Volume 3 — APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

THE SEXUAL INSTINCT IN SAVAGES.

I.

In the eighteenth century, when savage tribes in various parts of the world first began to be visited, extravagantly romantic views widely prevailed as to the simple and idyllic lives led by primitive peoples. During the greater part of the nineteenth century the tendency of opinion was to the opposite extreme, and it became usual to insist on the degraded and licentious morals of savages.^[181]

In reality, however, savage life is just as little a prolonged debauch as a prolonged idyll. The inquiries of such writers as Westermarck, Frazer, and Crawley are tending to introduce a sounder conception of the actual, often highly complex, conditions of primitive life in its relations to the sexual instinct.

At the same time it is not difficult to account for the belief, widely spread during the nineteenth century, in the unbridled licentiousness of savages. In the first place, the doctrine of evolution inevitably created a prejudice in favor of such a view. It was assumed that modesty, chastity, and restraint were the finest and ultimate flowers of moral development; therefore at the beginnings of civilization we must needs expect to find the opposite of these things. Apart, however, from any mere prejudice of this kind, a superficial observation of the actual facts necessarily led to much misunderstanding. Just as the nakedness of many savage peoples led to the belief that they were lacking in modesty, although, as a matter of fact, modesty is more highly developed in savage life than in civilization,^[182] so the absence of our European rules of sexual behavior among savages led to the conclusion that they were abandoned to debauchery. The widespread custom of lending the wife under certain circumstances was especially regarded as indicating gross licentiousness. Moreover, even when intercourse was found to be free before marriage, scarcely any investigator sought to ascertain what amount of sexual intercourse this freedom involved. It was not clearly understood that such freedom must by no means be necessarily assumed to involve very frequent intercourse. Again, it often happened that no clear distinction was made between peoples contaminated by association with civilization, and peoples not so contaminated. For instance, when prostitution is attributed to a savage people we must usually suppose either that a mistake has been made or that the people in question have been degraded by intercourse with white peoples, for among unspoilt savages customs that can properly be called prostitution rarely prevail. Nor, indeed, would they be in harmony with the conditions of primitive life.

It has been seriously maintained that the chastity of savages, so far as it exists at all, is due to European civilization. It is doubtless true that this is the case with individual persons and tribes, but there is ample evidence from various parts of the world to show that this is by no means the rule. And, indeed, it may be said—with no disregard of the energy and sincerity of missionary efforts—that it could not be so. A new system of beliefs and practices, however excellent it may be in itself, can never possess the same stringent and unquestionable force as the system in which an individual and his ancestors have always lived, and which they have never doubted the validity of. That this is so we may have occasion to observe among ourselves. Christian teachers question the wisdom of bringing young people under free-thinking influence, because, although they do not deny the morals of free-thinkers, they believe that to unsettle the young may have a disastrous effect, not only on belief, but also on conduct. Yet this dangerously unsettling process has been applied by missionaries on a wholesale scale to races which in some respect are often little more than children. When, therefore, we are considering the chastity of savages we must not take into account those peoples which have been brought into close contact with Europeans.

In order to understand the sexual habits of savages generally there are two points which always have to be borne in mind as of the first importance: (1) the checks restraining sexual intercourse among savages, especially as regards time and season, are so numerous, and the sanctions upholding those checks so stringent, that sexual excess cannot prevail to the same extent as in civilization; (2) even in the absence of such checks, that difficulty of obtaining sexual erethism which has been noted as so common among savages, when not overcome by the stimulating influences prevailing at special times and seasons, and which is probably in large measure dependent on hard condition of life as well as an insensitive quality of nervous texture, still remains an important factor, tending to produce a natural chastity. There is a third consideration which, though from the present point of view subsidiary, is not without bearing on our conception of chastity among savages: the importance, even sacredness, of procreation is much more generally recognized by savage than by civilized peoples, and also a certain symbolic significance is frequently attached to human procreation as related to natural fruitfulness generally; so that a primitive sexual orgy, instead of being a mere manifestation of licentiousness, may have a ritual significance, as a magical means of evoking the fruitfulness of fields and herds.^[183]

When a savage practises extraconjugal sexual intercourse, the act is frequently not, as it has come to be conventionally regarded in civilization, an immorality or at least an illegitimate indulgence; it is a useful and entirely justifiable act, producing definite benefits, conducing alike to cosmic order and social order, although these benefits are not always such as we in civilization believe to be caused by the act. Thus, speaking of the northern tribes of central Australia, Spencer and Gillen remark: "It is very usual amongst all of the tribes to allow considerable license during the performance of certain of their ceremonies when a large number of natives, some of them coming often from distant parts, are gathered together—in fact, on such occasions all of the ordinary marital rules seem to be more or less set aside for the time being. Each day, in some tribes, one or more women are told off whose duty it is to attend at the corrobboree grounds,—sometimes only during the day, sometimes at night,—and all of the men, except those who are fathers, elder and younger brothers, and sons, have access to them.... The idea is that the sexual intercourse assists in some way in the proper performance of the ceremony, causing everything to work smoothly and preventing the decorations from falling off."^[184]

It is largely this sacred character of sexual intercourse—the fact that it is among the things that are at once "divine" and "impure," these two conceptions not being differentiated in primitive thought—which leads to the frequency with which in savage life a taboo is put upon its exercise. Robertson Smith added an appendix to his Religion of the Semites on "Taboo on the Intercourse of the Sexes."^[185] Westermarck brought together evidence showing the frequency with which this and allied causes tended to the chastity of savages.^[186] Frazer has very luminously expounded the whole primitive conception of sexual intercourse, and showed how it affected chastity.^[187] Warriors must often be chaste; the men who go on any hunting or other expedition require to be chaste to be successful; the women left behind must be strictly chaste; sometimes even the whole of the people left behind, and for long periods, must be chaste in order to insure the success of the expedition. Hubert and Maus touched on the same point in their elaborate essay on sacrifice, pointing out how frequently sexual relationships are prohibited on the occasion of any ceremony whatever.^[188] Crawley, in elaborating the primitive conception of taboo, has dealt fully with ritual and traditional influences making for chastity among savages. He brings forward, for instance, a number of cases, from various parts of the world, in which intercourse has to be delayed for days, weeks, even months, after marriage. He considers that the sexual continence prevalent among savages is largely due to a belief in the enervating effects of coitus; so dangerous are the sexes to each other that, as he points out, even now sexual separation of the sexes commonly occurs.^[189]

There are thus a great number of constantly recurring occasions in savage life when continence must be preserved, and when, it is firmly believed, terrible risks would be incurred by its violation—during war, after victory, after festivals, during mourning, on journeys, in hunting and fishing, in a vast number of agricultural and industrial occupations.

It might fairly be argued that the facility with which the savage places these checks on sexual intercourse itself bears witness to the weakness of the sexual impulse. Evidence of another order which seems to point to the undeveloped state of the sexual impulse among savages may be found in the comparatively undeveloped condition of their sexual organs, a condition not, indeed, by any means constant, but very frequently noted. As regards women, it has in many parts of the world been observed to be the rule, and the data which Ploss and Bartels have accumulated seem to me, on the whole, to point clearly in this direction.^[190]

At another point, also, it may be remarked, the repulsion between the sexes and the restraints on intercourse may be associated with weak sexual impulse. It is not improbable that a certain horror of the sexual organs may be a natural feeling which is extinguished in the intoxication of desire, yet still has a physiological basis which renders the sexual organs—disguised and minimized by convention and by artistic representation—more or less disgusting in the absence of erotic emotion.^[191] And this is probably more marked in cases in which the sexual instinct is constitutionally feeble. A lady who had no marked sexual desires, and who considered it well bred to be indifferent to such matters, on inspecting her sexual parts in a mirror for the first time in her life was shocked and disgusted at the sight. Certainly many women could record a similar experience on being first approached by a man, although artistic conventions present the male form with greater truth than the female. Moreover,—and here is the significant point,—this feeling is by no means restricted to the refined and cultured. "When working at Michelangelo," wrote a correspondent from Italy, "my upper gondolier used to see photographs and statuettes of all that man's works. Stopping one day before the Night and Dawn of S. Lorenzo, sprawling naked women, he exclaimed: 'How hideous they are!' I pressed him to explain himself. He went on: 'The ugliest man naked is handsomer than the finest woman naked. Women have crooked legs, and their sexual organs stink. I only once saw a naked woman. It was in a brothel, when I was 18. The sight of her "natura" made me go out and vomit into the canal. You know I have been twice married, but I never saw either of my wives without clothing.' Of very rank cheese he said one day: 'Puzza come la natura d'una donna.'" This man, my correspondent added, was entirely normal and robust, but seemed to regard sexual congress as a mere evacuation, the sexual instinct apparently not being strong.

It seems possible that, if the sexual impulse had no existence, all men would regard women with this horror feminæ. As things are, however, at all events in civilization, sexual emotions begin to develop even earlier, usually, than acquaintance with the organs of the other sex begins; so that this disgust is inhibited. If, however, among savages the sexual impulse is habitually weak, and only aroused to strength under the impetus of powerful stimuli, often acting periodically, then we should expect the horror to be a factor of considerable importance.

The weakness of the physical sexual impulse among savages is reflected in the psychic sphere. Many writers have pointed out that love plays but a small part in their lives. They practise few endearments; they often only kiss children (Westermarck notes that sexual love is far less strong than parental love); love-poems are among some primitive peoples few (mostly originating with the women), and their literature often gives little or no attention to passion.^[192] Affection and devotion are, however, often strong, especially in savage women.

It is not surprising that jealousy should often, though not by any means invariably, be absent, both among men and among women. Among savages this is doubtless a proof of the weakness of the sexual impulse. Spencer and Gillen note the comparative absence of jealousy in men among the Central Australian tribes they studied.^[193] Negresses, it is said by a French army surgeon in his Untrodden Fields of Anthropology, do not know what jealousy is, and the first wife will even borrow money to buy the second wife. Among a much higher race, the women in a Korean household, it is said, live together happily, as an almost invariable rule, though it appears that this was not always the case among a polygamous people of European race, the Mormons.

The tendency of the sexual instinct in savages to periodicity, to seasonal manifestations, I do not discuss here, as I have dealt with it in the first volume of these Studies.^[194] It has, however, a very important bearing on this subject. Periodicity of sexual manifestations is, indeed, less absolute in primitive man than in most animals, but it is still very often quite clearly marked. It is largely the occurrence of these violent occasional outbursts of the sexual instinct—during which the organic impulse to tumescence becomes so powerful that external stimuli are no longer necessary—that has led to the belief in the peculiar strength of the impulse in savages.^[195]

[181]

Thus, Lubbock (Lord Avebury), in the Origin of Civilization, fifth edition, 1889, brings forward a number of references in evidence of this belief. More recently Finck, in his Primitive Love and Love-stories, 1899, seeks to accumulate data in favor of the unbounded licentiousness of savages. He admits, however, that a view of the matter opposed to his own is now tending to prevail.

[182]

See "The Evolution of Modesty" in the first volume of these Studies.

[183]

The sacredness of sexual relations often applies also to individual marriage. Thus, Skeat, in his Malay Magic, shows that the bride and bridegroom are definitely recognized as sacred, in the same sense that the king is, and in Malay States the king is a very sacred person. See also, concerning the sacred character of coitus, whether individual or collective, A. Van Gennep, Rites de Passage, passim.

[184]

Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 136.

[185]

Religion of the Semites, second edition, 1894, p. 454 et seq.

[186]

History of Marriage, pp. 66-70, 150-156, etc.

[187]

Golden Bough, third edition, part ii, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul. Frazer has discussed taboo generally. For a shorter account of taboo, see art. "Taboo" by Northcote Thomas in Encyclopædia Britannica, eleventh edition, 1911. Freud has lately (Imago, 1912) made an attempt to explain the origin of taboo psychologically by comparing it to neurotic obsessions. Taboo, Freud believes, has its origin in a forbidden act to perform which there is a strong unconscious tendency; an ambivalent attitude, that is, combining the opposite tendencies, is thus established. In this way Freud would account for the fact that tabooed persons and things are both sacred and unclean.

[188]

"Essai sur le Sacrifice," L'Année Sociologique, 1899, pp. 50-51.

[189]

The Mystic Rose, 1902, p. 187 et seq., 215 et seq., 342 et seq.

[190]

Das Weib, vol. i, section 6.

[191]

This statement has been questioned. It should, however, be fairly evident that the sexual organs in either sex, when closely examined, can scarcely be regarded as beautiful except in the eyes of a person of the opposite sex who is in a condition of sexual excitement, and they are not always attractive even then. Moreover, it must be remembered that the snake-like aptitude of the penis to enter into a state of erection apart from the control of the will puts it in a different category from any other organ of the body, and could not fail to attract the attention of primitive peoples so easily alarmed by unusual manifestations. We find even in the early ages of Christianity that St. Augustine attached immense importance to this alarming aptitude of the penis as a sign of man's sinful and degenerate state.

[192]

Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, fifth edition, pp. 69, 73; Westermarck, History of Marriage, p. 357; Grosse, Anfänge der Kunst, p. 236; Herbert Spencer, "Origin of Music," Mind, Oct., 1890.

[193]

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 99; cf. Finck, Primitive Love and Love-stories, p. 89 et seq.

[194]

"The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity." The subject has also been more recently discussed by Walter Heape, "The 'Sexual Season' of Mammals," Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, vol. xliv, 1900. See also F. H. A. Marshall, The Physiology of Reproduction, 1910.

[195]

This view finds a belated supporter in Max Marcuse ("Geschlechtstrieb des Urmenschens," Sexual-Probleme, Oct., 1909), who, on grounds which I cannot regard as sound, seeks to maintain the belief that the sexual instinct is more highly developed among savage than among civilized peoples.

II.

The facts thus seem to indicate that among primitive peoples, while the magical, ceremonial, and traditional restraints on sexual intercourse are very numerous, very widespread, and nearly always very stringent, there is, underlying this prevalence of restraints on intercourse, a fundamental weakness of the sexual instinct, which craves less, and craves less frequently, than is the case among civilized peoples, but is liable to be powerfully manifested at special seasons. It is perfectly true that among savages, as Sutherland states, "there is no ideal which makes chastity a thing beautiful in itself"; but when the same writer goes on to state that "it is untrue that in sexual license the savage has everything to learn," we must demand greater precision of statement.^[196] Travelers, and too often would-be scientific writers, have been so much impressed by the absence among savages of the civilized ideal of chastity, and by the frequent freedom of sexual intercourse, that they have not paused to inquire more carefully into the phenomena, or to put themselves at the primitive point of view, but have assumed that freedom here means all that it would mean in a European population.

In order to illustrate the actual circumstances of savage life in this respect from the scanty evidence furnished by the most careful observers, I have brought together from scattered sources a few statements concerning primitive peoples in very various parts of the world.^[197]

Among the Andamanese, Portman, who knows them well, says that sexual desire is very moderate; in males it appears at the age of 18, but, as "their love for sport is greater than their passions, these are not gratified to any great extent till after marriage, which rarely takes place till a man is about 26."^[198]

Although chastity is not esteemed by the Fuegians, and virginity is lost at a very early age, yet both men and women are extremely moderate in sexual indulgence.^[199]

Among the Eskimo at the other end of the American continent, according to Dr. F. Cook, the sexual passions are suppressed during the long darkness of winter, as also is the menstrual function usually, and the majority of the children are born nine months after the appearance of the sun.^[200]

Among the Indians of North America it is the custom of many tribes to refrain from sexual intercourse during the whole period of lactation, as also D'Orbigny found to be the case among South American Indians, although suckling went on for over three years.^[201] Many of the Indian tribes have now been rendered licentious by contact with civilization. In the primitive condition their customs were entirely different. Dr. Holder, who knows many tribes of North American Indians well, has dealt in some detail with this point. "Several of the virtues," he states, "and among them chastity, were more faithfully practised by the Indian race before the invasion from the East than these same virtues are practised by the white race of the present day.... The race is less salacious than either the negro or white race.... That the women of some tribes are now more careful of their virtue than the women of any other community whose history I know, I am fully convinced."^[202] It is not only on the women that sexual abstinence is imposed. Among some branches of the Salish Indians of British Columbia a young widower must refrain from sexual intercourse for a year, and sometimes lives entirely apart during that period.^[203]

In many parts of Polynesia, although the sexual impulse seems often to have been highly developed before the arrival of Europeans, it is very doubtful whether license, in the European sense, at all generally prevailed. The Marquesans, who have sometimes been regarded as peculiarly licentious, are especially mentioned by Foley as illustrating his statement that sexual erethism is with difficulty attained by primitive peoples except during sexual seasons.^[204] Herman Melville's detailed account in Typee of the Marquesans (somewhat idealized, no doubt) reveals nothing that can fairly be called licentiousness. At Rotuma, J. Stanley Gardiner remarks, before the missionaries came sexual intercourse before marriage was free, but gross immorality and prostitution and adultery were unknown. Matters are much worse now.^[205] The Maoris of New Zealand, in the old days, according to one who had lived among them, were more chaste than the English, and, though a chief might lend his wife to a friend as an honor, it would be very difficult to take her (private communication).^[206] Captain Cook also represented these people as modest and virtuous.

Among the Papuans of New Guinea and Torres Straits, although intercourse before marriage is free, it is by no means unbridled, nor is it carried to excess. There are many circumstances restraining intercourse. Thus, unmarried men must not indulge in it during October and November at Torres Straits. It is the general rule also that there should be no sexual intercourse during pregnancy, while a child is being suckled (which goes on for three or four years), or even until it can speak or walk.^[207] In Astrolabe Bay, New Guinea, according to Vahness, a young couple must abstain from intercourse for several weeks after marriage, and to break this rule would be disgraceful.^[208]

As regards Australia, Brough Smyth wrote: "Promiscuous intercourse between the sexes is not practised by the aborigines, and their laws on the subject, particularly those of New South Wales, are very strict. When at camp all the young unmarried men are stationed by themselves at the extreme end, while the married men, each with his family, occupy the center. No conversation is allowed between the single men and the girls or the married women. Infractions of these laws were visited by punishment; ... five or six warriors threw from a comparatively short distance several spears at him [the offender]. The man was often severely wounded and sometimes killed."^[209] This author mentions that a black woman has been known to kill a white man who attempted to have intercourse with her by force. Yet both sexes have occasional sexual intercourse from an early age. After marriage, in various parts of Australia, there are numerous restraints on intercourse, which is forbidden not merely during menstruation, but during the latter part of pregnancy and for one moon after childbirth.^[210]

Concerning the people of the Malay Peninsula, Hrolf Vaughan Stevens states: "The sexual impulse among the Belendas is only developed to a slight extent; they are not sensual, and the husband has intercourse with his wife not oftener than three times a month. The women also are not ardent.... The Orang Lâut are more sensual than the Dyaks, who are, however, more given to obscene jokes than their neighbors.... With the Belendas there is little or no love-play in sexual relations".^[211] Skeat tells us also that among Malays in war-time strict chastity must be observed in a stockade, or the bullets of the garrison will lose their power.^[212]

It is a common notion that the negro and negroid races of Africa are peculiarly prone to sexual indulgence. This notion is not supported by those who have had the most intimate knowledge of these peoples. It probably gained currency in part owing to the open and expansive temperament of the negro, and in part owing to the extremely sexual character of many African orgies and festivals, though those might quite as legitimately be taken as evidence of difficulty in attaining sexual erethism.

A French army surgeon, speaking from knowledge of the black races in various French colonies, states in his Untrodden Fields of Anthropology that it is a mistake to imagine that the negress is very amorous. She is rather cold, and indifferent to the refinements of love, in which respects she is very unlike the mulatto. The white man is usually powerless to excite her, partly from his small penis, partly from his rapidity of emission; the black man, on account of his blunter nervous system, takes three times as long to reach emission as the white man. Among the Mohammedan peoples of West Africa, Daniell remarks, as well as in central and northern Africa, it is usual to suckle a child for two or more years. From the time when pregnancy becomes apparent to the end of weaning no intercourse takes place. It is believed that this would greatly endanger the infant, if not destroy it. This means that for every child the woman, at all events, must remain continent for about three years.^[213] Sir H. H. Johnston, writing concerning the peoples of central Africa, remarks that the man also must remain chaste during these periods. Thus, among the Atonga the wife leaves her husband at the sixth month of pregnancy, and does not resume relations with him until five or six months after the birth of the child. If, in the interval, he has relations with any other woman, it is believed his wife will certainly die. "The negro is very rarely vicious," Johnston says, "after he has attained to the age of puberty. He is only more or less uxorious. The children are vicious, as they are among most races of mankind, the boys outrageously so. As regards the little girls over nearly the whole of British Central Africa, chastity before puberty is an unknown condition, except perhaps among the A-nyanja. Before a girl is become a woman it is a matter of absolute indifference what she does, and scarcely any girl remains a virgin after about 5 years of age."^[214] Among the Bangala of the upper Congo a woman suckles her child for six to eighteen months and during all this period the husband has no intercourse with his wife, for that, it is believed, would kill the child.^[215]

Among the Yoruba-speaking people of West Africa A. B. Ellis mentions that suckling lasts for three years, during the whole of which period the wife must not cohabit with her husband.^[216]

Although chastity before marriage appears to be, as a rule, little regarded in Africa, this is not always so. In some parts of West Africa, a girl, at all events if of high birth, when found guilty of unchastity may be punished by the insertion into her vagina of bird pepper, a kind of capsicum, beaten into a mass; this produces intense pain and such acute inflammation that the canal may even be obliterated.^[217]

Among the Dahomey women there is no coitus during pregnancy nor during suckling, which lasts for nearly three years. The same is true among the Jekris and other tribes on the Niger, where it is believed that the milk would suffer if intercourse took place during lactation.^[218]

In another part of Africa, among the Suaheli, even after marriage only incomplete coitus is at first allowed and there is no intercourse for a year after the child's birth.^[219]

Farther south, among the Ba Wenda of north Transvaal, says the Rev. R. Wessmann, although the young men are permitted to "play" with the young girls before marriage, no sexual intercourse is allowed. If it is seen that a girl's labia are apart when she sits down on a stone, she is scolded, or even punished, as guilty of having had intercourse.^[220]

Among the higher races in India the sexual instinct is very developed, and sexual intercourse has been cultivated as an art, perhaps more elaborately than anywhere else. Here, however, we are far removed from primitive conditions and among a people closely allied to the Europeans. Farther to the east, as among the Cambodians, strict chastity seems to prevail, and if we cross the Himalayas to the north we find ourselves among wild people to whom sexual license is unknown. Thus, among the Turcomans, even a few days after the marriage has been celebrated, the young couple are separated for an entire year.^[221]

All the great organized religions have seized on this value of sexual abstinence, already consecrated by primitive magic and religion, and embodied it in their system. It was so in ancient Egypt. Thus, according to Diodorus, on the death of a king, the entire population of Egypt abstained from sexual intercourse for seventy-two days. The Persians, again, attached great value to sexual as to all other kinds of purity. Even involuntary seminal emissions were severely punishable. To lie with a menstruating woman, according to the Vendidad, was as serious a matter as to pollute holy fire, and to lie with a pregnant woman was to incur a penalty of 2000 strokes. Among the modern Parsees a man must not lie with his wife after she is four months and ten days pregnant. Mohammedanism cannot be described as an ascetic religion, yet long and frequent periods of sexual abstinence are enjoined. There must be no sexual intercourse during the whole of pregnancy, during suckling, during menstruation (and for eight days before and after), nor during the thirty days of the Ramedan fast. Other times of sexual abstinence are also prescribed; thus among the Mohammedan Yezidis of Mardin in northern Mesopotamia there must be no sexual intercourse on Wednesdays or Fridays.^[222]

In the early Christian Church many rules of sexual abstinence still prevailed, similar to those usual among savages, though not for such prolonged periods. In Egbert's Penitential, belonging to the ninth century, it is stated that a woman must abstain from intercourse with her husband three months after conception and for forty days after birth. There were a number of other occasions, including Lent, when a husband must not know his wife.^[223] "Some canonists say," remarks Jeremy Taylor, "that the Church forbids a mutual congression of married pairs upon festival days.... The Council of Eliberis commanded abstinence from conjugal rights for three or four or seven days before the communion. Pope Liberius commanded the same during the whole time of Lent, supposing the fast is polluted by such congressions."^[224]

[196]

A. Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, vol. i, pp. 8, 187. As has been shown by, for instance, Dr. Iwan Bloch (Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Erster Theil, 1902), every perverse sexual practice may be found, somewhere or other, among savages or barbarians; but, as the same writer acutely points out (p. 58), these devices bear witness to the need of overcoming frigidity rather than to the strength of the sexual impulse.

[197]

Ploss and Bartels have brought together in Das Weib a large number of facts in the same sense, more especially under the headings of Abstinenz-Vorschriften and Die Fernhaltung der Schwangeren. I have not drawn upon their collection.

[198]

Journal of the Anthropological Institute, May, 1896, p. 369.

[199]

Hyades and Deniker, Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn, vol. vii, p. 188.

[200]

F. Cook, New York Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, 1894.

[201]

A. d'Orbigny, L'Homme Américain, 1839, vol. i, p. 47.

[202]

A. B. Holder, "Gynecic Notes Among the American Indians," American Journal of Obstetrics, 1892, vol. xxvi, No. 1.

[203]

Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1905, p. 139.

[204]

Foley, Bulletin de la Société d' Anthropologie, Paris, November 6, 1879.

[205]

J. S. Gardiner, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, February, 1898, p. 409.

[206]

As regards the modern Maoris, a medical correspondent in New Zealand writes: "It is nothing for members of both sexes to live in the same room, and for promiscuous intercourse to take place between father and daughter or brother and sister. Maori women, who will display a great deal of modesty when in the presence of male Maoris, will openly ask strange Europeans to have sexual intercourse with them, and without any desire for reward. The men, however, seem to prefer their own women, and even when staying in towns, where they can obtain prostitutes, they will remain continent until they return home again, a period of perhaps a month."

[207]

Schellong, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1889, i, pp. 17, 19; Haddon, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, February, 1890, pp. 316, 397; Guise, ib., February and May, 1899, p. 207; Seligmann, ib., 1902, pp. 298, 301-302; Reports Cambridge Expedition, vol. v, pp. 199-200, 275.

[208]

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1900, ht. v, p. 414.

[209]

R. Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, vol. ii, p. 318.

[210]

Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1894, pp. 170, 177, 187.

[211]

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1896, iv, pp. 180-181.

[212]

W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 524.

[213]

W. F. Daniell, Medical Topography of Gulf of Guinea, 1849, p. 55.

[214]

Sir H. H. Johnston, British Central Africa, 1899, pp. 409, 414.

[215]

Rev. J. H. Weeks, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1910, p. 418.

[216]

Sir A. B. Ellis, Yoruba-Speaking Peoples, p. 185.

[217]

W. F. Daniell, op. cit., p. 36.

[218]

Journal of the Anthropological Institute, August and November, 1898, p. 106.

[219]

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1899, ii and iii, p. 84; Velten, Sitten und Gebraüche der Suaheli, p. 12.

[220]

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1896, p. 364.

[221]

Vambery, Travels in Central Asia, 1864, p. 323.

[222]

Heard, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Jan.-June, 1911, p. 210. The same rule is also observed by the Christians of this district.

[223]

Haddon and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, vol. iii, p. 423.

[224]

Jeremy Taylor, The Rule of Conscience, bk. iii, ch. iv, rule xx.

III.

Thus it would seem probable that, contrary to a belief once widely prevalent, the sexual instinct has increased rather than diminished with the growth of civilization. This fact was clear to the insight of Lucretius, though it has often been lost sight of since.^[225] Yet even observation of animals might have suggested the real bearing of the facts. The higher breeds of cattle, it is said, require the male more often than the inferior breeds.^[226] Thorough-bred horses soon reach sexual maturity, and I understand that since pains have been taken to improve cart-horses the sexual instincts of the mares have become less trustworthy. There is certainly no doubt that in our domestic animals generally, which live under what may be called civilized conditions, the sexual system and the sexual needs are more developed than in the wild species most closely related to them.^[227] All observers seem to agree on this point, and it is sufficient to refer to the excellent summary of the question furnished by Heape in the study of "The 'Sexual Season' of Mammals," to which reference has already been made. He remarks, moreover, that, "while the sexual activity of domestic animals and of wild animals in captivity may be more frequently exhibited, it is not so violent as is shown by animals in the wild state."^[228] So that, it would seem, the greater periodicity of the instinct in the wild state, alike in animals and in man, is associated with greater violence of the manifestations when they do appear. Certain rodents, such as the rat and the mouse, are well known to possess both great reproductive power and marked sexual proclivities. Heape suggests that this also is "due to the advantages derived from their intimate relations with the luxuries of civilization." Heape recognizes that, as regards reproductive power, the same development may be traced in man: "It would seem highly probable that the reproductive power of man has increased with civilization, precisely as it may be increased in the lower animals by domestication; that the effect of a regular supply of good food, together with all the other stimulating factors available and exercised in modern civilized communities, has resulted in such great activity of the generative organs, and so great an increase in the supply of the reproductive elements, that conception in the healthy human female may be said to be possible almost at any time during the reproductive period."

"People of sense and reflection are most apt to have violent and constant passions," wrote Mary Wollstonecraft, "and to be preyed on by them."^[229] It is that fact which leads to the greater importance of sexual phenomena among the civilized as compared to savages. The conditions of civilization increase the sexual instinct, which consequently tends to be more intimately connected with moral feelings. Morality is bound up with the development of the sexual instinct. The more casual and periodic character of the impulse in animals, since it involves greater sexual indifference, tends to favor a loose tie between the sexes, and hence is not favorable to the development of morals as we understand morals. In man the ever-present impulse of sex, idealizing each sex to the other sex, draws men and women together and holds them together. Foolish and ignorant persons may deplore the full development which the sexual instinct has reached in civilized man; to a finer insight that development is seen to be indissolubly linked with all that is most poignant and most difficult, indeed, but also all that is best, in human life as we know it.

[225]

De Rerum Naturâ, v, 1016.

[226]

Raciborski (Traité de la Menstruation, p. 43) quotes the observation of an experienced breeder of choice cattle to this effect.

[227]

"The organs which in the feral state," as Adlerz remarks (Biologisches Centralblatt, No. 4, 1902; quoted in Science, May 16, 1902), "are continually exercised in a severe struggle for existence, do not under domestication compete so closely with one another for the less needed nutriment. Hence, organs like the reproductive glands, which are not so directly implicated in self-preservation, are able to avail themselves of more food."

[228]

Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, vol. xliv, 1900, p. 12, 31, 39.

[229]

"Love," in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters.

APPENDIX B.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SEXUAL INSTINCT.

It is a very remarkable fact that, although for many years past serious attempts have been made to elucidate the psychology of sexual perversions, little or no endeavor has been made to study the development of the normal sexual emotions. Nearly every writer seems either to take for granted that he and his readers are so familiar with all the facts of normal sex psychology that any detailed statement is altogether uncalled for, or else he is content to write a few fragmentary remarks, mostly made up of miscellaneous extracts from anatomical, philosophical, and historical works.

Yet it is as unreasonable to take normal phenomena for granted here as in any other region of science. A knowledge of such phenomena is as necessary here as physiology is to pathology or anatomy to surgery. So far from the facts of normal sex development, sex emotions, and sex needs being uniform and constant, as is assumed by those who consider their discussion unnecessary, the range of variation within fairly normal limits is immense, and it is impossible to meet with two individuals whose records are nearly identical.

There are two fundamental reasons why the endeavor should be made to obtain a broad basis of clear information on the subject. In the first place, the normal phenomena give the key to the abnormal phenomena, and the majority of sexual perversions, including even those that are most repulsive, are but exaggerations of instincts and emotions that are germinal in normal human beings. In the second place, we cannot even know what is normal until we are acquainted with the sexual life of a large number of healthy individuals. And until we know the limits of normal sexuality we are not in position to lay down any reasonable rules of sexual hygiene.

On these grounds I have for some time sought to obtain the sexual histories, and more especially the early histories, of men and women who, on prima facie grounds, may fairly be considered, or are at all events by themselves and others considered, ordinarily healthy and normal.

There are many difficulties about such a task, difficulties which are sufficiently obvious. There is, first of all, the natural reticence to reveal facts of so intimately personal a character. There is the prevailing ignorance and unintelligence which leads to the phenomena being obscure to the subject himself. When the first difficulty has been overcome, and the second is non-existent, there is still a lack of sufficiently strong motive to undertake the record, as well as a failure to realize the value of such records. I have, however, received a large number of such histories, for the most part offered spontaneously with permission to make such further inquiries as I thought desirable. Some of these histories are extremely interesting and instructive. In the present Appendix, and in a corresponding Appendix to the two following volumes of these Studies, I bring forward a varied selection of these narratives. In a few cases, it will be seen, the subjects are, to say the least, on the borderland of the abnormal, but they do not come before us as patients desiring treatment. They are playing their, usually active, sometimes even distinguished, part in the world, which knows nothing of their intimate histories.

HISTORY I.—E. T. (I reproduce this history, written in the third person, as it reached my hands.) T.'s earliest recollections of ideas of a sexual character are vaguely associated with thoughts upon whipping inflicted on companions by their parents, and sometimes upon his own person. About the age of 7 T. occasionally depicted to himself the appearance of the bare nates and genitalia of boys during flagellation. Reflection upon whipping gave rise to slight curious sensations at the base of the abdomen and in the nerves of the sexual system. The sight of a boy being whipped upon the bare nates caused erection before the age of 9. He cannot account for these excitations, as at the time he had not learned the most rudimentary facts of sex. The spectacle of the boy's nudity had no attraction for him, while the beating aroused his indignation against the person who administered it. T. knew a boy and girl of about his own age whose imaginations dwelt somewhat morbidly upon whipping. The three used to talk together about such chastisement, and the little girl liked to read "stories that had whippings in them." None of these children delighted in cruelty; the fascination in the theme of castigation seemed to be in imagining the spectacle of the exposed nates, though actual witnessing of the whipping made them angry at the time.

Accustomed to watch a young sister being bathed, T. had no distinct curiosity concerning the differences in sex until the age of 9. About this time he asked his father where babies came from, and was told to be quiet. When he persisted in the inquiry his father threatened to box his ears. His mother told him subsequently that doctors brought babies to mothers. He credited the story so far as to carefully watch the doctor who came when his mother "was going to have a new baby," in the hope of seeing a bundle in his arm. T. was 9 when he interrogated a servant-girl of 16 about babies and their origin. She laughed and said that one day she would tell him how children came. One Sunday this servant took T. for a country walk and initiated him in sexual intercourse, telling him he was too young to be a father, but that was the way babies were made. The girl took him into a field, saying she would show him how to do something which would make him "feel as though he was in heaven," informing him that she had often done this with young men. She then succeeded in causing erection and instructed him how to act. His feeling at the time was one of disgust; the appearance and odor of the female genitalia repelled him. Afterward, however, he wished to repeat the experience with girls of his own age. Finding the boy unresponsive, the girl took the masculine position and embraced him with great passion. T. can recall the expression of the girl's face, the perspiration on her forehead, and the whispered query whether it pleased him. The embrace lasted for about ten minutes, when the girl said it had "done her good." Later the same day they met a girl cousin of this servant about 10 or 12 years old. The three went to a lonely part of the seashore. The servant there suggested that T. should repeat the act with the little girl. T. was too shy, though the girl seemed quite willing and experienced. The older girl told the younger to keep watch a few yards away, while she again brought about intercourse in the same way. The servant told T. not to tell anyone. Intercourse with the servant was never repeated after that day; from shame he kept the promise for many years.

After this episode T. began to speculate about sexual matters and to observe the coupling of dogs with newly acquired interest. At 10 years he often lay awake, listening to a woman of 25 singing to a piano accompaniment. The woman's voice seemed very beautiful, and so strongly impressed him that he fell in love with her and longed to embrace her sexually. This secret attachment was much more romantic than sensual, though the idea of embracing the woman seemed to T. a natural part of the romance. He was beginning to invest the sex with angelic qualities. The thought of his adventure with the servant no longer caused repulsion, but rather pleasure. He reflected that if he could meet the girl now he could be very fond of her and understand things better. At this time he had not masturbated, nor even heard of the practice. One day, while playing with a girl of his own age, he succeeded in overcoming her shyness and induced her to expose herself, at the same time uncovering his own sexual parts. On this occasion and once afterward he succeeded in penetrating the vulva. Both he and the girl experienced imperfect enjoyment.

At boarding-school, where he was sent at 10, T. learned the vulgar phrases for sexual organs and sexual acts, and acquired the habit of moderate masturbation. Coarse talk and indecent jests about the opposite sex were common amusements of the playroom and dormitories. At first the obscene conversation was very distasteful; later he became more used to it, but thought it strange that sex intimacy should be a subject for ridicule and jest.

He began to read love-stories and think much about girls. At the same time he learned the nature of "the sin of fornication," and wondered why it should be considered so heinous. Parts of the Bible condemning intercourse between the unmarried alarmed him. Being of a serious as well as emotional and amorous nature, he became converted to evangelic belief. His mother warned him to beware of unclean companions at school. He tried to act as a Christian and think only pure thoughts about women. The talk, however, was always of girls and of being in love. His mind was often engrossed with amatory ideas of a poetic, sensuous nature, his sexual experiences having a firm hold on his imagination, while they gave him gratifying assurance of actual knowledge concerning things merely imagined by most of his companions.

His health was vigorous and he keenly enjoyed all outdoor games and excelled in daring and schoolboy mischief.

At 12 he fell deeply in love with a girl of corresponding age. He never felt any powerful sexual desire for his sweetheart, and never attempted anything but kissing and decorous caresses. He liked to walk and sit with the girl, to hold her hand, and stroke her soft hair. He felt real grief when separated from her. His thoughts of her were seldom sensual. A year or so afterward he had a temporary passion for a woman of 30, who used to flirt with him and allow kissing. T. thought her queen-like and very lovely, and wished to be her knight.

One day he saw, for a moment, in a friend's house, a dark, earnest-looking girl of 13, who made a very deep impression upon him, and, though he did not exchange a word with her, he often thought about her afterward. Five years later he met the dark girl again, and the pair were mutually drawn to one another. He proposed marriage and avowed a most desperate passion. A refusal on the plea of youth caused him the deepest misery. About eight years thereafter T. married the girl, and the marriage proved a very happy one for both.

When he was 15 T. made the acquaintance of a pretty blonde of the same age. She was a high-spirited hoiden. They were soon close friends and later lovers. They wrote a number of letters to each other and exchanged locks of hair and presents. Their talk about love was unreserved. One day she told T. that she had been sexually embraced by a former lover, a boy of 16, hinting very plainly that she would like T. to embrace her. This amour lasted for about six months. The lovers had many opportunities for clandestine intercourse. They used to consummate their passion in a part of a wood they called "the bower." Now and then one or the other would experience a pricking of conscience, but they were too passionately attached to each other to sever the intimacy. At length the girl began to dread the risk of conception and the intercourse ceased. Looking back upon this episode T. avers that the attachment and its physical expression seemed quite natural, poetic, and beautiful, though at times his religious principles condemned his conduct. He now thinks that the experience is by no means to be regretted either by the girl or himself. It was a wholesome youthful passion, as innocent as the mating of birds, and the insight which it gave to both of the hidden emotions of human nature was morally advantageous in after-life.

T. believes that his amative precocity was due to the early awakening of sex feeling by the servant-girl. But he also believes that the love passion would have asserted itself early in any case, since he inherits a warm temperament, had erectile power long before puberty, and has considerable seminal capacity. Having closely watched the effects of suppressed normal emotions and desires in youth at the time of pubescence, he maintains that such suppression is disastrous, causing unhealthy thoughts and leading to the formation of a habit of masturbation which may persist throughout life. He believes that temporary sexual intimacies between boys and girls under 20 from the period of puberty would be far less harmful than separation of the sexes until marriage, with its resultants: masturbation, hysteria, repressed and disordered functions in young women, seduction, prostitution, venereal affections, and many other evils.

HISTORY II.—The following narrative was written by a married lady: "My mother (herself a very passionate and attractive woman) recognized the difficulty for English girls of getting satisfactorily married, and determined, if possible, to shield us from disappointment by turning our thoughts in a different direction. Theoretically the idea was perhaps good, but in practice it proved useless. The natural desires were there. Disappointment and disillusion followed their repression none the less surely for having altered their natural shape. I think the love I had for my mother was almost sexual, as to be with her was a keen pleasure, and to be long away from her an almost unendurable pain. She used to talk to us a good deal on all sorts of subjects, but she never troubled about education in the ordinary sense. When 9 years old I had been taught nothing except to read and write. She never forbade us to read anything, but if by accident we got hold of a book of which she did not approve she used to say: 'I think that is rather a silly story, don't you?' We were so eager to come up to her standard of taste that we at once imagined we thought it silly, too. In the same way she discouraged ideas about love or marriage, not by suggesting there was anything wrong or improper about them, but by implying great contempt for girls who thought about lovers, etc. Up to the age of about 20 I had a vague general impression that love was very well for ordinary women, but far beneath the dignity of a somewhat superior person like myself. To show how little it entered my thoughts I may add that, up to 17, I fancied a woman got a child by being kissed on the lips by a man. Hence all the fuss in novels about the kiss on the mouth.

"When I was 9 years old I began to feel a great craving for scientific knowledge. A Child's Guide to Science, which I discovered at a second-hand book-stall (and which, by the way, informed me that heat is due to a substance called caloric), became a constant companion. In order to learn about light and gravitation, I saved up my money and ordered (of all books) Newton's Principia, shedding bitter tears when I found I could not understand a word of it. At the same time I was horribly ashamed of this desire for knowledge. I got such books as I could surreptitiously and hid them in odd corners. Why, I cannot imagine, as no one would have objected, but, on the contrary, I should have been helped to suitable books.

"My sisters and I were all violently argumentative, but our quarrels were all on abstract subjects. We saw little of other children and made no friendships, preferring each other's society to that of outsiders. When I was about 10 a girl of the same age came to stay with us for a few days. When we went to bed the first night she asked me if I ever played with myself, whereupon I took a great dislike to her. No sexual ideas or feelings were excited. When still quite a child, however, I had feelings of excitement which I now recognize as sexual. Such feelings always came to me in bed (at least I cannot remember them at any other time) and were generally accompanied by a gradually increasing desire to make water. For a long time I would not dare to get out of bed for fear of being scolded for staying awake, and only did so at last when actually compelled. In the mean time the sexual excitement increased also, and I believe I thought the latter was the result of the former, or, perhaps, rather, that both were the same thing. (This was when I was about 7 or 8 years old.) So far as I can recollect, the excitement did not recur when the desire to make water had been gratified. I seemed to remember wondering why thinking of certain things (I can't remember what these were) should make one want to urinate. (In later life I have found that, if the bladder is not emptied before coitus, pleasure is often more intense.) There were also feelings, which I now recognize as sexual, in connection with ideas of whipping.

"As a child and girl I had very strong religious feelings (I should have now if I could believe in the reality of religion), which were absent in my sisters. These feelings were much the same as I experienced later sexually; I felt toward God what I imagined I should like to feel to my husband if I married. This, I fancy, is what usually occurs. At 14 I went to a boarding-school where there were seventy girls between 7 and 19. I think it goes to show that there is but very little sexual precocity among English girls that during the three years I stayed there I never heard a word the strictest mother would have objected to. One or two of the older girls were occasionally a little sentimental, but on no occasion did I hear the physical side of things touched upon. I think this is partly due to the amount of exercise we took. When picturing my childhood I always see myself racing about, jumping walls, climbing trees. In France and Italy I have been struck by the greater sedateness of Continental children. Our idea of naughtiness consisted chiefly in having suppers in our bedrooms and sliding down the banisters after being sent to bed. The first gratified our natural appetite, while the second supplied the necessary thrill in the fear of being caught.

"I made no violent friendships with the other girls, but I became much attached to the French governess. She was 30, and a born teacher, very strict with all of us, and doubly so with me for fear of showing favoritism. But she was never unjust, and I was rather proud of her severity and took a certain pleasure in being punished by her, the punishment always taking the form of learning by heart, which I rather liked doing. So I had my thrill, excitement, I don't quite know what to call it, without any very great inconvenience to myself. Just before we left school the sexual instinct began to show itself in enthusiasm for art with a capital A, Ouida's novels being mainly responsible. My sister and I agreed that we would spend our lives traveling about France, Italy, and the Continent, generally à la Tricotrin, with a violin in one pocket and an Atravante Dante in the other. To do this satisfactorily to ourselves we must be artists, and I resolved to go in for music and become a second Liszt. When my father offered to take us to Italy, the artist's Mecca, for a couple of years, we were wild with delight. We went, and disillusionment began. It may perhaps seem absurd, but we suffered acutely that first summer. Our villa was quite on the beach, the lowest of its flight of steps being washed by the Mediterranean. At the back were grounds which seemed a paradise. Long alleys covered over with vines and carpeted with long grass and poppies, grassy slopes dotted with olives and ilex, roses everywhere, and almost every flower in profusion, with, at night, the fireflies and the heavy scents of syringa and orange blossoms. In the midst of every possible excitement to the senses there was one thing wanting, and we did not know what that was.

"We attributed our restlessness and dissatisfaction to the slow progress in our artistic education, and consoled ourselves by thinking when once we had mastered the technical difficulties we should feel all right. And of course we did derive a very real pleasure from all the beauties of art and nature with which Italy abounds.

"It seems to me, however, that the art craze is one of the modern phases of woman's sexual life. When we were in Italy the great centers of the country were simply overrun with girls studying art, most of whom had very little talent, but who had mistaken the restlessness due to the first awakening of the sexual instinct for the divine flame of genius. In our case it did not matter, as we were not dependent upon our own exertions. But it must have been terribly hard for girls who had burned their boats and chosen art as a career, to have added to the repression of their natural desires the bitterness of knowing that in their chosen walk of life they were failures. The results as far as work goes might not be so bad if the passions, as in men, were occasionally gratified. It is the constant drudgery combined with the disappointment and finding that art alone does not satisfy which is so paralyzing. Besides, sexual gratification is always followed by exaltation of the mental faculties, with, in my experience, no depressing reaction such as follows pleasure excited by mental causes alone.

"At one time when living at the villa I met a man about 45, who took rather a fancy to me. I mention this because it woke me up; no emotion was excited, but I realized for the first time (I must have been nearly 20) that I was no longer a child, and that a man could think of me in connection with love. It was only after this, and not immediately after, either, that men's society began to have an interest for me, and that I began to think a man's love would be a pleasant thing to possess, after all.

"The sexual instinct, at any rate as regards consciousness, thus developed slowly and in what I believe to be a very usual sequence: religion, admiration for an older woman, and art. I am not sure that I have made quite enough of the first, yet I do not know that there is any more to say. There were very strong physical feelings connected with all these which were identical with those now connected with passion, but they were completely satisfied by the mental idea which excited them.

"The first time I can remember feeling keen physical pleasure was when I was between 7 and 8 years old. I can't recollect the cause, but I remember lying quite still in my little cot clasping the iron rails at the top. It may be said that this is hardly slow development, but I mean slow as regards (1) any connection of the idea with a man or (2) any physical means of excitation.

"I have laid stress on my desire for knowledge, as I think my sexual feelings were affected by it. A great part of my feeling for my mother was due to the stores of information she appeared to possess. The omniscience of God was to me his most striking attribute. My French teacher's capacity was her chief attraction. When, as a girl, I thought of marriage, I desired a man who 'could explain things to me.' One learns later to live one's mental and sexual life separately to a great extent. But at 20 I could not have done so; given the opportunity, I should have made the mistake of Dorothea in Middlemarch.

"I have spoken of the depressing after-effects of pleasure brought about by a purely mental cause, but I do not think this is the case in childhood and early youth. (Perhaps some women feel no such depression afterward, and this may account for their coldness in regard to men.) This may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that it occurs much more rarely, and also it is perhaps a natural process before the sexual organs fully develop, and so not harmful.

"I always find it difficult in expressing the different degrees of physical excitement even to myself, though I know exactly what I felt. As a child, from the time of the early experience already mentioned (about the age of 7 or 8), and as a young girl, the second stage (secretion of mucus) was always reached. The amount of secretion has always been excessive, but at first secretion only lasted a short time; later it began to last for several hours, or even sometimes the whole night, if the natural gratification has been withheld for a long time (say, three months). I do not remember ever feeling the third stage (complete orgasm) until I saw the first man I fancied I cared for. I do not think that mental causes alone have ever produced more than the first two stages (general diffuse excitement and secretion). I have sometimes wondered whether I could produce the third mechanically, but I have a curious unreasonable repugnance to trying the experiment; it would seem to materialize it too much. As a child and a girl I was contented to arrive at the second stage, possibly because I did not realize that there was any other, and perhaps this is why I have experienced no evil results.

"In dreams the third stage seems to come suddenly without any leading up to it, either mental or physical, of which I am conscious. I do not, however, remember having any such dreams before I was engaged. They came at a later period; even then, when great pleasure was experienced, it came, as a rule, suddenly and sharply, with no dreams leading up to it. The dreams generally take a sad form (an Evangeline and Gabriel business), where one vainly seeks the person who eludes one. I have, however, sometimes had pleasurable dreams of men who were quite indifferent to me and of whom I never thought when awake. The impression on waking is so strong one could almost fancy one's self really in love with them. I can quite understand falling in love with a person by dreaming of him in this way.

"The first time I remember experiencing the third stage in waking moments was at a picnic, when the man, to whom I have before referred as the first that I fancied I cared for, leaned against me accidentally in passing a plate or dish; but I was already in a violent state of excitement at being with him. There was no possibility of anything between us, as he was married. If he guessed my feelings, they were never admitted, as I did my best to hide them. I never experienced this, except at the touch of some one I loved. (I think the saying about the woman 'desiring the desire of the man' is just about as true as most epigrams. It is the man's personality alone which affects me. His feelings toward me are of—I was going to say—indifference, but at any rate quite secondary importance, and the gratification of my own vanity counts as nothing in such relations.)

"As a rule, to reach even the second stage the exciting ideas must be associated with some particular person, except in the case of a story, where one identifies one's self with one of the characters. In childhood and early youth it was, in the case of religion, the idea of God and the presence and the personality of God which aroused my feelings and always seemed very vivid to me. In the case of my governess, my feelings were aroused in exactly the same way as later they would be by one's lover. In the art craze I am rather vague as to how it came about, but I think, as a rule, there was rather a craving for pleasure than pleasure itself. I do not remember ever thinking much about the physical feeling. It seemed as natural that a pleasant emotion should produce pleasant physical effects as that a painful one should cause tears. As a child, one takes so much for granted, and later on my mind was so much occupied with worrying about the truth of religion that I hardly thought enough about anything else to analyze it carefully.

"I may summarize my own feelings thus: First, exciting ideas alone produce, as a rule, merely the first stage of sexual excitement. Second, the same ideas connected with a particular person will produce the second stage. Third, the same may be said of the presence of the beloved person. Fourth, actual contact appears necessary for the third stage. If the first stage only be reached, the sensation is not pleasurable in reality, or would not be but for its association. If produced, as I have sometimes found it to be, by a sense of mental incapacity, it is distinctly disagreeable, especially if one feels that the energy which might have been used in coping with the difficulty is being thus dissipated. If it be produced, as it may be, as the result of physical or mental restraint, it is also unpleasant unless the restraint were put upon one by a person one loves. Then, however, the second stage would probably be reached, but this would depend a good deal on one's mood. If the first stage only were reached, I think it would be disagreeable; it would mean a conflict between one's will and sexual feeling. Perhaps women who feel actual repugnance to the sexual act with a man they love have never gone beyond the first stage, when their dislike to it would be quite intelligible to me.

"Some time after the life in Italy had come to an end I became engaged. There was considerable difficulty in the way of marriage, but we saw a good deal of each other. My fiancé often dined with us, and we met every day. The result of seeing him so frequently was that I was kept in a constant state of strong, but suppressed, sexual excitement. This was particularly the case when we met in the evening and wandered about the moonlit garden together. When this had gone on about three months I began to experience a sense of discomfort after each of his visits. The abdomen seemed to swell with a feeling of fullness and congestion; but, though these sensations were closely connected with the physical excitement, they were not sufficiently painful to cause me any alarm or make me endeavor to avoid their pleasurable cause. The symptoms got worse, however, and no longer passed off quickly as at first. The swelling increased; considerable pain and a dragged-down sensation resulted the moment I tried to walk even a short distance. I was troubled with constant indigestion, weight in the chest, pain in the head and eyes, and continual slight diarrhea. This went on for about nine months, and then my fiancé was called away from the neighborhood. After his departure I got a trifle better, but the symptoms remained, though in less acute form. A few months later the engagement was broken off, and for some weeks I was severely ill with influenza and was on my back for several weeks. When I could get about a little, though very weak, all the swelling was gone, but pain returned whenever I tried to walk or stand for long. The indigestion and diarrhea were also very troublesome. I was treated for both by a physician, but without success. Next year I became engaged to my husband and was shortly after married. The indigestion and diarrhea disappeared soon after. The pain and dragging feeling in the abdomen bothered me much in walking or any kind of exercise. One day I came across a medical work, The Elements of Social Science, in which I found descriptions of symptoms like those I suffered from ascribed to uterine disease. I again applied to a doctor, telling him I thought there was displacement and possibly congestion. He confirmed my opinion and told me to wear a pessary. He ascribed the displacement to the relaxing climate, and said he did not think I should ever get quite right again. After the pessary had been placed in position every trace of pain, etc., left me. A year later I thought I would try and do without the pessary, and to my great satisfaction none of the old trials came back after its removal, in spite of much trouble, anxiety, sick nursing, and fatigue. I attribute the disorder entirely to violent sexual excitement which was not permitted its natural gratification and relief.

"I have reason to believe that suppression acts very injuriously on a woman's mental capacity. When excitement is naturally relieved the mind turns of its own accord to another subject, but when suppressed it is unable to do this. Personally, in the latter event, I find the greatest difficulty in concentrating my thoughts, and mental effort becomes painful. Other women have complained to me of the same difficulty. I have tried mechanical mental work, such as solving arithmetical or algebraic problems, but it does no good; in fact, it seems only to increase the excitement. (I may remark here that my feelings are always very strong not only before and after the monthly period, but also during the time itself; very unfortunately, as, of course, they cannot then be gratified. This only applies to desire from within, as I am strongly susceptible to influences from without at any time.) There seems nothing to be done but to bow to the storm till it passes over. Anything I do during the time it lasts, even household work, is badly done. The brain seems to become addled for the time being, while after gratification of desire it seems to attain an additional quickness and cleverness. Perhaps this cause contributes to the small amount of intellectual and artistic work done by women, admitting their natural inferiority to men in artistic impulse. A woman whose passions are satisfied generally has her strength sapped by maternity, while her attention is drawn from abstract ideas to her children."

HISTORY III.—B. states that his first sexual thoughts and acts were curiously connected with whipping. At 12 he and another boy used to beat each other with a cricket bat upon the bare nates, and afterward indulge in mutual masturbation. He cannot remember the beginning of his sexual speculation as a child, nor how he learned masturbation. When he was 13 he used to discuss erotic matters with a schoolfellow who was in the habit of engaging in vulvar intercourse with a girl of his own age. The intercourse was practised on the way home from school, and in a standing posture. B. embraced the girl in the same way. He is not interested in the psychological aspects of the sexual emotion. Although his sex passion was early kindled, he never had commerce with prostitutes. He thinks that his youthful experiences had no ill effect upon him morally, mentally, or physically. He practised masturbation in moderation till he married, at the age of 31.

HISTORY IV.—"I can remember" (writes the subject) "trotting away as a youngster about 5 with another boy to 'see a girl's legs'; the idea emanated from the other boy, but I was vaguely interested. How or where we were going to see the object in question I do not remember nor anything further than the intention. When 6 or 7 I remember being put to bed with the nurse girl and feeling her bare arm with undoubted sexual excitement; I remember, too, gradually feeling along the arm very cautiously, fearing the girl would wake and being bitterly disappointed to find it was merely the arm. I am almost certain I had then no idea of sex, but the disappointment was actual.

"These are the only early experiences of the sort I can remember. When about 9 I had others. On the coast of the north of England, which had then very few visitors and seemed to me very remote, I lived in a farm-house and used to assist the girls of the farm in looking after young cattle. These girls certainly instilled sexual ideas, though I did not realize them with precision. They used to talk about things a good many of which, I can now see, I did not then understand as they did. I liked to see these girls wading with their dresses tucked up. About this time I fell passionately in love with a girl cousin, but do not remember having any sensual ideas in regard to her. I cannot say that these early experiences had any influence on my later sexual development so far as I am consciously aware. I have always remembered them vaguely, never with sexual excitement.

"Sexual dreams took place first at about the age of 13; there was then emission and sensation in sleep. These were, however, not much associated with distinctly sexual dreams. All that I recall after them was the sensation, which, however, I did not even then absolutely localize. Masturbation was undoubtedly the direct result of these dreams. It was tried at first tentatively, out of curiosity to determine if the sensation of the dream could be so reproduced. Sexual dreams, such as I have described, occurred frequently, although I cannot say at what interval. I have never experienced the slightest attraction for the same sex."

HISTORY V.—"My maternal grandfather" (writes the subject of this history) "was a small farmer who kept a few beagles and greyhounds for hare-hunting. He had three daughters, one of whom became my mother. One of his sporting companions, a doctor of profligate habits and a drunkard, seduced my mother at the age of 20. When her condition was discovered she had to flee from the violence of her father, and I was born some distance from her home. After my grandfather's death I was reared by my grandmother, and saw nothing of my mother until I was nearly 16; she had left the country in shame and disgrace.

"I believe that in my heredity the transmission comes chiefly from my mother, who is now 58 years old. Although her life has been blameless in every particular since her youthful indiscretion, she has never got over it. I feel in my character a reflection of her overstrung condition during pregnancy.

"I can distinctly remember from the age of 9 years, and am sure that I had no sexual feelings before the age of 13, though always in the company of girls. I had many boyish passions for girls, always older than myself, but these were never accompanied by sexual desires. I deified all my sweethearts, and was satisfied if I got a flower, a handkerchief, or even a shred of clothing of my inamorata for the time being. These things gave me a strange idealistic emotion, but caused no sexual desire or erection.

"At 13 a 26-year-old sister of a boy companion once sat down on a sheaf of corn so as to expose the mons veneris and enticed me to copulate. There was slight erection, and after the act had been continued some time a pleasurable sensation of ejaculation, but without true emission. I had frequent relations with this woman after that.

"About this time the farm servant of a neighbor taught me masturbation. The mistress of the farm, a thin, willowy, dark woman, the mother of several children, treated me with such familiarity as once to urinate in my presence, so that I saw her very hirsute mons veneris. From that moment I conceived a great passion for her, and used to tremble as soon as I saw her. I had become well developed and virile, but, though I think she was a lustful woman, I never ventured to touch her. I found an extreme ecstasy in masturbating while gazing upon some article of her clothing. This gave me much greater sexual pleasure than actual connection with the ever-willing sister of my schoolfellow. I think I loved the married woman best because the mons veneris was more covered with hair.

"This has always had a peculiar attraction for me. Later, when accosted by prostitutes, I never would go with them unless I was assured the mons veneris was very hirsute. Never much addicted to masturbation, I derived no great enjoyment therefrom unless I had hair or part of the clothing of the woman with whom I was indulging in psychic coitus.

"At 16 I left school and went to a large city to learn a business. At this time the sexual appetite was very strong. I frequently had intercourse with three women in one evening.

"I have had but few lascivious dreams. In these the phantom partner was almost invariably a dead woman. (When about 8 I had seen the dead body of an aunt who died at 24.)

"When 20 I went to London and took all the pleasure which came my way. I cared only for normal coitus. Offers of another type created disgust. I once allowed a woman to exhaust me sexually orally, but felt degraded thereby. Women with whom I had become very intimate often urged me to cunnilingus, but I could not do it. I have practised intermammary coitus a very few times.

"At 26 I married a pure, gentle woman, after having for ten months before marriage led a life of celibacy. My wife died when I was 30, and for about eight months I lived a celibate life. Lascivious dreams sometimes occurred, but I invariably awoke before ejaculation. Eventually I gave way to the cravings of my strong sexual nature, but never wished for anything out of the usual except intercourse from behind. A woman with marked development of the nates has great attraction for me. Solitary masturbation has for some time ceased, but a nude woman in the act of masturbation with her back to me gives me great pleasure. I am as strong sexually at 38 as I was at 20, only I never want women unless I am brought into actual contact with them and they are hairy and have large pelvic development. I am in excellent health. Genitals are well developed, and I am clothed with hair from the chin to the genitals. My skull is dolichocephalic. I am violent and tenacious in temper, high-strung, and rapid in thought and action. My digestion is good, but I have a tendency to constipation. Occasionally I have a twinge of pain below the occipital region.

"My early views of women have changed; I no longer deify them, though I study them. I have known very sensual women living at home in respectable middle-class society. One, in particular, a girl of 18, after coitus used to excite me lingually. I have had a sweetheart who remained virgo intacta. Had I seduced her, as I could have done, I should have lost all interest in her. I could never bear the presence of naked men, and would never go to a public swimming bath for that reason. I regard myself as a man of abnormally strong, but, on the whole, healthy and wholesome, sexual feelings. As a rule, I have coitus twice or oftener in one week and I practise withdrawal. I am a total abstainer, and never could embrace a woman who smelled of drink."

HISTORY VI.—The writer of the following is a man of letters, married. "Quite early I remember a strange and romantic interest in the feminine. Certainly before I was 9 I had a strong affection for a little girl playmate; our family lost sight of hers, and I saw and heard nothing of her for sixteen years; then, hearing she was coming to town, I experienced quite a flutter of heart, so strong had been the impression caused at even the early age of our acquaintance. Not that I mean to say I never wavered in between! Through the whole of my boyhood I remember persistent romantic interests in girls and women, whose smooth, fair faces and sweet voices exercised ever a subtle attraction over me. Before I was 12 I had picked out my 'future wife' a dozen times at least! (A different one each time of course!) Curiosity as to the physical detail of sex and birth was singularly absent. Possibly this was partly due to the fact that the only younger member of our family was born when I was but 4 years old. Grave, shy, and reserved, I was never taken into the counsels of prurient schoolmates. I was unaware that there was such discussion between them—though it is, I suppose, not probable that our school was exempt. I was a great reader, and when about 12 or 13 I came across a reference to an illegitimate child which puzzled me. Ere long, however, in my random and extensive reading I hit on a book that touched on phallicism, and I learned that there were male and female organs of generation. I had neither shame nor curiosity; I jumped to the conclusion that during close caresses somehow a subtle aroma arose from the man to fertilize the woman; I left the subject at this, satisfied, and had no inkling of the real intimacy of the embrace.

"About 14, much interested in Bradlaugh, I bought both the Knowlton pamphlet and Mrs. Besant's population book. I found the physical details in scientific language so dull that I could not peruse them. By reading the argumentative passages I learned that somehow (I knew not how) children could be produced or not produced as desired; and in this stage of the matter it seemed to me so admirable that it should be so that I wondered why there should be cavil.

"About this age my elder brother believed it to be his duty to tell me the secrets of sex; I remember his talking to me, while I, bored and uninterested, thought of something else. When he finished I had heard nothing. Remember, I felt no shame on the matter—none at all. I was simply bored. This I attribute to two things: first, my preponderating interest in the romantic side of things; secondly (and this bears with it a strong moral), the feeling that the knowledge lay always within my grasp kept me from that curiosity which so oft consumes those who think it is hidden away from them.

"The changes of puberty came naturally and without startling me. Even the fact of emissions—which took place during sleep at intervals, unaccompanied by dreams or by any physical prostration afterward—has left on my memory no recollection of surprise; I knew it to be somehow connected with generation, but I had no physical trouble, and I am quite sure I did not bother further about it. The best possible proof of this lies in the fact that my memory is a blank on the matter. At the age of 21 (I take this from a diary, so I know it is correct) I was still ignorant as to intrinsic fact. Then I pulled myself together and felt it was really time I learned the actual details of the matter. I went to a clever friend of mine and asked him to tell me all about it. He expressed himself astounded at my not knowing; and he had very great shyness about telling me. In fact, I had to drag facts out of him by a real cross-examination, during which he persistently marveled at my ignorance. Though he had a great deal of false shame about the matter, I had none at all. His revelations considerably surprised me, because I had no idea that there was actual intromission. When I came to reflect on what I had learned the fact of this close physical intimacy appealed to me as being quite poetic and beautiful between two lovers; and I have had no reason since to change my opinion.

"Summary.—1. Romantic interest in girls and women commencing early and remaining persistently.

"2. Knowledge before puberty of the fact that this interest was based on the all-important process of reproduction.

"3. Absence of further physical curiosity even at puberty itself.

"4. Knowledge ultimately acquired without shock.

"The physical in sex has never been any bother to me, neither have I bothered about it. I have recognized it, frankly, and don't see why I shouldn't, but my unashamed recognition has probably been because the merely physical is less absorbing to me than to most. Mental and emotional interest in passion has absorbed me greatly, but the merely physical has sunk into what I call its natural place of subordination. Nature is kind. It is our 'conspiracy of silence' which tends to emphasize physical detail."

HISTORY VII.—G. D., who is a doctor and a man of science, writes: "There is a strong history of gout on the paternal side. No history of alcohol, tubercle, brain trouble, or of the arthropathies. There is some reason to believe that two of my maternal aunts were sexually frigid, and perhaps this was true to a less extent of my mother, who had a contracted pelvis, necessitating the induction of labor at the eighth month of pregnancy.

"About the age of 7 a German nursery governess, B., took charge of me, and I soon became devoted to her. I was then a delicate child, and used to suffer frequently from nightmare, waking up screaming and covered with sweat. When this happened, B. would sometimes take me into her bed and soothe me with kisses, etc. These I returned, and can remember that I was particularly fond of kissing her breasts.

"About this time a girl cousin, A., about a year older than myself, was one of my most frequent playmates. I endeavored to monopolize her company and attention, and on this account often came to blows with C., a cousin rather younger than myself, who has since told me that he was then 'in love' with A. and 'jealous' of me. I believe I was really jealous and in love at the time, but cannot remember that anything in the nature of caresses took place between A. and myself.

"Some time later, probably when I was about 9, something led up to B. saying that she was not built like I was, that she had no penis, etc. (I cannot remember my nursery term for penis.) I was incredulous, and demanded to be allowed to see if it was true; this was refused, and I made many plans to gratify my curiosity, such as slipping into her room when she was dressing, tipping up the chair she was sitting in, and trying to suddenly thrust my hand up under her skirts. I did not succeed in finding out, but have since thought that, although she did not allow me to attain the object of my efforts, the later game caused her pleasurable sensations. I regard these efforts as being prompted purely by curiosity; I had no feelings of warmth or irritations of the genitals, and I certainly never manipulated them, nor was I, as far as I can judge, an unusually prurient small boy. B. left when I was about 10, when I went to a preparatory school.

"At 12½ I was sent to a public school, and was then told by my father the chief facts of sex and warned to avoid masturbation. My first wet dream took place when I was 14. Rather before this I had begun to suffer with severe intermittent testicular neuralgia which practically defied all treatment and continued on and off for four or five years, the attacks gradually becoming fewer and less severe.

"When 15, circumstances compelled me to leave school and to live for two years at the seaside with no companions of my own age. I had, however, the run of a well-stocked library, and fished and collected insects energetically.

"At 16 I made love to the trained nurse attending my mother, but, owing more, I think, to my timidity than to the austerity of her virtue, got no further than kissing. About this time wet dreams became inconveniently frequent; they would occur three or four times weekly, and resisted the stock remedies. At 17 I was advised to try connection. This I did, and found but little pleasure in the act, there being a strong esthetic objection to the 'love that keeps awake for lure.'

"About this time I found in the United States Pharmacopœia a remedy for my emissions, which have, however, always remained rather more frequent than those of the average individual, judging from the experience of my friends. Emissions are generally accompanied by lascivious dreams, but at times take place when I dream that I am hurrying to catch a train, or to micturate against time.

"I have of late years (not noticed till after 20) observed that the dream accompanying emission is shorter; so that, whereas up to, say, 21 I generally performed the whole physiological act with my dream-charmer, I now almost invariably emit and awake before intromission has taken place. There has been no alternation comparable to this in the performance of the act while I am awake.

"As regards my physique I should mention that all my reflexes are very brisk, though I am only slightly ticklish in the ordinary sense of the term. I sweat easily and am very shy, not only with women, but with any strangers. I have, however, trained myself not to show this. About averagely passionate, I should say, and extremely critical where women are concerned, the latter quality often keeping me chaste for months at a time."

HISTORY VIII.—"When I was about 8 years old" (states the lady who is the subject of the present observation) "I remember that, with several other children, we used to play in an old garden at being father and mother, unfastening our drawers and bringing the sexual parts together, as we imagined married people to do, but no sexual feelings were aroused, nor did the boys have erections." When about 10 years old she became conscious of a pleasurable sensation associated with the smell of leather, which has ever since persisted. At that age she was sometimes left to wait in the office of a wholesale business house full of leather-bound ledgers. She did not then notice the sensation particularly, and was certainly not conscious of any connection with sexual emotion. Menstruation was established at 13½ years. Distinct sexual feelings were first observed a few months later. "The first feelings of love which I ever felt were at the age of 14 for a nice, manly boy of my own age, who often came to our house. He liked me, but was not in love with me. It was very seldom that he would sit by me and hold my hand, as I wished him. This went on till I was about 17, when he went to the university. After his first term he came back and was then attracted to me; but, though I loved him very much, I was too proud to show it. When he tried to kiss me, I resisted, though I longed for it. Thinking I was greatly offended, he apologized, which only made me angry. All these years I was worshiping at his shrine and mixed him up with all my ideas of life." Whenever she was near him she experienced physical sensations, with moistening of the vulva. This continued till she was about 20, but the object of these emotions never again attempted any advances.

At 19 she became engaged to someone else. At the beginning she was physically indifferent to her lover, but when he first kissed her she became greatly excited. The engagement, however, was soon broken off from absence of strong affection on either side and chiefly, it would seem, from the cooling of the lover's ardor. She thinks he would have been more strongly attached to her if she had been colder to him, or pretended to be, instead of responding with simplicity and frankness.

During the next few years little occurred. She was working hard, and her amusements would mostly, she says, be regarded as rather childish. She was extremely fond of dancing, and she was always pleased when anyone paid her attention. She was frequently conscious of sexual feelings, sometimes tormented by them, and she regarded this as something to be ashamed of. The constant longing for love was affected little or not at all by hard work. "At about this time I was very fond of abandoning myself to day-dreams. I was very glad if I could get everyone out of the house and lie on an easy chair or the bed. I liked especially to read poetry, all the more if I did not quite understand it. This would lead me on to all sorts of dreams of love, which, however, never went beyond the preliminaries of actual love—as that was all I then knew of love." The only climax to her dream of love was founded on a piece of information volunteered by a married woman many years earlier, when she was about 12. This lady—evidently agreeing with Rousseau (who in Emile commended the mother's reply to the child's query whence babies come, "Les femmes les pissent, mon enfant, avec des grands douleurs") that the unknown should first be explained to the young in terms of the known—told her that the husband micturated into the wife. She therefore used to imagine a lover who would bear her away into a forest and do this on her as she lay at the foot of a tree. (At a later date she accidentally discovered that a full bladder tended to enhance sexual feelings, and occasionally resorted to this physical measure of heightening excitement.) All the physical sensations of sexual desire were called out by these day-dreams, with abundant secretion, but never the orgasm. Her reveries never led to masturbation or to allied manifestations, which have never taken place. Such a method of relief has, indeed, never offered any temptation to her and she doubts even its possibility in her case. (At a later period of life, however, at the age of 31, masturbation began and was practised at intervals.) At the same time she remarks that, while no orgasm (of which, indeed, she was then ignorant) ever occurred, the sexual excitement produced by the day-dreams was sufficiently great to cause a feeling of relief afterward. These day-dreams were the only way in which the sexual erethism was discharged. She cannot recall having erotic dreams or any sexual manifestations during sleep.