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Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3

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Title: Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3

Author: Havelock Ellis


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX, VOLUME 3 ***

STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX, VOLUME III

   Analysis of the Sexual Impulse
   Love and Pain
   The Sexual Impulse in Women


by

HAVELOCK ELLIS

1927







PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.


This volume has been thoroughly revised for the present edition and
considerably enlarged throughout, in order to render it more accurate and
more illustrative, while bringing it fairly up to date with reference to
scientific investigation. Numerous histories have also been added to the
Appendix.

It has not been found necessary to modify the main doctrines set forth ten
years ago. At the same time, however, it may be mentioned, as regards the
first study in the volume, that our knowledge of the physiological
mechanism of the sexual instinct has been revolutionized during recent
years. This is due to the investigations that have been made, and the
deductions that have been built up, concerning the part played by
hormones, or internal secretions of the ductless glands, in the physical
production of the sexual instinct and the secondary sexual characters. The
conception of the psychology of the sexual impulse here set forth, while
correlated to terms of a physical process of tumescence and detumescence,
may be said to be independent of the ultimate physiological origins of
that process. But we cannot fail to realize the bearing of physiological
chemistry in this field; and the doctrine of internal secretions, since it
may throw light on many complex problems presented by the sexual instinct,
is full of interest for us.

HAVELOCK ELLIS.

June, 1913.




PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.


The present volume of _Studies_ deals with some of the most essential
problems of sexual psychology. The _Analysis of the Sexual Impulse_ is
fundamental. Unless we comprehend the exact process which is being worked
out beneath the shifting and multifold phenomena presented to us we can
never hope to grasp in their true relations any of the normal or abnormal
manifestations of this instinct. I do not claim that the conception of the
process here stated is novel or original. Indeed, even since I began to
work it out some years ago, various investigators in these fields,
especially in Germany, have deprived it of any novelty it might otherwise
have possessed, while at the same time aiding me in reaching a more
precise statement. This is to me a cause of satisfaction. On so
fundamental a matter I should have been sorry to find myself tending to a
peculiar and individual standpoint. It is a source of gratification to me
that the positions I have reached are those toward which current
intelligent and scientific opinions are tending. Any originality in my
study of this problem can only lie in the bringing together of elements
from somewhat diverse fields. I shall be content if it is found that I
have attained a fairly balanced, general, and judicial statement of these
main factors in the sexual instinct.

In the study of _Love and Pain_ I have discussed the sources of those
aberrations which are commonly called, not altogether happily, "sadism"
and "masochism." Here we are brought before the most extreme and perhaps
the most widely known group of sexual perversions. I have considered them
from the medico-legal standpoint, because that has already been done by
other writers whose works are accessible. I have preferred to show how
these aberrations may be explained; how they may be linked on to normal
and fundamental aspects of the sexual impulse; and, indeed, in their
elementary forms, may themselves be regarded as normal. In some degree
they are present, in every case, at some point of sexual development;
their threads are subtly woven in and out of the whole psychological
process of sex. I have made no attempt to reduce their complexity to a
simplicity that would be fallacious. I hope that my attempt to unravel
these long and tangled threads will be found to make them fairly clear.

In the third study, on _The Sexual Impulse in Women_, we approach a
practical question of applied sexual psychology, and a question of the
first importance. No doubt the sex impulse in men is of great moment from
the social point of view. It is, however, fairly obvious and well
understood. The impulse in women is not only of at least equal moment, but
it is far more obscure. The natural difficulties of the subject have been
increased by the assumption of most writers who have touched it--casually
and hurriedly, for the most part--that the only differences to be sought
in the sexual impulse in man and in woman are quantitative differences. I
have pointed out that we may more profitably seek for qualitative
differences, and have endeavored to indicate such of these differences as
seem to be of significance.

In an Appendix will be found a selection of histories of more or less
normal sexual development. Histories of gross sexual perversion have often
been presented in books devoted to the sexual instinct; it has not
hitherto been usual to inquire into the facts of normal sexual
development. Yet it is concerning normal sexual development that our
ignorance is greatest, and the innovation can scarcely need justification.
I have inserted these histories not only because many of them are highly
instructive in themselves, but also because they exhibit the nature of the
material on which my work is mainly founded.

I am indebted to many correspondents, medical and other, in various parts
of the world, for much valuable assistance. When they have permitted me
to do so I have usually mentioned their names in the text. This has not
been possible in the case of many women friends and correspondents, to
whom, however, my debt is very great. Nature has put upon women the
greater part of the burden of sexual reproduction; they have consequently
become the supreme authorities on all matters in which the sexual emotions
come into question. Many circumstances, however, that are fairly obvious,
conspire to make it difficult for women to assert publicly the wisdom and
knowledge which, in matters of love, the experiences of life have brought
to them. The ladies who, in all earnestness and sincerity, write books on
these questions are often the last people to whom we should go as the
representatives of their sex; those who know most have written least. I
can therefore but express again, as in previous volumes I have expressed
before, my deep gratitude to these anonymous collaborators who have aided
me in throwing light on a field of human life which is of such primary
social importance and is yet so dimly visible.

HAVELOCK ELLIS.

Carbis Water,

Lelant, Cornwall, England.




CONTENTS.


ANALYSIS OF THE SEXUAL IMPULSE.

Definition of Instinct--The Sexual Impulse a Factor of the Sexual
Instinct--Theory of the Sexual Impulse as an Impulse of Evacuation--The
Evidence in Support of this Theory Inadequate--The Sexual Impulse to Some
Extent Independent of the Sexual Glands--The Sexual Impulse in Castrated
Animals and Men--The Sexual Impulse in Castrated Women, After the
Menopause, and in the Congenital Absence of the Sexual Glands--The
Internal Secretions--Analogy between the Sexual Relationship and that of
the Suckling Mother and her Child--The Theory of the Sexual Impulse as a
Reproductive Impulse--This Theory Untenable--Moll's Definition--The
Impulse of Detumescence--The Impulse of Contrectation--Modification of
this Theory Proposed--Its Relation to Darwin's Sexual Selection--The
Essential Element in Darwin's Conception--Summary of the History of the
Doctrine of Sexual Selection. Its Psychological Aspect--Sexual Selection a
Part of Natural Selection--The Fundamental Importance of
Tumescence--Illustrated by the Phenomena of Courtship in Animals and in
Man--The Object of Courtship is to Produce Sexual Tumescence--The
Primitive Significance of Dancing in Animals and Man--Dancing is a Potent
Agent for Producing Tumescence--The Element of Truth in the Comparison of
the Sexual Impulse with an Evacuation, Especially of the Bladder--Both
Essentially Involve Nervous Explosions--Their Intimate and Sometimes
Vicarious Relationships--Analogy between Coitus and Epilepsy--Analogy of
the Sexual Impulse to Hunger--Final Object of the Impulses of Tumescence
and Detumescence.


LOVE AND PAIN.

I.

The Chief Key to the Relationship between Love and Pain to be Found in
Animal Courtship--Courtship a Source of Combativity and of Cruelty--Human
Play in the Light of Animal Courtship--The Frequency of Crimes Against the
Person in Adolescence--Marriage by Capture and its Psychological
Basis--Man's Pleasure in Exerting Force and Woman's Pleasure in
Experiencing it--Resemblance of Love to Pain even in Outward
Expression--The Love-bite--In What Sense Pain May be Pleasurable--The
Natural Contradiction in the Emotional Attitude of Women Toward
Men--Relative Insensibility to Pain of the Organic Sexual Sphere in
Women--The Significance of the Use of the Ampallang and Similar Appliances
in Coitus--The Sexual Subjection of Women to Men in Part Explainable as
the Necessary Condition for Sexual Pleasure.

II.

The Definition of Sadism--De Sade--Masochism to some Extent
Normal--Sacher-Masoch--No Real Line of Demarcation between Sadism and
Masochism--Algolagnia Includes Both Groups of Manifestations--The
Love-bite as a Bridge from Normal Phenomena to Algolagnia--The Fascination
of Blood--The Most Extreme Perversions are Linked on to Normal Phenomena.

III.

Flagellation as a Typical Illustration of Algolagnia--Causes of Connection
between Sexual Emotion and Whipping--Physical Causes--Psychic Causes
Probably More Important--The Varied Emotional Associations of
Whipping--Its Wide Prevalence.

IV.

The Impulse to Strangle the Object of Sexual Desire--The Wish to be
Strangled. Respiratory Disturbance the Essential Element in this Group of
Phenomena--The Part Played by Respiratory Excitement in the Process of
Courtship--Swinging and Suspension--The Attraction Exerted by the Idea of
being Chained and Fettered.

V.

Pain, and not Cruelty, the Essential Element in Sadism and Masochism--Pain
Felt as Pleasure--Does the Sadist Identify Himself with the Feelings of
his Victim?--The Sadist Often a Masochist in Disguise--The Spectacle of
Pain or Struggle as a Sexual Stimulant.

VI.

Why is Pain a Sexual Stimulant?--It is the Most Effective Method of
Arousing Emotion--Anger and Fear the Most Powerful Emotions--Their
Biological Significance in Courtship--Their General and Special Effects in
Stimulating the Organism--Grief as a Sexual Stimulant--The Physiological
Mechanism of Fatigue Renders Pain Pleasurable.

VII.

Summary of Results Reached--The Joy of Emotional Expansion--The
Satisfaction of the Craving for Power--The Influence of Neurasthenic and
Neuropathic Conditions--The Problem of Pain in Love Largely Constitutes a
Special Case of Erotic Symbolism.


THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN WOMEN.

Introduction.

I.

The Primitive View of Women--As a Supernatural Element in Life--As
Peculiarly Embodying the Sexual Instinct--The Modern Tendency to
Underestimate the Sexual Impulse in Women--This Tendency Confined to
Recent Times--Sexual Anæsthesia--Its Prevalence--Difficulties in
Investigating the Subject--Some Attempts to Investigate it--Sexual
Anæsthesia Must be Regarded as Abnormal--The Tendency to Spontaneous
Manifestations of the Sexual Impulse in Young Girls at Puberty.

II.

Special Characters of the Sexual Impulse in Women--The More Passive Part
Played by Women in Courtship--This Passivity Only Apparent--The Physical
Mechanism of the Sexual Process in Women More Complex--The Slower
Development of Orgasm in Women--The Sexual Impulse in Women More
Frequently Needs to be Actively Aroused--The Climax of Sexual Energy Falls
Later in Women's Lives than in Men's--Sexual Ardor in Women increased
After the Establishment of Sexual Relationships--Women Bear Sexual
Excesses Better than Men--The Sexual Sphere Larger and More Diffused in
Women--The Sexual Impulse in Women Shows a Greater Tendency to Periodicity
and a Wider Range of Variation.

III.

Summary of Conclusions.


APPENDIX A.

The Sexual Instinct in Savages.


APPENDIX B.

The Development of the Sexual Instinct.


INDEX OF AUTHORS.


INDEX OF SUBJECTS.




ANALYSIS OF THE SEXUAL IMPULSE.

Definition of Instinct--The Sexual Impulse a Factor of the Sexual
Instinct--Theory of the Sexual Impulse as an Impulse of Evacuation--The
Evidence in Support of this Theory Inadequate--The Sexual Impulse to Some
Extent Independent of the Sexual Glands--The Sexual Impulse in Castrated
Animals and Men--The Sexual Impulse in Castrated Women, after the
Menopause, and in the Congenital Absence of the Sexual Glands--The
Internal Secretions--Analogy between the Sexual Relationship and that of
the Suckling Mother and her Child--The Theory of the Sexual Impulse as a
Reproductive Impulse--This Theory Untenable--Moll's Definition--The
Impulse of Detumescence--The Impulse of Contrectation--Modification of
this Theory Proposed--Its Relation to Darwin's Sexual Selection--The
Essential Element in Darwin's Conception--Summary of the History of the
Doctrine of Sexual Selection--Its Psychological Aspect--Sexual Selection a
Part of Natural Selection--The Fundamental Importance of
Tumescence--Illustrated by the Phenomena of Courtship in Animals and in
Man--The Object of Courtship is to Produce Sexual Tumescence--The
Primitive Significance of Dancing in Animals and Man--Dancing is a Potent
Agent for Producing Tumescence--The Element of Truth in the Comparison of
the Sexual Impulse with an Evacuation, Especially of the Bladder--Both
Essentially Involve Nervous Explosions--Their Intimate and Sometimes
Vicarious Relationships--Analogy between Coitus and Epilepsy--Analogy of
the Sexual Impulse to Hunger--Final Object of the Impulses of Tumescence
and Detumescence.


The term "sexual instinct" may be said to cover the whole of the
neuropsychic phenomena of reproduction which man shares with the lower
animals. It is true that much discussion has taken place concerning the
proper use of the term "instinct," and some definitions of instinctive
action would appear to exclude the essential mechanism of the process
whereby sexual reproduction is assured. Such definitions scarcely seem
legitimate, and are certainly unfortunate. Herbert Spencer's definition of
instinct as "compound reflex action" is sufficiently clear and definite
for ordinary use.

    A fairly satisfactory definition of instinct is that supplied by
    Dr. and Mrs. Peckham in the course of their study _On the
    Instincts and Habits of Solitary Wasps_. "Under the term
    'instinct,'" they say, "we place all complex acts which are
    performed previous to experience and in a similar manner by all
    members of the same sex and race, leaving out as non-essential,
    at this time, the question of whether they are or are not
    accompanied by consciousness." This definition is quoted with
    approval by Lloyd Morgan, who modifies and further elaborates it
    (_Animal Behavior_, 1900, p. 21). "The distinction between
    instinctive and reflex behavior," he remarks, "turns in large
    degree on their relative complexity," and instinctive behavior,
    he concludes, may be said to comprise "those complex groups of
    co-ordinated acts which are, on their first occurrence,
    independent of experience; which tend to the well-being of the
    individual and the preservation of the race; which are due to the
    co-operation of external and internal stimuli; which are
    similarly performed by all the members of the same more or less
    restricted group of animals; but which are subject to variation,
    and to subsequent modification under the guidance of experience."
    Such a definition clearly justifies us in speaking of a "sexual
    instinct." It may be added that the various questions involved in
    the definition of the sexual instinct have been fully discussed
    by Moll in the early sections of his _Untersuchungen über die
    Libido Sexualis_.

    Of recent years there has been a tendency to avoid the use of the
    term "instinct," or, at all events, to refrain from attaching any
    serious scientific sense to it. Loeb's influence has especially
    given force to this tendency. Thus, while Piéron, in an
    interesting discussion of the question ("Les Problèmes Actuels de
    l'Instinct," _Revue Philosophique_, Oct., 1908), thinks it would
    still be convenient to retain the term, giving it a philosophical
    meaning, Georges Bohn, who devotes a chapter to the notion of
    instinct (_La Naissance de l'Intelligence_, 1909), is strongly in
    favor of eliminating the word, as being merely a legacy of
    medieval theologians and metaphysicians, serving to conceal our
    ignorance or our lack of exact analysis.

It may be said that the whole of the task undertaken in these _Studies_ is
really an attempt to analyze what is commonly called the sexual instinct.
In order to grasp it we have to break it up into its component parts.
Lloyd Morgan has pointed out that the components of an instinct may be
regarded as four: first, the internal messages giving rise to the impulse;
secondly, the external stimuli which co-operate with the impulse to affect
the nervous centers; thirdly, the active response due to the co-ordinate
outgoing discharges; and, fourthly, the message from the organs concerned
in the behavior by which the central nervous system is further
affected.[1]

In dealing with the sexual instinct the first two factors are those which
we have most fully to discuss. With the external stimuli we shall be
concerned in a future volume (IV). We may here confine ourselves mainly to
the first factor: the nature of the internal messages which prompt the
sexual act. We may, in other words, attempt to analyze the _sexual
impulse_.

The first definition of the sexual impulse we meet with is that which
regards it as an impulse of evacuation. The psychological element is thus
reduced to a minimum. It is true that, especially in early life, the
emotions caused by forced repression of the excretions are frequently
massive or acute in the highest degree, and the joy of relief
correspondingly great. But in adult life, on most occasions, these desires
can be largely pushed into the background of consciousness, partly by
training, partly by the fact that involuntary muscular activity is less
imperative in adult life; so that the ideal element in connection with the
ordinary excretions is almost a negligible quantity. The evacuation theory
of the sexual instinct is, however, that which has most popular vogue, and
the cynic delights to express it in crude language. It is the view that
appeals to the criminal mind, and in the slang of French criminals the
brothel is _le cloaque_. It was also the view implicitly accepted by
medieval ascetic writers, who regarded woman as "a temple built over a
sewer," and from a very different standpoint it was concisely set forth by
Montaigne, who has doubtless contributed greatly to support this view of
the matter: "I find," he said, "that Venus, after all, is nothing more
than the pleasure of discharging our vessels, just as nature renders
pleasurable the discharges from other parts."[2] Luther, again, always
compared the sexual to the excretory impulse, and said that marriage was
just as necessary as the emission of urine. Sir Thomas More, also, in the
second book of _Utopia_, referring to the pleasure of evacuation, speaks
of that felt "when we do our natural easement, or when we be doing the act
of generation." This view would, however, scarcely deserve serious
consideration if various distinguished investigators, among whom Féré may
be specially mentioned, had not accepted it as the best and most accurate
definition of the sexual impulse. "The genesic need may be considered,"
writes Féré, "as a need of evacuation; the choice is determined by the
excitations which render the evacuation more agreeable."[3] Certain facts
observed in the lower animals tend to support this view; it is, therefore,
necessary, in the first place, to set forth the main results of
observation on this matter. Spallanzani had shown how the male frog during
coitus will undergo the most horrible mutilations, even decapitation, and
yet resolutely continue the act of intercourse, which lasts from four to
ten days, sitting on the back of the female and firmly clasping her with
his forelegs. Goltz confirmed Spallanzani's observations and threw new
light on the mechanism of the sexual instinct and the sexual act in the
frog. By removing various parts of the female frog Goltz found that every
part of the female was attractive to the male at pairing time, and that he
was not imposed on when parts of a male were substituted. By removing
various of the sense-organs of the male Goltz[4] further found that it was
not by any special organ, but by the whole of his sensitive system, that
this activity was set in action. If, however, the skin of the arms and of
the breast between was removed, no embrace took place; so that the sexual
sensations seemed to be exerted through this apparatus. When the
testicles were removed the embrace still took place. It could scarcely be
said that these observations demonstrated, or in any way indicated, that
the sexual impulse is dependent on the need of evacuation. Professor
Tarchanoff, of St. Petersburg, however, made an experiment which seemed to
be crucial. He took several hundred frogs (_Rana temporaria_), nearly all
in the act of coitus, and in the first place repeated Goltz's experiments.
He removed the heart; but this led to no direct or indirect stoppage of
coitus, nor did removal of the lungs, parts of the liver, the spleen, the
intestines, the stomach, or the kidneys. In the same way even careful
removal of both testicles had no result. But on removing the seminal
receptacles coitus was immediately or very shortly stopped, and not
renewed. Thus, Tarchanoff concluded that in frogs, and possibly therefore
in mammals, the seminal receptacles are the starting-point of the
centripetal impulse which by reflex action sets in motion the complicated
apparatus of sexual activity.[5] A few years later the question was again
taken up by Steinach, of Prague. Granting that Tarchanoff's experiments
are reliable as regards the frog, Steinach points out that we may still
ask whether in mammals the integrity of the seminal receptacles is bound
up with the preservation of sexual excitability. This cannot be taken for
granted, nor can we assume that the seminal receptacles of the frog are
homologous with the seminal vesicles of mammals. In order to test the
question, Steinach chose the white rat, as possessing large seminal
vesicles and a very developed sexual impulse. He found that removal of the
seminal sacs led to no decrease in the intensity of the sexual impulse;
the sexual act was still repeated with the same frequency and the same
vigor. But these receptacles, Steinach proceeded to argue, do not really
contain semen, but a special secretion of their own; they are anatomically
quite unlike the seminal receptacles of the frog; so that no doubt is thus
thrown on Tarchanoff's observations. Steinach remarked, however, that
one's faith is rather shaken by the fact that in the _Esculenta_, which
in sexual life closely resembles _Rana temporaria_, there are no seminal
receptacles. He therefore repeated Tarchanoff's experiments, and found
that the seminal receptacles were empty before coitus, only becoming
gradually filled during coitus; it could not, therefore, be argued that
the sexual impulse started from the receptacles. He then extirpated the
seminal receptacles, avoiding hemorrhage as far as possible, and found
that, in the majority of cases so operated on, coitus still continued for
from five to seven days, and in the minority for a longer time. He
therefore concluded, with Goltz, that it is from the swollen testicles,
not from the seminal receptacles, that the impulse first starts. Goltz
himself pointed out that the fact that the removal of the testicles did
not stop coitus by no means proves that it did not begin it, for, when the
central nervous mechanism is once set in action, it can continue even when
the exciting stimulus is removed. By extirpating the testicles some months
before the sexual season he found that no coitus occurred. At the same
time, even in these frogs, a certain degree of sexual inclination and a
certain excitability of the embracing center still persisted, disappearing
when the sexual epoch was over.

According to most recent writers, the seminal vesicles of mammals are
receptacles for their own albuminous secretion, the function of which is
unknown. Steinach could find no spermatozoa in these "seminal" sacs, and
therefore he proposed to use Owen's name of _glandulæ vesiculares_. After
extirpation of these vesicular glands in the white rat typical coitus
occurred. But the capacity for _procreation_ was diminished, and
extirpation of both _glandulæ vesiculares_ and _glandulæ prostaticæ_ led
to disappearance of the capacity for procreation. Steinach came to the
conclusion that this is because the secretions of these glands impart
increased vitality to the spermatozoa, and he points out that great
fertility and high development of the accessory sexual glands go together.

Steinach found that, when sexually mature white rats were castrated,
though at first they remained as potent as ever, their potency gradually
declined; sexual excitement, however, and sexual inclination always
persisted. He then proceeded to castrate rats before puberty and
discovered the highly significant fact that in these also a quite
considerable degree of sexual inclination appeared. They followed,
sniffed, and licked the females like ordinary males; and that this was not
a mere indication of curiosity was shown by the fact that they made
attempts at coitus which only differed from those of normal males by the
failure of erection and ejaculation, though, occasionally, there was
imperfect erection. This lasted for a year, and then their sexual
inclinations began to decline, and they showed signs of premature age.
These manifestations of sexual sense Steinach compares to those noted in
the human species during childhood.[6]

The genesic tendencies are thus, to a certain degree, independent of the
generative glands, although the development of these glands serves to
increase the genesic ability and to furnish the impulsion necessary to
assure procreation, as well as to insure the development of the secondary
sexual characters, probably by the influence of secretions elaborated and
thrown into the system from the primary sexual glands.[7]

    Halban ("Die Entstehung der Geschlechtscharaktere," _Archiv für
    Gynäkologie_, 1903, pp. 205-308) argues that the primary sex
    glands do not necessarily produce the secondary sex characters,
    nor inhibit the development of those characteristic of the
    opposite sex. It is indeed the rule, but it is not the inevitable
    result. Sexual differences exist from the first. Nussbaum made
    experiments on frogs (_Rana fusca_), which go through a yearly
    cycle of secondary sexual changes at the period of heat. These
    changes cease on castration, but, if the testes of other frogs
    are introduced beneath the skin of the castrated frogs, Nussbaum
    found that they acted as if the frog had not been castrated. It
    is the secretion of the testes which produces the secondary
    sexual changes. But Nussbaum found that the testicular secretion
    does not work if the nerves of the secondary sexual region are
    cut, and that the secretion has no direct action on the organism.
    Pflüger, discussing these experiments (_Archiv für die Gesammte
    Physiologie_, 1907, vol. cxvi, parts 5 and 6), disputes this
    conclusion, and argues that the secretion is not dependent on the
    action of the nervous system, and that therefore the secondary
    sexual characters are independent of the nervous system.

    Steinach has also in later experiments ("Geschlechtstrieb und
    echt Sekundäre Geschlechtsmerkmale als Folge der
    innerskretorischen Funktion der Keimdrusen," _Zentralblatt für
    Physiologie_, Bd. xxiv, Nu. 13, 1910) argued against any local
    nervous influence. He found in _Rana fusca_ and _esculenta_ that
    after castration in autumn the impulse to grasp the female
    persisted in some degrees and then disappeared, reappearing in a
    slight degree, however, every winter at the normal period of
    sexual activity. But when the testicular substance of actively
    sexual frogs was injected into the castrated frogs it exerted an
    elective action on the sexual reflex, sometimes in a few hours,
    but the action is, Steinach concludes, first central. The
    testicular secretion of frogs that were not sexually active had
    no stimulating action, but if the frogs were sexually active the
    injection of their central nervous substance was as effective as
    their testicular substance. In either case, Steinach concludes,
    there is the removal of an inhibition which is in operation at
    sexually quiescent periods.

    Speaking generally, Steinach considers that there is a process of
    "erotisation" (Erotisieurung) of the nervous center under the
    influence of the internal testicular secretions, and that this
    persists even when the primary physical stimulus has been
    removed.

The experience of veterinary surgeons also shows that the sexual impulse
tends to persist in animals after castration. Thus the ox and the gelding
make frequent efforts to copulate with females in heat. In some cases, at
all events in the case of the horse, castrated animals remain potent, and
are even abnormally ardent, although impregnation cannot, of course,
result.[8]

The results obtained by scientific experiment and veterinary experience on
the lower animals are confirmed by observation of various groups of
phenomena in the human species. There can be no doubt that castrated men
may still possess sexual impulses. This has been noted by observers in
various countries in which eunuchs are made and employed.[9]

    It is important to remember that there are different degrees of
    castration, for in current language these are seldom
    distinguished. The Romans recognized four different degrees: 1.
    True _castrati_, from whom both the testicles and the penis had
    been removed. 2. _Spadones_, from whom the testicles only had
    been removed; this was the most common practice. 3. _Thlibiæ_, in
    whom the testicles had not been removed, but destroyed by
    crushing; this practice is referred to by Hippocrates. 4.
    _Thlasiæ_, in whom the spermatic cord had simply been cut.
    Millant, from whose Paris thesis (_Castration Criminelle et
    Maniaque_, 1902) I take these definitions, points out that it was
    recognized that _spadones_ remained apt for coitus if the
    operation was performed after puberty, a fact appreciated by many
    Roman ladies, _ad seouras libidinationes_, as St. Jerome
    remarked, while Martial (lib. iv) said of a Roman lady who sought
    eunuchs: "Vult futui Gallia, non parere." (See also Millant, _Les
    Eunuques à Travers les Ages_, 1909, and articles by Lipa Bey and
    Zambaco, _Sexual-Probleme_, Oct. and Dec., 1911.)

In China, Matignon, formerly physician to the French legation in Pekin,
tells us that eunuchs are by no means without sexual feeling, that they
seek the company of women and, he believes, gratify their sexual desires
by such methods as are left open to them, for the sexual organs are
entirely removed. It would seem probable that, the earlier the age at
which the operation is performed, the less marked are the sexual desires,
for Matignon mentions that boys castrated before the age of 10 are
regarded by the Chinese as peculiarly virginal and pure.[10] At
Constantinople, where the eunuchs are of negro race, castration is usually
complete and performed before puberty, in order to abolish sexual potency
and desire as far as possible. Even when castration is effected in
infancy, sexual desire is not necessarily rendered impossible. Thus Marie
has recorded the case of an insane Egyptian eunuch whose penis and scrotum
were removed in infancy; yet, he had frequent and intense sexual desire
with ejaculation of mucus and believed that an invisible princess touched
him and aroused voluptuous sensations. Although the body had a feminine
appearance, the prostate was normal and the vesiculæ seminales not
atrophied.[11] It may be added that Lancaster[12] quotes the following
remark, made by a resident for many years in the land, concerning Nubian
eunuchs: "As far as I can judge, sex feeling exists unmodified by absence
of the sexual organs. The eunuch differs from the man not in the absence
of sexual passion, but only in the fact that he cannot fully gratify it.
As far as he can approach a gratification of it he does so." In this
connection it may be noted that (as quoted by Moll) Jäger attributes the
preference of some women--noted in ancient Rome and in the East--for
castrated men as due not only to the freedom from risk of impregnation in
such intercourse, but also to the longer duration of erection in the
castrated.

When castration is performed without removal of the penis it is said that
potency remains for at least ten years afterward, and Disselhorst, who in
his _Die accessorischen Geschlechtsdrüsen der Wirbelthiere_ takes the same
view as has been here adopted, mentions that, according to Pelikan (_Das
Skopzentum in Rüssland_), those castrated at puberty are fit for coitus
long afterward. When castration is performed for surgical reasons at a
later age it is still less likely to affect potency or to change the
sexual feelings.[13] Guinard concludes that the sexual impulse after
castration is relatively more persistent in man than in the lower animals,
and is sometimes even heightened, being probably more dependent on
external stimuli.[14]

Except in the East, castration is more often performed on women than on
men, and then the evidence as to the influence of the removal of the
ovaries on the sexual emotions shows varying results. It has been found
that after castration sexual desire and sexual pleasure in coitus may
either remain the same, be diminished or extinguished, or be increased. By
some the diminution has been attributed to autosuggestion, the woman being
convinced that she can no longer be like other women; the augmentation of
desire and pleasure has been supposed to be due to the removal of the
dread of impregnation. We have, of course, to take into account individual
peculiarities, method of life, and the state of the health.

    In France Jayle ("Effets physiologiques de la Castration chez la
    Femme," _Revue de Gynécologie_, 1897, pp. 403-57) found that,
    among 33 patients in whom ovariotomy had been performed, in 18
    sexual desire remained the same, in 3 it was diminished, in 8
    abolished, in 3 increased; while pleasure in coitus remained the
    same in 17, was diminished in 1, abolished in 4, and increased in
    5, in 6 cases sexual intercourse was very painful. In two other
    groups of cases--one in which both ovaries and uterus were
    removed and another in which the uterus alone was removed--the
    results were not notably different.

    In Germany Gläveke (_Archiv für Gynäkologie_, Bd. xxxv, 1889)
    found that desire remained in 6 cases, was diminished in 10, and
    disappeared in 11, while pleasure in intercourse remained in 8,
    was diminished in 10, and was lost in 8. Pfister, again (_Archiv
    für Gynäkologie_, Bd. lvi, 1898), examined this point in 99
    castrated women; he remarks that sexual desire and sexual
    pleasure in intercourse were usually associated, and found the
    former unchanged in 19 cases, decreased in 24, lost in 35, never
    present in 21, while the latter was unchanged in 18 cases and
    diminished or lost in 60. Keppler (International Medical
    Congress, Berlin, 1890) found that among 46 castrated women
    sexual feeling was in no case abolished. Adler also, who
    discusses this question (_Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung
    des Weibes_, 1904, p. 75 et seq.), criticises Gläveke's
    statements and concludes that there is no strict relation between
    the sexual organs and the sexual feelings. Kisch, who has known
    several cases in which the feelings remained the same as before
    the operation, brings together (_The Sexual Life of Women_)
    varying opinions of numerous authors regarding the effects of
    removal of the ovaries on the sexual appetite.

    In America Bloom (as quoted in _Medical Standard_, 1896, p. 121)
    found that in none of the cases of women investigated, in which
    oöphorectomy had been performed before the age of 33, was the
    sexual appetite entirely lost; in most of them it had not
    materially diminished and in a few it was intensified. There
    was, however, a general consensus of opinion that the normal
    vaginal secretion during coitus was greatly lessened. In the
    cases of women over 33, including also hysterectomies, a gradual
    lessening of sexual feeling and desire was found to occur most
    generally. Dr. Isabel Davenport records 2 cases (reported in
    _Medical Standard_, 1895, p. 346) of women between 30 and 35
    years of age whose erotic tendencies were extreme; the ovaries
    and tubes were removed, in one case for disease, in the other
    with a view of removing the sexual tendencies; in neither case
    was there any change. Lapthorn Smith (_Medical Record_, vol.
    xlviii) has reported the case of an unmarried woman of 24 whose
    ovaries and tubes had been removed seven years previously for
    pain and enlargement, and the periods had disappeared for six
    years; she had had experience of sexual intercourse, and declared
    that she had never felt such extreme sexual excitement and
    pleasure as during coitus at the end of this time.

    In England Lawson Tait and Bantock (_British Medical Journal_,
    October 14, 1899, p. 975) have noted that sexual passion seems
    sometimes to be increased even after the removal of ovaries,
    tubes, and uterus. Lawson Tait also stated (_British
    Gynæcological Journal_, Feb., 1887, p. 534) that after systematic
    and extensive inquiry he had not found a single instance in
    which, provided that sexual appetite existed before the removal
    of the appendages, it was abolished by that operation. A Medical
    Inquiry Committee appointed by the Liverpool Medical Institute
    (ibid., p. 617) had previously reported that a considerable
    number of patients stated that they had suffered a distinct loss
    of sexual feeling. Lawson Tait, however, throws doubts on the
    reliability of the Committee's results, which were based on the
    statements of unintelligent hospital patients.

    I may quote the following remarks from a communication sent to me
    by an experienced physician in Australia: "No rule can be laid
    down in cases in which both ovaries have been extirpated. Some
    women say that, though formerly passionate, they have since
    become quite indifferent, but I am of opinion that the majority
    of women who have had prior sexual experience retain desire and
    gratification in an equal degree to that they had before
    operation. I know one case in which a young girl hardly 19 years
    old, who had been accustomed to congress for some twelve months,
    had trouble which necessitated the removal of the ovaries and
    tubes on both sides. Far from losing all her desire or
    gratification, both were very materially increased in intensity.
    Menstruation has entirely ceased, without loss of femininity in
    either disposition or appearance. During intercourse, I am told,
    there is continuous spasmodic contraction of various parts of the
    vagina and vulva."

The independence of the sexual impulse from the distention of the sexual
glands is further indicated by the great frequency with which sexual
sensations, in a faint or even strong degree, are experienced in childhood
and sometimes in infancy, and by the fact that they often persist in women
long after the sexual glands have ceased their functions.

    In the study of auto-erotism in another volume of these _Studies_
    I have brought together some of the evidence showing that even in
    very young children spontaneous self-induced sexual excitement,
    with orgasm, may occur. Indeed, from an early age sexual
    differences pervade the whole nervous tissue. I may here quote
    the remarks of an experienced gynecologist: "I venture to think,"
    Braxton Hicks said many years ago, "that those who have much
    attended to children will agree with me in saying that, almost
    from the cradle, a difference can be seen in manner, habits of
    mind, and in illness, requiring variations in their treatment.
    The change is certainly hastened and intensified at the time of
    puberty; but there is, even to an average observer, a clear
    difference between the sexes from early infancy, gradually
    becoming more marked up to puberty. That sexual feelings exist
    [it would be better to say 'may exist'] from earliest infancy is
    well known, and therefore this function does not depend upon
    puberty, though intensified by it. Hence, may we not conclude
    that the progress toward development is not so abrupt as has been
    generally supposed?... The changes of puberty are all of them
    dependent on the primordial force which, gradually gathering in
    power, culminates in the perfection both of form and of the
    sexual system, primary and secondary."

    There appear to have been but few systematic observations on the
    persistence of the sexual impulse in women after the menopause.
    It is regarded as a fairly frequent phenomenon by Kisch, and also
    by Löwenfeld (_Sexualleben und Nervenleiden_, p. 29). In America,
    Bloom (as quoted in _Medical Standard_, 1896), from an
    investigation of four hundred cases, found that in some cases the
    sexual impulse persisted to a very advanced age, and mentions a
    case of a woman of 70, twenty years past the menopause, who had
    been long a widow, but had recently married, and who declared
    that both desire and gratification were as great, if not greater,
    than before the menopause.

Reference may finally be made to those cases in which the sexual impulse
has developed notwithstanding the absence, verified or probable, of any
sexual glands at all. In such cases sexual desire and sexual gratification
are sometimes even stronger than normal. Colman has reported a case in
which neither ovaries nor uterus could be detected, and the vagina was too
small for coitus, but pleasurable intercourse took place by the rectum and
sexual desire was at times so strong as to amount almost to nymphomania.
Clara Barrus has reported the case of a woman in whom there was congenital
absence of uterus and ovaries, as proved subsequently by autopsy, but the
sexual impulse was very strong and she had had illicit intercourse with a
lover. She suffered from recurrent mania, and then masturbated
shamelessly; when sane she was attractively feminine. Macnaughton-Jones
describes the case of a woman of 32 with normal sexual feelings and fully
developed breasts, clitoris, and labia, but no vagina or internal
genitalia could be detected even under the most thorough examination. In a
case of Bridgman's, again, the womb and ovaries were absent, and the
vagina small, but coitus was not painful, and the voluptuous sensations
were complete and sexual passion was strong. In a case of Cotterill's, the
ovaries and uterus were of minute size and functionless, and the vagina
was absent, but the sexual feelings were normal, and the clitoris
preserved its usual sensibility. Mundé had recorded two similar cases, of
which he presents photographs. In all these cases not only was the sexual
impulse present in full degree, but the subjects were feminine in
disposition and of normal womanly conformation; in most cases the external
sexual organs were properly developed.[15]

    Féré (_L'Instinct sexuel_, p. 241) has sought to explain away
    some of these phenomena, in so far as they may be brought against
    the theory that the secretions and excretions of the sexual
    glands are the sole source of the sexual impulse. The persistence
    of sexual feelings after castration may be due, he argues, to the
    presence of the nerves in the cicatrices, just as the amputated
    have the illusion that the missing limb is still there. Exactly
    the same explanation has since been put forward by Moll,
    _Medizinische Klinik_, 1905, Nrs. 12 and 13. In the same way the
    presence of sexual feelings after the menopause may be due to
    similar irritation determined by degeneration during involution
    of the glands. The precocious appearance of the sexual impulse in
    childhood he would explain as due to an anomaly of development in
    the sexual organs. Féré makes no attempt to explain the presence
    of the sexual impulse in the congenital absence of the sexual
    glands; here, however, Mundé intervenes with the suggestion that
    it is possible that in most cases "an infinitesimal trace of
    ovary" may exist, and preserve femininity, though insufficient to
    produce ovulation or menstruation.

    It is proper to mention these ingenious arguments. They are,
    however, purely hypothetical, obviously invented to support a
    theory. It can scarcely be said that they carry conviction. We
    may rather agree with Guinard that so great is the importance of
    reproduction that nature has multiplied the means by which
    preparation is made for the conjunction of the sexes and the
    roads by which sexual excitation may arrive. As Hirschfeld puts
    it, in a discussion of this subject (_Sexual-Probleme_, Feb.,
    1912), "Nature has several irons in the fire."

    It will be seen that the conclusions we have reached indirectly
    involve the assumption that the spinal nervous centers, through
    which the sexual mechanism operates, are not sufficient to
    account for the whole of the phenomena of the sexual impulse. The
    nervous circuit tends to involve a cerebral element, which may
    sometimes be of dominant importance. Various investigators, from
    the time of Gall onward, have attempted to localize the sexual
    instinct centrally. Such attempts, however, cannot be said to
    have succeeded, although they tend to show that there is a real
    connection between the brain and the generative organs. Thus
    Ceni, of Modena, by experiments on chickens, claims to have
    proved the influence of the cortical centers of procreation on
    the faculty of generation, for he found that lesions of the
    cortex led to sterility corresponding in degree to the lesion;
    but as these results followed even independently of any
    disturbance of the sexual instinct, their significance is not
    altogether clear (Carlo Ceni, "L'Influenza dei Centri Corticali
    sui Fenomeni della Generazione," _Revista Sperimentale di
    Freniatria_, 1907, fasc. 2-3). At present, as Obici and
    Marchesini have well remarked, all that we can do is to assume
    the existence of cerebral as well as spinal sexual centers; a
    cerebral sexual center, in the strictest sense, remains purely
    hypothetical.

    Although Gall's attempt to locate the sexual instinct in the
    cerebellum--well supported as it was by observations--is no
    longer considered to be tenable, his discussion of the sexual
    instinct was of great value, far in advance of his time, and
    accompanied by a mass of facts gathered from many fields. He
    maintained that the sexual instinct is a function of the brain,
    not of the sexual organs. He combated the view ruling in his day
    that the seat of erotic mania must be sought in the sexual
    organs. He fully dealt with the development of the sexual
    instinct in many children before maturity of the sexual glands,
    the prolongation of the instinct into old age, its existence in
    the castrated and in the congenital absence of the sexual glands;
    he pointed out that even with an apparently sound and normal
    sexual apparatus all sorts of psychic pathological deviations may
    yet occur. In fact, all the lines of argument I have briefly
    indicated in the foregoing pages--although when they were first
    written this fact was unknown to me--had been fully discussed by
    this remarkable man nearly a century ago. (The greater part of
    the third volume of Gall's _Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau_, in the
    edition of 1825, is devoted to this subject. For a good summary,
    sympathetic, though critical, of Gall's views on this matter, see
    Möbius, "Ueber Gall's Specielle Organologie," _Schmidt's
    Jahrbücher der Medicin_, 1900, vol. cclxvii; also _Ausgewahlte
    Werke_, vol. vii.)

It will be seen that the question of the nature of the sexual impulse has
been slowly transformed. It is no longer a question of the formation of
semen in the male, of the function of menstruation in the female. It has
become largely a question of physiological chemistry. The chief parts in
the drama of sex, alike on its psychic as on its physical sides, are thus
supposed to be played by two mysterious protagonists, the hormones, or
internal secretions, of the testes and of the ovary. Even the part played
by the brain is now often regarded as chemical, the brain being considered
to be a great chemical laboratory. There is a tendency, moreover, to
extend the sexual sphere so as to admit the influence of internal
secretions from other glands. The thymus, the adrenals, the thyroid, the
pituitary, even the kidneys: it is possible that internal secretions from
all these glands may combine to fill in the complete picture of sexuality
as we know it in men and women.[16] The subject is, however, so complex
and at present so little known that it would be hazardous, and for the
present purpose it is needless, to attempt to set forth any conclusions.

It is sufficiently clear that there is on the surface a striking analogy
between sexual desire and the impulse to evacuate an excretion, and that
this analogy is not only seen in the frog, but extends also to the highest
vertebrates. It is quite another matter, however, to assert that the
sexual impulse can be adequately defined as an impulse to evacuate. To
show fully the inadequate nature of this conception would require a
detailed consideration of the facts of sexual life. That is, however,
unnecessary. It is enough to point out certain considerations which alone
suffice to invalidate this view. In the first place, it must be remarked
that the trifling amount of fluid emitted in sexual intercourse is
altogether out of proportion to the emotions aroused by the act and to its
after-effect on the organism; the ancient dictum _omne animal post coitum
triste_ may not be exact, but it is certain that the effect of coitus on
the organism is far more profound than that produced by the far more
extensive evacuation of the bladder or bowels. Again, this definition
leaves unexplained all those elaborate preliminaries which, both in man
and the lower animals, precede the sexual act, preliminaries which in
civilized human beings sometimes themselves constitute a partial
satisfaction to the sexual impulse. It must also be observed that, unlike
the ordinary excretions, this discharge of the sexual glands is not
always, or in every person, necessary at all. Moreover, the theory of
evacuation at once becomes hopelessly inadequate when we apply it to
women; no one will venture to claim that an adequate psychological
explanation of the sexual impulse in a woman is to be found in the desire
to expel a little bland mucus from the minute glands of the genital tract.
We must undoubtedly reject this view of the sexual impulse. It has a
certain element of truth and it permits an instructive and helpful
analogy; but that is all. The sexual act presents many characters which
are absent in an ordinary act of evacuation, and, on the other hand, it
lacks the special characteristic of the evacuation proper, the
elimination of waste material; the seminal fluid is not a waste material,
and its retention is, to some extent perhaps, rather an advantage than a
disadvantage to the organism.

Eduard von Hartmann long since remarked that the satisfaction of what we
call the sexual instinct through an act carried out with a person of the
opposite sex is a very wonderful phenomenon. It cannot be said, however,
that the conception of the sexual act as a simple process of evacuation
does anything to explain the wonder. We are, at most, in the same position
as regards the stilling of normal sexual desire as we should be as regards
the emptying of the bladder, supposing it were very difficult for either
sex to effect this satisfactorily without the aid of a portion of the body
of a person of the other sex acting as a catheter. In such a case our
thoughts and ideals would center around persons of opposite sex, and we
should court their attention and help precisely as we do now in the case
of our sexual needs. Some such relationship does actually exist in the
case of the suckling mother and her infant. The mother is indebted to the
child for the pleasurable relief of her distended breasts; and, while in
civilization more subtle pleasures and intelligent reflection render this
massive physical satisfaction comparatively unessential to the act of
suckling, in more primitive conditions and among animals the need of this
pleasurable physical satisfaction is a real bond between the mother and
her offspring. The analogy is indeed very close: the erectile nipple
corresponds to the erectile penis, the eager watery mouth of the infant to
the moist and throbbing vagina, the vitally albuminous milk to the vitally
albuminous semen.[17] The complete mutual satisfaction, physical and
psychic, of mother and child, in the transfer from one to the other of a
precious organized fluid, is the one true physiological analogy to the
relationship of a man and a woman at the climax of the sexual act. Even
this close analogy, however, fails to cover all the facts of the sexual
life.

A very different view is presented to us in the definition of the sexual
instinct as a reproductive impulse, a desire for offspring. Hegar,
Eulenburg, Näcke, and Löwenfeld have accepted this as, at all events, a
partial definition.[18] No one, indeed, would argue that it is a complete
definition, although a few writers appear to have asserted that it is so
sometimes as regards the sexual impulse in women. There is, however,
considerable mental confusion in the attempt to set up such a definition.
If we define an instinct as an action adapted to an end which is not
present to consciousness, then it is quite true that the sexual instinct
is an instinct of reproduction. But we do not adequately define the sexual
instinct by merely stating its ultimate object. We might as well say that
the impulse by which young animals seize food is "an instinct of
nutrition." The object of reproduction certainly constitutes no part of
the sexual impulse whatever in any animal apart from man, and it reveals a
lack of the most elementary sense of biological continuity to assert that
in man so fundamental and involuntary a process can suddenly be
revolutionized. That the sexual impulse is very often associated with a
strong desire for offspring there can be no doubt, and in women the
longing for a child--that is to say, the longing to fulfill those
functions for which their bodies are constituted--may become so urgent and
imperative that we may regard it as scarcely less imperative than the
sexual impulse. But it is not the sexual impulse, though intimately
associated with it, and though it explains it. A reproductive instinct
might be found in parthenogenetic animals, but would be meaningless,
because useless, in organisms propagating by sexual union. A woman may not
want a lover, but may yet want a child. This merely means that her
maternal instincts have been aroused, while her sexual instincts are still
latent. A desire for reproduction, as soon as that desire becomes
instinctive, necessarily takes on the form of the sexual impulse, for
there is no other instinctive mechanism by which it can possibly express
itself. A "reproductive instinct," apart from the sexual instinct and
apart from the maternal instinct, cannot be admitted; it would be an
absurdity. Even in women in whom the maternal instincts are strong, it may
generally be observed that, although before a woman is in love, and also
during the later stages of her love, the conscious desire for a child may
be strong, during the time when sexual passion is at its highest the
thought of offspring, under normally happy conditions, tends to recede
into the background. Reproduction is the natural end and object of the
sexual instinct, but the statement that it is part of the contents of the
sexual impulse, or can in any way be used to define that impulse, must be
dismissed as altogether inacceptable. Indeed, although the term
"reproductive instinct" is frequently used, it is seldom used in a sense
that we need take seriously; it is vaguely employed as a euphemism by
those who wish to veil the facts of the sexual life; it is more precisely
employed mainly by those who are unconsciously dominated by a
superstitious repugnance to sex.

I now turn to a very much more serious and elaborate attempt to define the
constitution of the sexual impulse, that of Moll. He finds that it is made
up of two separate components, each of which may be looked upon as an
uncontrollable impulse.[19] One of these is that by which the tension of
the sexual organs is spasmodically relieved; this he calls the _impulse of
detumescence_,[20] and he regards it as primary, resembling the impulse to
empty a full bladder. The other impulse is the "instinct to approach,
touch, and kiss another person, usually of the opposite sex"; this he
terms the _impulse of contrectation_, and he includes under this head not
only the tendency to general physical contact, but also the psychic
inclination to become generally interested in a person of the opposite
sex. Each of these primary impulses Moll regards as forming a constituent
of the sexual instinct in both men and women. It seems to me undoubtedly
true that these two impulses do correspond to the essential phenomena. The
awkward and unsatisfactory part of Moll's analysis is the relation of the
one to the other. It is true that he traces both impulses back to the
sexual glands, that of detumescence directly, that of contrectation
indirectly; but evidently he does not regard them as intimately related to
each other; he insists on the fact that they may exist apart from each
other, that they do not appear synchronously in youth: the contrectation
impulse he regards as secondary; it is, he states, an indirect result of
the sexual glands, "only to be understood by the developmental history of
these glands and the object which they subserve"; that is to say, that it
is connected with the rise of the sexual method of reproduction and the
desirability of the mingling of the two sexes in procreation, while the
impulse of detumescence arose before the sexual method of reproduction had
appeared; thus the contrectation impulse was propagated by natural
selection together with the sexual method of reproduction. The impulse of
contrectation is secondary, and Moll even regards it as a secondary sexual
character.

While, therefore, this analysis seems to include all the phenomena and to
be worthy of very careful study as a serious and elaborate attempt to
present an adequate psychological definition of the sexual impulse, it
scarcely seems to me that we can accept it in precisely the form in which
Moll presents it. I believe, however, that by analyzing the process a
little more minutely we shall find that these two constituents of the
sexual impulse are really much more intimately associated than at the
first glance appears, and that we need by no means go back to the time
when the sexual method of reproduction arose to explain the significance
of the phenomena which Moll includes under the term contrectation.

To discover the true significance of the phenomena in men it is necessary
to observe carefully the phenomena of love-making not only among men, but
among animals, in which the impulse of contrectation plays a very large
part, and involves an enormous expenditure of energy. Darwin was the first
to present a comprehensive view of, at all events a certain group of, the
phenomena of contrectation in animals; on his interpretation of those
phenomena he founded his famous theory of sexual selection. We are not
primarily concerned with that theory; but the facts on which Darwin based
his theory lie at the very roots of our subject, and we are bound to
consider their psychological significance. In the first place, since these
phenomena are specially associated with Darwin's name, it may not be out
of place to ask what Darwin himself considered to be their psychological
significance. It is a somewhat important question, even for those who are
mainly concerned with the validity of the theory which Darwin established
on those facts, but so far as I know it has not hitherto been asked. I
find that a careful perusal of the _Descent of Man_ reveals the presence
in Darwin's mind of two quite distinct theories, neither of them fully
developed, as to the psychological meaning of the facts he was collecting.
The two following groups of extracts will serve to show this very
conclusively: "The lower animals have a sense of beauty," he declares,
"powers of discrimination and taste on the part of the female" (p.
211[21]); "the females habitually or occasionally prefer the more
beautiful males," "there is little improbability in the females of insects
appreciating beauty in form or color" (p. 329); he speaks of birds as the
most "esthetic" of all animals excepting man, and adds that they have
"nearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have" (p. 359); he remarks
that a change of any kind in the structure or color of the male bird
"appears to have been admired by the female" (p. 385). He speaks of the
female Argus pheasant as possessing "this almost human degree of taste."
Birds, again, "seem to have some taste for the beautiful both in color and
sound," and "we ought not to feel too sure that the female does not attend
to each detail of beauty" (p. 421). Novelty, he says, is "admired by birds
for its own sake" (p. 495). "Birds have fine powers of discrimination and
in some few instances it can be shown that they have a taste for the
beautiful" (p. 496). The "esthetic capacity" of female animals has been
advanced by exercise just as our own taste has improved (p. 616). On the
other hand, we find running throughout the book quite another idea. Of
cicadas he tells us that it is probable that, "like female birds, they are
excited or allured by the male with the most attractive voice" (p. 282);
and, coming to _Locustidæ_, he states that "all observers agree that the
sounds serve either to call or excite the mute females" (p. 283). Of birds
he says, "I am led to believe that the females prefer or are most excited
by the more brilliant males" (p. 316). Among birds also the males
"endeavor to charm or excite their mates by love-notes," etc., and "the
females are excited by certain males, and thus unconsciously prefer them"
(p. 367), while ornaments of all kinds "apparently serve to excite,
attract, or fascinate the female" (p. 394). In a supplemental note, also,
written in 1876, five years after the first publication of the _Descent of
Man_, and therefore a late statement of his views, Darwin remarks that "no
supporter of the principle of sexual selection believes that the females
select particular points of beauty in the males; they are merely excited
or attracted in a greater degree by one male than by another, and this
seems often to depend, especially with birds, on brilliant coloring" (p.
623). Thus, on the one hand, Darwin interprets the phenomena as involving
a real esthetic element, a taste for the beautiful; on the other hand, he
states, without apparently any clear perception that the two views are
quite distinct, that the colors and sounds and other characteristics of
the male are not an appeal to any esthetic sense of the female, but an
appeal to her sexual emotions, a stimulus to sexual excitement, an
allurement to sexual contact. According to the first theory, the female
admires beauty, consciously or unconsciously, and selects the most
beautiful partner[22]; according to the second theory, there is no
esthetic question involved, but the female is unconsciously influenced by
the most powerful or complex organic stimulus to which she is subjected.
There can be no question that it is the second, and not the first, of
these two views which we are justified in accepting. Darwin, it must be
remembered, was not a psychologist, and he lived before the methods of
comparative psychology had begun to be developed; had he written twenty
years later we may be sure he would never have used so incautiously some
of the vague and hazardous expressions I have quoted. He certainly injured
his theory of sexual selection by stating it in too anthropomorphic
language, by insisting on "choice," "preference," "esthetic sense," etc.
There is no need whatever to burden any statement of the actual facts by
such terms borrowed from human psychology. The female responds to the
stimulation of the male at the right moment just as the tree responds to
the stimulation of the warmest days in spring. We should but obscure this
fact by stating that the tree "chooses" the most beautiful days on which
to put forth its young sprouts. In explaining the correlation between
responsive females and accomplished males the supposition of esthetic
choice is equally unnecessary. It is, however, interesting to observe
that, though Darwin failed to see that the love-combats, pursuits, dances,
and parades of the males served as a method of stimulating the impulse of
contrectation--or, as it would be better to term it, tumescence--in the
male himself,[23] he to some extent realized the part thus played in
exciting the equally necessary activity of tumescence in the female.

    The justification for using the term "tumescence," which I here
    propose, is to be found in the fact that vascular congestion,
    more especially of the parts related to generation, is an
    essential preliminary to acute sexual desire. This is clearly
    brought out in Heape's careful study of the "sexual season" in
    mammals. Heape distinguishes between the "pro-estrum," or
    preliminary period of congestion, in female animals and the
    immediately following "estrus," or period of desire. The latter
    period is the result of the former, and, among the lower animals
    at all events, intercourse only takes place during the estrus,
    not during the pro-estrum. Tumescence must thus be obtained
    before desire can become acute, and courtship runs _pari passu_
    with physiological processes. "Normal estrus," Heape states,
    "occurs in conjunction with certain changes in the uterine
    tissue, and this is accompanied by congestion and stimulation or
    irritation of the copulatory organs.... Congestion is invariably
    present and is an essential condition.... The first sign of
    pro-estrum noticed in the lower mammals is a swollen and
    congested vulva and a general restlessness, excitement, or
    uneasiness. There are other signs familiar to breeders of various
    mammals, such as the congested conjunctiva of the rabbit's eye
    and the drooping ears of the pig. Many monkeys exhibit congestion
    of the face and nipples, as well as of the buttocks, thighs, and
    neighboring parts; sometimes they are congested to a very marked
    extent, and in some species a swelling, occasionally prodigious,
    of the soft tissues round the anal and generative openings, which
    is also at the time brilliantly congested, indicates the progress
    of the pro-estrum.... The growth of the stroma-tissue [in the
    uterus of monkeys during the pro-estrum] is rapidly followed by
    an increase in the number and size of the vessels of the stroma;
    the whole becomes richly supplied with blood, and the surface is
    flushed and highly vascular. This process goes on until the whole
    of the internal stroma becomes tense and brilliantly injected
    with blood.... In all essential points the menstruation or
    pro-estrum of the human female is identical with that of
    monkeys.... Estrus is possible only after the changes due to
    pro-estrum have taken place in the uterus. A wave of disturbance,
    at first evident in the external generative organs, extends to
    the uterus, and after the various phases of pro-estrum have been
    gone through in that organ, and the excitement there is
    subsiding, it would seem as if the external organs gain renewed
    stimulus, and it is then that estrus takes place.... In all
    animals which have been investigated coition is not allowed by
    the female until some time after the swelling and congestion of
    the vulva and surrounding tissue are first demonstrated, and in
    those animals which suffer from a considerable discharge of blood
    the main portion of that discharge, if not the whole of it, will
    be evacuated before sexual intercourse is allowed." (W. Heape,
    "The 'Sexual Season' of Mammals," _Quarterly Journal of
    Microscopical Science_, vol. xliv, Part I, 1900. Estrus has since
    been fully discussed in Marshall's _Physiology of Reproduction_.)
    This description clearly brings out the fundamentally vascular
    character of the process I have termed "tumescence"; it must be
    added, however, that in man the nervous elements in the process
    tend to become more conspicuous, and more or less obliterate
    these primitive limitations of sexual desire. (See "Sexual
    Periodicity" in the first volume of these _Studies_.)

    Moll subsequently restated his position with reference to my
    somewhat different analysis of the sexual impulse, still
    maintaining his original view ("Analyse des Geschlechtstriebes,"
    _Medizinische Klinik_, Nos. 12 and 13, 1905; also _Geschlecht und
    Gesellschaft_, vol. ii, Nos. 9 and 10). Numa Praetorius
    (_Jahrbuch für Sexeuelle Zwischenstufen_, 1904, p. 592) accepts
    contrectation, tumescence, and detumescence as all being stages
    in the same process, contrectation, which he defines as the
    sexual craving for a definite individual, coming first. Robert
    Müller (_Sexualbiologie_, 1907, p. 37) criticises Moll much in
    the same sense as I have done and considers that contrectation
    and detumescence cannot be separated, but are two expressions of
    the same impulse; so also Max Katte, "Die Präliminarien des
    Geschlechtsaktes," _Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, Oct.,
    1908, and G. Saint-Paul, _L'Homosexualité et les Types
    Homosexuels_, 1910, p. 390.

    While I regard Moll's analysis as a valuable contribution to the
    elucidation of the sexual impulse, I must repeat that I cannot
    regard it as final or completely adequate. As I understand the
    process, contrectation is an incident in the development of
    tumescence, an extremely important incident indeed, but not an
    absolutely fundamental and primitive part of it. It is equally an
    incident, highly important though not primitive and fundamental,
    of detumescence. Contrectation, from first to last; furnishes
    the best conditions for the exercise of the sexual process, but
    it is not an absolutely essential part of the process and in the
    early stages of zoölogical development it had no existence at
    all. Tumescence and detumescence are alike fundamental,
    primitive, and essential; in resting the sexual impulse on these
    necessarily connected processes we are basing ourselves on the
    solid bedrock of nature.

    Moreover, of the two processes, tumescence, which in time comes
    first, is by far the most important, and nearly the whole of
    sexual psychology is rooted in it. To assert, with Moll, that the
    sexual process may be analyzed into contrectation and
    detumescence alone is to omit the most essential part of the
    process. It is much the same as to analyze the mechanism of a gun
    into probable contact with the hand, and a more or less
    independent discharge, omitting all reference to the loading of
    the gun. The essential elements are the loading and the
    discharging. Contrectation is a part of loading, though not a
    necessary part, since the loading may be effected mechanically.
    But to understand the process of firing a gun and to comprehend
    the mechanism of the discharge, we must insist on the act of
    loading and not merely on the contact of the hand. So it is in
    analyzing the sexual impulse. Contrectation is indeed highly
    important, but it is important only in so far as it aids
    tumescence, and so may be subordinated to tumescence, exactly as
    it may also be subordinated to detumescence. It is tumescence
    which is the really essential part of the process, and we cannot
    afford, with Moll, to ignore it altogether.

Wallace opposed Darwin's theory of sexual selection, but it can scarcely
be said that his attitude toward it bears critical examination. On the one
hand, as has already been noted, he saw but one side of that theory and
that the unessential side, and, on the other hand, his own view really
coincided with the more essential elements in Darwin's theory. In his
_Tropical Nature_ he admitted that the male's "persistency and energy win
the day," and also that this "vigor and liveliness" of the male are
usually associated with intense coloration, while twenty years later (in
his _Darwinism_) he admitted also that it is highly probable that the
female is pleased or excited by the male's display. But all that is really
essential in Darwin's theory is involved, directly or indirectly, in these
admissions.

Espinas, in 1878, in his suggestive book, _Des Sociétés Animales_,
described the odors, colors and forms, sounds, games, parades, and mock
battles of animals, approaching the subject in a somewhat more
psychological spirit than either Darwin or Wallace, and he somewhat more
clearly apprehended the object of these phenomena in producing mutual
excitement and stimulating tumescence. He noted the significance of the
action of the hermaphroditic snails in inserting their darts into each
other's flesh near the vulva in order to cause preliminary excitation. He
remarks of this whole group of phenomena: "It is the preliminary of sexual
union, it constitutes the first act of it. By it the image of the male is
graven on the consciousness of the female, and in a manner impregnates it,
so as to determine there, as the effects of this representation descend to
the depths of the organism, the physiological modifications necessary to
fecundation." Beaunis, again, in an analysis of the sexual sensations, was
inclined to think that the dances and parades of the male are solely
intended to excite the female, not perceiving, however, that they at the
same time serve to further excite the male also.[24]

A better and more comprehensive statement was reached by Tillier, who, to
some extent, may be said to have anticipated Groos. Darwin, Tillier
pointed out, had not sufficiently taken into account the coexistence of
combat and courtship, nor the order of the phenomena. Courtship without
combat, Tillier argued, is rare; "there is a normal coexistence of combat
and courtship."[25] Moreover, he proceeded, force is the chief factor in
determining the possession of the female by the male, who in some species
is even prepared to exert force on her; so that the female has little
opportunity of sexual selection, though she is always present at these
combats. He then emphasized the significant fact that courtship takes
place long after pairing has ceased, and the question of selection thus
been eliminated. The object of courtship, he concluded, is not sexual
selection by the female, but the sexual excitement of both male and
female, such excitement, he asserted, not only rendering coupling easier,
but favoring fecundation. Modesty, also, Tillier further argued, again
anticipating Groos, works toward the same end; it renders the male more
ardent, and by retarding coupling may also increase the secretions of the
sexual glands and favor the chances of reproduction.[26]

    In a charming volume entitled _The Naturalist in La Plata_ (1892)
    Mr. W.H. Hudson included a remarkable chapter on "Music and
    Dancing in Nature." In this chapter he described many of the
    dances, songs, and love-antics of birds, but regarded all such
    phenomena as merely "periodical fits of gladness." While,
    however, we may quite well agree with Mr. Hudson that conscious
    sexual gratification on the part of the female is not the cause
    of music and dancing performances in birds, nor of the brighter
    colors and ornaments that distinguish the male, such an opinion
    by no means excludes the conclusion that these phenomena are
    primarily sexual and intimately connected with the process of
    tumescence in both sexes. It is noteworthy that, according to
    H.E. Howard ("On Sexual Selection in Birds," _Zoölogist_, Nov.,
    1903), color is most developed just before pairing, rapidly
    becoming less beautiful--even within a few hours--after this, and
    the most beautiful male is most successful in getting paired. The
    fact that, as Mr. Hudson himself points out, it is at the season
    of love that these manifestations mainly, if not exclusively,
    appear, and that it is the more brilliant and highly endowed
    males which play the chief part in them, only serves to confirm
    such a conclusion. To argue, with Mr. Hudson, that they cannot be
    sexual because they sometimes occur before the arrival of the
    females, is much the same as to argue that the antics of a
    kitten with a feather or a reel have no relationship whatever to
    mice. The birds that began earliest to practise their
    accomplishments would probably have most chance of success when
    the females arrived. Darwin himself said that nothing is commoner
    than for animals to take pleasure in practising whatever instinct
    they follow at other times for some real good. These
    manifestations are primarily for the sake of producing sexual
    tumescence, and could not well have been developed to the height
    they have reached unless they were connected closely with
    propagation. That they may incidentally serve to express
    "gladness" one need not feel called upon to question.

    Another observer of birds, Mr. E. Selous, has made observations
    which are of interest in this connection. He finds that all
    bird-dances are not nuptial, but that some birds--the
    stone-curlew (or great plover), for example--have different kinds
    of dances. Among these birds he has made the observation, very
    significant from our present point of view, that the nuptial
    dances, taken part in by both of the pair, are immediately
    followed by intercourse. In spring "all such runnings and
    chasings are, at this time, but a part of the business of
    pairing, and one divines at once that such attitudes are of a
    sexual character.... Here we have a bird with distinct nuptial
    (sexual) and social (non-sexual) forms of display or antics, and
    the former as well as the latter are equally indulged in by both
    sexes." (E. Selous, _Bird Watching_, pp. 15-20.)

    The same author (ibid., pp. 79, 94) argues that in the fights of
    two males for one female--with violent emotion on one side and
    interested curiosity on the other--the attitude of the former
    "might gradually come to be a display made entirely for the
    female, and of the latter a greater or less degree of pleasurable
    excitement raised by it, with a choice in accordance." On this
    view the interest of the female would first have been directed,
    not to the plumage, but to the frenzied actions and antics of the
    male. From these antics in undecorated birds would gradually
    develop the interest in waving plumes and fluttering wings. Such
    a dance might come to be of a quite formal and non-courting
    nature.

    Last, we owe to Professor Häcker what may fairly be regarded, in
    all main outlines, as an almost final statement of the matter. In
    his _Gesang der Vögel_ (1900) he gives a very clear account of
    the evolution of bird-song, which he regards as the most
    essential element in all this group of manifestations, furnishing
    the key also to the dancing and other antics. Originally the song
    consists only of call-cries and recognition-notes. Under the
    parallel influence of natural selection and sexual selection they
    become at the pairing season reflexes of excitement and thus
    develop into methods of producing excitement, in the male by the
    muscular energy required, and in the female through the ear;
    finally they become play, though here also it is probable that
    use is not excluded. Thus, so far as the male bird is concerned,
    bird-song possesses a primary prenuptial significance in
    attracting the female, a secondary nuptial significance in
    producing excitement (p. 48). He holds also that the
    less-developed voices of the females aid in attaining the same
    end (p. 51). Finally, bird-song possesses a tertiary extranuptial
    significance (including exercise play, expression of gladness).
    Häcker points out, at the same time, that the maintenance of some
    degree of sexual excitement beyond pairing time may be of value
    for the preservation of the species, in case of disturbance
    during breeding and consequent necessity for commencing breeding
    over again.

    Such a theory as this fairly coincides with the views brought
    forward in the preceding pages,--views which are believed to be
    in harmony with the general trend of thought today,--since it
    emphasizes the importance of tumescence and all that favors
    tumescence in the sexual process. The so-called esthetic element
    in sexual selection is only indirectly of importance. The male's
    beauty is really a symbol of his force.

    It will be seen that this attitude toward the facts of tumescence
    among birds and other animals includes the recognition of dances,
    songs, etc., as expressions of "gladness." As such they are
    closely comparable to the art manifestations among human races.
    Here, as Weismann in his _Gedanken über Musik_ has remarked, we
    may regard the artistic faculty as a by-product: "This [musical]
    faculty is, as it were, the mental hand with which we play on our
    own emotional nature, a hand not shaped for this purpose, not due
    to the necessity for the enjoyment of music, but owing its origin
    to entirely different requirements."

The psychological significance of these facts has been carefully studied
and admirably developed by Groos in his classic works on the play instinct
in animals and in men.[27] Going beyond Wallace, Groos denies _conscious_
sexual selection, but, as he points out, this by no means involves the
denial of unconscious selection in the sense that "the female is most
easily won by the male who most strongly excites her sexual instincts."
Groos further quotes a pregnant generalization of Ziegler: "In all animals
a high degree of excitement of the nervous system is _necessary to
procreation_, and thus we find an excited prelude to procreation widely
spread."[28] Such a stage, indeed, as Groos points out, is usually
necessary before any markedly passionate discharge of motor energy, as may
be observed in angry dogs and the Homeric heroes. While, however, in other
motor explosions the prelude may be reduced to a minimum, in courtship it
is found in a highly marked degree. The primary object of courtship, Groos
insists, is to produce sexual excitement.

It is true that Groos's main propositions were by no means novel. Thus, as
I have pointed out, he was at most points anticipated by Tillier. But
Groos developed the argument in so masterly a manner, and with so many
wide-ranging illustrations, that he has carried conviction where the mere
insight of others had passed unperceived. Since Darwin wrote the _Descent
of Man_ the chief step in the development of the theory of sexual
selection has been taken by Groos, who has at the same time made it clear
that sexual selection is largely a special case of natural selection.[29]
The conjunction of the sexes is seen to be an end only to be obtained with
much struggle; the difficulty of achieving sexual erethism in both sexes,
the difficulty of so stimulating such erethism in the female that her
instinctive coyness is overcome, these difficulties the best and most
vigorous males,[30] those most adapted in other respects to carry on the
race, may most easily overcome. In this connection we may note what Marro
has said in another connection, when attempting to answer the question why
it is that among savages courtship becomes so often a matter in which
persuasion takes the form of force. The explanation, he remarks, is yet
very simple. Force is the foundation of virility, and its psychic
manifestation is courage. In the struggle for life violence is the first
virtue. The modesty of women--in its primordial form consisting in
physical resistance, active or passive, to the assaults of the male--aided
selection by putting to the test man's most important quality, force. Thus
it is that when choosing among rivals for her favors a woman attributes
value to violence.[31] Marro thus independently confirms the result
reached by Groos.

The debate which has for so many years been proceeding concerning the
validity of the theory of sexual selection may now be said to be brought
to an end. Those who supported Darwin and those who opposed him were, both
alike, in part right and in part wrong, and it is now possible to combine
the elements of truth on either side into a coherent whole. This is now
beginning to be widely recognized; Lloyd Morgan,[32] for instance, has
readjusted his position as regards the "pairing instinct" in the light of
Groos's contribution to the subject. "The hypothesis of sexual selection,"
he concludes, "suggests that the accepted male is the one which adequately
evokes the pairing impulse.... Courtship may thus be regarded from the
physiological point of view as a means of producing the requisite amount
of pairing hunger; of stimulating the whole system and facilitating
general and special vascular changes; of creating that state of profound
and explosive irritability which has for its psychological concomitant or
antecedent an imperious and irresistible craving.... Courtship is thus
the strong and steady bending of the bow that the arrow may find its mark
in a biological end of the highest importance in the survival of a healthy
and vigorous race."

    Having thus viewed the matter broadly, we may consider in detail
    a few examples of the process of tumescence among the lower
    animals and man, for, as will be seen, the process in both is
    identical. As regards animal courtship, the best treasury of
    facts is Brehm's _Thierleben_, while Büchner's _Liebe und
    Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt_ is a useful summary; the admirable
    discussion of bird-dancing and other forms of courtship in
    Häcker's _Gesang der Vögel_, chapter iv, may also be consulted.
    As regards man, Wallaschek's _Primitive Music_, chapter vii,
    brings together much scattered material, and is all the more
    valuable since the author rejects any form of sexual selection;
    Hirn's _Origins of Art_, chapter xvii, is well worth reading, and
    Finck's _Primitive Love and Love-stories_ contains a large amount
    of miscellaneous information. I have preferred not to draw on any
    of these easily accessible sources (except that in one or two
    cases I have utilized references they supplied), but here simply
    furnish illustrations met with in the course of my own reading.

    Even in the hermaphroditic slugs (_Limax maximus_) the process of
    courtship is slow and elaborate. It has been described by James
    Bladon ("The Loves of the Slug [_Limax cinereus_]," _Zoölogist_,
    vol. xv, 1857, p. 6272). It begins toward midnight on sultry
    summer nights, one slug slowly following another, resting its
    mouth on what may be called the tail of the first, and following
    its every movement. Finally they stop and begin crawling around
    each other, emitting large quantities of mucus. When this has
    constituted a mass of sufficient size and consistence they
    suspend themselves from it by a cord of mucus from nine to
    fifteen inches in length, continuing to turn round each other
    till their bodies form a cone. Then the organs of generation are
    protruded from their orifice near the mouth and, hanging down a
    short distance, touch each other. They also then begin again the
    same spiral motion, twisting around each other, like a two-strand
    cord, assuming various and beautiful forms, sometimes like an
    inverted agaric, or a foliated murex, or a leaf of curled
    parsley, the light falling on the ever-varying surface of the
    generative organs sometimes producing iridescence. It is not
    until after a considerable time that the organs untwist and are
    withdrawn and the bodies separate, to crawl up the suspending
    cord and depart.

    Some snails have a special organ for creating sexual excitement.
    A remarkable part of the reproductive system in many of the true
    Helicidæ is the so-called _dart, Liebespfeil_, or _telum
    Veneris_. It consists of a straight or curved, sometimes
    slightly twisted, tubular shaft of carbonate of lime, tapering to
    a fine point above, and enlarging gradually, more often somewhat
    abruptly, to the base. The sides of the shaft are sometimes
    furnished with two or more blades; these are apparently not for
    cutting purposes, but simply to brace the stem. The dart is
    contained in a dart-sac, which is attached as a sort of pocket to
    the vagina, at no great distance from its orifice. In _Helix
    aspersa_ the dart is about five-sixteenths of an inch in length,
    and one-eighth of an inch in breadth at its base. It appears most
    probable that the dart is employed as an adjunct for the sexual
    act. Besides the fact of the position of the dart-sac
    anatomically, we find that the darts are extended and become
    imbedded in the flesh, just before or during the act of
    copulation. It may be regarded, then, as an organ whose functions
    induce excitement preparatory to sexual union. It only occurs in
    well-grown specimens. (Rev. L.H. Cooke, "Molluscs," _Cambridge
    Natural History_, vol. iii, p. 143.)

    Racovitza has shown that in the octopus (_Octopus vulgaris_)
    courtship is carried on with considerable delicacy, and not
    brutally, as had previously been supposed. The male gently
    stretches out his third arm on the right and caresses the female
    with its extremity, eventually passing it into the chamber formed
    by the mantle. The female contracts spasmodically, but does not
    attempt to move. They remain thus about an hour or more, and
    during this time the male shifts the arm from one oviduct to the
    other. Finally he withdraws his arm, caresses her with it for a
    few moments, and then replaces it with his other arm. (E.G.
    Racovitza, in _Archives de Zoölogie Expérimentale_, quoted in
    _Natural Science_, November, 1894.)

    The phenomena of courtship are very well illustrated by spiders.
    Peckham, who has carefully studied them, tells us of _Saitis
    pulex_: "On May 24th we found a mature female, and placed her in
    one of the larger boxes, and the next day we put a male in with
    her. He saw her as she stood perfectly still, twelve inches away;
    the glance seemed to excite him, and he at once moved toward her;
    when some four inches from her he stood still, and then began the
    most remarkable performances that an amorous male could offer to
    an admiring female. She eyed him eagerly, changing her position
    from time to time so that he might be always in view. He, raising
    his whole body on one side by straightening out the legs, and
    lowering it on the other by folding the first two pairs of legs
    up and under, leaned so far over as to be in danger of losing his
    balance, which he only maintained by sliding rapidly toward the
    lowered side. The palpus, too, on this side was turned back to
    correspond to the direction of the legs nearest it. He moved in a
    semicircle for about two inches, and then instantly reversed the
    position of the legs and circled in the opposite direction,
    gradually approaching nearer and nearer to the female. Now she
    dashes toward him, while he, raising his first pair of legs,
    extends them upward and forward as if to hold her off, but withal
    slowly retreats. Again and again he circles from side to side,
    she gazing toward him in a softer mood, evidently admiring the
    grace of his antics. This is repeated until we have counted one
    hundred and eleven circles made by the ardent little male. Now he
    approaches nearer and nearer, and when almost within reach whirls
    madly around and around her, she joining and whirling with him in
    a giddy maze. Again he falls back and resumes his semicircular
    motions, with his body tilted over; she, all excitement, lowers
    her head and raises her body so that it is almost vertical; both
    draw nearer; she moves slowly under him, he crawling over her
    head, and the mating is accomplished."

    The same author thus describes the courtship of _Dendryphantes
    elegans_: "While from three to five inches distant from her, he
    begins to wave his plumy first legs in a way that reminds one of
    a windmill. She eyes him fiercely, and he keeps at a proper
    distance for a long time. If he comes close she dashes at him,
    and he quickly retreats. Sometimes he becomes bolder, and when
    within an inch, pauses, with the first legs outstretched before
    him, not raised as is common in other species; the palpi also are
    held stiffly out in front with the points together. Again she
    drives him off, and so the play continues. Now the male grows
    excited as he approaches her, and while still several inches
    away, whirls completely around and around; pausing, he runs
    closer and begins to make his abdomen quiver as he stands on
    tiptoe in front of her. Prancing from side to side, he grows
    bolder and bolder, while she seems less fierce, and yielding to
    the excitement, lifts up her magnificently iridescent abdomen,
    holding it at one time vertical, and at another sideways to him.
    She no longer rushes at him, but retreats a little as he
    approaches. At last he comes close to her, lying flat, with his
    first legs stretched out and quivering. With the tips of his
    front legs he gently pats her; this seems to arouse the old demon
    of resistance, and she drives him back. Again and again he pats
    her with a caressing movement, gradually creeping nearer and
    nearer, which she now permits without resistance, until he crawls
    over her head to her abdomen, far enough to reach the epigynum
    with his palpus." (G.W. Peckham, "Sexual Selection of Spiders,"
    _Occasional Papers of the Natural History Society of Wisconsin_,
    1889, quoted in _Nature_, August 21, 1890.)

    The courtship of another spider, the _Agelena labyrinthica_, has
    been studied by Lécaillon ("Les Instincts et les Psychismes des
    Araignées," _Revue Scientifique_, Sept. 15, 1906.) The male
    enters the female's web and may be found there about the middle
    of July. When courtship has begun it is not interrupted by the
    closest observation, even under the magnifying glass. At first it
    is the male which seeks to couple and he pursues the female over
    her web till she consents. The pursuit may last some hours, the
    male agitating his abdomen in a peculiar way, while the female
    simply retreats a short distance without allowing herself to be
    approached. At last the female holds herself completely
    motionless, and then the male approaches, seizes her, places her
    on her side, sometimes carrying her to a more suitable part of
    the web. Then one of his copulative apparatus is applied to the
    female genital opening, and copulation begins. When completed (on
    an average in about two hours) the male withdraws his copulatory
    palpus and turns over the female, who is still inert, on to her
    other side, then brings his second copulatory apparatus to the
    female opening and starts afresh. When the process is definitely
    completed the male leaves the female, suddenly retiring to a
    little distance. The female, who had remained completely
    motionless for four hours, suddenly runs after the male. But she
    only pursues him for a short distance, and the two spiders remain
    together without any danger to either. Lécaillon disbelieves the
    statement of Romanes (in his _Animal Intelligence_) that the
    female eats the male after copulation. But this certainly seems
    to occur sometimes among insects, as illustrated by the following
    instance described by so careful an observer of insects as Fabre.

    The _Mantis religiosa_ is described by Fabre as contemplating the
    female for a long time in an attitude of ecstasy. She remains
    still and seems indifferent. He is small and she is large. At
    last he approaches; spreads his wings, which tremble
    convulsively; leaps on her back, and fixes himself there. The
    preludes are long and the coupling itself sometimes occupies five
    or six hours. Then they separate. But the same day or the
    following day she seizes him and eats him up in small mouthfuls.
    She will permit a whole series of males to have intercourse with
    her, always eating them up directly afterward. Fabre has even
    seen her eating the male while still on her back, his head and
    neck gone, but his body still firmly attached. (J.H. Fabre,
    _Souvenirs Entomologiques_, fifth series, p. 307.) Fabre also
    describes in great detail (ibid., ninth series, chs. xxi-xxii)
    the sexual parades of the Languedoc scorpion (_Scorpio
    occitanus_), an arachnid. These parades are in public; for their
    subsequent intercourse the couple seek complete seclusion, and
    the female finally eats the male.

    An insect (a species of _Empis_) has been described which excites
    the female by manipulating a large balloon. "This is of
    elliptical shape, about seven millimeters long (nearly twice as
    long as the fly), hollow, and composed entirely of a single layer
    of minute bubbles, nearly uniform in size, arranged in regular
    circles concentric with the axis of the structure. The
    beautiful, glistening whiteness of the object when the sun shines
    upon it makes it very conspicuous. The bubbles were slightly
    viscid, and in nearly every case there was a small fly pressed
    into the front end of the balloon, apparently as food for the
    _Empis_. In all cases they were dead. The balloon appears to be
    made while the insect is flying in the air. Those flying highest
    had the smallest balloons. The bubbles are probably produced by
    some modification of the anal organs. It is possible that the
    captured fly serves as a nucleus to begin the balloon on. One
    case of a captured fly but no balloon was observed. After
    commencing, it is probable that the rest of the structure is made
    by revolving the completed part between the hind legs and adding
    more bubbles somewhat spirally. The posterior end of the balloon
    is left more or less open. The purpose of this structure is to
    attract the female. When numerous males were flying up and down
    the road, it happened several times that a female was seen to
    approach them from some choke-cherry blossoms near by. The males
    immediately gathered in her path, and she with little hesitation
    selected for a mate the one with the largest balloon, taking a
    position _upon his back_. After copulation had begun, the pair
    would settle down toward the ground, select a quiet spot, and the
    female would alight by placing her front legs across a horizontal
    grass blade, her head resting against the blade so as to brace
    the body in position. Here she would continue to hold the male
    beneath her for a little time, until the process was finished.
    The male, meanwhile, would be rolling the balloon about in a
    variety of positions, juggling with it, one might almost say.
    After the male and female parted company, the male immediately
    dropped the balloon upon the ground, and it was greedily seized
    by ants. No illustration could properly show the beauty of the
    balloon." (Aldrich and Turley, "A Balloon-making Fly," _American
    Naturalist_, October, 1899.)

    "In many species of moths the males 'assemble' around the freshly
    emerged female, but no special advantage appears to attend on
    early arrival. The female sits apparently motionless, while the
    little crowd of suitors buzz around her for several minutes.
    Suddenly, and, as far as one can see, without any sign from the
    female, one of the males pairs with her and all the others
    immediately disappear. In these cases the males do not fight or
    struggle in any way, and as one watches the ceremony the wonder
    arises as to how the moment is determined, and why the pairing
    did not take place before. Proximity does not decide the point,
    for long beforehand the males often alight close to the female
    and brush against her with fluttering wings. I have watched the
    process exactly as I have described it in a common Northern
    _Noctua_, the antler moth (_Charæax graminis_), and I have seen
    the same thing among beetles." (E.B. Poulton, _The Colors of
    Animals_, 1890, p. 391.) This author mentions that among some
    butterflies the females take the active part. The example here
    quoted of courtship among moths illustrates how phenomena which
    are with difficulty explicable by the theory of sexual selection
    in its original form become at once intelligible when we realize
    the importance of tumescence in courtship.

    Of the Argentine cow-bird (_Molothrus bonariensis_) Hudson says
    (_Argentine Ornithology_, vol. i, p. 73): "The song of the male,
    particularly when making love, is accompanied with gestures and
    actions somewhat like those of the domestic pigeon. He swells
    himself out, beating the ground with his wings, and uttering a
    series of deep internal notes, followed by others loud and clear;
    and occasionally, when uttering them, he suddenly takes wing and
    flies directly away from the female to a distance of fifty yards,
    and performs a wide circuit about her in the air, singing all the
    time. The homely object of his passion always appears utterly
    indifferent to this curious and pretty performance; yet she must
    be even more impressionable than most female birds, since she
    continues scattering about her parasitical and often wasted eggs
    during four months in every year."

    Of a tyrant-bird (_Pitangus Bolivianus_) Hudson writes
    (_Argentine Ornithology_, vol. i, p. 148): "Though the male and
    female are greatly attached, they do not go afield to hunt in
    company, but separate to meet again at intervals during the day.
    One of a couple (say, the female) returns to the trees where they
    are accustomed to meet, and after a time, becoming impatient or
    anxious at the delay of her consort, utters a very long, clear
    call-note. He is perhaps a quarter of a mile away, watching for a
    frog beside a pool, or beating over a thistle-bed, but he hears
    the note and presently responds with one of equal power. Then,
    perhaps, for half an hour, at intervals of half a minute, the
    birds answer each other, though the powerful call of the one must
    interfere with his hunting. At length he returns; then the two
    birds, perched close together, with their yellow bosoms almost
    touching, crests elevated, and beating the branch with their
    wings, scream their loudest notes in concert--a confused jubilant
    noise that rings through the whole plantation. Their joy at
    meeting is patent, and their action corresponds to the warm
    embrace of a loving human couple."

    Of the red-breasted marsh-bird (_Leistes superciliaris_) Hudson
    (_Argentine Ornithology_, vol. i, p. 100) writes: "These birds
    are migratory, and appear everywhere in the eastern part of the
    Argentine country early in October, arriving singly, after which
    each male takes up a position in a field or open space abounding
    with coarse grass and herbage, where he spends most of his time
    perched on the summit of a tall stalk or weed, his glowing
    crimson bosom showing at a distance like some splendid flower
    above the herbage. At intervals of two or three minutes he soars
    vertically up to a height of twenty or twenty-five yards to utter
    his song, composed of a single long, powerful and rather musical
    note, ending with an attempt at a flourish, during which the bird
    flutters and turns about in the air; then, as if discouraged at
    his failure, he drops down, emitting harsh, guttural chirps, to
    resume his stand. Meanwhile the female is invisible, keeping
    closely concealed under the long grass. But at length, attracted
    perhaps by the bright bosom and aërial music of the male, she
    occasionally exhibits herself for a few moments, starting up with
    a wild zigzag flight, and, darting this way and that, presently
    drops into the grass once more. The moment she appears above the
    grass the male gives chase, and they vanish from sight together."

    "Courtship with the mallard," says J.G. Millais (_Natural History
    of British Ducks_, p. 6), "appears to be carried on by both
    sexes, though generally three or four drakes are seen showing
    themselves off to attract the attention of a single duck.
    Swimming round her, in a coy and semi-self-conscious manner, they
    now and again all stop quite still, nod, bow, and throw their
    necks out in token of their admiration and their desire of a
    favorable response. But the most interesting display is when all
    the drakes simultaneously stand up in the water and rapidly pass
    their bills down their breasts, uttering at the same time a low
    single note somewhat like the first half of the call that teal
    and pintail make when 'showing off.' At other times the
    love-making of the drake seems to be rather passive than active.
    While graciously allowing himself to be courted, he holds his
    head high with conscious pride, and accepts as a matter of course
    any attention that may be paid to him. A proud bird is he when
    three or four ducks come swimming along beside and around him,
    uttering a curious guttural note, and at the same time dipping
    their bills in quick succession to right and left. He knows what
    that means, and carries himself with even greater dignity than
    before. In the end, however, he must give in. As a last appeal,
    one of his lady lovers may coyly lower herself in the water till
    only the top of her back, head, and neck is seen, and so
    fascinating an advance as this no drake of any sensibility can
    withstand."

    The courting of the Argus pheasant, noted for the extreme beauty
    of the male's plumage, was observed by H.O. Forbes in Sumatra. It
    is the habit of this bird to make "a large circus, some ten or
    twelve feet in diameter, in the forest, which it clears of every
    leaf and twig and branch, till the ground is perfectly swept and
    garnished. On the margin of this circus there is invariably a
    projecting branch or high-arched root, at a few feet elevation
    above the ground, on which the female bird takes its place, while
    in the ring the male--the male birds alone possess great
    decoration--shows off all its magnificence for the gratification
    and pleasure of his consort and to exalt himself in her eyes."
    (H.O. Forbes, _A. Naturalist's Wanderings_, 1885, p. 131.)

    "All ostriches, adults as well as chicks, have a strange habit
    known as 'waltzing.' After running for a few hundred yards they
    will also stop, and, with raised wings, spin around rapidly for
    some time after until quite giddy, when a broken leg occasionally
    occurs.... Vicious cocks 'roll' when challenging to fight or when
    wooing the hen. The cock will suddenly bump down on to his knees
    (the ankle-joint), open his wings, and then swing them
    alternately backward and forward, as if on a pivot.... While
    rolling, every feather over the whole body is on end, and the
    plumes are open, like a large white fan. At such a time the bird
    sees very imperfectly, if at all; in fact, he seems so
    preoccupied that, if pursued, one may often approach unnoticed.
    Just before rolling, a cock, especially if courting the hen, will
    often run slowly and daintily on the points of his toes, with
    neck slightly inflated, upright, and rigid, the tail
    half-drooped, and all his body-feathers fluffed up; the wings
    raised and expanded, the inside edges touching the sides of the
    neck for nearly the whole of its length, and the plumes showing
    separately, like an open fan. In no other attitude is the
    splendid beauty of his plumage displayed to such advantage."
    (S.C. Cronwright Schreiner, "The Ostrich," _Zoölogist_, March,
    1897.)

    As may be seen from the foregoing fairly typical examples, the
    phenomena of courtship are highly developed, and have been most
    carefully studied, in animals outside the mammal series. It may
    seem a long leap from birds to man; yet, as will be seen, the
    phenomena among primitive human peoples, if not, indeed, among
    many civilized peoples also, closely resemble those found among
    birds, though, unfortunately, they have not usually been so
    carefully studied.

    In Australia, where dancing is carried to a high pitch of
    elaboration, its association with the sexual impulse is close and
    unmistakable. Thus, Mr. Samuel Gason (of whom it has been said
    that "no man living has been more among blacks or knows more of
    their ways") remarks concerning a dance of the Dieyerie tribe:
    "This dance men and women only take part in, in regular form and
    position, keeping splendid time to the rattle of the beat of two
    boomerangs; some of the women keep time by clapping their hands
    between their thighs; promiscuous sexual intercourse follows
    after the dance; jealousy is forbidden." Again, at the Mobierrie,
    or rat-harvest, "many weeks' preparation before the dance comes
    off; no quarreling is allowed; promiscuous sexual intercourse
    during the ceremony." The fact that jealousy is forbidden at
    these festivals clearly indicates that sexual intercourse is a
    recognized and probably essential element in the ceremonies. This
    is further emphasized by the fact that at other festivals open
    sexual intercourse is not allowed. Thus, at the Mindarie, or
    dance at a peace festival (when a number of tribes comes
    together), "there is great rejoicing at the coming festival,
    which is generally held at the full of the moon, and kept up all
    night. The men are artistically decorated with down and feathers,
    with all kinds of designs. The down and feathers are stuck on
    their bodies with blood freshly taken from their penis; they are
    also nicely painted with various colors; tufts of boughs are tied
    on their ankles to make a noise while dancing. Promiscuous sexual
    intercourse is carried on _secretly_; many quarrels occur at this
    time." (_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, vol. xxiv,
    November, 1894, p. 174.)

    In Australian dances, sometimes men and women dance together,
    sometimes the men dance alone, sometimes the women. In one dance
    described by Eyre: "Women are the chief performers; their bodies
    are painted with white streaks, and their hair adorned with
    cockatoo feathers. They carry large sticks in their hands, and
    place themselves in a row in front, while the men with their
    spears stand in a row behind them. They then all commence their
    movements, but without intermingling, the males and females
    dancing by themselves. The women have occasionally another mode
    of dancing, by joining the hands together over the head, closing
    the feet, and bringing the knees into contact. The legs are then
    thrown outward from the knee, while the feet and hands are kept
    in their original position, and, being drawn quickly in again, a
    sharp sound is produced by the collision. This is also practised
    alone by young girls or by several together for their own
    amusement. It is adopted also when a single woman is placed in
    front of a row of male dancers to excite their passions." (E.J.
    Eyre, _Journals of Expeditions into Central Australia_, vol. ii,
    p. 235.)

    A charming Australian folk-tale concerning two sisters with
    wings, who disliked men, and their wooing by a man, clearly
    indicates, even among the Australians (whose love-making is
    commonly supposed to be somewhat brutal in character), the
    consciousness that it is by his beauty, charm, and skill in
    courtship that a man wins a woman. Unahanach, the lover, stole
    unperceived to the river where the girls were bathing and at last
    showed himself carelessly sitting on a high tree. The girls were
    startled, but thought it would be safe to amuse themselves by
    looking at the intruder. "Young and with the most active figure,
    yet of a strength that defied the strongest emu, and even enabled
    him to resist an 'old man' kangaroo, he had no equal in the
    chase, and conscious power gave a dignity to his expression that
    at one glance calmed the fears of the two girls. His large
    brilliant eyes, shaded by a deep fringe of soft black eyelashes,
    gazed down upon them admiringly, and his rich black hair hung
    around his well-formed face, smooth and shining from the emu-oil
    with which it was abundantly covered." At last he persuaded them
    to talk and by and by induced them to call him husband. Then they
    went off with him, with no thought of flight in their hearts.
    ("Australian Folklore Stories," collected by W. Dunlop, _Journal
    of the Anthropological Institute_, new series, vol. i, 1898, p.
    33.)

    Of the people of Torres Straits Haddon states (_Reports
    Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, vol. v, p. 222):
    "It was during the secular dance, or _Kap_, that the girls
    usually lost their hearts to the young men. A young man who was a
    good dancer would find favor in the sight of the girls. This can
    be readily understood by anyone who has seen the active, skilful,
    and fatiguing dances of these people. A young man who could
    acquit himself well in these dances must be possessed of no mean
    strength and agility, qualities which everywhere appeal to the
    opposite sex. Further, he was decorated, according to local
    custom, with all that would render him more imposing in the eyes
    of the spectators. As the former chief of Mabuiag put it, 'In
    England if a man has plenty of money, women want to marry him; so
    here, if a man dances well they too want him.' In olden days the
    war-dance, which was performed after a successful foray, would be
    the most powerful excitement to a marriageable girl, especially
    if a young man had distinguished himself sufficiently to bring
    home the head of someone he had killed."

    Among the tribes inhabiting the mouth of the Wanigela River, New
    Guinea, "when a boy admires a girl, he will not look at her,
    speak to her, or go near her. He, however, shows his love by
    athletic bounds, posing, and pursuit, and by the spearing of
    imaginary enemies, etc., before her, to attract her attention. If
    the girl reciprocates his love she will employ a small girl to
    give to him an _ugauga gauna_, or love invitation, consisting of
    an areca-nut whose skin has been marked with different designs,
    significant of her wish to _ugauga_. After dark he is apprised of
    the place where the girl awaits him; repairing thither, he seats
    himself beside her as close as possible, and they mutually share
    in the consumption of the betel-nut." This constitutes betrothal;
    henceforth he is free to visit the girl's house and sleep there.
    Marriages usually take place at the most important festival of
    the year, the _kapa_, preparations for which are made during the
    three previous months, so that there may be a bountiful and
    unfailing supply of bananas. Much dancing takes place among the
    unmarried girls, who, also, are tattooed at this time over the
    whole of the front of the body, special attention being paid to
    the lower parts, as a girl who is not properly tattooed there
    possesses no attraction in the eyes of young men. Married women
    and widows and divorced women are not forbidden to take part in
    these dances, but it would be considered ridiculous for them to
    do so. (R.E. Guise, "On the Tribes of the Wanigela River,"
    _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, new series, vol. i,
    1899, pp. 209, 214 et seq.)

    In the island of Nias in the Malay Archipelago, Modigliani
    (mainly on the excellent authority of Sundermann, the missionary)
    states, at a wedding "dancing and singing go on throughout the
    day. The women, two or three at a time, a little apart from the
    men, take part in the dancing, which is very well adapted to
    emphasize the curves of the flanks and the breasts, though at the
    same time the defects of their legs are exhibited in this series
    of rhythmic contortions which constitute a Nias dance. The most
    graceful movement they execute is a lascivious undulation of the
    flanks while the face and breast are slowly wound round by the
    _sarong_ [a sort of skirt] held in the hands, and then again
    revealed. These movements are executed with jerks of the wrist
    and contortions of the flanks, not always graceful, but which
    excite the admiration of the spectators, even of the women, who
    form in groups to sing in chorus a compliment, more or less
    sincere, in which they say: 'They dance with the grace of birds
    when they fly. They dance as the hawk flies; it is lovely to
    see.' They sing and dance both at weddings and at other
    festivals." (Elio Modigliani, _Un Viaggio a Nias_, 1890, p. 549.)

    In Sumatra Marsden states that chastity prevails more, perhaps,
    than among any other people: "But little apparent courtship
    precedes their marriages. Their manners do not admit of it, the
    _boojong_ and _geddas_ (youths of each sex) being carefully kept
    asunder and the latter seldom trusted from under the wings of
    their mothers.... The opportunities which the young people have
    of seeing and conversing with each other are at the _birnbangs_,
    or public festivals. On these occasions the young people meet
    together and dance and sing in company. The men, when determined
    in their regard, generally employ an old woman as their agent, by
    whom they make known their sentiments, and send presents to the
    female of their choice. The parents then interfere, and the
    preliminaries being settled, a _birnbang_ takes place. The young
    women proceed in a body to the upper end of the _balli_ (hall),
    where there is a part divided off for them by a curtain. They do
    not always make their appearance before dinner, that time,
    previous to a second or third meal, being appropriated to
    cock-fighting or other diversions peculiar to men. In the evening
    their other amusements take place, of which the dances are the
    principal. These are performed either singly or by two women, two
    men, or with both mixed. Their motions and attitudes are usually
    slow, approaching often to the lascivious. They bend forward as
    they dance, and usually carry a fan, which they close and strike
    smartly against their elbows at particular cadences.... The
    assembly seldom breaks up before daylight and these _birnbangs_
    are often continued for several days together. The young men
    frequent them in order to look out for wives, and the lasses of
    course set themselves off to the best advantage. They wear their
    best silken dresses, of their own weaving, as many ornaments of
    filigree as they possess, silver rings upon their arms and legs,
    and ear-rings of a particular construction. Their hair is
    variously adorned with flowers, and perfumed with oil of
    benjamin. Civet is also in repute, but more used by the men. To
    render their skin fine, smooth, and soft they make use of a white
    cosmetic called _poopoor_ [a mixture of ginger, patch-leaf,
    maize, sandal-wood, fairy-cotton, and mush-seed with a basis of
    fine rice]." (W. Marsden, _History of Sumatra_, 1783, p. 230.)

    The Alfurus of Seram in the Moluccas, who have not yet been
    spoilt by foreign influences, are very fond of music and dancing.
    Their _maku_ dances, which take place at night, have been
    described by Joest: "Great torches of dry bamboos and piles of
    burning resinous leaves light up the giant trees to their very
    summits and reveal in the distance the little huts which the
    Alfuras have built in the virgin forests, as well as the skulls
    of the slain. The women squat together by the fire, making a
    deafening noise with the gongs and the drums, while the young
    girls, richly adorned with pearls and fragrant flowers, await the
    beginning of the dance. Then appear the men and youths without
    weapons, but in full war-costume, the girdle freshly marked with
    the number of slain enemies. [Among the Alfuras it is the man who
    has the largest number of heads to show who has most chance of
    winning the object of his love.] They hold each other's arms and
    form a circle, which is not, however, completely closed. A song
    is started, and with small, slow steps this ring of bodies, like
    a winding snake, moves sideways, backward, closes, opens again,
    the steps become heavier, the songs and drums louder, the girls
    enter the circle and with closed eyes grasp the girdle of their
    chosen youths, who clasp them by the hips and necks, the chain
    becomes longer and longer, the dance and song more ardent, until
    the dancers grow tired and disappear in the gloom of the forest."
    (W. Joest, _Welt-Fahrten_, 1895, Bd. ii, p. 159.)

    The women of the New Hebrides dance, or rather sway, to and fro
    in the midst of a circle formed by the men, with whom they do not
    directly mingle. They leap, show their genital parts to the men,
    and imitate the movements of coitus. Meanwhile the men unfasten
    the _manou_ (penis-wrap) from their girdles with one hand, with
    the other imitating the action of seizing a woman, and, excited
    by the women, also go through a mock copulation. Sometimes, it is
    said, the dancers masturbate. This takes place amid plaintive
    songs, interrupted from time to time by loud cries and howls.
    (_Untrodden Fields of Anthropology_, by a French army-surgeon,
    1898, vol. ii, p. 341.)

    Among the hill tribes of the Central Indian Hills may be traced a
    desire to secure communion with the spirit of fertility embodied
    in vegetation. This appears, for instance, in a tree-dance, which
    is carried out on a date associated not only with the growths of
    the crops or with harvest, but also with the seasonal period for
    marriage and the annual Saturnalia. (W. Crooke, "The Hill
    Tribes," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, new series,
    vol. i, 1899, p. 243.) The association of dancing with seasonal
    ritual festivals of a generative character--of which the above is
    a fairly typical instance--leads us to another aspect of these
    phenomena on which I have elsewhere touched in these _Studies_
    (vol. i) when discussing the "Phenomena of Periodicity."

    The Tahitians, when first discovered by Europeans, appear to have
    been highly civilized on the sexual side and very licentious. Yet
    even at Tahiti, when visited by Cook, the strict primitive
    relationship between dancing and courtship still remained
    traceable. Cook found "a dance called Timorodee, which is
    performed by young girls, whenever eight or ten of them can be
    collected together, consisting of motions and gestures beyond
    imagination wanton, in the practice of which they are brought up
    from their earliest childhood, accompanied by words which, if it
    were possible, would more explicitly convey the same ideas. But
    the practice which is allowed to the virgin is prohibited to the
    woman from the moment that she has put these hopeful lessons in
    practice and realized the symbols of the dance." He added,
    however, that among the specially privileged class of the Areoi
    these limitations were not observed, for he had heard that this
    dance was sometimes performed by them as a preliminary to sexual
    intercourse. (Hawkesworth, _An Account of the Voyages_, etc.,
    1775, vol. ii, p. 54.)

    Among the Marquesans at the marriage of a woman, even of high
    rank, she lies with her head at the bridegroom's knees and all
    the male guests come in single file, singing and dancing--those
    of lower class first and the great chiefs last--and have
    connection with the woman. There are often a very large number of
    guests and the bride is sometimes so exhausted at the end that
    she has to spend several days in bed. (Tautain, "Etude sur le
    Mariage chez les Polynésiens," _L'Anthropologie_,
    November-December, 1895, p. 642.) The interesting point for us
    here is that singing and dancing are still regarded as a
    preliminary to a sexual act. It has been noted that in sexual
    matters the Polynesians, when first discovered by Europeans, had
    largely gone beyond the primitive stage, and that this applies
    also to some of their dances. Thus the _hula-hula_ dance, while
    primitive in origin, may probably be compared more to a civilized
    than to a primitive dance, since it has become divorced from real
    life. In the same way, while the sexual pantomime dance of the
    Azimba girls of central Africa has a direct and recognized
    relationship to the demands of real life, the somewhat allied
    _danses du ventre_ of the Hamitic peoples of northern Africa are
    merely an amusement, a play more or less based on the sexual
    instinct. At the same time it is important to bear in mind that
    there is no rigid distinction between dances that are, and those
    that are not, primitive. As Haddon truly points out in a book
    containing valuable detailed descriptions of dances, even among
    savages dances are so developed that it is difficult to trace
    their origin, and at Torres Straits, he remarks, "there are
    certainly play or secular dances, dances for pure amusement
    without any ulterior design." (A.C. Haddon, _Head Hunters_, p.
    233.) When we remember that dancing had probably become highly
    developed long before man appeared on the earth, this difficulty
    in determining the precise origin of human dancing cannot cause
    surprise.

    Spix and Martius described how the Muras of Brazil by moonlight
    would engage all night in a Bacchantic dance in a great circle,
    hand in hand, the men on one side, the women on the other,
    shouting out all the time, the men "Who will marry me?" the
    women, "You are a beautiful devil; all women will marry you,"
    (Spix and Martius, _Reise in Brasilien_, 1831, vol. iii, p.
    1117.) They also described in detail the dance of the Brazilian
    Puris, performed in a state of complete nakedness, the men in a
    row, the women in another row behind them. They danced backward
    and forward, stamping and singing, at first in a slow and
    melancholy style, but gradually with increasing vigor and
    excitement. Then the women began to rotate the pelvis backward
    and forward, and the men to thrust their bodies forward, the
    dance becoming a pantomimic representation of sexual intercourse
    (ibid., vol. i, 1823, pp. 373-5).

    Among the Apinages of Brazil, also, the women stand in a row,
    almost motionless, while the men dance and leap in front of them,
    both men and women at the same time singing. (Buscalioni, "Reise
    zu den Apinages," _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1899, ht. 6, p.
    650.)

    Among the Gilas of New Mexico, "when a young man sees a girl whom
    he desires for a wife, he first endeavors to gain the good-will
    of the parents; this accomplished, he proceeds to serenade his
    lady-love, and will often sit for hours, day after day, near her
    home, playing on his flute. Should the girl not appear, it is a
    sign she rejects him; but if, on the other hand, she comes out to
    meet him, he knows that his suit is accepted, and he takes her to
    his home. No marriage ceremony is performed."[33] (H.H. Bancroft,
    _Native Races of the Pacific_, vol. i, p. 549.)

    "Among the Minnetarees a singular night-dance is, it is said,
    sometimes held. During this amusement an opportunity is given to
    the squaws to select their favorites. A squaw, as she dances,
    will advance to a person with whom she is captivated, either for
    his personal attractions or for his renown in arms; she taps him
    on the shoulder and immediately runs out of the lodge and betakes
    herself to the bushes, followed by the favorite. But if it should
    happen that he has a particular preference for another from whom
    he expects the same favor, or if he is restrained by a vow, or is
    already satiated with indulgence, he politely declines her offer
    by placing his hand in her bosom, on which they return to the
    assembly and rejoin the dance." It is worthy of remark that in
    the language of the Omahas the word _watche_ applies equally to
    the amusement of dancing and to sexual intercourse. (S.H. Long,
    _Expedition to the Rocky Mountains_, 1823, vol. i, p. 337.)

    At a Kaffir marriage "singing and dancing last until midnight.
    Each party [the bride's and the bridegroom's] dances in front of
    the other, but they do not mingle together. As the evening
    advances, the spirits and passions of all become greatly excited;
    and the power of song, the display of muscular action, and the
    gesticulations of the dancers and leapers are something
    extraordinary. The manner in which, at certain times, one man or
    woman, more excited than the rest, bounds from the ranks, leaps
    into the air, bounces forward, and darts backward beggars all
    description. These violent exercises usually close about
    midnight, when each party retires; generally, each man selects a
    paramour, and, indulging in sexual gratification, spends the
    remainder of the night." (W.C. Holden, _The Kaffir Race_, 1866,
    p. 192.)

    At the initiation of Kaffir boys into manhood, as described by
    Holden, they were circumcised. "Cattle are then slaughtered by
    the parents, and the boys are plentifully supplied with flesh
    meat; a good deal of dancing also ensues at this stage of the
    proceedings. The _ukut-shila_ consists in attiring themselves
    with the leaves of the wild date in the most fantastic manner;
    thus attired they visit each of the kraals to which they belong
    in rotation, for the purpose of dancing. These dances are the
    most licentious which can be imagined. The women act a prominent
    part in them, and endeavor to excite the passions of the novices
    by performing all sorts of obscene gesticulations. As soon as the
    soreness occasioned by the act of circumcision is healed the boys
    are, as it were, let loose upon society, and exempted from nearly
    all the restraints of law; so that should they even steal and
    slaughter their neighbor's cattle they would not be punished; and
    they have the special privilege of seizing by force, if force be
    necessary, every unmarried woman they choose, for the purpose of
    gratifying their passions." Similar festivals take place at the
    initiation of girls. (W.C. Holden, _The Kaffir Race_, 1866, p.
    185.)

    The Rev. J. Macdonald has described the ceremonies and customs
    attending and following the initiation-rites of a young girl on
    her first menstruation among the Zulus between the Tugela and
    Delagoa Bay. At this time the girl is called an _intonjane_. A
    beast is killed as a thank-offering to the ancestral spirits,
    high revel is held for several days, and dancing and music take
    place every night till those engaged in it are all exhausted or
    daylight arrives. "After a few days and when dancing has been
    discontinued, young men and girls congregate in the outer
    apartment of the hut, and begin singing, clapping their hands,
    and making a grunting noise to show their joy. At nightfall most
    of the young girls who were the intonjane's attendants, leave for
    their own homes for the night, to return the following morning.
    Thereafter the young men and girls who gathered into the hut in
    the afternoon separate into pairs and sleep together _in puris
    naturalibus_, for that is strictly ordained by custom. Sexual
    intercourse is not allowed, but what is known as _metsha_ or
    _ukumetsha_ is the sole purpose of the novel arrangement.
    _Ukumetsha_ may be defined as partial intercourse. Every man who
    sleeps thus with a girl has to send to the father of the
    intonjane an assegai; should he have formed an attachment for his
    partner of the night and wish to pay her his addresses, he sends
    two assegais." (Rev. J. Macdonald, "Manners, etc., of South
    African Tribes," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, vol.
    xx, November, 1890, p. 117.)

    Goncourt reports the account given him by a French officer from
    Senegal of the dances of the women, "a dance which is a gentle
    oscillation of the body, with gradually increasing excitement,
    from time to time a woman darting forward from the group to stand
    in front of her lover, contorting herself as though in a
    passionate embrace, and, on passing her hand between her thighs,
    showing it covered with the moisture of amorous enjoyment."
    (_Journal_, vol. ix, p. 79.) The dance here referred to is
    probably the Bamboula dance of the Wolofs, a spring festival
    which has been described by Pierre Loti in his _Roman d'un
    Spahi_, and concerning which various details are furnished by a
    French army-surgeon, acquainted with Senegal, in his _Untrodden
    Fields of Anthropology_. The dance, as described by the latter,
    takes place at night during full moon, the dancers, male and
    female, beginning timidly, but, as the beat of the tam-tams and
    the encouraging cries of the spectators become louder, the dance
    becomes more furious. The native name of the dance is _anamalis
    fobil_, "the dance of the treading drake." "The dancer in his
    movements imitates the copulation of the great Indian duck. This
    drake has a member of a corkscrew shape, and a peculiar movement
    is required to introduce it into the duck. The woman tucks up her
    clothes and convulsively agitates the lower part of her body; she
    alternately shows her partner her vulva and hides it from him by
    a regular movement, backward and forward, of the body."
    (_Untrodden Fields of Anthropology_, Paris, 1898, vol. ii, p.
    112.)

    Among the Gurus of the Ivory Coast (Gulf of Guinea), Eysséric
    observes, dancing is usually carried on at night and more
    especially by the men, and on certain occasions women must not
    appear, for if they assisted at fetichistic dances "they would
    die." Under other circumstances men and women dance together with
    ardor, not forming couples but often _vis-à-vis_: their movements
    are lascivious. Even the dances following a funeral tend to
    become sexual in character. At the end of the rites attending the
    funeral of a chief's son the entire population began to dance
    with ever-growing ardor; there was nothing ritualistic or sad in
    these contortions, which took on the character of a lascivious
    dance. Men and women, boys and girls, young and old, sought to
    rival each other in suppleness, and the festival became joyous
    and general, as if in celebration of a marriage or a victory.
    (Eysséric, "La Côte d'Ivoire," _Nouvelles Archives des Missions
    Scientifiques_, tome ix, 1890, pp. 241-49.)

    Mrs. French-Sheldon has described the marriage-rites she observed
    at Taveta in East Africa. "During this time the young people
    dance and carouse and make themselves generally merry and
    promiscuously drunk, carrying the excess of their dissipation to
    such an extent that they dance until they fall down in a species
    of epileptic fit." It is the privilege of the bridegroom's four
    groomsmen to enjoy the bride first, and she is then handed over
    to her legitimate husband. This people, both men and women, are
    "great dancers and merry-makers; the young fellows will collect
    in groups and dance as though in competition one with the other;
    one lad will dash out from the circle of his companions, rush
    into the middle of a circumscribed space, and scream out 'Wow,
    wow!' Another follows him and screams; then a third does the
    same. These men will dance with their knees almost rigid, jumping
    into the air until their excitement becomes very great and their
    energy almost spasmodic, leaving the ground frequently three feet
    as they spring into the air. At some of their festivals their
    dancing is carried to such an extent that I have seen a young
    fellow's muscles quiver from head to foot and his jaws tremble
    without any apparent ability on his part to control them, until,
    foaming at the mouth and with his eyes rolling, he falls in a
    paroxysm upon the ground, to be carried off by his companions."
    The writer adds significantly that this dancing "would seem to
    emanate from a species of voluptuousness." (Mrs. French-Sheldon,
    "Customs among the Natives of East Africa," _Journal of the
    Anthropological Institute_, vol. xxi, May, 1892, pp. 366-67.) It
    may be added that among the Suaheli dances are intimately
    associated with weddings; the Suaheli dances have been minutely
    described by Velten (_Sitten und Gebraüche der Suaheli_, pp.
    144-175). Among the Akamba of British East Africa, also,
    according to H.R. Tate (_Journal of the Anthropological
    Institute_, Jan.-June, 1904, p. 137), the dances are followed by
    connection between the young men and girls, approved of by the
    parents.

    The dances of the Faroe Islanders have been described by Raymond
    Pilet ("Rapport sur une Mission en Islande et aux lies Féroë,"
    _Nouvelles Archives des Missions Scientifiques_, tome vii, 1897,
    p. 285). These dances, which are entirely decorous, include
    poetry, music, and much mimicry, especially of battle. They
    sometimes last for two consecutive days and nights. "The dance is
    simply a permitted and discreet method by which the young men may
    court the young girls. The islander enters the circle and places
    himself beside the girl to whom he desires to show his affection;
    if he meets with her approval she stays and continues to dance at
    his side; if not, she leaves the circle and appears later at
    another spot."

    Pitre (_Usi, etc., del Popolo Siciliano_, vol. ii, p. 24, as
    quoted in Marro's _Pubertà_) states that in Sicily the youth who
    wishes to marry seeks to give some public proof of his valor and
    to show himself off. In Chiaramonte, in evidence of his virile
    force, he bears in procession the standard of some confraternity,
    a high and richly adorned standard which makes its staff bend to
    a semicircle, of such enormous weight that the bearer must walk
    in a painfully bent position, his head thrown back and his feet
    forward. On reaching the house of his betrothed he makes proof of
    his boldness and skill in wielding this extremely heavy standard
    which at this moment seems a plaything in his hands, but may yet
    prove fatal to him through injury to the loins or other parts.

    This same tendency, which we find in so highly developed a degree
    among animals and primitive human peoples, is also universal
    among the children of even the most civilized human races,
    although in a less organized and more confused way. It manifests
    itself as "showing-off." Sanford Bell, in his study of the
    emotion of love in children, finds that "showing-off" is an
    essential element in the love of children in what he terms the
    second stage (from the eighth to the twelfth year in girls and
    the fourteenth in boys). "It constitutes one of the chief numbers
    in the boy's repertory of love charms, and is not totally absent
    from the girl's. It is a most common sight to see the boys taxing
    their resources in devising means of exposing their own
    excellencies, and often doing the most ridiculous and extravagant
    things. Running, jumping, dancing, prancing, sparring, wrestling,
    turning handsprings, somersaults, climbing, walking fences,
    swinging, giving yodels and yells, whistling, imitating the
    movements of animals, 'taking people off,' courting danger,
    affecting courage are some of its common forms.... This
    'showing-off' in the boy lover is the forerunner of the skilful,
    purposive, and elaborate means of self-exhibition in the adult
    male and the charming coquetry in the adult female, in their
    love-relations." (Sanford Bell, "The Emotion of Love Between the
    Sexes," _American Journal Psychology_, July, 1902; cf.
    "Showing-off and Bashfulness," _Pedagogical Seminary_, June,
    1903.)

If, in the light of the previous discussion, we examine such facts as
those here collected, we may easily trace throughout the perpetual
operations of the same instinct. It is everywhere the instinctive object
of the male, who is very rarely passive in the process of courtship, to
assure by his activity in display, his energy or skill or beauty, both his
own passion and the passion of the female. Throughout nature sexual
conjugation only takes place after much expenditure of energy.[34] We are
deceived by what we see among highly fed domesticated animals, and among
the lazy classes of human society, whose sexual instincts are at once both
unnaturally stimulated and unnaturally repressed, when we imagine that the
instinct of detumescence is normally ever craving to be satisfied, and
that throughout nature it can always be set off at a touch whenever the
stimulus is applied. So far from the instinct of tumescence naturally
needing to be crushed, it needs, on the contrary, in either sex to be
submitted to the most elaborate and prolonged processes in order to bring
about those conditions which detumescence relieves. A state of tumescence
is not normally constant, and tumescence must be obtained before
detumescence is possible.[35] The whole object of courtship, of the mutual
approximation and caresses of two persons of the opposite sex, is to
create the state of sexual tumescence.

It will be seen that the most usual method of attaining tumescence--a
method found among the most various kinds of animals, from insects and
birds to man--is some form of the dance. Among the Negritos of the
Philippines dancing is described by A.B. Meyer as "jumping in a circle
around a girl and stamping with the feet"; as we have seen, such a dance
is, essentially, a form of courtship that is widespread among animals.
"The true cake-walk," again, Stanley Hall remarks, "as seen in the South
is perhaps the purest expression of this impulse to courtship antics seen
in man."[36] Muscular movement of which the dance is the highest and most
complex expression, is undoubtedly a method of auto-intoxication of the
very greatest potency. All energetic movement, indeed, tends to produce
active congestion. In its influence on the brain violent exercise may thus
result in a state of intoxication even resembling insanity. As Lagrange
remarks, the visible effects of exercise--heightened color, bright eyes,
resolute air and walk--are those of slight intoxication, and a girl who
has waltzed for a quarter of an hour is in the same condition as if she
had drunk champagne.[37] Groos regards the dance as, above all, an
intoxicating play of movement, possessing, like other methods of
intoxication,--and even apart from its relationship to combat and
love,--the charm of being able to draw us out of our everyday life and
lead us into a self-created dream-world.[38] That the dance is not only a
narcotic, but also a powerful stimulant, we may clearly realize from the
experiments which show that this effect is produced even by much less
complex kinds of muscular movement. This has been clearly determined, for
instance, by Féré, in the course of a long and elaborate series of
experiments dealing with the various influences that modify work as
measured by Mosso's ergograph. This investigator found that muscular
movement is the most efficacious of all stimulants in increasing muscular
power.[39] It is easy to trace these pleasurable effects of combined
narcotic and stimulant motion in everyday life and it is unnecessary to
enumerate its manifestations.[40]

    Dancing is so powerful an agent on the organism, as Sergi truly
    remarks (_Les Emotions_, p. 288), because its excitation is
    general, because it touches every vital organ, the higher centers
    no longer dominating. Primitive dancing differs very widely from
    that civilized kind of dancing--finding its extreme type in the
    ballet--in which energy is concentrated into the muscles below
    the knee. In the finest kinds of primitive dancing all the limbs,
    the whole body, take part. For instance, "the Marquisan girls,"
    Herman Melville remarked in _Typee_, "dance all over, as it were;
    not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands,
    fingers,--ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads. In
    good sooth, they so sway their floating forms, arch their necks,
    toss aloft their naked arms, and glide, and swim, and whirl,"
    etc.

    If we turn to a very different people, we find this
    characteristic of primitive dancing admirably illustrated by the
    missionary, Holden, in the case of Kaffir dances. "So far as I
    have observed," he states, "the perfection of the art or science
    consists in their _being able to put every part of the body into
    motion at the same time_. And as they are naked, the bystander
    has a good opportunity of observing the whole process, which
    presents a remarkably odd and grotesque appearance,--the head,
    the trunk, the arms, the legs, the hands, the feet, bones,
    muscles, sinews, skin, scalp, and hair, each and all in motion at
    the same time, with feathers waving, tails of monkeys and wild
    beasts dangling, and shields beating, accompanied with whistling,
    shouting, and leaping. It would appear as though the whole frame
    was hung on springing wires or cords. Dances are held in high
    repute, being the natural expression of joyous emotion, or
    creating it when absent. There is, perhaps, no exercise in
    greater accordance with the sentiments or feelings of a barbarous
    people, or more fully calculated to gratify their wild and
    ungoverned passions." (W.C. Holden, _The Kaffir Race_, 1866, p.
    274.)

Dancing, as the highest and most complex form of muscular movement, is the
most potent method of obtaining the organic excitement muscular movement
yields, and thus we understand how from the earliest zoölogical ages it
has been brought to the service of the sexual instinct as a mode of
attaining tumescence. Among savages this use of dancing works harmoniously
with the various other uses which dancing possesses in primitive times
and which cause it to occupy so large and vital a part in savage life that
it may possibly even affect the organism to such an extent as to mold the
bones; so that some authorities have associated platycnemia with dancing.
As civilization advances, the other uses of dancing fall away, but it
still remains a sexual stimulant. Burton, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_,
brings forward a number of quotations from old authors showing that
dancing is an incitement to love.[41]

    The Catholic theologians (Debreyne, _Moechialogie_, pp. 190-199)
    for the most part condemn dancing with much severity. In
    Protestant Germany, also, it is held that dance meetings and
    musical gatherings are frequent occasions of unchastity. Thus in
    the Leipzig district when a girl is asked "How did you fall?" she
    nearly always replies "At the dance." (_Die
    Geschlechtlich-Sittliche Verhältnisse im Deutschen Reiche_, vol.
    i, p. 196.) It leads quite as often, and no doubt oftener, to
    marriage. Rousseau defended it on this account (_Nouvelle
    Heloïse_, bk. iv, letter x); dancing is, he held, an admirable
    preliminary to courtship, and the best way for young people to
    reveal themselves to each other, in their grace and decorum,
    their qualities and defects, while its publicity is its
    safeguard. An International Congress of Dancing Masters was held
    at Barcelona in 1907. In connection with this Congress, Giraudet,
    president of the International Academy of Dancing Masters, issued
    an inquiry to over 3000 teachers of dancing throughout the world
    in order to ascertain the frequency with which dancing led to
    marriage. Of over one million pupils of dancing, either married
    or engaged to be married, it was found that in most countries
    more than 50 per cent. met their conjugal partners at dances. The
    smallest proportion was in Norway, with only 39 per cent., and
    the highest, Germany, with 97 per cent. Intermediate are France,
    83 per cent.; America, 80 per cent.; Italy, 70 per cent.; Spain,
    68 per cent.; Holland, Bulgaria, and England, 65 per cent.;
    Australia and Roumania, 60 per cent., etc. Of the teachers
    themselves 92 per cent. met their partners at dances. (Quoted
    from the _Figaro_ in Beiblatt "Sexualreform" to _Geschlecht und
    Gesellschaft_, 1907, p. 175.)

In civilization, however, dancing is not only an incitement to love and a
preliminary to courtship, but it is often a substitute for the normal
gratification of the sexual instinct, procuring something of the pleasure
and relief of gratified love. In occasional abnormal cases this may be
consciously realized. Thus Sadger, who regards the joy of dancing as a
manifestation of "muscular eroticism," gives the case of a married
hysterical woman of 21, with genital anesthesia, but otherwise strongly
developed skin eroticism, who was a passionate dancer: "I often felt as
though I was giving myself to my partner in dancing," she said, "and was
actually having coitus with him. I have the feeling that in me dancing
takes the place of coitus."[42] Normally something of the same feeling is
experienced by many young women, who will expend a prodigious amount of
energy in dancing, thus procuring, not fatigue, but happiness and
relief.[43] It is significant that, after sexual relations have begun,
girls generally lose much of their ardor in dancing. Even our modern
dances, it is worthy of note, are often of sexual origin; thus, the most
typical of all, the waltz, was originally (as Schaller, quoted by Groos,
states) the close of a complicated dance which "represented the romance of
love, the seeking and the fleeing, the playful sulking and shunning, and
finally the jubilation of the wedding."[44]

Not only is movement itself a source of tumescence, but even the spectacle
of movement tends to produce the same effect. The pleasure of witnessing
movement, as represented by its stimulating effect on the muscular
system,--for states of well-being are accompanied by an increase of
power,--has been found susceptible of exact measurement by Féré. He has
shown that to watch a colored disk when in motion produced stronger
muscular contractions, as measured by the dynamometer, than to watch the
same disk when motionless. Even in the absence of color a similar
influence of movement was noted, and watching a modified metronome
produced a greater increase of work with the ergograph than when working
to the rhythm of the metronome without watching it.[45] This psychological
fact has been independently discovered by advertisers, who seek to impress
the value of their wares on the public by the device of announcing them by
moving colored lights. The pleasure given by the ballet largely depends on
the same fact. Not only is dancing an excitation, but the spectacle of
dancing is itself exciting, and even among savages dances have a public
which becomes almost as passionately excited as the dancers
themselves.[46] It is in virtue of this effect of dancing and similar
movements that we so frequently find, both among the lower animals and
savage man, that to obtain tumescence in both sexes, it is sufficient for
one sex alone, usually the male, to take the active part. This point
attracted the attention of Kulischer many years ago, and he showed how the
dances of the men, among savages, excite the women, who watch them
intently though unobtrusively, and are thus influenced in choosing their
lovers. He was probably the first to insist that in man sexual selection
has taken place mainly through the agency of dances, games, and
festivals.[47]

It is now clear, therefore, why the evacuation theory of the sexual
impulse must necessarily be partial and inadequate. It leaves out of
account the whole of the phenomena connected with tumescence, and those
phenomena constitute the most prolonged, the most important, the most
significant stage of the sexual process. It is during tumescence that the
whole psychology of the sexual impulse is built up; it is as an incident
arising during tumescence and influencing its course that we must probably
regard nearly every sexual aberration. It is with the second stage of the
sexual process, when the instinct of detumescence arises, that the analogy
of evacuation can alone be called in. Even here, that analogy, though
real, is not complete, the nervous element involved in detumescence being
out of all proportion to the extent of the evacuation. The typical act of
evacuation, however, is a nervous process, and when we bear this in mind
we may see whatever truth the evacuation theory possesses. Beaunis classes
the sexual impulse with the "needs of activity," but under this head he
coordinates it with the "need of urination." That is to say, that both
alike are nervous explosions. Micturition, like detumescence, is a
convulsive act, and, like detumescence also, it is certainly connected
with cerebral processes; thus in epilepsy the passage of urine which may
occur (as in a girl described by Gowers with minor attacks during which it
was emitted consciously, but involuntarily) is really a part of the
process.[48]

There appears, indeed, to be a special and intimate connection between the
explosion of sexual detumescence and the explosive energy of the bladder;
so that they may reinforce each other and to a limited extent act
vicariously in relieving each other's tension. It is noteworthy that
nocturnal and diurnal incontinence of urine, as well as "stammering" of
the bladder, are all specially liable to begin or to cease at puberty. In
men and even infants, distention of the bladder favors tumescence by
producing venous congestion, though at the same time it acts as a physical
hindrance to sexual detumescence[49]; in women--probably not from pressure
alone, but from reflex nervous action--a full bladder increases both
sexual excitement and pleasure, and I have been informed by several women
that they have independently discovered this fact for themselves and
acted in accordance with it. Conversely, sexual excitement increases the
explosive force of the bladder, the desire to urinate is aroused, and in
women the sexual orgasm, when very acute and occurring with a full
bladder, is occasionally accompanied, alike in savage and civilized life,
by an involuntary and sometimes full and forcible expulsion of urine.[50]
The desire to urinate may possibly be, as has been said, the normal
accompaniment of sexual excitement in women (just as it is said to be in
mares; so that the Arabs judge that the mare is ready for the stallion
when she urinates immediately on hearing him neigh). The association may
even form the basis of sexual obsessions.[51] I have elsewhere shown that,
of all the influences which increase the expulsive force of the bladder,
sexual excitement is the most powerful.[52] It may also have a reverse
influence and inhibit contraction of the bladder, sometimes in association
with shyness, but also independently of shyness. There is also reason to
suppose that the nervous energy expended in an explosion of the tension
of the sexual organs may sometimes relieve the bladder; it is well
recognized that a full bladder is a factor in producing sexual emissions
during sleep, the explosive energy of the bladder being inhibited and
passing over into the sexual sphere. Conversely, it appears that explosion
of the bladder relieves sexual tension. An explosion of the nervous
centers connected with the contraction of the bladder will relieve nervous
tension generally; there are forms of epilepsy in which the act of
urination constitutes the climax, and Gowers, in dealing with minor
epilepsy, emphasizes the frequency of micturition, which "may occur with
spasmodic energy when there is only the slightest general stiffness,"
especially in women. He adds the significant remark that it "sometimes
seems to relieve the cerebral tension,"[53] and gives the case of a girl
in whom the aura consisted mainly of a desire to urinate; if she could
satisfy this the fit was arrested; if not she lost consciousness and a
severe fit followed.

If micturition may thus relieve nervous tension generally, it is not
surprising that it should relieve the tension of the centers with which it
is most intimately connected. Sérieux records the case of a girl of 12,
possessed by an impulse to masturbation which she was unable to control,
although anxious to conquer it, who only found relief in the act of
urination; this soothed her and to some extent satisfied the sexual
excitement; when the impulse to masturbate was restrained the impulse to
urinate became imperative; she would rise four or five times in the night
for this purpose, and even urinate in bed or in her clothes to obtain the
desired sexual relief.[54] I am acquainted with a lady who had a similar,
but less intense, experience during childhood. Sometimes, especially in
children, the act of urination becomes an act of gratification at the
climax of sexual pleasure, the imitative symbol of detumescence. Thus
Schultze-Malkowsky describes a little girl of 7 who would bribe her girl
companions with little presents to play the part of horses on all fours
while she would ride on their necks with naked thighs in order to obtain
the pleasurable sensation of close contact. With one special friend she
would ride facing backward, and leaning forward to embrace her body
impulsively, and at the same time pressing the neck closely between her
thighs, would urinate.[55] Féré has recorded the interesting case of a man
who, having all his life after puberty been subject to monthly attacks of
sexual excitement, after the age of 45 completely lost the liability to
these manifestations, but found himself subject, in place of them, to
monthly attacks of frequent and copious urination, accompanied by sexual
day-dreams, but by no genital excitement.[56] Such a case admirably
illustrates the compensatory relation of sexual and vesical excitation.
This mutual interaction is easily comprehensible when we recall the very
close nervous connection which exists between the mechanisms of the sexual
organs and the bladder.

Nor are such relationships found to be confined to these two centers; in a
lesser degree the more remote explosive centers are also affected; all
motor influences may spread to related muscles; the convulsion of
laughter, for instance, seems to be often in relation with the sexual
center, and Groos has suggested that the laughter which, especially in the
sexually minded, often follows allusions to the genital sphere is merely
an effort to dispel nascent sexual excitement by liberating an explosion
of nervous energy in another direction.[57] Nervous discharges tend to
spread, or to act vicariously, because the motor centers are more or less
connected.[58] Of all the physiological motor explosions, the sexual
orgasm, or detumescence, is the most massive, powerful, and overwhelming.
So volcanic is it that to the ancient Greek philosophers it seemed to be a
minor kind of epilepsy. The relief of detumescence is not merely the
relief of an evacuation; it is the discharge, by the most powerful
apparatus for nervous explosion in the body, of the energy accumulated and
stored up in the slow process of tumescence, and that discharge
reverberates through all the nervous centers in the organism.

    "The sophist of Abdera said that coitus is a slight fit of
    epilepsy, judging it to be an incurable disease." (Clement of
    Alexandria, _Pædagogus_, bk. ii, chapter x.) And Coelius
    Aurelianus, one of the chief physicians of antiquity, said that
    "coitus is a brief epilepsy." Féré has pointed out that both
    these forms of nervous storm are sometimes accompanied by similar
    phenomena, by subjective sensations of sight or smell, for
    example; and that the two kinds of discharge may even be
    combined. (Féré, _Les Epileptiques_, pp. 283-84; also "Exces
    Vénériens et Epilepsie," _Comptes-rendus de la Société de
    Biologie_, April 3, 1897, and the same author's _Instinct
    Sexuel_, pp. 209, 221, and his "Priapisme Epileptique," _La
    Médecine Moderne_, February 4, 1899.) The epileptic convulsion in
    some cases involves the sexual mechanism, and it is noteworthy
    that epilepsy tends to appear at puberty. In modern times even so
    great a physician as Boerhaave said that coitus is a "true
    epilepsy," and more recently Roubaud, Hammond, and Kowalevsky
    have emphasized the resemblance between coitus and epilepsy,
    though without identifying the two states. Some authorities have
    considered that coitus is a cause of epilepsy, but this is denied
    by Christian, Strümpell, and Löwenfeld. (Löwenfeld, _Sexualleben
    und Nervenleiden_, 1899, p. 68.) Féré has recorded the case of a
    youth in whom the adoption of the practice of masturbation,
    several times a day, was followed by epileptic attacks which
    ceased when masturbation was abandoned. (Féré, _Comptes-rendus de
    la Socitété de Biologie_, April 3, 1897.)

It seems unprofitable at present to attempt any more fundamental analysis
of the sexual impulse. Beaunis, in the work already quoted, vaguely
suggests that we ought possibly to connect the sexual excitation which
leads the male to seek the female with chemical action, either exercised
directly on the protoplasm of the organism or indirectly by the
intermediary of the nervous system, and especially by smell in the higher
animals. Clevenger, Spitzka, Kiernan, and others have also regarded the
sexual impulse as protoplasmic hunger, tracing it back to the presexual
times when one protozoal form absorbed another. In the same way Joanny
Roux, insisting that the sexual need is a need of the whole organism, and
that "we love with the whole of our body," compares the sexual instinct to
hunger, and distinguishes between "sexual hunger" affecting the whole
system and "sexual appetite" as a more localized desire; he concludes that
the sexual need is an aspect of the nutritive need.[59] Useful as these
views are as a protest against too crude and narrow a conception of the
part played by the sexual impulse, they carry us into a speculative region
where proof is difficult.

We are now, however, at all events, in a better position to define the
contents of the sexual impulse. We see that there are certainly, as Moll
has indicated, two constituents in that impulse; but, instead of being
unrelated, or only distantly related, we see that they are really so
intimately connected as to form two distinct stages in the same process: a
first stage, in which--usually under the parallel influence of internal
and external stimuli--images, desires, and ideals grow up within the mind,
while the organism generally is charged with energy and the sexual
apparatus congested with blood; and a second stage, in which the sexual
apparatus is discharged amid profound sexual excitement, followed by deep
organic relief. By the first process is constituted the tension which the
second process relieves. It seems best to call the first impulse the
_process of tumescence_; the second the _process of detumescence_.[60] The
first, taking on usually a more active form in the male, has the double
object of bringing the male himself into the condition in which discharge
becomes imperative, and at the same time arousing in the female a similar
ardent state of emotional excitement and sexual turgescence. The second
process has the object, directly, of discharging the tension thus produced
and, indirectly, of effecting the act by which the race is propagated.

It seems to me that this is at present the most satisfactory way in which
we can attempt to define the sexual impulse.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] C. Lloyd Morgan, "Instinct and Intelligence in Animals," _Nature_,
February 3, 1898.

[2] _Essais_, livre iii, ch. v.

[3] Féré, "La Prédisposition dans l'étiologie des perversions sexuelles,"
_Revue de médecine_, 1898. In his more recent work on the evolution and
dissolution of the sexual instinct Féré perhaps slightly modified his
position by stating that "the sexual appetite is, above all, a general
need of the organism based on a sensation of fullness, a sort of need of
evacuation," _L'Instinct sexuel_, 1899, p. 6. Löwenfeld (_Ueber die
Sexuelle Konstitution_, p. 30) gives a qualified acceptance to the
excretory theory, as also Rohleder (_Die Zeugung beim Menschen_, p. 25).

[4] Goltz, _Centralblatt für die med. Wissenschaften_, 1865, No. 19, and
1866, No. 18; also _Beiträge zur Lehre von den Funktionen des Frosches_,
Berlin, 1869, p. 20.

[5] J. Tarchanoff, "Zur Physiologie des Geschlechtsapparatus des
Frosches," _Archiv für die Gesammte Physiologie_, 1887, vol. xl, p. 330.

[6] E. Steinach, "Untersuchungen zur vergleichenden Physiologie der
männlicher Geschlechtsorgane insbesondere der accessorischen
Geschlechtsdrüsen," _Archiv für die Gesammte Physiologie_, vol. lvi, 1894,
pp. 304-338.

[7] See, e.g., Shattock and Seligmann, "The Acquirement of Secondary
Sexual Characters," _Proceedings of the Royal Society_, vol. lxxiii, 1904,
p. 49.

[8] For facts bearing on this point, see Guinard, art. "Castration,"
Richet's _Dictionnaire de Physiologie_. The general results of castration
are summarized by Robert Müller in ch. vii of his _Sexualbiologie_; also
by F.H.A. Marshall, _The Physiology of Reproduction_, ch, ix; see also E.
Pittard, "Les Skoptzy," _L'Anthropologie_, 1903, p. 463.

[9] For an ancient discussion of this point, see Schurig, _Spermatologia_,
1720, cap. ix.

[10] J.J. Matignon, _Superstition, Crime, et Misère en Chine_, "Les
Eunuques du Palais Impérial de Pékin," 1901.

[11] P. Marie, "Eunuchisme et Erotisme," _Nouvelle Iconographie de la
Salpêtrière_, 1906, No. 5, and _Progrès médical_, Jan. 26, 1907.

[12] _Pedagogical Seminary_, July, 1897, p. 121.

[13] See, for instance, the case reported in another volume of these
_Studies_ ("Sexual Inversion"), in which castration was performed on a
sexual invert without effecting any change.

[14] Guinard, art. "Castration," _Dictionnaire de Physiologie_.

[15] M.A. Colman, _Medical Standard_, August, 1895; Clara Barrus,
_American Journal of Insanity_, April, 1895; Macnaughton-Jones, _British
Gynæcological Journal_, August, 1902; W.G. Bridgman, _Medical Standard_,
1896; J.M. Cotterill, _British Medical Journal_, April 7, 1900 (also
private communication); Paul F. Mundé, _American Journal of Obstetrics_,
March, 1899.

[16] See Swale Vincent, _Internal Secretion and the Ductless Glands_,
1912; F.H.A. Marshall, _The Physiology of Reproduction_, 1910, ch. ix;
Munzer, _Berliner klinische Wochenschrift_, Nov., 1910; C. Sajous, _The
Internal Secretions_, vol. i, 1911. The adrenal glands have been fully and
interestingly studied by Glynn, _Quarterly Journal of Medicine_, Jan.,
1912; the thyroid, by Ewan Waller, _Practitioner_, Aug., 1912; the
internal secretion of the ovary, by A. Louise McIlroy, _Proceedings Royal
Society Medicine_, July, 1912. For a discussion at the Neurology Section
of the British Medical Association Meeting, 1912, see _British Medical
Journal_, Nov. 16, 1912.

[17] Since this was written I have come across a passage in _Hampa_ (p.
228), by Rafael Salillas, the Spanish sociologist, which shows that the
analogy has been detected by the popular mind and been embodied in popular
language: "A significant anatomico-physiological concordance supposes a
resemblance between the mouth and the sexual organs of a woman, between
coitus and the ingestion of food, and between foods which do not require
mastication and the spermatic ejaculation; these representations find
expression in the popular name _papo_ given to women's genital organs.
'Papo' is the crop of birds, and is derived from 'papar' (Latin,
_papare_), to eat soft food such as we call pap. With this representation
of infantile food is connected the term _leche_ [milk] as applied to the
ejaculated genital fluid." Cleland, it may be added, in the most
remarkable of English erotic novels, _The Memoirs of Fanny Hill_, refers
to "the compressive exsuction with which the sensitive mechanism of that
part [the vagina] thirstily draws and drains the nipple of Love," and
proceeds to compare it to the action of the child at the breast. It
appears that, in some parts of the animal world at least, there is a real
analogy of formation between the oral and vaginal ends of the trunk. This
is notably the case in some insects, and the point has been elaborately
discussed by Walter Wesché, "The Genitalia of Both the Sexes in Diptera,
and their Relation to the Armature of the Mouth," _Transactions of the
Linnean Society_, second series, vol. ix, Zoölogy, 1906.

[18] Näcke now expresses himself very dubiously on the point; see, e.g.,
_Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie_, 1905, p. 186.

[19] _Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis_, Berlin, 1897-98.

[20] Moll adopts the term "impulse of detumescence" (_Detumescenztrieb_)
instead of "impulse of ejaculation," because in women there is either no
ejaculation or it cannot be regarded as essential.

[21] I quote from the second edition, as issued in 1881.

[22] This is the theory which by many has alone been seen in Darwin's
_Descent of Man_. Thus even his friend Wallace states unconditionally
(_Tropical Nature_, p. 193) that Darwin accepted a "voluntary or conscious
sexual selection," and seems to repeat the same statement in _Darwinism_
(1889), p. 283. Lloyd Morgan, in his discussion of the pairing instinct in
_Habit and Instinct_ (1896), seems also only to see this side of Darwin's
statement.

[23] In his _Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication_, Darwin
was puzzled by the fact that, in captivity, animals often copulate without
conceiving and failed to connect that fact with the processes behind his
own theory of sexual selection.

[24] Beaunis, _Sensations Internes_, ch. v, "Besoins Sexuels," 1889. It
may be noted that many years earlier Burdach (in his _Physiologie als
Erfahrungswissenschaft_, 1826) had recognized that the activity of the
male favored procreation, and that mental and physical excitement seemed
to have the same effect in the female also.

[25] It is scarcely necessary to point out that this is too extreme a
position. As J.G. Millais remarks of ducks (_Natural History of British
Ducks_, p. 45), in courtship "success in winning the admiration of the
female is rather a matter of persistent and active attention than physical
force," though the males occasionally fight over the female. The ruff
(_Machetes pugnax_) is a pugnacious bird, as his name indicates. Yet, the
reeve, the female of this species, is, as E. Selous shows ("Sexual
Selection in Birds," _Zoölogist_, Feb. and May, 1907), completely mistress
of the situation. "She seems the plain and unconcerned little mistress of
a numerous and handsome seraglio, each member of which, however he flounce
and bounce, can only wait to be chosen." Any fighting among the males is
only incidental and is not a factor in selection. Moreover, as R. Müller
points out (loc. cit., p. 290), fighting would not usually attain the end
desired, for if the males expend their time and strength in a serious
combat they merely afford a third less pugnacious male a better
opportunity of running off with the prize.

[26] L. Tillier, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, 1889, pp. 74, 118, 119, 124 et seq.,
289.

[27] K. Groos, _Die Spiele der Thiere_, 1896; _Die Spiele der Menschen_,
1899; both are translated into English.

[28] Prof. H.E. Ziegler, in a private letter to Professor Groos, _Spiele
der Thiere_, p. 202.

[29] _Die Spiele der Thiere_, p. 244. This had been briefly pointed out by
earlier writers. Thus, Haeckel (_Gen. Morph._, ii, p. 244) remarked that
fighting for females is a special or modified kind of struggle for
existence, and that it acts on both sexes.

[30] It may be added that in the human species, as Bray remarks ("Le Beau
dans la Nature," _Revue Philosophique_, October, 1901, p. 403), "the hymen
would seem to tend to the same end, as if nature had wished to reinforce
by a natural obstacle the moral restraint of modesty, so that only the
vigorous male could insure his reproduction." There can be no doubt that
among many animals pairing is delayed so far as possible until maturity is
reached. "It is a strict rule amongst birds," remarks J.G. Millais (op.
cit., p. 46), "that they do not breed until both sexes have attained the
perfect adult plumage." Until that happens, it seems probable, the
conditions for sexual excitation are not fully established. We know
little, says Howard (_Zoölogist_, 1903, p. 407), of the age at which birds
begin to breed, but it is known that "there are yearly great numbers of
individuals who do not breed, and the evidence seems to show that such
individuals are immature."

[31] A. Marro, _La Puberté_, 1901, p. 464.

[32] Lloyd Morgan, _Animal Behavior_, 1900, pp. 264-5. It may be added
that, on the esthetic side, Hirn, in his study (_The Origins of Art_,
1900), reaches conclusions which likewise, in the main, concord with those
of Groos.

[33] It may be noted that the marriage ceremony itself is often of the
nature of a courtship, a symbolic courtship, embodying a method of
attaining tumescence. As Crawley, who has brought out this point, puts it,
"Marriage-rites of union are essentially identical with love charms," and
he refers in illustration to the custom of the Australian Arunta, among
whom the man or woman by making music on the bull-roarer compels a person
of the opposite sex to court him or her, the marriage being thus
completed. (E. Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, p. 318.)

[34] The more carefully animals are observed, the more often this is found
to be the case, even with respect to species which possess no obvious and
elaborate process for obtaining tumescence. See, for instance, the
detailed and very instructive account--too long to quote here--given by E.
Selous of the preliminaries to intercourse practised by a pair of great
crested grebes, while nest-building. Intercourse only took place with much
difficulty, after many fruitless invitations, more usually given by the
female. ("Observational Diary of the Habits of the Great Crested Grebe,"
_Zöologist_, September, 1901.) It is exactly the same with savages. The
observation of Foley (_Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris_,
November 6, 1879) that in savages "sexual erethism is very difficult" is
of great significance and certainly in accordance with the facts. This
difficulty of erethism is the real cause of many savage practices which to
the civilized person often seem perverse; the women of the Caroline
Islands, for instance, as described by Finsch, require the tongue or even
the teeth to be applied to the clitoris, or a great ant to be applied to
bite the parts, in order to stimulate orgasm. Westermarck, after quoting a
remark of Mariner's concerning the women of Tonga,--"it must not be
supposed that these women are always easily won; the greatest attentions
and the most fervent solicitations are sometimes requisite, even though
there be no other lover in the way,"--adds that these words "hold true for
a great many, not to say all, savage and barbarous races now existing."
(_Human Marriage_, p. 163.) The old notions, however, as to the sexual
licentiousness of peoples living in natural conditions have scarcely yet
disappeared. See Appendix A; "The Sexual Instinct in Savages."

[35] In men a certain degree of tumescence is essential before coitus can
be effected at all; in women, though tumescence is not essential to
coitus, it is essential to orgasm and the accompanying physical and
psychic relief. The preference which women often experience for prolonged
coitus is not, as might possibly be imagined, due to sensuality, but has a
profound physiological basis.

[36] Stanley Hall, _Adolescence_, vol. i, p. 223.

[37] See Lagrange's _Physiology of Bodily Exercise_, especially chapter
ii. It is a significant fact that, as Sergi remarks (_Les Emotions_, p.
330), the physiological results of dancing are identical with the
physiological results of pleasure.

[38] Groos, _Spiele der Menschen_, p. 112. Zmigrodzki (_Die Mutter bei den
Volkern des Arischen Stammes_, p. 414 et seq.) has an interesting passage
describing the dance--especially the Russian dance--in its orgiastic
aspects.

[39] Féré, "L'Influence sur le Travail Volontaire d'un muscle de
l'activité d'autres muscles," _Nouvelles Iconographie de la Salpêtrière_,
1901.

[40] "The sensation of motion," Kline remarks ("The Migratory Impulse,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, October, 1898, p. 62), "as yet but
little studied from a pleasure-pain standpoint, is undoubtedly a
pleasure-giving sensation. For Aristippus the end of life is pleasure,
which he defines as gentle motion. Motherhood long ago discovered its
virtue as furnished by the cradle. Galloping to town on the parental knee
is a pleasing pastime in every nursery. The several varieties of swings,
the hammock, see-saw, flying-jenny, merry-go-round, shooting the chutes,
sailing, coasting, rowing, and skating, together with the fondness of
children for rotating rapidly in one spot until dizzy and for jumping from
high places, are all devices and sports for stimulating the sense of
motion. In most of these modes of motion the body is passive or
semipassive, save in such motions as skating and rotating on the feet. The
passiveness of the body precludes any important contribution of stimuli
from kinesthetic sources. The stimuli are probably furnished, as Dr. Hall
and others have suggested, by a redistribution of fluid pressure (due to
the unusual motions and positions of the body) to the inner walls of the
several vascular systems of the body."

[41] _Anatomy of Melancholy_, part iii., sect. ii, mem. ii, subs. iv.

[42] Sadger, "Haut-, Schleimhaut-, und Muskel-erotik," _Jahrbuch für
psychoanalytische Forschungen_, Bd. iii, 1912, p. 556.

[43] Marro (_Pubertà_, p. 367 et seq.) has some observations on this
point. It was an insight into this action of dancing which led the Spanish
clergy of the eighteenth century to encourage the national enthusiasm for
dancing (as Baretti informs us) in the interests of morality.

[44] It is scarcely necessary to remark that a primitive dance, even when
associated with courtship, is not necessarily a sexual pantomime; as
Wallaschek, in his comprehensive survey of primitive dances, observes, it
is more usually an animal pantomime, but nonetheless connected with the
sexual instinct, separation of the sexes, also, being no proof to the
contrary. (Wallaschek, _Primitive Music_, pp. 211-13.) Grosse (_Anfänge
der Kunst_, English translation, p. 228) has pointed out that the best
dancer would be the best fighter and hunter, and that sexual selection and
natural selection would thus work in harmony.

[45] Féré, "Le plaisir de la vue du Mouvement," _Comptes-rendus de la
Société de Biologie_, November 2, 1901; also _Travail et Plaisir_, ch.
xxix.

[46] Groos repeatedly emphasizes the significance of this fact (_Spiele
der Menschen_, pp. 81-9, 460 et seq.); Grosse (_Anfänge der Kunst_, p.
215) had previously made some remarks on this point.

[47] M. Kulischer, "Die Geschlechtliche Zuchtwahl bei den Menschen in der
Urzeit," _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1876, p. 140 _et seq._

[48] Sir W.R. Gowers, _Epilepsy_, 2d ed., 1901, pp. 61, 138.

[49] Guyon, _Leçons Cliniques sur les Maladies des Voies Urinaires_, 3d
ed., 1896, vol. ii, p. 397.

[50] See, e.g., Féré, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, pp. 222-23: Brantôme was
probably the first writer in modern times who referred to this phenomenon.
MacGillicuddy (_Functional Disorders of the Nervous System in Women_, p.
110) refers to the case of a lady who always had sudden and uncontrollable
expulsion of urine whenever her husband even began to perform the marital
act, on which account he finally ceased intercourse with her. Kubary
states that in Ponape (Western Carolines) the men are accustomed to
titillate the vulva of their women with the tongue until the excitement is
so intense that involuntary emission of urine takes place; this is
regarded as the proper moment for intercourse.

[51] Thus Pitres and Régis (_Transactions of the International Medical
Congress, Moscow_, vol. iv, p. 19) record the case of a young girl whose
life was for some years tormented by a groundless fear of experiencing an
irresistible desire to urinate. This obsession arose from once seeing at a
theater a man whom she liked, and being overcome by sexual feeling
accompanied by so strong a desire to urinate that she had to leave the
theater. An exactly similar case in a young woman of erotic temperament,
but prudish, has been recorded by Freud (_Zur Neurosenlehre_, Bd. i, p.
54). Morbid obsessions of modesty involving the urinary sphere and
appearing at puberty are evidently based on transformed sexual emotion.
Such a case has been recorded by Marandon de Montyel (_Archives de
Neurologie_, vol. xii, 1901, p. 36); this lady, who was of somewhat
neuropathic temperament, from puberty onward, in order to be able to
urinate found it necessary not only to be absolutely alone, but to feel
assured that no one even knew what was taking place.

[52] H. Ellis, "The Bladder as a Dynamometer," _American Journal of
Dermatology_, May, 1902.

[53] Sir W. Gowers, "Minor Epilepsy," _British Medical Journal_, January
6, 1900; ib., _Epilepsy_, 2d ed., 1901, p. 106; see also H. Ellis, art.
"Urinary Bladder, Influence of the Mind on the," in Tuke's _Dictionary of
Psychological Medicine_.

[54] Sérieux, _Recherches Cliniques sur les Anomalies de l'Instinct
Sexuel_, p. 22.

[55] Emil Schultze-Malkowsky, "Der Sexuelle Trieb in Kindesalter,"
_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, vol. ii, part 8, p. 372.

[56] Féré, "Note sur un Cas de Periodicité Sexuelle chez l'Homme,"
_Comptes-rendus Société de Biologie_, July 23, 1904.

[57] It is a familiar fact that, in women, occasionally, a violent
explosion of laughter may be propagated to the bladder-center and produce
urination. "She laughed till she nearly wetted the floor," I have heard a
young woman in the country say, evidently using without thought a familiar
locution. Professor Bechterew has recorded the case of a young married
lady who, from childhood, wherever she might be--in friends' houses, in
the street, in her own drawing-room--had always experienced an involuntary
and forcible emission of urine, which could not be stopped or controlled,
whenever she laughed; the bladder was quite sound and no muscular effort
produced the same result. (W. Bechterew, _Neurologisches Centralblatt_,
1899.) In women these relationships are most easily observed, partly
because in them the explosive centers are more easily discharged, and
partly, it is probable, so far as the bladder is concerned, because,
although after death the resistance to the emission of urine is notably
less in women, during life about the same amount of force is necessary in
both sexes; so that a greater amount of energy flows to the bladder in
women, and any nervous storm or disturbance is thus specially apt to
affect the bladder.

[58] "Every pain," remarks Marie de Manacéine, "produces a number of
movements which are apparently useless: we cry out, we groan, we move our
limbs, we throw ourselves from one side to the other, and at bottom all
these movements are logical because by interrupting and breaking our
attention they render us less sensitive to the pain. In the days before
chloroform, skillful surgeons requested their patients to cry out during
the operation, as we are told by Gratiolet, who could not explain so
strange a fact, for in his time the antagonism of movements and attention
was not recognized." (Marie de Manacéine, _Archives Italiennes de
Biologie_, 1894, p. 250.) This antagonism of attention by movement is but
another way of expressing the vicarious relationship of motor discharges.

[59] Joanny Roux, _Psychologie de l'Instinct Sexuel_, 1899, pp. 22-23. It
is disputed whether hunger is located in the whole organism, and powerful
arguments have been brought against the view. (W. Cannon, "The Nature of
Hunger," _Popular Science Monthly_, Sept., 1912.) Thirst is usually
regarded as organic (A. Mayer, _La Soif_, 1901).

[60] If there is any objection to these terms it is chiefly because they
have reference to vascular congestion rather than to the underlying
nervous charging and discharging, which is equally fundamental, and in man
more prominent than the vascular phenomena.




LOVE AND PAIN.

I.

The Chief Key to the Relationship between Love and Pain to be Found in
Animal Courtship--Courtship a Source of Combativity and of Cruelty--Human
Play in the Light of Animal Courtship--The Frequency of Crimes Against the
Person in Adolescence--Marriage by Capture and its Psychological
Basis--Man's Pleasure in Exerting Force and Woman's Pleasure in
Experiencing it--Resemblance of Love to Pain even in Outward
Expression--The Love-bite--In what Sense Pain may be Pleasurable--The
Natural Contradiction in the Emotional Attitude of Women Toward
Men--Relative Insensibility to Pain of the Organic Sexual Sphere in
Women--The Significance of the Use of the Ampallang and Similar Appliances
in Coitus--The Sexual Subjection of Women to Men in Part Explainable as
the Necessary Condition for Sexual Pleasure.


The relation of love to pain is one of the most difficult problems, and
yet one of the most fundamental, in the whole range of sexual psychology.
Why is it that love inflicts, and even seeks to inflict, pain? Why is it
that love suffers pain, and even seeks to suffer it? In answering that
question, it seems to me, we have to take an apparently circuitous route,
sometimes going beyond the ostensible limits of sex altogether; but if we
can succeed in answering it we shall have come very near one of the great
mysteries of love. At the same time we shall have made clear the normal
basis on which rest the extreme aberrations of love.

The chief key to the relationship of love to pain is to be found by
returning to the consideration of the essential phenomena of courtship in
the animal world generally. Courtship is a play, a game; even its combats
are often, to a large extent, mock-combats; but the process behind it is
one of terrible earnestness, and the play may at any moment become deadly.
Courtship tends to involve a mock-combat between males for the possession
of the female which may at any time become a real combat; it is a pursuit
of the female by the male which may at any time become a kind of
persecution; so that, as Colin Scott remarks, "Courting may be looked upon
as a refined and delicate form of combat." The note of courtship, more
especially among mammals, is very easily forced, and as soon as we force
it we reach pain.[61] The intimate and inevitable association in the
animal world of combat--of the fighting and hunting impulses--with the
process of courtship alone suffices to bring love into close connection
with pain.

Among mammals the male wins the female very largely by the display of
force. The infliction of pain must inevitably be a frequent indirect
result of the exertion of power. It is even more than this; the infliction
of pain by the male on the female may itself be a gratification of the
impulse to exert force. This tendency has always to be held in check, for
it is of the essence of courtship that the male should win the female, and
she can only be won by the promise of pleasure. The tendency of the male
to inflict pain must be restrained, so far as the female is concerned, by
the consideration of what is pleasing to her. Yet, the more carefully we
study the essential elements of courtship, the clearer it becomes that,
playful as these manifestations may seem on the surface, in every
direction they are verging on pain. It is so among animals generally; it
is so in man among savages. "It is precisely the alliance of pleasure and
pain," wrote the physiologist Burdach, "which constitutes the voluptuous
emotion."

Nor is this emotional attitude entirely confined to the male. The female
also in courtship delights to arouse to the highest degree in the male the
desire for her favors and to withhold those favors from him, thus finding
on her part also the enjoyment of power in cruelty. "One's cruelty is
one's power," Millament says in Congreve's _Way of the World_, "and when
one parts with one's cruelty one parts with one's power."

At the outset, then, the impulse to inflict pain is brought into
courtship, and at the same time rendered a pleasurable idea to the female,
because with primitive man, as well as among his immediate ancestors, the
victor in love has been the bravest and strongest rather than the most
beautiful or the most skilful. Until he can fight he is not reckoned a man
and he cannot hope to win a woman. Among the African Masai a man is not
supposed to marry until he has blooded his spear, and in a very different
part of the world, among the Dyaks of Borneo, there can be little doubt
that the chief incentive to head-hunting is the desire to please the
women, the possession of a head decapitated by himself being an excellent
way of winning a maiden's favor.[62] Such instances are too well known to
need multiplication here, and they survive in civilization, for, even
among ourselves, although courtship is now chiefly ruled by quite other
considerations, most women are in some degree emotionally affected by
strength and courage. But the direct result of this is that a group of
phenomena with which cruelty and the infliction of pain must inevitably be
more or less allied is brought within the sphere of courtship and rendered
agreeable to women. Here, indeed, we have the source of that love of
cruelty which some have found so marked in women. This is a phase of
courtship which helps us to understand how it is that, as we shall see,
the idea of pain, having become associated with sexual emotion, may be
pleasurable to women.

Thus, in order to understand the connection between love and pain, we have
once more to return to the consideration, under a somewhat new aspect, of
the fundamental elements in the sexual impulse. In discussing the
"Evolution of Modesty" we found that the primary part of the female in
courtship is the playful, yet serious, assumption of the rôle of a hunted
animal who lures on the pursuer, not with the object of escaping, but with
the object of being finally caught. In considering the "Analysis of the
Sexual Impulse" we found that the primary part of the male in courtship is
by the display of his energy and skill to capture the female or to arouse
in her an emotional condition which leads her to surrender herself to him,
this process itself at the same time heightening his own excitement. In
the playing of these two different parts is attained in both male and
female that charging of nervous energy, that degree of vascular
tumescence, necessary for adequate discharge and detumescence in an
explosion by which sperm-cells and germ-cells are brought together for the
propagation of the race. We are now concerned with the necessary interplay
of the differing male and female rôles in courtship, and with their
accidental emotional by-products. Both male and female are instinctively
seeking the same end of sexual union at the moment of highest excitement.
There cannot, therefore, be real conflict.[63] But there is the semblance
of a conflict, an apparent clash of aim, an appearance of cruelty.
Moreover,--and this is a significant moment in the process from our
present point of view,--when there are rivals for the possession of one
female there is always a possibility of actual combat, so tending to
introduce an element of real violence, of undisguised cruelty, which the
male inflicts on his rival and which the female views with satisfaction
and delight in the prowess of the successful claimant. Here we are brought
close to the zoölogical root of the connection between love and pain.[64]

In his admirable work on play in man Groos has fully discussed the plays
of combat (_Kampfspiele_), which begin to develop even in childhood and
assume full activity during adolescence; and he points out that, while the
impulse to such play certainly has a wider biological significance, it
still possesses a relationship to the sexual life and to the rivalries of
animals in courtship which must not be forgotten.[65]

Nor is it only in play that the connection between love and combativity
may still be traced. With the epoch of the first sexual relationship,
Marro points out, awakes the instinct of cruelty, which prompts the youth
to acts which are sometimes in absolute contrast to his previous conduct,
and leads him to be careless of the lives of others as well as of his own
life.[66] Marro presents a diagram showing how crimes against the person
in Italy rise rapidly from the age of 16 to 20 and reach a climax between
21 and 25. In Paris, Gamier states, crimes of blood are six times more
frequent in adolescents (aged 16 to 20) than in adults. It is the same
elsewhere.[67] This tendency to criminal violence during the age-period of
courtship is a by-product of the sexual impulse, a kind of tertiary sexual
character.

In the process of what is commonly termed "marriage by capture" we have a
method of courtship which closely resembles the most typical form of
animal courtship, and is yet found in all but the highest and most
artificial stages of human society. It may not be true that, as MacLennan
and others have argued, almost every race of man has passed through an
actual stage of marriage by capture, but the phenomena in question have
certainly been extremely widespread and exist in popular custom even among
the highest races today. George Sand has presented a charming picture of
such a custom, existing in France, in her _Mare au Diable_. Farther away,
among the Kirghiz, the young woman is pursued by all her lovers, but she
is armed with a formidable whip, which she does not hesitate to use if
overtaken by a lover to whom she is not favorable. Among the Malays,
according to early travelers, courtship is carried on in the water in
canoes with double-bladed paddles; or, if no water is near, the damsel,
stripped naked of all but a waistband, is given a certain start and runs
off on foot followed by her lover. Vaughan Stevens in 1896 reported that
this performance is merely a sport; but Skeat and Blagden, in their more
recent and very elaborate investigations in the Malay States, find that it
is a rite.

Even if we regard "marriage by capture" as simply a primitive human
institution stimulated by tribal exigencies and early social conditions,
yet, when we recall its widespread and persistent character, its close
resemblance to the most general method of courtship among animals, and the
emotional tendencies which still persist even in the most civilized men
and women, we have to recognize that we are in presence of a real
psychological impulse which cannot fail in its exercise to introduce some
element of p

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