Note 291 — Chapter III · THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE LIBIDO. A POSSIBLE SOURCE OF PRIMITIVE HUMAN DISCOVERIES

The stem manth according to Kuhn becomes in German mangeln, rollen (referring to washing). Manthara is the butter paddle. When the gods generated the amrta (drink of immortality) by twirling the ocean around, they used the mountain Mandara as the paddle (see Kuhn: Ibid., p. 17). Steinthal calls attention to the Latin expression in poetical speech: mentula = male member, in which ment (manth) was used. I add here also, mentula is to be taken as diminutive for menta or mentha (μίνθα), Minze. In antiquity the Minze was called “Crown of Aphrodite” (Dioscorides, II, 154). Apuleius called it “mentha venerea”; it was an aphrodisiac. (The opposite meaning is found in Hippocrates: Si quis eam saepe comedat, ejus genitale semen ita colliquescit, ut effluat, et arrigere prohibet et corpus imbecillum reddit), and according to Dioscorides, Minze is a means of preventing conception. (See Aigremont: “Volkserotik und Pflanzenwelt,” Vol. I, p. 127). But the ancients also said of Menta: “Menta autem appellata, quod suo odore mentem feriat—mentae ipsius odor animum excitat.” This leads us to the root ment—in Latin mens; English, mind—with which the parallel development to pramantha, Προμηθεύς, would be completed. Still to be added is that an especially strong chin is called mento (mentum). A special development of the chin is given, as we know, to the priapic figure of Pulcinello, also the pointed beard (and ears) of the satyrs and the other priapic demon, just as in general all the protruding parts of the body can be given a masculine significance and all the receding parts or depressions a feminine significance. This applies also to all other animate or inanimate objects. See Maeder: Psycho.-Neurol. Wochenschr., X. Jahrgang. However, this whole connection is more than a little uncertain.