Note BB — Chapter XVIII · PARAESTHESIA

It is nowadays the fashion of sex-determinism to attribute every human emotion or its anomalies to sex. Thus not only cruelty connected with sexual activity is termed sadism, but every kind of cruelty is imputed to sadistic emotions. When the Spanish nations in Europe or America love to see bull-fights and thus enjoy cruelty, inflicted upon animals, these sex-determinists at once attribute this love of cruelty to the sadistic nature of the Latin and his descendants. This averment has as much right to make claim upon our credulity as the assertion that when an infant falls back satisfied after nursing at its mother’s breast, this satisfaction is of libidinous sexual nature. These singular saints see sex everywhere, nothing but sex. No wonder that such claims are repudiated by the logical mind. It is such exaggerations which tend to bring the best teachings and theories into discredit.