Note 219 — Chapter XII

In the titular heading to this chapter, throughout the chapter, and in most cases throughout the book, the German word Verführung has been translated as seduction. Verführung means “leading astray,” and one of the commonest uses of the term is to denote sexual leading astray—the seduction of a woman by a man. But in some cases Verführung, like the English seduction, is used in its more primitive and wider signification. The context will suffice to show the sense in which the word is employed.—Translator.

[220] Thus, at the present day, in quite small country towns, we find variety theatres and low music-halls; and with these, prostitutes are commonly introduced into the town, so that the wild love, which was previously free from danger, now becomes a focus of venereal infection.

[221] Willy Hellpach, “Our Sensual Life and Venereal Diseases,” published in the “Reports of the German Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases,” 1905, vol. iii., Nos. 5 and 6, pp. 103-105.

[222] Of this work there recently appeared an excellent German translation, admirably modernized in blank verse by Karl Ettlinger, “Ovid’s Art of Love: a Modern Translation.” (An English translation of Ovid’s “Art of Love,” revised by Charles W. Ryle, was published in 1907 by Sisley.—Translator.)

[223] Hilarii Drudonis, “Practica Artis Amandi” (Amsterdam, 1652).

[224] Paris, 1659.

[225] Paris, 1775.

[226] J. F. C. Manso, “Die Kunst zu Lieben” (Berlin, 1794).

[227] Henry Beyle (Stendhal), “On Love.”

[228] Paul Bourget, “Physiologie de l’Amour Moderne.”

[229] Armand Silvestre, “Le Petit Art d’Aimer” (Paris, 1897).

[230] Catulle Mendés, “L’Art d’Aimer” (Paris).

[231] Robert Hessen, “Das Glück in der Liebe: Eine technische Studie” (Stuttgart, 1899).

[232] Hjalmar Kjölenson, “Die Erschliessung des Liebesglückes” (Leipzig, 1905).

[233] An exhaustive study of the history and literature of the ars amandi, by the author of the present work, is in course of preparation, and will appear shortly.

[234] Cf. regarding masterful erotics, also the exposition of Georg Hirth in “The Ways to Love,” p. 563.

[235] S. Kierkegaard, “Entweder—Oder. Ein Lebensfragment,” pp. 221-311. German translation by O. Gleib (Dresden and Leipzig, 1904).

[236] “The sun,” says Grillparzer in his “Diary,” “is hostile to voluptuousness. But the artificial sun of our nocturnal illumination in our large town, has the opposite effect.”

[237] The old proverb says: “From the two V’s, Vinum (wine) and Venus (woman), there arises a big W, Weh (woe or pain).”

[238] Cf., in addition to the great works on the subject of alcohol, the special monograph by B. Laquer, “A Lecture on Alcohol and Sexual Hygiene,” published in the “Reports of the German Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases,” 1904, vol. ii., Nos. 3 and 4, pp. 56-63; W. Hellpach, op. cit., pp. 100-102; Magnus Hirschfeld, “The Influence of Alcohol on the Sexual Life,” Berlin, 1905; Magnus Hirschfeld, “Alcohol and Family Life,” Berlin-Charlottenburg, 1906; Otto Lang, “Alcohol and Crime,” Basel; Oscar Rosenthal, “Alcohol and Prostitution,” Berlin, 1906; G. Rosenfeld, “Alcohol and the Sexual Life,” published in the Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1905, pp. 321-335.

[239] It has been established by Bonhoeffer, Hoppe, A. H. Hübner, and others, that chronic alcoholism constitutes an important cause of prostitution in the case of the so-called “late prostitutes”—that is to say, in those women who do not commence a life of professional prostitution at puberty, but usually after the age of twenty-five years. Cf. Artur Hermann Hübner, “Prostitutes in Relation to Criminal Jurisdiction,” published in Monatsschr. für Kriminalpsychologie, edited by G. Aschaffenburg, 1907, p. 5.

[240] At the great public dinner which, in 1890, the town of Berlin gave in the Rathaus to the members of the International Medical Congress, and at which 4,000 persons consumed 15,382 bottles of wine, 22 hectolitres (484 gallons) of beer, and 300 bottles of brandy, there were witnessed in and outside the Rathaus the most disgusting scenes of drunkenness. “As the blowflies gather round a piece of carrion, so in the street in front of the Rathaus there had gathered a swarm of prostitutes, who found a rich booty among the drunken, staggering guests” (cf. Rosenfeld, op. cit., p. 325).—A striking example of the manner in which alcohol sometimes completely annihilates every æsthetic perception is reported by E. Kraepelin (“The Psychiatric Duties of the State,” p. 6; Jena, 1900): “A number of students were infected by a prostitute, who from early youth had been weak-minded, and who was suffering from both lupus of the nose and recent syphilis.”

[241] It is not yet quite so bad as this. But the number of venereal infections that occur in consequence of wild love, and of free sexual intercourse in these relations of “intimacy,” is continually on the increase.

[242] Sexual freedom—that is to say, the formal organization of sexual promiscuity—was demanded by a certain Dr. Roderich Hellmann in a book which has now become very rare, because it was confiscated immediately after publication. Its title was “Sexual Freedom: a Philosophic Attempt to Increase Human Happiness” (Berlin, 1878). The author demands that immediately after puberty “the sexual organs shall have the opportunity of a regulated activity,” and that it shall now be allowed to persons of both sexes “to indulge in sexual intercourse as much as they please,” of course, with the avoidance of injury to health and of pregnancy. This remarkable freak proceeds to demand that public lavatories shall be done away with, so that persons of both sexes shall relieve themselves freely in one another’s presence in the open street, and, with equal freedom, shall display their sexual organs to one another for the purpose of sexual allurement!!