Please see the [Transcriber’s Notes] at the end of this text.

THE SEXUAL LIFE OF OUR TIME

THE SEXUAL LIFE OF
OUR TIME
IN ITS RELATIONS TO MODERN
CIVILIZATION

BY
IWAN BLOCH, M.D.
PHYSICIAN FOR DISEASES OF THE SKIN, AND FOR DISEASES OF THE SEXUAL SYSTEM
IN CHARLOTTENBURG, BERLIN

AUTHOR OF “THE ORIGIN OF SYPHILIS,” ETC.

TRANSLATED FROM THE SIXTH GERMAN EDITION
BY
M. EDEN PAUL, M.D.

LONDON
REBMAN LIMITED, 129, SHAFTESBURY AVENUE, W.C.
1909

Entered at Stationers’ Hall, 1908
All rights reserved

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

The author’s aim in writing this book was to write a complete Encyclopædia on the sexual sciences, and it will probably be acknowledged by all who study its pages that the author has accomplished his intention in a very scholarly manner, and in such form as to be of great value to the professions for whom this translation is intended. The subject is no doubt one which appeals to and affects the interests of all adult persons, but the publishers have, after very serious and careful consideration, come to the conclusion that the sale of the English translation of the book shall be limited to members of the legal and medical professions. To both these professions it is essential that a knowledge of the science of Sex and the various causes for the existence of “abnormals” should be ascertained, so that they may be guided in the future in their investigations into, and the practice of attempts to mitigate, the evil which undoubtedly exists, and to bring about a more healthy class of beings. It is the first time that the subject has been so carefully and fully gone into in the English language, and it is believed that the very exhaustive examination which the author has made into the matter, and the various cases to which he has called attention, will be of considerable use to the medical practitioner, and also to the lawyer in criminal and quasi-criminal matters, and probably in matrimonial disputes and cases of insanity.

CONTENTS

ERRATA

Page 189, note, line 2, for “Classes in Antiquity,” read “Age Classes.”

Page 361, line 1, for “inflammation of the retina,” read “syphilitic iritis.”

Page 361, line 2, for “retina,” read “iris.”

Page 446, lines 6 and 7 from foot, for “reflection,” read “reflective.”

Page 481, note 493, line 5, for “Classes of Antiquity,” read “Age Classes.”

Page 485, line 17, for “Classes of Antiquity,” read “Age Classes.”

Page 548, note 577, line 1, for “Classes in Antiquity,” read “Age Classes.”

Page 747, lines 21 and 24, for “divorce,” read “adultery.”

INTRODUCTION

“It seems at first sight as if Nature had endowed man with the procreative impulse solely with a view to the preservation of the species, and regardless of the individual; and yet it is undeniable that in the high estimation of this impulse the individual was not forgotten.” (“On the Art of Attaining an Advanced Age,” vol. i., p. 2; Berlin, 1813).

CONTENTS OF INTRODUCTION

The two constituents of modern love — The purposes of the species and the purposes of the individual — Insufficiency of the former for the understanding of love — The individualization of love through the process of civilization — The organic interconnexion between the bodily and the mental manifestations of love — Possibilities of future development — Victory of the love of civilized man over the elemental force of the sexual impulse — Our own time a turning-point in the history of love.

INTRODUCTION

The sexuality of the modern civilized man—the sum, that is to say, of the phenomena of sexual love dependent upon and associated with the sexual impulse—is the result of a process of development lasting many thousands of years. Therein, as in a mirror, we may see an accurate reflection of all the phases of the bodily and mental history of the human race. Anyone who wishes to understand modern love in all its complexity must, in the first place, succeed in informing himself, not merely regarding the first foundations of the feeling of love in the grey primeval age, but, in addition, as to the manner in which that feeling has been transformed and enriched in the course of the history of civilization. For modern love is a complex of two constituents.

The word “love” is applicable to the sexual impulse of human beings only. Its use implies that in the case of man the purely animal feelings have acquired an importance far greater than that of subserving the purposes of mere reproduction, and aim at a goal transcending that of the preservation of the species. The nature of human love can be understood and explained only with reference to this intimate and inseparable union of its purposes in respect of the preservation of the species and its independent significance in the life of the loving individual himself. Herein is to be found the starting-point of the whole so-called “sexual problem,” and it is necessary that the matter should be clearly understood at the outset of this book. In earlier days human love was mainly concerned with the purposes of the species. Modern civilized man, conceiving history as progress in the consciousness of freedom, has also come to recognize the profound individual significance of love for his own inward growth, for the proper development of his free manhood. To quote a phrase from Georg Hirth, a cultured modern writer, the genuine experienced love of a civilized man of the present day is one of the “ways to freedom.” By love is made manifest, and through love is developed, his inmost individual nature. For this reason Schopenhauer’s “Metaphysik der Geschlechtsliebe” (“Metaphysic of Sexual Love”), which wholly ignores this individual factor, must be regarded, brilliant as it unquestionably is, as a quite inadequate explanation of the nature of love. Again, a recent writer, Arnold Lindwurm, greatly influenced by Schopenhauer’s teaching, in the introduction to his work entitled “Ueber die Geschlechtsliebe in sozial-ethische Beziehung” (“Sexual Love in its Socio-Ethical Relations”), writes: “The fruit of love, children, and marriage as a domestic institution indispensable for the upbringing of children—these constitute the author’s ethical criterion in the field of sexual research; these also form the socio-ethical goal of all sexual love, inasmuch as the sole standard by which sexual love can be judged is the procreation and upbringing of children.” We, however, at the very outset, contest the validity of such a standpoint, for we consider that it fails entirely to do justice to the nature of modern love. For the history of the human sexual impulse teaches us beyond dispute that, in the course of the development of the human species, that impulse, through its progressive association with intellectual and emotional elements to form the complex whole designated by the term “love,” has undergone a progressive individualization, and has attained a more defined significance for the unitary human being. At the present day sexual love constitutes a part of the very being of the civilized man; his sexual life clearly reflects his individual nature, and love influences his development in an enduring manner.

Love conjoins in a quite unique way the two principal classes of vital manifestations—the lower vegetative and the higher animal life; and it thus constitutes the highest and the most intense expression of the unity of life (Schopenhauer’s “focus of the will;” Weismann’s “continuity of the germ-plasma”).

Whoever wishes to understand the developmental tendencies of love as they manifest themselves at the present day in the course of human history, whoever desires to grasp how remarkably love has been developed, enriched, and ennobled in the course of civilization, must at the outset gain a clear understanding of this apparently dualistic, but in reality thoroughly monistic, nature of the passion.

The matter may be expressed also in this way—that he who has scientifically investigated love, who has based his conception of it philosophically, and has personally experienced it, will become a convinced monist in relation to life, at least, and to the organic world, and will be compelled to regard every dualistic division into a physical and a spiritual sphere as something quite artificial. In love above all is manifested this mystery of the life force, as for centuries the poets, the artists, and the metaphysicians have declared, and more especially as the great natural philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have proved—above all Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel. There is, indeed, no more happily chosen metaphor, none that better describes the fundamentally monistic nature of love, than the saying of the old æsthetic J. G. Sulzer—that love is a tree, that it has its roots in the physical sphere, but that its branches extend high above the physical world, expanding more and more, branching more and more abundantly into the sphere of the spiritual.[1] It is certainly impossible to find a more appropriate comparison. Thereby we show clearly the intimate organic connexion between the physical and spiritual phenomena of love; it is rooted for ever in Mother Earth, but it grows always upwards into the subtle ether. Just as the arborescence of the tree has a richer, more manifold, more extensive development than the root, so also it is in the spiritual form that love is first capable of extending upwards and in all directions, compared with which its physical capacity for development is minimal and strictly limited. But just as the arborescence of the tree grows from, and is supplied with nutriment by, the root, so also the higher love is inevitably founded upon a sensory basis. Even while love becomes spiritually richer, it remains as irrevocably as ever dependent upon the physical.[2]

To put the matter briefly, the future developmental possibilities of human love rest purely in the spiritual sphere, but they are inseparably connected with the far less variable physical phenomena of sexuality.

Upon the development, the configuration, and the differentiation, of the spiritual elements of sexual love are alone based the intimate relations of love with the process of civilization. This fact is again reflected in the manifold phases of the evolution of the sentiment of love.

For the human spirit in the course of its development has become not merely lord of the earth and of the elementary forces of Nature: it has become also lord and master, interpreter and guide, of the sexual impulse; for this impulse owes to the human spirit its new and peculiar life, its life capable of further development as manifested in the history of human love. The history of love is the history of mankind, of civilization. For love manifests a continual progress, which can be denied by those only who have failed to understand the deep significance of human love in the entire civilized life of all times, and who, observing the persistence of the primeval and ever-active sexual impulse, elemental in its nature, are led only to a hopeless doubt as to the possibility of all love, and thus justify the pessimism with which Schopenhauer has condemned the significance of human sexual love. Undoubtedly this elemental impulse persists for ever, and to follow it alone leads to death, to utter desolation, to nothingness, as Tolstoi, Strindberg, and Weininger, the bitter opponents of modern “love,” have so vehemently declared. But did these men know true love? Had they become conscious of the inevitable necessity with which civilization in the course of ages and generations had transformed the human sexual impulse into love as it now exists, transformed it in so manifold and so wonderful a way? Had they any idea of the development of love, and of its place and its significance in history?

Let them believe this, these doubting and despairing souls—nothing has been destroyed of all the spiritual relations, of all the wonderful possibilities of development, which have manifested themselves in the course of the long and varied history of the evolution of love. To describe this evolution, it is necessary to draw attention to all those elements of civilization which remain at present influential in love, but it is further indispensable to forecast their future development. Once again we stand at an important turning-point in the history of love. The old separates itself from the new, the better will once more be the enemy of the good. But love regarded, as it must now be regarded, in its inner nature, as a sexual impulse most perfectly and completely infused with a spiritual content, will remain the inalienable gain of civilization; it will stand forth ever purer and more promotive of happiness, like a mirror of marvellous clearness, wherein is reflected a peculiar and accurate picture of the successive epochs of civilization.

[1] The natural philosopher Kielmeyer, the teacher of Cuvier, also compared the genital organs with the root, the brain with the arborescence, of a tree. Cf. Arthur Schopenhauer, “New Paralipomena” (Grisebach’s edition, p. 217).

[2] Eduard von Hartmann points out very effectively that “an assumed love without sensuality is merely a fleshless and bloodless phantom of the creative imagination” (“Philosophy of the Unconscious,” sixth edition, p. 196; Berlin, 1874).

CHAPTER I
THE ELEMENTARY PHENOMENA OF HUMAN LOVE

“The critical natural philosopher conceives this process, this ‘crown of love,’ in a very matter-of-fact manner, as the process of conjugation of two cells and the coalescence of their nuclei.”—Ernst Haeckel.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER I

The well-spring of love — The conjugation of the germinal cells as the simplest expression of the nature of the sexes — The active masculine and the passive feminine principles of sexuality — Their representation in ancient mythology — The significance of sexual procreation — The most important principle of progressive development — The significance of sexual differentiation — The development of heterosexuality — Vestiges of an original hermaphroditic state in men and women — New acquisitions — The hymen — Metchnikoff’s hypothesis of the original significance of the hymen — The “third sex” — The attainment of perfection by means of progressive sexual differentiation — The increase in the intensity of the sexual attractive force in the course of human evolution — Its cause — Explanation of Paul Rée — Theory of Havelock Ellis — Elementary psychical phenomena of love — A sensation analogous to one of smell — Theories of Steffens, Haeckel, and Kröner — The specific sexual odours of the capryl group — Odoriferous glands in animals and human beings — An example from Southern Slavonic folk-lore — The position of the nose in relation to the genital system — The sexual rôle of artificial perfumes — Origin of the latter — Reduction in size of the organ of smell in the human species — Primary and secondary elements in human sexuality — Bölsche’s “fusion-love” and “distance-love” — Their different significance.

CHAPTER I

The mystery of sexual love, of this “wonder of life,” from which both religious belief and artistic inspiration have drawn and continue to draw the major part of their force, may ultimately be referred to a single phenomenon in the sexuality of the great group of metazoa to which the major part of the animal world and the human species belong. This process is a conjugation of the female germ cell with the male sperm cell—the “well-spring of love,” to use Haeckel’s expression; in comparison with this conjugation, all other spiritual and physical phenomena, however complicated, are of a subordinate and secondary nature. From this primitive organic process of reciprocal attraction and conjugation of the two reproductive cells has arisen the entire complex of the remaining physical and spiritual phenomena of love. We have, in this process of cell conjugation, a picture in little of love, a greatly simplified representation of the nature of the relations between man and woman; moreover, the highest and the finest psychical experiences and impressions occurring under the influence of love are ultimately no more than the results of this “erotic chemotropism” of the sperm and germ cells.

Sexual differentiation existed already as a natural product in the early stages of organic evolution, and civilization has done no more than develop, increase, and refine that differentiation, which is typified in a manner at once simple and convincing—because directly visible—in the male sperm cell and the female germ cell. Herein the specific sexual differences are made visibly manifest.

Procreation results from the approach of the male sperm cell towards the female germ cell, and from the entrance of the former into the latter.

Thus, the sperm cell represents the active, the germ cell the passive, principle in sexuality. Already in this most important act in the process of procreation the natural relations between man and woman are very clearly manifested. This fact is clearly grasped already in the mythology and the sepulchral symbolism of antiquity. In these the man is always represented as the active principle; woman, on the contrary, as the passive principle.

“Peace reigns in the ovum, but when driven by the desire of creation the masculine god breaks through the shell and begins his work of fertilization, everything at once becomes movement, restless haste, impulsive force, unending circulation. Thus the male generative principle appears as the representative and embodiment of movement in the visible act of creation.... The active principle in Nature appears to be identical with the principle of motion.... Winged is the phallus, quiescent the female; the man is the principle of movement, and the woman the principle of repose; force is the cause of eternal change, woman the picture of eternal repose; for which reason the ‘earth-mother’ is almost always depicted in a sitting posture” (Bachofen).

The appearance of sexual reproduction in the history of the evolution of the organic world is an especially instructive example of the great importance of differentiation and variation as the most effective principle of evolution in general. The lowliest forms of life reproduce their kind in an extremely simple manner by a process of asexual cell division, which has not improperly been regarded as nothing more than a peculiar form of growth; and this simple process of cell division is retained as a mode of growth also in the higher organisms which reproduce their kind by sexual union. In some cases of simple cell division the secondary cell, the “daughter cell,” separates itself from the old cell, the “mother cell,” and forms a new complete individual; in other cases the cell division occurs as gemmiparous reproduction (budding or pululation), the daughter cell remaining united with the mother cell, so that a new organ is built up. Reproduction by cell division is found in many plants and lower animals side by side with sexual reproduction. This latter becomes the exclusive method of production in higher animals and in the human species, whose capacity for the procreation of new individuals by cell division, and for the replacement of lost organs by growth, has been lost. Thus, the progress and the gain which on the one hand are derived from the process of sexual reproduction, whose character we are about to investigate more closely, are balanced on the other hand by a loss. We shall often encounter this fact again in the history of the evolution of the sexual impulse, more especially in mankind and in relation to human love.

With the evolution of sexual reproduction is introduced the opportunity for a great step forward, since an incomparably greater sphere of action is opened to the differentiation and variability of specific forms than was possible in the case of species reproduced asexually (Kerner von Marilaun, R. Martin). By means of the sexual union of two differing independent individuals, each of which, again, has been brought into the world by the sexual union of two differing individuals, the way is freely opened for a progressive differentiation of the individuals of this species. No one of them is exactly similar to any other. Each one exhibits new peculiarities, new capabilities, and all of these play their part in the struggle for existence. This gradually results in a progress towards higher, better, more perfect forms. The persistence of specific type, due to inheritance, is largely counteracted by sexual reproduction, inasmuch as the conjugation of reproductive cells derived from two different individuals induces a tendency to progressive variation and improvement. Moreover, by this sexual mode of reproduction the preservation of the species is rendered much more secure than by asexual reproduction, whilst at the same time the possibility of differentiation or variation is indubitably increased. We have already insisted on the fact that in the striking difference between the sperm cell of the male and the germ cell of the female we must seek for the ultimate cause of the profound difference between the sexes. Those who maintain the theory of the absolute identity of man and woman must continually be reminded of this fact. Unquestionably the greater motility of the male reproductive cell as compared with the more passive quality of the female cell implies the existence of deeply founded psychical differences; and the existence of these may be assumed with more confidence since we know from experience to what a high degree the finest psychical peculiarities of father and mother can be transmitted by inheritance to the child.

For this reason, all attempts, whether initiated by some natural process or by some intentional guidance of the process of civilization, towards the obliteration of the distinction between the specific masculine and the specific feminine, must be regarded as futile, and as antagonistic to the process of development. The production of the so-called “third sex” is unquestionably a step backwards. For bisexual differentiation is an advance upon the more primitive form of sexual differentiation in which both the male and the female sexual elements were produced by a single individual (hermaphroditism). In the phylogeny of the human species unilateral sexual reproduction gave place to the bilateral type, the reproductive elements being formed within the bodies of two distinct individuals—the sperm cells within the body of the male, the germ cells within the body of the female. In this manner originated the contrast between the individuals of the two sexes, or bisexual differentiation, which, in the course of phylogenetic development, has become continually more definite, more extensive, and more characteristic, through the operation of the principle of sexual selection; and thus by inheritance and adaptation the mental and physical characteristics of sexuality, primitive and superadded, have gradually become defined and fixed. In the higher ranks of the animal kingdom and in the human species, this heterosexuality has, through inheritance, become continually more sharply defined; but the traces of the primitive hermaphroditic state have never been wholly obliterated. Love in the human species is manifested by pairing. Such is the normal condition, and the only condition in harmony with the progressive tendency towards perfection. But remnants of hermaphroditism, of bisexuality in a single individual, of the “third sex,” are to be found in every human being, and are disclosed by embryology and comparative anatomy in the form of vestiges of female reproductive organs in the male and of male reproductive organs in the female. Herein exists an indisputable proof of the originally hermaphrodite nature of the human ancestry. But these female organs in the male body, and their converse, the male organs in the female body, are stunted, are rudiments merely; whereas in the course of evolution the masculine reproductive organs of the male and the feminine reproductive organs of the female have been more and more powerfully developed, and more and more sharply differentiated in type, until they have come to constitute the expression of the specific differences between man and woman. They alone represent the more advanced stage. Moreover, these vestiges of an early hermaphroditic condition are in the human species far less extensive than in other mammals; and the sexual discrepancy in the human species, as compared with the lower animals, becomes still more noticeable when we take into account the fact that certain parts of the reproductive system are peculiar to mankind, are new acquisitions, and, above all, the hymen, which is non-existent even in the anthropoid apes.

The original purpose of the hymen, which unquestionably must at the time of its appearance have represented an evolutionary advance, is still undetermined. Metchnikoff has propounded an interesting hypothesis on this subject. According to him, it is very probable that human beings, during the earliest period of human history, began sexual relations at an extremely youthful age, at a time when the external genital organs of the boy were not yet fully developed. In such a case the hymen would not only have been no hindrance to the act of copulation, but rather, by narrowing the vaginal outlet, and thus accommodating its size to the relatively too small penis of the male, would have rendered pleasure in sexual intercourse possible. In such cases, moreover, the hymen would not have been brutally lacerated, but gradually dilated. Laceration of the hymen represents a later and secondary phenomenon.

It is a fact that, even at the present day, among many primitive races, marriages commonly take place in childhood, and it is further true that even in civilized races in a considerable number of cases (15 per cent., according to Budin) the hymen is not always lacerated during sexual intercourse, but is retained; thus some support is given to Metchnikoff’s hypothesis.

It is unquestionable that evolution and the progress of civilization have resulted in an extremely marked differentiation between the two sexes, and for this reason the formation of a so-called “third sex,” in which these sexual differences are obscured, can only be regarded as a markedly retrogressive step. Ernst von Wolzogen, in a well-known romance, to which he gave the name of “The Third Sex,” described a kind of barren, stunted woman, capable, however, of holding her own at work in competition with men; but in our opinion such women represent merely a stage of transition in the great battle of women for the independent, free development of their peculiar personality. Such types as these are certainly not the final goal of the woman’s movement; they are caricatures, products of a false and extreme conception of woman’s development. This “third sex,” which Schurtz very justly compares to the stunted, barren workers among ants and bees, is incapable of prolonged existence, and will give place to a new generation of women, who, while fully retaining their specific feminine peculiarities, will share with men the rights and duties of the great work of civilization; and thus this work will unquestionably be enriched by a number of new and fruitful elements.

It is indeed possible that this “third sex,” that hermaphrodites, homosexual individuals, sexual “intermediate stages,” also play a certain part in the great process of civilization. But their significance is slight and limited, if for this reason alone because from these individuals the possibility of transmission by inheritance of valuable peculiarities is cut off, and hence the possibility of a future perfectibility, of true “progress,” is excluded. There are two sexes only on which every true advance in civilization depends—the genuine man and the genuine woman. All other varieties are ultimately no more than phantoms, monstrosities, vestiges of primitive sexual conditions.

Very ably has Mantegazza described the intimate relationship between these dreams of the “third sex” and the fantastic aberration of the sexual impulse. He writes:

“While the pathology of love recognizes in many sexual aberrations the obscure traces of a general hermaphroditism, imagination, which works faster than science, shows us the possibility that in more complicated creations sexual differentiation might be more than twofold, so that in such worlds sexual reproduction might be effected by a more elaborate division of labour. Thus, in the cynical or sceptical distinction between platonic, sexual, and licentious love, we see the first traces of new and monstrous possibilities of sexual union, on the one hand reflecting the sublimity of the supersensual, and on the other more brutal than the most horrible sexual aberration.”

In reality, it is only for normal heterosexual love between a normal man and a normal woman that it is possible to find an unimpeachable sanction. Only this love, continually more differentiated and more individualized, will play a part in the future course of civilization.

Heterosexuality arises from the reciprocal attraction and the coalescence of the reproductive cells of two individuals of distinct sexes; it forms the foundation and constitutes the most important element of the sexual relations of the higher animal world and of the human species; and it obtains through inheritance continually a more sharply defined expression. Since this fundamental phenomenon of the sexual impulse has been transmitted from the most ancient and simplest forms of the organic world and has been modified only in the direction of heterosexuality, it has come to pass, as Ewald Hering says at the end of his celebrated lecture on “Memory as a General Function of Organic Matter,” that organic matter has the strongest memory of the impulse of conjugation in its most ancient and most primitive form; thus this impulse at the present day continues to dominate mankind as an intensely powerful physical imperative, endowed with the strength of an elemental force, which, notwithstanding the gradually higher development of the brain, has remained during thousands of years undiminished in its potency, and indeed by the accumulative influence extending through thousands of generations has acquired a notable increase in intensity. We must assume that for untold generations always those animals and men have had the most numerous descendants in whom the sexual impulse was the most powerful; this powerful impulse being inherited, was transmitted once more to the next generation, and tended by natural selection continually to increase.

This explanation of the indisputable gradual increase in the intensity of the sexual impulse, first given by the moral philosopher Paul Rée, is more illuminating than the theory propounded by Havelock Ellis of the increase of the sexual impulse by civilization, which was long ago maintained by Lucretius (“De Rerum Naturâ,” V. 1016). In support of this latter theory, it is asserted that among savage people the genital organs are less powerfully developed than among civilized races, but this can by no means be regarded as an established fact. Civilization has done no more than cause a fuller development of all sides of sexual love by a multiplication of physical and psychical stimuli; but it appears extremely doubtful if civilization itself is to be regarded as the immediate causal influence in the increase of the intensity of the sexual impulse.

Having studied the elementary phenomena of human love dependent upon the phylogenetic history of the human race, namely the union of the male and female reproductive cells, the question now arises as to the nature of the psychical processes, the character of the sensations that accompany this union of the sperm cells and the germ cells. What is the most primitive psychical elementary phenomenon of love?

It is apparently that sensation in which the actual contact of the psyche with the material occurs—an immediate sensation of the nature of matter—namely, the sense of smell. The metaphysical significance of the sense of smell has been aptly indicated by describing that sense as the “sublimated thing-in-itself,” as a sense which, like no other sense, allows us to enter immediately into the nature of matter; it is, in fact, the sense of personality.

“Smell,” says Heinrich Steffens, “is the principal sense of the higher animals; it represents for them their own inner world; it envelops their existence. Upon smell, wherein sympathy and antipathy are represented, is based the whole security of the higher animal instinct; for carnal desire is comprehended in this sense.... Indeed, in sexual union the subjective sensation which is developed by means of smell blends completely with the objective, and from the monistic union of the two arises the intenser libido, wherein the unfathomableness of the procreative force and the whole power of sex are absorbed.”

Ernst Haeckel ascribes to the two sexual cells a kind of inferior psychical activity; he believes that they experience a sensation of one another’s proximity; and indeed it is probably a form of sensory activity analogous to the sense of smell that draws them together. The sensation of the two sexual cells, which Haeckel believes to be situated especially in the cell nuclei, he denotes by the term “erotic chemotropism.” He attributes it to an attraction of the nature of smell, and considers that it represents the psychical quintessence, the original being of love.

A later investigator, Eugen Kröner, holds the same view. In the conjugation of two vorticellæ he recognizes the influence of the chemically operative sensation of smell; to him smell is the most important element in the sexual impulse of animals.

This theory is strongly supported, and indeed elevated to the rank of a natural law, by the circumstance that in the higher animals the sense of smell, in the course of phylogenetic development, has attained a continually greater significance in relation to sexuality; and by the fact that, according to the discovery of Zwaardemaker, there exists widely diffused throughout Nature a distinct group of sexual odours, the so-called capryl odours, which have a natural biological connexion with the vita sexualis. These capryl odours, which already in plants play a sexual part, are in animals and in the human species localized in or near the genital organs (odoriferous glands of the beaver, the musk-ox, etc., the secretions of the male foreskin and the female vagina), or in other cases are found in the general secretions, such as the sweat. Recently Gustav Klein has succeeded in proving that a definite group of glands in the female genital organs (glandulæ vestibulares majores, or glands of Bartholin) must be regarded as a vestige from the time of periodic sexual excitement (rutting). At that time in the human species, as now in the lower animals, the sexual impulse was periodic in its activity, and the secretion of these odoriferous glands of the human female then served as a means of alluring members of the male sex. At the present time these glands have for the most part lost their significance as specific stimuli. Now it is rather the exhalation from the entire surface of the female body which exercises the erotic influence. Cases in which such stimuli proceed exclusively from the female genital organs are regarded by Klein as a phylogenetic vestige of the primitive relations between the rutting odours of the female and sexual excitement in the male. Friedrich S. Krauss, in his “Anthropophyteia” (1904, vol. i., p. 224), reproduces a Southern Slavonic story in which a man is described who obtained sexual gratification only by enjoying the natural smell of the female genital organs. The remarkable classification of Indian women according to the various odours proceeding from their genital organs must not be forgotten in this connexion.

That this primitive phenomenon of love has even to-day a certain significance, although, in consequence of the enormous development of the brain and the predominance of purely psychical elements in man, its influence has been very notably diminished, is shown by the existing physiological connexion proved by Fliess to exist between the nose and the genital organs. On the inferior turbinate bones there exist certain “genital areas,” which, under the influence of sexual stimulus and excitement, as in coitus, during menstruation, etc., swell up. From these areas it is also possible to influence directly certain conditions of the genital organs.

It is noteworthy that civilization has to a large extent replaced the natural sexual odours by artificial scents, so-called perfumes, whose origin is partly due to the imitation or accentuation of the natural odours, in part, however, and especially in recent times, to an endeavour to conceal these natural odours, especially when the latter are of a disagreeable character. For this reason, in addition to penetrating perfumes, such as civet, ambergris, musk, etc., we have also mild perfumes, for the most part vegetable in origin. The markedly exciting influence of these artificial scents is employed especially by women, above all by professional prostitutes, in order to excite men.[3] Frequently also the simple perfume of flowers suffices for this purpose. Krauss tells us that in the kolo-dance of the Southern Slavs the girls fasten strong-scented flowers and sprigs in the front of their dress, and thereby excite intense sexual desire in the young men. In the East sexual stimulation by means of the sense of smell plays a far more extensive rôle than in Europe.

In the human species, however, as a specific elementary phenomenon of sexual reproduction, smell has long been thrust into the background by the strong development of other senses, especially that of sight. This fact is very clearly exhibited by the notable reduction which has occurred in the size of the organ of smell. In man the frontal lobes of the brain, the seat of the highest intellectual processes and of speech, have taken the place of the olfactory lobes in the lower animals. Besides, by means of clothing, the natural odours of men and women, which previously had such marked sexual significance, have been rendered almost imperceptible, and nowadays sexual stimulation may result merely from the senses of touch and of sight, so that the hands and the lips and the female breasts have been transformed into erotic organs. Notwithstanding, however, the notable weakening of the sexual significance of smell, this most primitive sense (actually associated, as we have shown, with the activity of the germinal cells) will never completely cease to influence the sexual life.

“Still, there always surrounds us a now gently moving and now stormy sea of odours, whose waves without cessation arouse in us feelings of sympathy or antipathy, and to the minutest movements of which we are not wholly indifferent” (Havelock Ellis).

Inasmuch as we have pointed out as the single primæval basis, as the most important elementary phenomenon, of human love, the conjugation of the male sperm cell with the female ovum (dependent probably upon a sensation analogous to that of smell), we denote this particular phenomenon of sexuality as primary, and we separate all the other phenomena as secondary, as more remote. Wilhelm Bölsche has also expressed this difference by denoting the union of the two reproductive cells as “fusion-love,” whilst all that has occurred later, in the course of many thousands of years of evolution, and that has transformed this primary process, by innumerable new influences, stimuli, and perceptions, into the love of modern civilized man, he denotes by the apt name of “distance-love.”

According to him,

“the ultimate act of love in a member of the most highly civilized community assumes the form of a sudden withdrawal from the entire world of surrounding artifacts, of alphabets, posts, telephones, submarine cables, etc.... At this instant the principle of union is once again victorious, as it were, in an ultimate posthumous vision in a vital experience of a portion of primæval Nature, of the primæval world, of an instant’s profoundest self-absorption into the great mystery of the obscure original basis of Nature, to which neither time nor old and new is known, but which is ever renewed in us in its elemental force—the procreative principle. At this instant the loving individual must return home to the heart of the all-mother—it is useless to resist. It must draw from the fountain of youth—must descend like Odin to the Norns, like Faust to the Mothers—and there all civilization is swallowed up; there cell body must join cell body, in order in the ardent embrace to reduce to a minimum the distance which usually sunders such large bodies. Indeed, in reality the sexual act goes further and deeper than this reduction of separation to a minimum. Within the body of one of the partners of the sexual act the ovum and the spermatozoon undergo an ultimate perfect fusion of soul and body, in comparison with which even the closest approximation of the great halves of the love partnership is no more than a mere mechanical apposition. The ultimate aim of the loving union is attained only in the coalescence of ovum and spermatozoon.”

To express the matter briefly, fusion-love fulfils the purpose of the species, while distance-love subserves rather the purpose of the individual. Thus the natural course of the development of love, which in the next chapter we propose to follow further, affords already the proof of the thesis propounded in the introduction regarding the duplicate nature of human love.

[3] According to Laurent (“Morbid Love,” pp. 133, 134, Leipzig, 1895), common prostitutes generally use musk; young working women, violet or rose-water; ladies of the bourgeoisie, penetrating perfumes, such as white heliotrope, jasmine, and ylang-ylang; women of the half-world, finer perfumes, or such “as are complex, like their own mode of life”—for example, lily-of-the-valley, or mignonette.

CHAPTER II
THE SECONDARY PHENOMENA OF LOVE (BRAIN AND SENSES)

“From these considerations it follows that man, in the course of his phylogenetic development extending through lengthy geological periods, has lost numerous advantages; and the question arises whether, in exchange for these, he may not also have gained certain other advantages. Such must, indeed, have been the case if the human species was to remain capable of survival. There has been a process of exchange, by means of which man has gained an equivalent for all the qualities he has lost. And the gain consists in the unlimited plasticity of his brain. By this he is fully compensated for the loss of the large and long series of advantages which his remote predecessors possessed.”—R. Wiedersheim.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER II

The secondary phenomena of sexuality — Their connexion with the nervous system and the sense organs — The brain as criterion of human sexuality — Its development proportional to the retrogression of other parts — Example of the organ of smell and of the mammary glands — Relative retrogression of the female clitoris — Variation of the female genital organs — Reduction of the hairy covering of the skin — Theory regarding the origin of the comparative baldness of the human species — Assumed connexion with climate — With dentition — Influence of artificial clothing — The hygienic and æsthetic significance of the loss of hair — The reason why the axillary and pubic hair have been retained — Sexual influence of the hair of these regions and of the hair of woman’s head — Gradual retrogression of the male beard — The change of bodily type under the influence of the brain — The way of the spirit in love — The pure instinctive in the sexuality of primitive man — His lack of the idea, “love” — Analogy of this state among the lower classes of the present day — Periodicity of the sexual impulse in the time of primitive man — Periodicity amongst savage races of to-day — The researches of Fliess and Swoboda — The twenty-three day “masculine” and the twenty-eight day “feminine” periods — Menstruation — A peculiarity of the human female — The origin of enduring love in mankind — Love rendered more enduring by the spirit — Kant’s views on the subject — Hypothesis of W. Rheinhard and Virey — The complication of the sexual impulse through sensory stimuli — Buddha’s speech to the monks — The prepotency of the higher senses — The sense of touch — The skin as an organ of voluptuous sensation — Erogenic areas of skin — The kiss — Its erotic significance — An Arabian poet (Sheik Nefzawi) on this subject — Burdach’s definition of the kiss — The kiss on the boundary-line between erotism and actual sexual enjoyment — The origin of the kiss — The primitive elements of contact, licking and biting — Its connexion with the nutritive impulse — European origin of the kiss of contact — The smelling kiss of the Mongols — The kiss and sexuality — Voltaire’s genito-labial nerve — The sense of taste and sexuality — The preponderant importance of the higher senses in the love of civilized man — The beautiful explanation of Herder — Liberation from the material in the higher senses — The sense of sight as the true æsthetic sense — Beauty as the product of love — Its perception by the sense of sight — Rôle of the sense of hearing in love — The investigations of Darwin — The voice as a sexual lure — The rhythmical repetition of alluring sounds — Origin of song and music — Greater susceptibility of women to impressions received through the sense of hearing — The charm of woman’s voice — An experience of the natural philosopher Moreau.

CHAPTER II

As we have learnt in the first chapter, the primitive phenomenon of sexual attraction and reproduction, the conjugation of the male and the female germinal cells, persists unaltered in man as the most important part of the act of procreation; but this process of “fusion-love” derived by inheritance from unicellular organisms, is associated in man with a number of new secondary physical and psychical phenomena of sexuality. This inevitably results from the nature of the human organism as a cell society, from the development of man as one of the order of mammalia, and finally from man’s elevation above the other mammalia as a being of enormously enhanced brain powers. The complex of these secondary physical and psychical phenomena of love, dependent upon the process of evolution, has, as we have already said, been denoted by W. Bölsche by the apt name of “distance-love,” which he thus distinguishes from the primary elemental phenomenon of “fusion-love.” These superadded elements play an extremely important part in human civilization, and, indeed, actually characterize that civilization which is in no way dependent on the primitive qualities shared by man with plants and lower animals.

This secondary sexuality of mankind is, in correspondence with the differentiation of the various organs of his body, extremely complicated, and it is by no means solely dependent upon the structure of the special reproductive or copulatory organs; it is also intimately connected with other parts of the body, and more especially with the sense organs and the nervous system. Thus it has accommodated itself to all the external influences to which the species has been subjected in the long course of its development history. We may say that the criterion, the characteristic mark of distinction between the human body and that of the lower animals, is also the distinctive differential characteristic between human sexuality and that of the lower animals. And this criterion is the brain.

The present physical and mental constitution of man is the result of an evolutionary process, of which the most marked characteristic has been a continually more rapid increase in the size and complexity of the brain. Phylogeny and ontogeny clearly demonstrate the evolution of the human body from lower states to higher, the slow but sure improvement in the direction of a continual enlargement and increasing convolution of the brain, which has by no means yet attained finality, but which may be expected to continue into the far-distant future; and associated with this physical development will undoubtedly proceed an equally extensive improvement in the quality of human consciousness.

This progressive development of the brain has resulted in a retrogression and arrest of development of other parts and organs, and among these some more or less closely associated with the sexual functions, and originally of considerable importance. Gegenbaur, in his “Anatomy,” and Wiedersheim, in his interesting work on “The Structure of Man as Bearing Witness to his Past,” recognize in the unlimited plasticity of the human brain the sole cause of the arrest of development and retrogressive metamorphosis of many organs and functions which persist in other members of the animal kingdom.

In the sexual life, also, in correspondence with this preponderating development of the brain, purely psychical elements continually play a larger part, whilst parts and functions at one time intimately related to sexuality have undergone atrophy. Thus, as we have already pointed out, the human organ of smell had unquestionably in earlier times much greater significance in relation to the vita sexualis than it has at the present day. Wiedersheim shows that in the ancestors of the human race this organ was much more extensively developed, and that it must now be regarded as in a state of atrophy. The mammary glands, the original function of which was perhaps the production of odoriferous substances, but which later became devoted solely to the secretion of milk, existed in our ancestors in a larger number than in the present human race. This is clearly shown by the fact that the human embryo normally exhibits a “hyperthelia,” an excess of breasts, of which, however, two only normally undergo development; moreover, the breasts of the male, which are now in a state of arrested development, were formerly better developed, and served, like those of the female, the purpose of nourishing the offspring. These facts are clearly explicable on the assumption that at one time the number of offspring at a single birth was considerable, and that in this way the preservation of the species was favoured (Wiedersheim).

It is a very interesting fact that the principal “organ of voluptuousness” in women, the clitoris, is notably diminished in size absolutely and relatively as compared with the clitoris of apes. It certainly no longer represents an organ so susceptible to voluptuous stimulation and excitement as it was assumed to be by the older physicians and physiologists; so that, for example, Van Swieten, the celebrated body physician of the Empress Maria Theresa, recommended titillatio clitoridis as the most certain means of curing the sexual insensibility of his royal patient.

Moreover, the common variations in the external configuration of the female genital organs, which Rudolf Bergh has very fully and minutely described in his “Symbolæ ad Cognitionem Genitalium Externorum Femineorum,” are largely dependent on such arrests of development, which, indeed, occur also in the male.

A very remarkable phenomenon in the course of human evolution has been the diminution in the hairy covering of the body. As compared with the other mammalia, especially those most nearly allied to man—the anthropoid apes—man is relatively bald. This baldness has been gradually acquired, and seems likely to progress further in the future. Numerous hypotheses have been propounded regarding the purpose and true cause of this progressive atrophy of the hairy covering which originally extended over the entire surface of the body. The effect of tropical climate will not suffice to account for the change, for in the tropics the hairy covering is useful for a covering against the rays of the sun—witness the thick hairy coat of the tropical apes. More apt is the idea of sexual selection, advanced by Darwin in explanation of the loss of hair. According to this theory, the comparatively balder women were preferred by the men to those with a thicker covering of hair. Helbig raises the objection that primitive man in sexual intercourse would observe only the genital organs and the parts in their immediate neighbourhood. Yet in this region the sexually mature woman has retained a portion of the hairy covering of the body. We must therefore, in order to rescue the idea of sexual selection as an explanation of the increasing baldness of the human race, assume that primitive man had cultivated æsthetic tastes, and was not an extremely sensual person, and that in his choice of a partner he would be guided by the appearance of the woman’s entire body. This, however, is a very questionable assumption. Very doubtful also is the suggested connexion between largely developed dentition and the baldness of the skin (Helbig). More apposite is W. Bölsche’s view that the atrophy of the human hairy covering is related to the adoption of an artificial covering. Since that time the thick hairy covering of the skin was felt to be burdensome, since it hindered perspiration beneath the clothing, and also favoured the harbouring of parasites, fleas, lice, etc., which play so large a part in the annoyance of all hair-covered mammals. In these circumstances bareness of skin became an ideal to primitive man. By rubbing away the hair beneath the clothes, by cutting it short, and by pulling it out by the roots, an artificial baldness was produced; this then became an ideal of beauty. Thus it happened in the choice of a partner that those individuals less hairy than others were preferred, and thus gradually by this process of sexual selection the race became continually less hairy, until ultimately the relative baldness of the present day was attained.

In certain parts of the body, especially in the armpits and in the neighbourhood of the external genital organs, the thick hairy covering has been retained. This may, perhaps, be dependent upon the fact that from the axillary and pubic hair certain erotic stimuli proceed, more especially certain odours. In fact, it is possible that the hair of those regions in which strong-smelling secretions were produced have played the part of scent-sprinklers, analogous to the “perfume brushes” of butterflies.

In a similar way, the preservation of an exceptionally rich development of the hair of a woman’s head may be explained by the fact that therefrom erotically stimulating odours unquestionably proceed. This circumstance has influenced sexual selection in the direction of the preservation and continual increase in the length of the hair of a woman’s head; while, in the opposite direction, and equally by the process of sexual selection, the female body has been much more fully deprived of hair than that of the male.

It seems, however, that this process of loss of hair is not yet completed. The male beard has already ceased to play the part of a sexual lure, which it formerly undoubtedly possessed. Schopenhauer’s opinion, that with the advance of civilization the beard will disappear, probably represents the truth; he regarded shaving as a sign of the higher civilization. It is certainly a logical postulate of the natural course of development.[4]

Havelock Ellis, in “Man and Woman,” comes to the conclusion that the bodily development of our race is a progress in the direction of a youthful type. This is merely another way of expressing the fact that in the case of many organs and systems, and more especially in the case of the hairy covering of the skin, an arrest of development has occurred, and it is a recognition of the fact that the retrogressive metamorphosis of these organs is a compensation for the dominating and enormous development of the brain.

Parallel with this development of the brain there has occurred a progressive development of sexuality from the lowest animal instinct to the highest human “love.” The way of the spirit in love becomes predominant pari passu with the development of mankind in civilization. There is a profound meaning in the saying of Schopenhauer that the transformation of the sexual impulse into passionate love represents the victory of the intelligence over the will. And when another writer of genius has described the history of civilization as the history of the progress of mankind from nearer to more remote, more spiritual stimuli of pleasure, this is above all true of human love.

In lower states of human love these spiritual elements are undoubtedly wanting. Amongst primitive men the manifestations of sexuality can have differed in no wise from those of the animals most nearly related to them. Their love was still a pure animal instinct. The Asiatic myth which divided the earliest periods of human history in this way, asserting that the inhabitants of paradise loved for thousands of years merely by means of glances, later by a kiss, by simple physical contact, until ultimately they underwent a “fall” through adopting the debased methods of common animal sexual indulgence—this infantile mythology would be accurate enough if one inverted the series of stages in the evolution of love.

This view is confirmed by the fact that, according to the most recent investigation into the history of primitive man, it is extremely probable that to palæolithic man of the earlier diluvial period the idea of the spiritual was still completely unknown—that palæolithic man was, in fact, purely a creature of impulse—an opinion already maintained by Darwin in his work on the “Descent of Man.” In the sexual instinct, above all, every dualistic division into physical and spiritual was entirely foreign to primitive man. The more primitive the state of civilization, the less is the idea “love” known, a fact first established by Lubbock. Even at the present day, in regard to this matter, there is a notable difference between the upper and the lower classes in a European civilized community. For example, Elard Hugo Meyer, in his excellent “Deutsche Volkskunde” (“German Folk-lore,” p. 152; Strasburg, 1898), states that from Eastern Friesland to the Alps amongst the common people the word “love,” to us so indispensable and so exalted, is entirely unknown; in its place words expressing rather the sensual side of the impulse are employed.

Rousseau suggested that primitive man embraced primitive woman only in the fugitive moments of domination by his instinctive impulse. It is no doubt very probable that primæval man shared with other animals the periodicity of the sexual impulse; this periodicity disappeared only in the subsequent course of human development, and traces of it yet remain. It is probable that this periodicity of the sexual impulse was associated with variations in the supply of nutriment, and was thus, as Darwin assumes, a kind of natural obstacle to too rapid an increase in the population. Later, in consequence of an increase in individual security, and of a more enduring supply of abundant nutriment, such periodic rutting ceased to occur, or was preserved only in the form of menstruation (ovulation) in women, in whom at this period there is a perceptible increase in sexual excitability. Among savage races this periodicity of the sexual impulse, its increase at definite seasons of the year, is still clearly manifested even in the male. Heape and Havelock Ellis have carefully studied this primitive phenomenon, and have adduced numerous proofs of its truth.[5]

Only the human female experiences true “menstruation”; that is to say, only in women is the maturation of the ovum accompanied by a monthly discharge of blood from the genital passage. The so-called menstruation of female apes is limited to a periodic swelling of the external genital organs, with a mucous discharge therefrom. According to Metchnikoff, the menstruation of apes constitutes the intermediate stage between the rutting of the lower animals and the menstruation of the human female. This latter is a new acquisition, the purpose of which is perhaps the limitation of fertility and the prevention of the excessively early marriage of girls.

With the advanced development of the brain, the old periodic rutting, of which rudiments still persist, became more and more subordinate to the conscious will, was transformed more and more into enduring love. Charles Letourneau writes:

“If we go to the root of the matter, we find that human love is in its essence merely the rutting season in a reasoning being; it increases all the vital forces of the human being, just as rutting increases those of the lower animals. If love apparently differs enormously from rutting, this is merely due to the fact that the reproductive impulse, the most primitive of all impulses, becomes in developed nerve centres more diffuse in its sphere of operations, and thus in man awakens and excites a whole province of psychical life which is entirely unknown to the lower animals.”

Philosophers and scientific observers have defined the distinction between human and animal love as consisting in the fact that man can love at all times, the animal periodically only; but this distinction certainly does not apply to the beginnings of human development; it originates beyond question with the first appearance of the spiritual element in love. This alone makes man capable of enduring love, this alone frees him from dependence upon periodic rutting seasons. The prolongation of love by the introduction of the spiritual element was already pointed out by Kant, whose writings (especially the lesser ones) are rich in valuable observations of a similar kind. In his treatise published in 1786, “The Probable Beginning of Human History,” he says regarding the sexual instinct:

“Reason, as soon as it had become active, did not delay to exert its influence also in the sexual sphere. Man soon discovered that the stimulus of sex, which in animals depended merely on a transient and for the most part periodic impulse, was in his own case capable of prolongation, and indeed of increase, by the force of imagination. This influence works more moderately, it is true, but with more persistence and more evenness the more the affair is withdrawn from the dominion of the senses, so that the satiety produced by the gratification of a purely animal passion is avoided.”

This important question regarding the origin of the love of human beings as contrasted with the periodic instinct of the lower animals and primitive man has hitherto, strangely enough, hardly received any attention, notwithstanding the fact that it is one of the most important evolutionary problems in the history of human civilization, and represents to a certain extent the only problem in the primitive history of love.

The principal cause of the perennial nature of human love, as contrasted with the periodic character of the sexual impulse of the lower animals, must, as Kant says, be sought in the appearance of these psychical relations between the sexes. Hypotheses such as that put forward by Dr. W. Rheinhard in his book, “Man considered as an Animal Species, and his Impulses,” according to which the prolonged separation of the sexes, consequent on the increased difficulty in the provision of sufficient nutriment (more especially in the Ice Age), led to an incomplete satisfaction of the sexual impulse during the rutting season, and thus gave rise to an enduring sexual excitement, cannot be treated seriously. The same author suggests that the excessive consumption of meat of the Ice Age, owing to the absence of vegetable food, was responsible for the stronger stimulation of the sexual impulse, and for its prolongation beyond the rutting season.

Unquestionably Kant’s explanation is the only true one; it is the one which Schiller had in his mind when in his essay on the connexion between the animal and the spiritual nature of man, he spoke of the happiness of the animals as of such a kind that

“it is dependent merely upon the periods of the organism, and these are subject to chance, to blind hazard, because this happiness rests solely on sensation.”

The sexual love of primitive man was, like this, purely instinctive and impulsive.

For him, beginning, course, and end, of every love-process was “directly linear, with no to-and-fro oscillations into the indefinite province of the transcendental.” The need for love and the satisfaction of that need were in primitive man entirely limited to the physical process of sexual activity (L. Jacobowski, “The Beginnings of Poetry,” p. 84).

It was the interpenetration of the whole of sexuality with spiritual elements which first interrupted this single line of sensation, making in a sense two lines: hence arose the frequently unhappy dualism between body and mind in our experience of love; and yet at the same time it was the cause of the elevation of human love to purely individual feelings, which, extending far beyond the purposes of reproduction, subserved the spiritual demands of the loving individual himself.[6]

Natural science, and especially the doctrine of descent, have shown that in the higher animal world, to which we have proved primitive man belongs, a complication of the sexual impulse exists as compared to this condition in lower forms; this complication consists mainly in the intimate association of sensory stimuli with the sexual impulse. In a speech to monks, reported in the Pali Canon, Buddha has well described the sexual part played by the various senses:

“I do not know, young men, any other form which fetters the heart of man like a woman’s form.

“A woman’s form, young men, fetters the heart of man.

“I do not know, young men, any other voice which fetters the heart of man like the voice of woman.

“The voice of woman, young men, fetters the heart of man.

“I do not know, young men, any other odour which fetters the heart of man like the odour of woman.

“The odour of woman, young men, fetters the heart of man.

“I do not know, young men, any other taste which fetters the heart of man like the taste of woman.

“The taste of woman, young men, fetters the heart of man.

“I do not know, young men, any touch which fetters the heart of man like the touch of woman.

“The touch of woman, young men, fetters the heart of man.”

Then there follows, in the same rhythmical form, an enumeration of the sexual stimuli emanating from woman through eye, ear, smell, taste, and touch.

Associated with the progress towards “love” of this sexual impulse enriched by sensory stimuli was a preponderance, a prevalence, of certain particular sensory stimuli. Herein are certainly to be found the beginnings of a spiritualization of purely animal instincts and impulses.

The most important part in the amatory life of man is played, even at the present day, by the sense of touch, and by the two higher senses, sight and hearing, these two latter containing so many spiritual elements.

The sense of touch is more widely extended in space than the other senses, and for this reason touch is quantitatively the most excitable of the senses. The stimulation of the sensory nerves of the skin, the enormous number of which suffices to explain the richness of sensation through the skin, experienced as touch, tickling, or slight pain, transmits very similar sensations to the voluptuous sensorium. The relationship between these various modes of sensation is confirmed by the fact that the terminals of the sensory nerves of the skin, the so-called corpuscles of Vater or Pacini, closely resemble in structure the corpuscles of Krause found on the glans penis and glans clitoridis, on the prepuce of the clitoris, the labia majora, and on the papillæ of the red margin of the lip. From this point of view, the entire skin may be regarded as a huge organ of voluptuous sensation, of which the skin of the external organs of conjugation is most strongly susceptible to stimulation.

Mantegazza therefore describes sexual love as a higher form of tactile sensation. In human beings of a baser disposition love is no more than a touch. Between the chaste stroking of the hair and the violent storm of the sexual orgasm there is a quantitative, but not a qualitative difference. The sense of touch is a profoundly sexual sense, which at the present day plays much the same part as was in primitive times played by the sense of smell.

“The skin,” says Wilhelm Bölsche, “became the great procurer, the dominant intermediary of love, for the multicellular animals, in which complete conjugation of the cell bodies had become impossible, so that their sexual gratification had to be obtained by distance-love, by contact-love. Thus the skin was the primitive area of voluptuous sensation, the arena of the supreme bodily triumph of this distance-love.”

It has been well said that the first intentional touching of a part of the skin of the loved one is already a half-sexual union; and this view is confirmed by the fact that such intimate bodily contacts, even when they occur between parts far distant from sexual organs, very speedily lead to states of marked excitement of these organs. Quite rightly, therefore, the pleasurable sensations aroused by means of cutaneous sensibility are regarded by Magnus Hirschfeld as the stages of transition along which the power of self-command and the capacity for resisting the impulses arising out of the transformation of sensory perceptions into movements and actions most commonly break down. He who avoids these first contacts, best protects himself against the danger of being overpowered by his sexual impulse, and of blindly following where that impulse leads—if, for example, he wishes to avoid intercourse with a person whom he suspects to be suffering from some venereal disease.

Areas of skin more especially susceptible to sexual stimulation, the so-called erogenic areas, are those parts of the body where skin and mucous membrane meet—above all therefore the lips, but also the region of the anus, the female genital organs, and the nipples of the female breast. That in certain circumstances even the eye may be an erogenic zone is shown by the remarkable observation of Dr. Emil Bock, that in many female patients a gentle inunction of Pagenstecher’s ointment into the eye gives rise to changes of countenance showing that a sexual orgasm is occurring.

The contact of the lips in the kiss is one of the most powerful stimuli of love.[7] An Arabian author of the sixteenth century (Sheikh Nefzawi) in his work, “The Perfumed Garden,” an Arabian ars amandi, alludes to this fact. He quotes the verses of an Arabian poet:

“When the heart burns with love,
It finds, alas, nowhere a cure;
No witch’s magic art
Will give the heart that for which it thirsts;
The working of no charm
Will perform the desired miracle;
And the most intimate embrace
Leaves the heart cold and unsatisfied—
If the rapture of the kiss is wanting.”

The physiologist Burdach, influenced by the then dominant natural philosophy of Schelling, defined the kiss as “the symbol of the union of souls,” analogous to “the galvanic contact between a positively and a negatively electrified body; it increases sexual polarity, permeates the entire body, and if impure transfers sin from one individual to the other.” Goethe has very perspicuously described sexual union in a kiss:

“Eagerly she sucks the flames of his mouth:
Each is conscious only of the other.”

And Byron writes:

“A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth and love,
And beauty, all concentrating like rays
Into one focus kindled from above;
Such kisses as belong to early days,
Where heart and soul and sense in concert move,
And the blood’s lava, and the pulse a blaze,
Each kiss a heart-quake—for a kiss’s strength,
I think it must be reckoned by its length.”

It is therefore a true saying, that a woman who permits a man to kiss her will ultimately grant him complete possession.[8] Moreover, by the majority of finely sensitive women the kiss is valued just as highly as the last favour.[9]

The problem of the origin of the kiss, which Scheffel, in his book (“Trompeter von Säckingen”), has treated in humorous verse, has recently been investigated by the methods of natural science. The lip kiss is peculiar to man and in him the impulse to kiss is not innate, but has been gradually developed, and the kiss has only acquired by degrees a relation to the sexual sphere.

Havelock Ellis has recently made an interesting investigation regarding the origin of the kiss, and has proved that the love kiss has developed from the primitive maternal kiss and from the sucking of the infant at the maternal breast,[10] which are customary in regions where the sexual kiss is unknown. Both the sense of touch and the sense of smell play a part in this primitive kiss, and to simple contact primitive man superadded both licking and biting. This primitive physiological sadism of the biting kiss was probably inherited from the lower animals, which when copulating often bite one another (Kleist in “Penthesilea” writes “Küsse”—kissing—rhymes with “Bisse”—biting). Earlier authors—as, for example, Mohnike, in his admirable essay on the sexual instinct—have inferred from the existence of these passionate accompaniments of the kiss that the latter has an intimate connexion with the nutritive impulse. We have indeed the familiar expression, “I could eat you for love.” Indeed, according to Mohnike, the frenzy of the wild kisses of passionate love may actually lead to anthropophagy, as in a case reported by Metzger, in which a young man on his wedding night actually bit and began to devour his wife. Although in this case we doubtless have to do with an insane individual, such sadistic feelings in a lesser degree are so often observed in association with kissing that they may be regarded as physiological.[11]

In the novel “Hunger,” by Knut Hamsun, the author describes a peculiar relationship between hunger and the libido sexualis. Georg Lomer also, in the beginning of his thoughtful work, “Love and Psychosis” (Wiesbaden, 1907), expresses the opinion that hunger and love are not opposites, but that one is rather the completion, the larval state, or the sublimation, of the other. In certain species of spiders the male runs the danger, when performing his share in sexual congress, of being actually devoured by the stronger female.

The kiss by contact between the lips or neighbouring parts of the skin is of European origin, and even here is a comparatively recent practice, for the ancients very rarely allude to it. Its erotic significance was early pointed out by Indian, Oriental, and Roman poets. Amongst the Mongol races the so-called olfactory kiss (“smell-kiss”) is in much more common use. In this the nose is apposed to the cheek of the beloved person, and the expired air and the odour arising from the cheek are inhaled.

With the diffusion of European civilization, the European kiss of contact has also been diffused. It is no longer possible to determine whether the peculiar connexion between the lips and the genital organs, as manifested for example by the growth of hair on the upper lip at puberty in the male sex, and also by the well-known thick “sensual” lips often seen in individuals with exceptionally powerful sexual impulses, is originally primary, or merely a secondary result of the employment of the lips in a sexual caress.[12]

To our consideration of the kiss we may naturally append a few remarks on the rôle of the sense of taste in human love. Inasmuch as taste is almost invariably closely connected with smell, we are rarely able to prove in an individual case whether an impression of taste or an impression of smell more powerfully affects the vita sexualis. In kissing, an unconscious tasting of the beloved person seems often to play a part; and as regards the kissing of other parts of the body, especially the genital organs, at the acme of sexual excitement this undoubtedly often occurs. In Norwegian folk-tales, and in a South Hungarian song published by Friedrich S. Krauss, this tasting of the woman is very realistically described. The taste for sweets has also been largely associated with sexuality. Children who are fond of sweets, who have, as it is called, a sweet tooth, are also sensually disposed, sexually more excitable, and more inclined to the practice of onanism, than other children. The sensory impulses have therefore been classified as the hunger impulse and the sexual impulse respectively. A certain amount of truth appears to lie in these observations.

Much greater influence than these lower senses possess is exerted in the sexual sphere on modern civilized man by the higher, truly intellectual senses, sight and hearing. With the adoption of the upright posture they gained an advantage over the sense of smell and taste.

In his work “Ideas Concerning the Philosophy of Human History” Herder writes:

“In the beginning all the senses of man had but a small area of action, and the lower senses were more active than the higher. We see this among savages of the present day: smell and taste are their guides, as they are in the case of the lower animals. But when man is raised above the earth and the undergrowth, smell is no longer in command, but the eye: it has a wider kingdom, and accustoms itself from early childhood to the finest geometry of lines and colours. The ear, deeply placed beneath the projecting skull, has closer access to the inner chamber for the collection of ideas, whilst in the lower animals the ear stands upright, and in many is so formed as to point in the direction of the sound.”

Smell, taste, and even touch, have but little æsthetic value as compared with the two higher senses, because in the former the material preponderates too greatly, and because they are more closely related with the pure animal impulses than are sight and hearing. Johannes Volkelt, in his valuable work “Æsthetics,” has carried on an interesting investigation of this question, and comes to the conclusion that in sight and hearing perception proceeds without any trace of the material; in touch and taste, on the other hand, the material enormously predominates, whilst smell stands between. Schiller wrote:

“In the case of the eye and the ear the surrounding matter is rejected by the senses; for this reason, these two senses give the freest æsthetic enjoyment unalloyed with animal lust.”

The sense of sight is a true æsthetic sense in relation to the vita sexualis; it is the first messenger of love. By means of this sense, colour and form become sexual stimuli: by the sense of sight the entire impression of the beloved personality is first conveyed; sympathy and sexual attraction are almost always at first dependent upon sight. In regard to love’s choice, sight is unquestionably the sense of the greatest importance.

According to researches guided by the light of the modern doctrine of evolution, we can no longer doubt that the beauty of the living world is intimately connected with the sexual life, and is indeed by this first called into being. All beauty is, to use the words of Darwin and P. J. Möbius, “love become capable of perception,” and, let us ourselves add, love become capable of perception by means of the sense of sight. The figure, the carriage, the gait, the clothing, the adornment, the observation of the beauties of the various parts of the body of the beloved person—all these impressions, received by means of the sense of sight, have the most powerful erotic influence.

Havelock Ellis also comes to the conclusion that for mankind the ideal of a suitable love-partner is based far more upon the data of the sense of sight than upon those of touch, smell, and hearing.

However, in addition to the sense of sight, the sense of hearing plays a part of considerable importance in the amatory life of mankind. A sufficient indication of this fact is given by the change occurring in a man’s voice at the time of puberty. Darwin’s classical investigations prove beyond a possibility of doubt the intimate relationship between the voice and sexual life. The masculine voice, especially, has a sexually stimulating effect upon woman; but the converse influence of a woman’s voice upon man may also be observed. In the other mammalia, it is especially in the rutting season that the voice is used as a means of sexual allurement. The repetition of this vocal lure at measured intervals gives rise to rhythm and song. The rhythmical repetition of the same tone possesses something highly suggestive, fascinating, and so gives rise to sexual attraction and charm in the most powerful manner. Here lies the origin of the profound erotic influence of singing and music. Darwin assumes that the early progenitors of mankind, before they had acquired the faculty of expressing their mutual love in articulate speech, used to charm one another by musical tones and rhythms. Woman is far more susceptible than man to the sexual influence of singing or music, but man himself is by no means indifferent to the charms of the beautiful feminine voice. The soft tones of a woman’s voice are, for many men, the first enthralling disclosure of woman’s nature. The French physician and natural philosopher Moreau relates that he was once compelled to renounce the pleasure of seeing the performance of a beautiful actress, for only thus could he overcome a violent outburst of sexual passion which was evoked in him by the mere stimulus of her voice.

[4] If at the present day an inquiry were instituted among the cultured women of European and Anglo-American descent, whether bearded or beardless men more nearly corresponded to their ideal of beauty, there can be little doubt that the majority—perhaps a very large majority—would declare against a full beard.

[5] Recently, apart from sexual periodicity, a general periodicity of vital manifestations, more especially of the psychical phenomena associated with sexuality, has been proved to exist in both sexes. In a work that attracted much attention—“The Course of Life: Elements of Exact Biology” (Vienna, 1905)—Wilhelm Fliess proved the occurrence in the human species of a twenty-three day “masculine,” and a twenty-eight day “feminine” period. Not merely do physical phenomena recur quite spontaneously at intervals of twenty-three and twenty-eight days respectively, but the same is true of perceptions, feelings, and voluntary impulses. Hermann Swoboda, a thoughtful supporter of Fliess’s theory, has treated this question in two works—“The Periods of the Human Organism in their Psychological and Biological Significance” (Leipzig and Vienna, 1904), and “Studies in the Elements of Psychology” (Leipzig and Vienna, 1905). In these he has described also twenty-three-hour and eighteen-hour vital undulations in human beings, and has discussed the significance of this periodicity to psychology. These researches of Fliess and Swoboda need to be confirmed by other investigators before they can be regarded as definite additions to our scientific knowledge. In this connexion also the older work of Carl Reinl—“Undulatory Movements of the Vital Processes in Woman” (Leipzig, 1884)—may be consulted. See also Van de Velde’s “Ovarian Functions, Undulatory Movement, and Menstrual Hæmorrhage” (Jena, 1905).

[6] Virey likewise explains the enduring nature of human love as dependent upon an excess of potent nutritive material, whereas the poor savages of Northern Europe and America, who must often go hungry, really experience no more than an instant of sexual pleasure, just like the wild animals, who rut only at certain distinct seasons. For the same reason, our domestic animals, which have a superfluous supply of nutriment, copulate far more frequently. And in our own case, the incessant intimate association of the sexes in our domestic life is a continued source of ever-renewed sexual needs, even contrary to our own will. The assumption of the upright posture by man, which is so intimately connected with the preponderance of the human brain, is also regarded by Virey as “an enduring cause of sexual excitement.” Cf. J. J. Virey, “Das Weib” (“Woman”), p. 301; Leipzig, 1827.

[7] Recently Gualino [“Il Riflesso Sessuale nell’ Eccitamento alle Labbra” (“The Sexual Reflex resulting from the Stimulation of the Lips”), published in the Italian “Archives of Psychiatry,” 1904, p. 341 et seq.] by mechanical stimulation of the red parts of the lips, has produced erotic ideas and congestion of the genital organs, and this proves that the lips are an erogenic zone. Compare also the interesting remarks of Professor Petermann and Dr. Näcke on the origin of the kiss, in the German “Archives of Criminal Anthropology,” 1904, vol. xvi., pp. 356, 357.

[8] A kiss is on the boundary-line between erotism and sexual enjoyment. Bölsche calls it the true transitional form between fusion-love and distance-love. At the instant of the kiss the distance between the two lovers is certainly reduced to a minimum; the distance-love, therefore, is on the point of becoming fusion-love. On the other hand, however, the kiss is still simply tactile contact, and contact of the heads only, the actual seat in mankind of the sentiment of distance-love. The kiss represents a yearning for complete fusion-love, and yet is at the same time a symbol of purely spiritual distance-love.

[9] Especially in France is this the case. Madame Adam describes very tastefully this feeling of loss of virtue after granting a kiss.

[10] Cf. also J. Librowicz, “The Kiss and Kissing,” p. 22 (Hamburg, 1877).

[11] It is interesting to observe that the Chinese regard the European kiss as a sign of cannibalism [d’Enjoy, “Le Baiser en Europe et en Chine” (“The Kiss in Europe and in China”), Bulletin de la Société d’Anthropologie, Paris, 1897, No. 2.]

[12] We can allude only in passing to the celebrated genito-labial nerve of Voltaire.

CHAPTER III
THE SECONDARY PHENOMENA OF HUMAN LOVE (REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS, SEXUAL IMPULSE, SEXUAL ACT)

“Sexual passion is a matter of universal experience; and speaking broadly and generally, we may say it is a matter on which it is quite desirable that every adult at some time or other should have actual experience.”—Edward Carpenter.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER III

Origin and purpose of the reproductive organs — Progressive differentiation of these organs — Original identity of their rudiments in the two sexes — Weininger’s theory of the intermixture of the sexual elements — This theory anticipated by Heinse — Bisexuality — The actual significance of bisexuality trifling — Phylogenetic explanation of the organs of sexual congress — Bölsche’s three problems — The “aperture-problem” — Connexion between the genital aperture and the urinary passage — Between the genital aperture and the anus — Significance in relation to certain sexual aberrations — The “member-problem” — Earlier modes of fixation during coitus — Sucking and biting — The action of the limbs (the embrace) — The penis — Its various forms — The penis-bone — The free character of the human penis — The descent of the testicles — The feminine rudiment of the penis — Its original function rendered superfluous by the further evolution of the sexual orifice — Transformation into the clitoris and the labia minora — The “libido-problem” — Voluptuousness a phenomenon of distance-love — Questionable specificity of voluptuousness — Theory of the “sexual sense” and of the “sexual cells” — Relations of voluptuousness to tickling and to painful sensations — A special variety of contact stimuli — Localization to the genital organs — The sexual impulse — Relative independence of the impulse from the reproductive glands — Genesis of sexual excitement — Stage of prelibido (sexual tension) — Terminal libido (sexual gratification) — Symptoms and early appearance of prelibido — Causes of sexual tension — Freud’s chemical theory of sexual tension — The act of sexual intercourse — Roubaud’s description of coitus — Demeanour of woman in coitus — Magendie on this subject — Dr. Theopold’s observations — Physiological phenomena associated with coitus — Sadistic and masochistic elements — The normal position during sexual intercourse — Figuræ Veneris — Significance of the normal position in relation to civilization.

CHAPTER III

As the progressive evolution of the multicellular organism continued, and there occurred an increasing differentiation of the individual portions of the body, it became necessary that the very simple process of reproduction of the unicellular organism (by simple cell-division or by conjugation) should, in the multicellular organisms of the metazoa, be ensured and facilitated by the development of new apparatus. This was all the more necessary because, owing to the differentiation of the other organs, the originally independent reproductive elements became more and more dependent upon the parent organism, and lost their former capacity for obtaining nourishment by means of their own activity. Hence it became necessary that the period of time elapsing between the moment when the reproductive cells were freed from the parent organism and the moment in which they coalesced to form a new individual should be shortened to a minimum. This purpose is subserved by apparatus which renders possible the secure and rapid coalescence of the two reproductive elements, having the form of special excretory canals with contractile walls, through which the two sexual elements pass. These are the “copulatory organs,” by means of which the distance between the two loving individuals is abridged. According to the exhaustive investigations of Ferdinand Simon, the perfection and differentiation of these conducting canals proceeds pari passu with the higher development of the organism.

Simultaneously therewith proceeds the differentiation of the proper internal reproductive organs, the rudiments of which are identical in the two sexes. A portion of these primitively identical structures undergoes further development in the male, another portion undergoes further development in the female, whilst in both sexes rudiments of the earlier condition are retained, and these bear witness to the primitive state in which both reproductive glands were present in a single individual (hermaphroditism). In this sense Weininger’s theory applies—viz., that there is no absolutely male and no absolutely female individual, that in every man there is something of woman, and in every woman something of man, and that between the two various transitional forms, sexual “intermediate stages,” exist. Therefore, according to this view, every individual has in his composition so many fractions “man” and so many fractions “woman,” and according to the preponderance of one set of elements or the other, he must be assigned to one or the other sex. This theory, which Weininger regards as his own discovery, is by no means new, and already finds a place in Heinse’s “Ardinghello,” where we read:

“I find it therefore necessary to assume the existence in Nature of masculine and feminine elements. That man is nearest perfection who is composed entirely of masculine elements, and that woman perhaps is nearest perfection who contains only so many feminine elements as to be able to remain woman; whilst that man is the worst who contains only so many masculine elements as to qualify for the title of man.”

Magnus Hirschfeld, to whom this noteworthy passage in Heinse’s book appears to be unknown, has recently, in his valuable monographs, “Sexual Stages of Transition” (Leipzig, 1905) and “The Nature of Love” (Leipzig, 1906), thoroughly investigated these relations, and quotes, among others, sayings of Darwin and Weismann, according to which the latent presence of opposite sexual characters in every sexually differentiated bion must be regarded as a normal arrangement. Unquestionably the widely diffused phenomenon of “psychical hermaphroditism,” or “spiritual bisexuality,” is connected with the physical facts just enumerated, and provides us with the key for the understanding of the nature of homosexuality. Both these states—the physical and the mental—may be referred to primitive conditions of sexuality. They cannot play any serious part in the future course of human evolution, of which the progressive differentiation of the sexes is so marked a characteristic. In contrast with this differentiation, these rudimentary sexual conditions are practically devoid of significance. Suggestion, indeed, the influence of momentary tendencies of the time and of transient mental states, may temporarily deceive us. And when, for example, Hirschfeld maintains that in the central nervous system of women the more masculine, rational qualities, and in the central nervous system of men the more feminine, emotional qualities, are respectively on the increase, we must answer, in the first place, that this is not generally true, and, in the second place, that, in so far as it is true, it is a passing phenomenon, which has already provoked a powerful reaction in the opposite direction.[13] The exuviæ of a dead condition cannot again be vitalized.

The original purpose of the organs of sexual congress is, then, to safeguard and to facilitate, in the more complicated conditions peculiar to multicellular organisms, the conjugation of the two reproductive cells. They do not exist, as Eduard von Hartmann assumes, as a mere lure to voluptuousness, to induce man to continue the practice of sexual congress, purely instinctive in his animal ancestors, but now endangered by the development of the higher type of consciousness. For animals without organs of sexual congress also experience a voluptuous sensation at the instant of the sexual orgasm and of procreation.

The history of evolution alone solves the riddle of the origin of the organs of sexual congress, and renders their purpose clear to us. In a most ingenious manner, W. Bölsche distinguishes three problems in this history of the genital organs: the “aperture-problem,” the “member-problem,” and the “libido-problem.”

The first problem relates to the character and the position of the two apertures from which the sexual products, the reproductive cells, issue; the second relates to the exact mutual adaptation of the male and the female reproductive apertures; the third relates to the impulse to the intimate apposition of the genital apertures in consequence of a powerful nervous stimulus.

The most remarkable fact that we encounter in our consideration of the first problem—the “aperture-problem”—is the intimate association between the sexual aperture and the excretory canal of the urinary apparatus both in woman and in man—in the latter, indeed, the association is more pronounced. There seems to be a sort of parsimony on the part of Nature to combine so closely these two excretory tubes of the urine and of the products of sexual activity. Phylogenetically, indeed, the reproductive products originally passed with the urine freely into the open, and it was there that their conjugation took place. Among certain worms still existing at the present day we find this “urine-love.” Later, the genital canal became separated from the urinary canal, but the two tubes remained partly united at their outlets, opening side by side at the same part of the body. In man, indeed, the urethra still subserves the double purpose of the excretion of urine and the emission of semen. In woman the two excretory apertures are distinct, but they open in close proximity into the genital fissure between the thighs.

The intimate connexion which thus obtains between the urinary and the reproductive organs is not without significance for the understanding of certain aberrations of the libido sexualis. The same is true of the relations between the orifice of the genital passage and the similarly adjacent aperture of the large intestine, the anus. “Anus,” or, better, “cloaca love,” plays a part, indeed, in many fishes, amphibia, and reptiles; in these the act of procreation and the excretion of urine and fæces all take place by way of the cloaca. Among the mammals, at an early stage of phylogenetic development the intestine became completely separated from the sexual rudiment and the sexual excretory passages; and it is only in the proximity of the respective orifices that we find an indication of the primitive association. The act of pæderasty reminds us of the same fact.

The “aperture-problem” itself leads us, in the course of progressive development, to the “member-problem”—that is to say, to the problem of the more accurate apposition of the two reproductive apertures. The penis, by its introduction into the body of a member of the opposite sex, acts as a means for the shortening of distance-love; it serves for the fixation, for the clamping together, of the copulating pair, which in earlier stages of animal life was effected by sucking and biting; for example, in birds, who for the most part lack an actual penis, the cock holds the hen firmly with his beak during intercourse, and the sucking and biting which often occur in human beings in the sexual act persist as a reminiscence of these relations. In various vertebrates other means of fixation are employed: by the shape of fins, of arms, or of legs, a close “embrace” is rendered possible; finally, the evolution of a special member for sexual purposes closed the long series of means of ensuring union. Originally no more than a peg or a spine, in man the penis is first developed into the form of an absolutely free limb. Dogs, beasts of prey, rodents, bats, and apes, have a strong bone in the organ, the so-called “penis-bone.” In man this bone is lacking; the penis has become entirely free. W. Bölsche writes:

“In relation to the large, heavy, massive trunk and thighs, the sharply individualized, independent, mobile penis appears as a kind of spiritualized central point; as it were, a finger or a small third hand to the trunk, appearing to the eye to stand in rhythmical relation with the hands, right and left.”

In phylogenetic parallelism with the development of the penis, proceeds (from the marsupials upwards) the descensus testiculorum, the descent of the male reproductive glands, the testicles, until they attain their final position in the scrotum, beneath the penis. Here also we can recognize the principle of “limb-mobility,” mentally refined mobility.

In the clitoris woman also possesses a rudiment of a primitive penis. By the apposition of the two limbs, a more complete and rapid conjunction of the reciprocal sexual products must have been effected. But the further development of the large sexual aperture of the female checked the progressive development of this primitive penis, made it to some extent superfluous, since now, by the adaptation of the male penis to the female sexual aperture, a sufficient internal fixation in the act of copulation was rendered possible. Thus the female penis came to subserve other purposes: a portion of it formed the labia minora; another portion, the upper, the clitoris, the name of which sufficiently indicates the fact that, like the penis of the male, its function is connected with the voluptuous sense.

This leads us to the third and last problem, the “libido-problem.” In the human species voluptuous pleasure is almost completely divorced from the process of “fusion-love,” the coalescence of spermatozoon and ovum, and has for the most part become a phenomenon of “distance-love.” It appears extremely doubtful if there is anything specific about the voluptuous sensation—whether there is, in fact, a special “sexual sense.” Magnus Hirschfeld assumes the existence of peculiar “sexual cells,” of receptive areas for sexual stimuli, furnished with a sensory substance endowed with a peculiar specific sensibility. He regards love and the sexual impulse as “a molecular movement or force of a quite specific quality, streaming through the nervous system,” and accompanied by a quite peculiar sensation, or pleasure-tone, arising from a condition of excitement of the sexual cells. But, as we have already pointed out, the voluptuous sensation is merely a special case of general cutaneous sensibility; it is very closely allied with the cutaneous sensation of tickling; properly speaking, it is no more than an excessively powerful tickling.[14] It has also intimate relations with the sensation of pain.[15] The structure and position of the nerve-terminal apparatus of the genital organs, by means of which voluptuous pleasure is rendered possible, exhibit great similarity with the touch corpuscles and sensory end-organs of other parts of the skin. In the sexual orgasm the general cutaneous sensation increases to so high a degree of intensity, becomes so powerful, that for an instant consciousness is actually lost. The association of a momentary loss of consciousness with the acme of sensation indicates the summit of sexual pleasure—it is an abandonment, a dissolution, of individual personality.

Voluptuous pleasure plays its part in the human species entirely in the sphere of distance-love. Bölsche has very beautifully described its significance in this relation:

“All-embracing in its path towards the attainment of its final aim is the love-life also of the great cell societies, such as you yourself are, such as I myself am, such as your beloved is. These higher, more advanced individuals saw one another, approached one another, heard one another, perceived one another through a hundred external media; they became spiritually fused, and attained a condition of wonderful harmony—their principal body walls came at length into immediate contact—they pressed one another’s hands, they embraced one another, kissed one another—they drew ever closer and closer together; to a certain extent the body of one penetrated the body of the other. In all this, their love undertook the whole affair, undertook it a thousand times more effectually than the individual cells seeking conjunction could ever have done; undertook it for the sake of the reproductive cells hidden deep within their bodies. All the pleasurable and painful feelings of love undulated and surged for so long a time throughout the entire organism with intense force; these feelings agitated the entire superior, comprehensive, individual personality, searched its every depth with stormy emotions of desire, complaint, and exultation.

“But at a precise instant this all came to a halt. The seminal cells were ejaculated; one of them conjugated with the ovum; the hidden inward life of a tiny separate organism began within the body of one of the over-individuals. The last separation was bridged, and the true cell-fusion took place. But when this happened, the immediate relationship with the love-life of the great individual man and woman was already completely severed. The bodily act of love was already long at an end; its increase to a climax and its fulfilment had long passed by.

“The instant of supreme voluptuous pleasure, which in the case of unicellular beings naturally occurs at the moment of complete coalescence, must in the case of the multicellular organisms just as naturally be transferred to another stage, as it were, in the great path of love.

“To an earlier stage.

“To that stage of distance-love which is nearest to the true act of fusion of the reproductive elements. To the farthest point, that is to say, attained by the great containers of the genuine unicellular sexual elements (themselves capable of the act of ultimate coalescence)—the farthest point attained by the multicellular over-individuals.”

This farthest point is an act of contact.[16] We have already learnt to regard the skin as a projection of the nervous system, and we have come to understand the significance of the skin in the sphere of sexuality. The other senses which have arisen from the skin must also be taken into account in this matter. In the genital organs, this touch stimulus assumes a quite peculiar character; it gives rise here to the proper voluptuous sensation which is associated with the discharge of the reproductive products. In man this association is most distinctly manifest. The instant of most intense sexual pleasure coincides with ejaculation, with the expulsion of the semen. The character of this voluptuous sensation can hardly be defined; in part, it is like an intense tickling sensation, but, on the other hand, it has an unmistakable relationship to pain. Later, in another connexion, we shall consider this interesting point at greater length. Not inaptly the sexual act has also been compared with sneezing; the preliminary tickling sensation, with the subsequent discharge of nervous tension, in the form of a sneeze, have, in fact, a notable similarity with the processes occurring in the sexual act.

The sexual act depends upon the occurrence of certain stimuli which are connected with the complete development of the internal and external genital organs and of the reproductive glands. The time when this development occurs in man and woman is known as puberty. The sum of these stimuli is known as the “sexual impulse.” Whereas in the lower animals the sexual impulse is for the most part connected with the activity of the reproductive glands, in the human species, in association with the preponderating significance of the brain, it has attained a relative independence of the reproductive glands; whilst the mind has come to influence the sexual impulse very powerfully. Generally speaking, sexual excitement is produced in three ways: first, by the activity of the reproductive glands; secondly, by peripheral excitement derived from the so-called “erogenic” areas; and thirdly, by central psychical influences. S. Freud has recently studied the relations between these three causes of sexual excitement, of the sexual impulse, and has very properly distinguished two stages—the stage of “prelibido” (sexual desire), and the stage of the proper sexual “libido” (sexual gratification).

The stage of prelibido has distinctly the character of tension; the stage of libido, the character of relief. The feeling of tension during the prelibido finds expression mentally as well as physically by a series of changes in the genital organs. The tension is further increased by the stimulation of the various erogenic zones. If this prelibido increases beyond a certain degree, the characteristic potential energy of sexual tension is transformed into the relief-giving kinetic energy of the terminal libido, during which the evacuation of the reproductive products occurs.

Prelibido, which is especially characterized by engorgement, swelling, and erection of the corpora cavernosa of the male and female reproductive organs, occurring as a reflex from the spinal cord, may be experienced long before puberty; it is much more independent of processes occurring in the reproductive glands than is the terminal libido, or sexual gratification, which in the male accompanies ejaculation of the semen, and is associated with conditions attained only at puberty.

The actual origin of the sexual tension which ultimately leads to ejaculation is still obscure; it seems, at first sight, probable that in the male this sensation is connected with the accumulation of semen in the seminal vesicles. Pressure on the walls of these structures may be supposed to stimulate the sexual centres in the spinal cord, and also those in the brain; but this theory fails to take into account the condition in the child, in woman, and in castrated males, in all of whom, notwithstanding the absence of the accumulation of any reproductive products, nevertheless a distinct state of sexual tension may be observed. It is, indeed, an old experience that eunuchs may have a very powerful sexual impulse. It is obvious, then, that the sexual impulse must be, to a very great extent, independent of the reproductive glands.

The nature of sexual tension is still entirely unknown. Freud assumes, in view of the recently recognized significance of the thyroid glands in relation to sexuality, that possibly some substance generally diffused throughout the organism is produced by stimulation of the erogenic zones, that the products of decomposition of this substance exercise a specific stimulus on the reproductive organs, or on the associated sexual centre in the spinal cord. For example, such a transformation of a toxic, chemical stimulus into a special organ-stimulus is known to occur in the case of certain foreign poisonous materials introduced into the body. Freud considers that the probability of this chemical theory of sexual excitement is increased by the fact that the neuroses referable to disturbances of the sexual life possess a great clinical similarity to the phenomena of intoxication induced by the habitual employment of aphrodisiac poisons (certain alkaloids).

The relief of sexual tension occurs in the natural way in the sexual act, in the completion of normal intercourse between man and woman. Notwithstanding the numerous observations of leading natural philosophers and physicians concerning the act of sexual congress, among which I need only refer to those of Magendie, Johannes Müller, Marshall Hall, Kobelt, Busch, Deslandes, Roubaud, Landois, Theopold, Burdach, and many others, we possess, for reasons it is easy to understand, no really exact investigations regarding the different phenomena occurring during the sexual act. More particularly, the demeanour of the woman during this act is a matter which remains extremely obscure.

The French physician Roubaud has given us the most vivid description of sexual intercourse:

“As soon as the penis enters the vaginal vestibule, it first of all pushes against the glans clitoridis, which is situated at the entrance of the genital canal, and owing to its length and to the way in which it is bent, can give way and bend further before the penis. After this preliminary stimulation of the two chief centres of sexual sensibility, the glans penis glides over the inner surfaces of the two vaginal bulbs; the collum and the body of the penis are then grasped between the projecting surfaces of the vaginal bulbs, but the glans penis itself, which has passed further onward, is in contact with the fine and delicate surface of the vaginal mucous membrane, which membrane itself, owing to the presence of erectile tissue between the layers, is now in an elastic, resilient condition. This elasticity, which enables the vagina to adapt itself to the size of the penis, increases at once the turgescence and the sensibility of the clitoris, inasmuch as the blood that is driven out of the vessels of the vaginal wall passes thence to those of the vaginal bulbs and the clitoris. On the other hand, the turgescence and the sensitiveness of the glans penis itself are heightened by compression of that organ, in consequence of the ever-increasing fulness of the vessels of the vaginal mucous membrane and the two vaginal bulbs.

“At the same time, the clitoris is pressed downwards by the anterior portion of the compressor muscle, so that it is brought into contact with the dorsal surface of the glans and of the body of the penis. In this way a reciprocal friction between these two organs takes place, repeated at each copulatory movement made by the two parties to the act, until at length the voluptuous sensation rises to its highest intensity, and culminates in the sexual orgasm, marked in the male by the ejaculation of the seminal fluid, and in the female by the aspiration of that fluid into the gaping external orifice of the cervical canal.

“When we take into consideration the influence which temperament, constitution, and a number of other special and general circumstances are capable of exercising on the intensity of sexual sensation, it may well be doubted if the problem regarding the differences in voluptuous sensation between the male and the female is anywhere near solution; indeed, we may go further, and feel convinced that this problem, in view of all the difficulties that surround it, is really insoluble. So true is this, that it is a difficult matter to give a picture at once accurate and complete of the phenomena attending the normal act of copulation. Whilst in one individual the sense of sexual pleasure amounts to no more than a barely perceptible titillation, in another that sense reaches the acme of both mental and physical exaltation.

“Between these two extremes we meet with innumerable states of transition. In cases of intense exaltation various pathological symptoms make themselves manifest, such as quickening of the general circulation and violent pulsation of the arteries; the venous blood, being retained in the larger vessels by general muscular contractions, leads to an increased warmth of the body; and, further, this venous stagnation, which is still more marked in the brain in consequence of the contraction of the cervical muscles and the backward flexion of the neck, may cause cerebral congestion, during which consciousness and all mental manifestations are momentarily in abeyance. The eyes, reddened by injection of the conjunctiva, become fixed, and the expression becomes vacant; the lids close convulsively, to exclude the light. In some the breathing becomes panting and labouring; but in others it is temporarily suspended, in consequence of laryngeal spasm, and the air, after being pent up for a time in the lungs, is finally forcibly expelled, accompanied by the utterance of incoherent and incomprehensible words.

“The impulses proceeding from the congested nerve centres are confused. There is an indescribable disorder both of motion and of sensation; the extremities are affected with convulsive twitchings, and may be either moved in various directions or extended straight and stiff; the jaws are pressed together so that the teeth grind against each other; and certain individuals are affected by erotic delirium to such an extent that they will seize the unguarded shoulder, for instance, of their partner in the sexual act, and bite it till the blood flows.

“This delirious frenzy is usually of short duration, but sufficiently long to exhaust the forces of the organism, especially in the male, in whom the condition of hyperexcitability is terminated by a more or less abundant loss of semen.

“A period of exhaustion follows, which is the more intense in proportion to the intensity of the preceding excitement. The sudden fatigue, the general sense of weakness, and the inclination to sleep, which habitually affect the male after the act of intercourse, are in part to be ascribed to the loss of semen; for in the female, however energetic the part she may have played in the sexual act, a mere transient fatigue is observed, much less in degree than that which affects the male, and permitting far sooner of a repetition of the act. ‘Triste est omne animal post coitum, præter mulierem gallumque,’ wrote Galen, and the axiom is essentially true—at any rate, so far as the human species is concerned.”

Kobelt, in his celebrated work on the human organs of sexual pleasure (Freiburg, 1884, p. 55 et seq.), gave a similar description of copulation. In the majority of descriptions of coitus but little attention is usually paid to the demeanour of the woman. Magendie long ago drew attention to the fact that there was much obscurity about this matter, and insisted that, in comparison with the male, the female exhibited extremely marked differences, in respect to her active participation in copulation and to the intensity of her voluptuous sensations.

“Very many women,” says this distinguished physiologist, “experience a sexual orgasm accompanied by very intense voluptuous sensations; others, on the contrary, appear entirely devoid of sensation; and some, again, have only a disagreeable and painful sensation. Many women excrete, at this moment of most intense sexual pleasure, a large quantity of mucus, but the majority do not exhibit this phenomenon. In reference to all these phenomena, there are perhaps no two women who are precisely similar.”

The demeanour of the woman in coitu has been especially studied by gynæcologists, such as Busch, Theopold, and recently Otto Adler. Little known are the observations of Dr. Theopold, based upon his own experience, and published in 1873. He energetically denies the view that the woman is always passive in coitus, and also that the female reproductive organs are inactive during intercourse. During erotic excitement in woman the heart beats more frequently, the arteries of the labia pulsate powerfully, the genital organs are turgid and are hotter to the touch. As the most intense libido approaches, the uterus undergoes erection; its base touches the anterior abdominal wall; the Fallopian tubes can be distinctly felt through the abdominal wall, when these are thin, as hard, curved strings. The vagina, especially the upper part of the passage, undergoes rhythmical contraction and dilation, and complete gratification terminates the act.

As long as the muscle guarding the vaginal outlet (constrictor cunni—bulbo-cavernosus muscle) is intact, the woman is able, by tightly grasping the root of the penis, to expedite the ejaculation of semen, or to increase the stimulation of the male until ejaculation occurs.

These powerful contractions of the vagina, alternating rhythmically with the dilatations occurring during the orgasm, grip the glans penis tightly, and induce a coaptation of the male urethral orifice with the os uteri externum, and the enlargement of the latter orifice facilitates the entrance of the semen. According to O. Adler, sexual excitement of the woman during sexual intercourse begins with very powerful congestion of the entire reproductive apparatus, including even the fimbriæ surrounding the abdominal orifice of the Fallopian tubes; this congestion gives rise to an erection of these parts, and especially of the clitoris, the labia minora, and the vaginal wall. At the same time, the glands of the vaginal mucous membrane and of the vaginal inlet begin to secrete, as is manifest by the moistness of the external genital organs. There now begin gentle rhythmical contractions of the vagina and of the pelvic muscles, and during the orgasm these increase, to become spasmodic contractions, whereby an increased secretion is extruded, and more especially is there an evacuation of uterine mucus.

It is very important to note the various physiological accompaniments of coitus, since they assist us to understand the mode of origin and the biological root of many sexual perversions. Already in normal sexual intercourse sadistic and masochistic phenomena may be observed. The biting and crying out mentioned by Roubaud as occurring in the voluptuous ecstasy are, indeed, of very frequent occurrence. Rudolf Bergh, the celebrated Danish dermatologist and physician, of the Copenhagen Hospital for Women suffering from Venereal Diseases, alludes regularly in his annual reports to the consequences of “erotic bites.” Amongst the Southern Slavs, the custom of “biting one another” is very general (Krauss). The intense dark red coloration of the face and of the reproductive organs and their environment is also a physiological accompaniment of sexual excitement, and this coloration is more marked in consequence of the associated turgescence of the male and female genital organs; it leads, moreover, to associations of feeling in which the blood plays a dominant part. Hence we deduce the biological and ethnological significance of the colour red in the sphere of sexuality. The nature of the sadist “to see red” during sexual intercourse is, therefore, firmly founded upon a physiological basis, and merely exhibits an increase of a normal phenomenon.[17] The crying and cursing in which many individuals find sexual gratification has also a physiological representative in the inarticulate noises and cries frequently expressed in normal intercourse. It is remarkable that an Indian writer on erotics—Vātsyāyana—deduces this verbal sadism from the various noises which are commonly made in normal intercourse. Similarly, in both parties to the sexual act the presence of masochistic elements can be detected: witness the patience with which pain is borne when it has a voluptuous tinge.[18]

Passing to the consideration of the posture adopted during intercourse, we find in civilized man, who in this respect is far removed from animals, the normal position during coitus is front to front, the woman lying on her back with her lower extremities widely separated, and the knee and hip joints semiflexed; the man lies on her, with his thighs between hers, supporting himself on hands or elbows—or often the two unite their lips in a kiss.

Of all other numerous positions during coitus, or figuræ Veneris, some of which, according to Sheikh Nefzawi, are possible only “in words and thoughts,” the postures that demand consideration on hygienic grounds are, lateral decubitus of the woman, dorsal decubitus of the man, and coitus a posteriori (for example, when man and woman are extremely obese); but this subject belongs rather to the chapter on sexual hygiene.

Ploss-Bartels has proved that the position described above as normal was usual already in ancient times and amongst the most diverse peoples. The adoption of this position in coitus undoubtedly ensued in the human race upon the evolution of the upright posture. It is the natural, instinctive position of civilized man, who in this respect also manifests an advance on the lower animals.

[13] Apart from Strindberg and Weininger, who advocate, for the salvation of the future and as ideals of development, the most pronounced and one-sided development of the masculine type, I need refer only to “The Physiological Weakmindedness of Woman” by Möbius, and to such writings as B. Friedländer’s “Renaissance des Eros Uranios” (Berlin, 1904), and to Eduard von Mayer’s “The Vital Laws of Civilization” (Halle, 1904), as characteristic symptoms of such a reaction.

[14] Itching, Tickling, and Sexual Sensibility.—On September 2, 1890, Dr. Bronson, Professor of Dermatology in the New York Polyclinic, read before the American Dermatological Association a paper on “The Sensation of Itching” (printed in the New York Medical Record of October 18, 1890, and republished by the New Sydenham Society in 1893 in a volume entitled “Selected Monographs on Dermatology”). In this paper the author deals at some length with the relations between itching and the voluptuous, or, as he calls it, the “aphrodisiac,” sense. He also denies the specific character of sexual sensations, and states that the aphrodisiac sense “is but a higher development of the primitive sense of contact. It has a special organ or instrument—the penis in the male, the clitoris in the female. Moreover, it is distributed over the entire cutaneous surface” (New Sydenham Society, op. cit., p. 314). In this connexion, and more particularly apropos of Dr. Bloch’s statement on the previous page that “the function of the clitoris is expressed by its name” (German, Kitzler), it is interesting to note that in German the word Kitzel variously denotes—(1) tickling, (2) itching, (3) sexual desire, (4) sexual gratification. The more commonly employed German term for itching, Jucken, does not possess any secondary sexual signification; but, as Dr. Bronson points out (op. cit., p. 312), “both the English words itch and itching, and the Latin prurio and pruritus, in their secondary significations, convey the idea of a longing, teasing desire, while pruritus was commonly used by the Latins as a synonym for lasciviousness.” The same idea is, of course, conveyed by the English derivations, pruriency and prurient. Thus, we see that the familiar terminology of these three tongues (and doubtless of many others) refuses to countenance Hirschfeld’s view regarding the specific character of sexual sensibility.—Translator.

[15] In his profound essay, containing a number of new points of view, “Concerning the Emotions” (Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie, 1906, vol. xix., Heft 3 and 4), Dr. Edmund Forster has ably discussed these primitive relations between voluptuous sensation and pain. According to him, the sexual tension, which commences at the time of puberty, is an increased stimulus of the sensory nerves of the genital organs. The positive sensation-tone of libido accompanying ejaculation represents the relief of the painful, disturbing sensation of sexual tension, and for this reason it has a pleasurable tone.

[16] Carpenter perceives in this “sense of contact” the essence of all sexual love.

[17] For this reason many ingenious prostitutes wear a red chemise.—Cf. P. Näcke, “Un Cas de Fetichisme de Souliers,” etc. (“A Case of Shoe Fetichism”), in Bulletin de la Société de Médecine Mentale de Belgique, 1894.

[18] Thus it appears that sadism and masochism are not manifestations of “genital atavism” in the sense of Mantegazza and Lombroso, but are rather due to the gradual and pathological increase of physiological phenomena still manifest at the present day.

CHAPTER IV
PHYSICAL DIFFERENTIAL SEXUAL CHARACTERS

“We have here a primitive inequality, whose primitiveness goes back to the opposition between content and form. From this primeval difference arise all the other secondary differences.”—Alfons Bilharz.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IV

Sexual differentiation as the primeval fact of human sexual life — Waldeyer on the significance of sexual differentiation — The biological law of Herbert Spencer — Antagonism between reproductive and developmental tendencies — Example of menstruation in illustration of this contrast — The primitiveness of woman, and her greater proximity to nature — Untenability of the notion of the “inferiority” of woman — Views upon the nature of her physical development — Increased differentiation of the sexes in consequence of civilization — Comparison between medieval and modern pictures of women — Obscuration of the sexual contrast in primitive times — Examples — Change of the voice in consequence of civilization — Return to primitive conditions in certain phenomena of the emancipation of woman (the adoption of a masculine style of clothing, tobacco-smoking) — Sexual indifference in the primitive history of mankind — Connexion therewith of a primordial gynecocracy (according to Ratzel) — Secondary sexual characters — Principal difference between the masculine and the feminine body — New researches on sexual differences — Skeletal differences — The specific sexual differences of the human pelvis — Their dependence upon civilization and upon development of the brain — Differences in body-size and body-weight — In muscular and fatty development — In the constitution of the blood — Sexual differences in the larynx and the voice — The skulls of men and women — The weight of the brain — No ground for the assumption of the inferiority of women — Differences in brain-structure — Researches of Rüdinger, Waldeyer, Broca, G. Retzius, etc. — Recognition of the fact that the feminine type is somewhat infantile — This type due to adaptation to the purposes of reproduction — Masculine and feminine beauty — Men and women different, but neither superior to the other.

CHAPTER IV

The difference between the sexes is the original cause of the human sexual life, the primeval preliminary of all human civilization. The existence of this difference can be proved, alike in physical and psychical relations, already in the fundamental phenomenon of human love, in which, because here the relations are simple and uncomplicated, it is most easily visible.

Waldeyer, in his notable address on the somatic differences between the sexes, delivered in 1895 at the Anthropological Congress in Kassel, drew attention to the fact that the higher development of any particular species is notably characterized by the increasing differentiation of the sexes. The further we advance in the animal and vegetable world from the lower to the higher forms, the more markedly are the male and the female individuals distinguished one from another. In the human species also, in the course of phylogenetic development, this sexual differentiation increases in extent.

In the development of these sexual differences, the antagonism first shown by Herbert Spencer to exist between reproduction and the higher evolutionary tendency plays an important part. Among the higher species of animals the males exhibit a stronger evolutionary tendency than the females, owing to the fact that their share in the work of reproduction has become less important. The more extensive organic expenditure demanded by the reproductive functions limits the feminine development to a notably greater extent than the masculine. In the human species this retardation of growth in the female is especially increased in consequence of menstruation, and this affords a striking example of the truth of Spencer’s law. I quote also in this connexion the remarks of the Würzburg anatomist Oskar Schultze, in his recently published valuable monograph on “Woman from an Anthropological Point of View,” pp. 55, 56 (Würzburg, 1906);

“The undulatory periodicity of the principal functions of the feminine organism, which depends on the processes of ovulation and menstruation, and is invariable in the females of the human species, does not occur in the other mammalia (with the exception of apes). In these latter, as far as we have been able to observe, the secondary sexual characters, in the matter of differences in muscular development and in strength, are not so developed, or sometimes are not so developed, as in the human species. We must in this connexion exclude the differences which appear in domestic animals as a result of domestication (for example, the difference between the cow and the bull). In the human female, the periodicity, which begins to act even on the youthful, still undeveloped body, has during thousands of years increased the secondary sexual differences. Periodicity is, in my opinion, an important cause of the fact that woman is inferior to man, more especially in the development of the muscular system and in strength, and that her organs, for the most part, are more closely approximated to the infantile type.

“The sexually mature body of a woman has always during the intermenstrual period to make good the loss undergone during menstruation. Hardly has this been effected and the climax of vital energy been once more attained, when a new follicle ruptures in the ovary, and the menstrual hæmorrhage recurs; thus continually, month after month, the vital undulation and the vital energy rises and falls. The energy periodically expended in woman’s principal function has for thousands of years ceased to be available for her own internal development. The actual loss on each occasion is so trifling that numerous women hardly find it disagreeable. The effect depends upon summation. The earnings are almost immediately spent, not for the purpose of her own domestic economy, but for the sake of another, in the service of reproduction; this comes first, for the species must be preserved. To accumulate capital for her personal needs has been rendered more difficult for woman than it is for man.”

The previously quoted biological law of Spencer (regarding the antagonism between reproduction and the higher evolutionary tendency), of which menstruation affords so interesting an illustration, explains also the fact pointed out by Milne Edwards, Darwin, Brooks, Lombroso, Alfons Bilharz, and other investigators—to wit, the greater simplicity and primitiveness of woman as compared with the more complicated and more variable nature of man—more variable, because it oscillates within wider boundaries. Paracelsus long ago enunciated the profound saying, “Woman is nearer to the world than man.”

It would be fundamentally erroneous to deduce from these considerations any inferiority or comparative inutility of woman. Rather, indeed, the nature of her bodily structure in relation to the purposes it has to fulfil is comparatively nearer perfection; and this admirable adaptation has undergone an increase in the course of the evolution of civilization. We have already noted the fact that under the influence of the continually increasing predominance of the brain in the male, certain retrogressive processes have also made themselves manifest (as, for example, the increasing loss of hair); and these processes in woman have gone farther than in man, because in her case the progressive development is in its very nature less extensive. Hence recent investigators, such as Havelock Ellis, have actually come to the conclusion that the ideal type, towards which the bodily development of mankind is striving, is represented by the feminine—that is, by a youthful type.[19]

It is, however, very doubtful if this evolution will ever go so far that the primitive difference between man and woman, founded as it is in the very nature of the sexual, will ever pass away. On the contrary, notwithstanding the retrogressive changes associated with the excessive development of the brain, we find that there is an increasing differentiation of the sexes induced by civilization. To this fact, which possesses great importance in connexion with the discussion of the woman’s question and the problem of homosexuality, W. H. Riehl, the historian of civilization, in his work on the family, published in 1885, was the first to draw attention. He devotes the second chapter of this book to the differentiation of the sexes in the course of civilized life. He was astonished by the fact that in almost all the portraits of celebrated beauties of previous centuries the heads appeared to him too masculine in type when compared with the ideal of feminine beauty which now appeals to us.

“The medieval painters, when representing the general type of angels and saints, van Eyck and Memmling in their Madonnas and female saints, paint heads exhibiting the most clearly defined individual characteristics, but into these feeling representations of delicate virginity there intrude certain harsh lineaments, so that the heads strike us as masculine, or as a little too old. Van Eyck’s Madonnas, with the Christ-child at their breast, frequently look to us like women of thirty years old. But the painter must have followed Nature; it is Nature which since his time has changed. The tender virgin of three hundred years ago had more masculine lineaments than she has at the present day, and he who in the portrait of a Maria Stuart expects to find a face like one he would meet in a modern journal of fashion will find himself greatly disappointed by certain traits in the pictures of this celebrated beauty, traits which to the nineteenth century would seem almost masculine.”

The contrast between the sexes becomes with advancing civilization continually sharper and more individualized, whereas in primitive conditions, and even at the present day among agricultural labourers and the proletariat, it is less sharp and to some extent even obliterated. Let the reader familiarize himself with the likenesses of modern women of the working classes; they seem to us almost to resemble disguised men. In the stature, also, of the sexes among savage peoples, and among the lower classes of the civilized nations, the sexual differences are much less marked than in our cultivated large towns. Very characteristic of the differentiating influence of civilization is, moreover, the effect on the voice. Riehl remarks on this subject:

“The tone of the voice even, in simpler conditions of civilization, is generally far more alike in the two sexes. The high tenor, the feminine man’s voice, and the deep alto, the masculine woman’s voice, are among civilized peoples far rarer than among savage races, in whom masculine and feminine varieties sometimes seem hardly distinguishable. Our bandmasters travel to Hungary and Galicia to find clear high tenors, whilst deep alto voices are now increasingly difficult to find, for the reason that among the civilized peoples the masculine-feminine contraltos die out. Dominant, on the other side, is the distinct contrast between the two sexual tones of voices—soprano and bass. This fact has already had a determining influence in our school of song; it affects our vocal tone-teaching—to such a hidden, out-of-the-way path have we been led by our recognition of the continually increasing contrast between man and woman.”

Certain phenomena and aberrations of the movement for the emancipation of women, such as the adoption of a masculine style of dress and the use of tobacco, are no more than relapses into a primitive condition, which among the common people has persisted unaltered to the present day. We need merely allude to the man’s hat, the short coat, and the high-laced boot of the Tyrolese women, and to the tobacco-smoking of the women at the wedding festivals among the German peasantry. A false “emancipation” of this kind is frequently encountered among peasants, vagabonds, and gipsies, to which, moreover, the neuter designation of the women of this class as das Mensch and “woman-fellow,” etc., bears witness; we have herein characteristic indications of the fact that “peculiar to the woman of the people is a self-conscious, actively progressive masculine nature.”

That the comparative obliteration of sexual contrasts among the lower orders of modern society is a vestigial relic of primitive conditions, is shown also by the primeval history of the nations. The idea appearing already in the Biblical creation myth, and the thought later expressed by Plato, and recently by Jacob Böhme, that the first human being was originally both man and woman, and that the woman was subsequently formed out of this primeval human being Adam—this pregnant thought merely expresses the fact of the indifference of the sexes among savage people and in the primitive history of mankind. The hermaphrodite of ancient art is, like the man-woman of the modern woman’s movement, an atavism, a retrogression to these long-past stages, of which we have only the above-mentioned vestiges to remind us.[20]

Friedrich Ratzel, in the introduction to his great work on “The Races of Man,” also alludes to this primitive obscuration of sexual contrasts in earlier stages of civilization, and draws therefrom interesting conclusions regarding the existence of a primordial gynecocracy, a “regiment of women.” I have myself discussed this question in the second volume of my book, “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” and shall return to the subject when dealing with masochism.

W. H. Riehl, and after him Heinrich Schurtz, have laid stress on the dangers to civilization involved in the obliteration of sexual differences. Sexual differentiation stands and falls with civilization. The former is the indispensable preliminary of the latter. Destroy it, and the whole course of development will be reversed.

Sexual differences comprise for the most part the diverse development of the so-called “secondary sexual characters”—that is to say, all the differential characteristics which distinguish man from woman, over and above those strictly related to the work of sex—for instance, stature, skeleton, muscles, skin, voice, etc.

The masculine body has evolved to a greater extent than the feminine body as a force-producing machine, for in man the bones and the muscles have a larger development, whereas in woman we observe a greater development of fat, whereby the plasticity of the body is enhanced, but its mechanical utility and energy are impaired.

According to the most recent scientific representation of sexual differences, as we find them enumerated in the monograph of Oskar Schultze, based upon his own observations, and also on the earlier works of Vierordt, Quetelet, Topinard, Pfitzner, Waldeyer, C. H. Stratz, J. Ranke, E. von Lange, Havelock Ellis, Merkel, Bischoff, Rebentisch, Welcker, Schwalbe, Marchand, and others, the most important physical differentiæ between man and woman are the following:

The supporting framework of the body, the osseous skeleton, exhibits important differences in man and woman. The bones of women are on the whole smaller and weaker. Especially extensive sexual differences are noticeable in the pelvis. Wiedersheim regards these sexual differences of the woman’s pelvis as a specific characteristic of the human species. In all the anthropoid apes they are far less strongly marked than in man. Moreover, these differences exhibit a progressive development, which is to an important extent dependent upon advancing civilization. For this reason, as G. Fritsch, Alsberg, and others, point out, among the majority of savage races the differences between the male and the female pelvis are far less extensive than among civilized nations. The characteristic peculiarities of the pelvis of the European woman, which can be distinguished from the male pelvis at a glance—namely, its greater extent in transverse diameter, the greater depression and the wider opening of the anterior osseous arch—are far less marked among women of the South African races and among the South Sea Islanders.

The enlargement of the female pelvis in the course of human evolution is dependent upon the most important of all the factors of civilization, the brain. Even in the human fœtus the great size of the brain gives rise to a far greater proportionate development of the skull than we find in the fœtus of any other mammal. This influences the pelvic inlet and the sacrum, but also the large pelvis, since, in consequence of the adoption by man of the upright posture, the pregnant uterus expands more laterally, and thus opens out the iliac fossæ. In the lower races of man, it is precisely this plate-like expansion of the iliac fossæ which is so much less developed than in the case of civilized races.

Another physical difference between the sexes concerns stature and body-weight.

The mean stature of woman is somewhat less than that of man. Among Europeans it is about 1·60 metres (5 feet 3 inches), as compared with 1·72 metres (5 feet 7³⁄₄ inches) for the average stature of the male. According to Vierordt, the new-born boy is already on the average from ¹⁄₂ to 1 centimetre (¹⁄₅ to ²⁄₅ inch) longer than the new-born girl. Johannes Ranke characterizes the individual factors which give rise to these differences in the following manner:

“The typical bodily development of the human male is characterized by a trunk relatively shorter in relation to the whole stature; but in relation to the length of the trunk, the upper and the lower extremities are longer, the thighs and the legs longer, the hand and the foot also longer; relatively to the long upper arm and to the long thigh respectively, the forearm and the leg are still longer; and relatively to the entire upper extremity, the entire lower extremity is also longer.

“On the other hand, the feminine proportions, remaining more approximate to those of the youthful state, as compared with those of the fully developed male, are distinguished by the following characteristics: comparatively greater length of the trunk; relatively to the length of the trunk, comparatively shorter arms and lower extremities, shorter upper arm and forearm, shorter thigh and leg, shorter hands and feet; relatively to the shorter upper arm, still shorter forearm, and relatively to the shorter thigh, still shorter leg; finally, relatively to the entire upper extremity, shorter lower extremities.”

This difference in the stature is found also in primitive peoples. Among the savage races of Brazil, who are still living in the stone age, Karl von den Steinen found that the average height of the men was 162 centimetres (5 feet 3·8 inches), whilst that of the women was 10·5 centimetres (4·14 inches) less. This difference corresponds exactly with that given in Topinard’s figures as corresponding to the average male height of 162 centimetres (5 feet 3·8 inches).

In relation to the greater length of the body, the other proportions of the male body also exhibit greater figures. More particularly, the width of the shoulders is greater in man as compared with woman.

The body-weight of man is likewise notably greater than that of woman. According to Vierordt, the average weight of a new-born boy in middle Europe is 3,333 grammes (7·348 pounds), as compared with that of a new-born girl 3,200 grammes (7·055 pounds). The difference, therefore, is 133 grammes (0·293 pounds = about 4¹⁄₂ ounces). In the case of adults, the mean difference amounts to 7 kilogrammes (15 pounds), since the average weight of man is 65 kilogrammes (143 pounds), that of woman 58 kilogrammes (128 pounds).

Corresponding with the slighter development of the skeleton, the muscular system in woman is also less strongly developed; the muscles contain a larger percentage of water than those of man, and in this point also we find a resemblance to the juvenile state.

On the other hand, the development of fat in woman is much greater than in man. Bischoff investigated the relations between muscle and fat in man and woman, and found that in the entire body in the male there was 41·8 per cent. muscle and 18·2 per cent. fat; in the female 35·8 per cent. muscle and 28·2 per cent. fat. In the female two regions of the body are distinguished by a specially abundant deposit of fat, the breast and the buttocks, whereby both parts receive the stamp of extremely prominent secondary sexual characters. Upon this greater deposit of fat depends the softer, more rounded form of the feminine body; whilst the muscular system is less developed than in man. Man, on the other hand, is especially powerful in the head, neck, breast, and upper extremities. The contrast between the typical beauty of man and woman, respectively, is mainly explicable by the differences just enumerated.

Woman’s skin is clearer and more delicate than that of man.

More important is the fact that the blood of man contains a notably larger quantity of red blood-corpuscles (erythrocytes) than that of woman. Woman’s blood is richer in water. Welcker found in a cubic millimetre of man’s blood 5,000,000, and in the same quantity of woman’s blood 4,500,000 blood-discs. In correspondence with this, the hæmoglobin content and the specific weight of woman’s blood are both less than those of man’s. Since the red blood-corpuscles play a very important part in the human economy as oxygen-carriers, this sexual difference in the corpuscular richness of the blood is very important, and influences to a high degree the bodily organization of both sexes.

Larynx and voice remain infantile in woman. Woman’s larynx is notably smaller than man’s. After puberty woman’s voice is, on the average, in the deep tones an octave, in the high tones two octaves, higher than man’s.

According to the investigations of Pfitzner, the measurements of the head (length, breadth, height, circumference) are smaller in woman than in man. Woman’s skull remains, in respect of numerous peculiarities of structure, strikingly like the skull of the child.[21] This infantile quality of a woman’s skull, we must again point out, justifies no conclusion regarding the inferiority of woman. Schultze, when presenting these data for our consideration, rightly reminds us of the well-known fact that the man of genius is also frequently distinguished by infantile peculiarities.

Woman’s skull is absolutely smaller than man’s; hence, of course, her brain is also absolutely smaller. Waldeyer gives as the mean weight of a man’s brain 1,372 grammes (44·12 ounces), and of a woman’s brain, 1,231 grammes (39·58 ounces); Schwalbe’s figures are respectively 1,375 grammes (44·21 ounces) and 1,245 grammes (40·03 ounces).

In this connexion O. Schultze remarks:

“The question immediately arises, whether we are justified in speaking of the mental ‘inferiority’ of woman, because her brain weighs less than that of man.

“Now, in the first place, it is obvious that the greater body-weight of man demands a greater weight of brain. And there is nothing remarkable about the fact that the greater size exhibited by many organs of the male should be exhibited also by the brain. It seems very natural that the unquestionably greater functional activity which has distinguished the masculine brain for many thousand years should be manifested by the notably greater size of that organ, just as a larger muscle generally performs more work than a small one.

“As a matter of fact, among the numerous investigators occupied with this question, many have assumed that differences in the psychical power of human brains are dependent upon differences in their size. But this is an assumption merely, and with Bischoff, who as long as forty years ago conducted an exhaustive investigation into the problem of the relations between brain-weight and intellectual capacity, we must say also to-day that ‘the proof of any such connexion has not yet been offered us.’”

Whether the study of the finer structure of the brain in man and woman will enable us to form more trustworthy conclusions regarding their respective intellectual valuation, is a question whose answer must for the present be postponed. According to Rüdinger and Passet, in new-born boys and girls there exist very remarkable differences in the formation and development of the brain. In the male fœtal brain the frontal lobes are larger, wider, and higher; the convolutions, especially those of the parietal lobe, are better formed than in the female fœtal brain. Waldeyer was able to confirm this observation, and he considers it of great importance, especially in view of the large share which the frontal lobes have in the performance of purely intellectual functions. Broca, however, was unable to detect a lesser development of the frontal lobes in woman. Eberstaller and Cunningham even believed that they could establish that this portion of the brain was more powerfully developed in woman! Finally, the great Swedish cerebral anatomist, G. Retzius, made an exact investigation of the sexual differences between the brains of man and woman in the adult state. According to O. Schultze, his results can be regarded as authoritative. Retzius stated that hitherto no specific invariably recurrent peculiarity had been found by which the female brain could always with certainty be distinguished from the male; still, he was inclined to attribute to woman’s brain a greater simplicity of structure; it showed less divergence from the fundamental type.

This coincides with the fact to which we have already alluded, that woman as compared with man possesses less variability, that she is the simpler, more primitive being. Similarly, experience teaches ethnologists that the men of a race differ from one another to a much greater extent than the women.[22]

If we wish to sum up in a word the nature of the physical sexual differences, we must say: Woman remains more akin to the child than man.

This, however, in no way constitutes an inferiority, as Havelock Ellis and Oskar Schultze have convincingly shown. It is only the expression of a primitive difference in nature, brought about by the adaptation of the female body to the purposes of reproduction. This is the cause of the more infantile habitus of women (according to the above-quoted biological law of Herbert Spencer).

The observation of the physical differences between man and woman also teaches us the futility of the old dispute as to whether man’s body or woman’s was the more beautiful.[23] The different tasks which lie before the male and female bodies respectively give rise to different development of individual parts. If this development is complete in its kind, the body is beautiful. Stratz, in the introduction to his book on “The Beauty of the Female Body,” has rightly identified perfect beauty with perfect health. Man’s body and woman’s will alike be beautiful if all secondary sexual characters are developed in a harmonious and not excessive degree, if the idea of “manliness in man” and “womanliness in woman” have attained full expression, and have not been unduly limited by isolated peculiarities and variations.

Masculine and feminine beauty are different. There can be no question regarding the superiority of one or the other.

[19] Another author—H. Quensel—goes even farther than this in his book (in some respects most fantastic), “Do We Advance? An Ideal Philosophical Hypothesis of the Evolution of the Human Psyche based upon Natural Science,” pp. 152, 153 (Cologne, 1904). He writes: “When we compare the position in civilization of man and woman, we find that man unquestionably takes the higher position in respect of those intellectual impulses which serve as the basis of the higher and the highest stages of civilization, especially the impulse of building and construction, of the collection and the elaboration of scientific facts, in regard to the science of statesmanship and social activities, in respect also of the study of the connexion between cause and effect, and in respect of art. When, however, we apply to the problem before us the data I have obtained concerning the details of physical retrogression and of psychical advance, it appears that woman in many relations stands unquestionably higher than man; for woman, in her development, not alone in bodily relations, as regards the retrogression of the skeletal and muscular systems and the delicacy of constitution dependent thereon, as regards the cutaneous covering of the body, and as regards speech and voice, has advanced much farther than man on the path of bodily retrogression necessary for the progress of civilization. Positively, also, in all that concerns the development of the highest psychical impulses, the development of general nervous sensibility, of a finer discrimination of moral values and of idealism, of general charity and capacity for self-sacrifice in association with diminishing egoism, of transcendental piety and religious sentiment, and also of clearness of vision, and, finally, in all that concerns the development of an adaptability disclosing supreme psychical differentiation—associated, indeed, with deficient fixity of purpose—woman has advanced far beyond man on the forward path of civilization; that is to say, in respect of civilization, woman unquestionably excels man.”

[20] W. Havelburg, in his essay, “Climate, Race, and Nationality in Relation to Marriage,” published in “Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage and the Married State,” by Senator and Kaminer, p. 127 (London, Rebman, Limited, 1904), also alludes to the significance of progressive sexual differentiation in the process of civilization, and draws attention to the increase in feminine beauty.

[21] We may refer also to Paul Bartel’s valuable work, “Ueber Geschlechtsunterschiede am Schädel”—“Sexual Differences in the Skull” (Berlin, 1898). The author concludes: “We are unable to recognize any important difference between man’s skull and woman’s—probably, indeed, no such difference exists.”

[22] We must not ignore the fact, that other distinguished anthropologists, such as Manouvrier, Pearson, Frassetto, and especially Giuffrida-Ruggieri, have recently contested the slighter variability and the infantile character of woman. Cf. Giuffrida-Ruggieri, “Anthropological Considerations regarding Infantilism, and Conclusions regarding the Origin of the Varieties of the Human Species” (Italian Zoological Review, 1903, vol. xiv., Nos. 4, 5). Cf. also the interesting remarks of Näcke in the “German Archives for Criminal Anthropology,” 1903, vol. xiii., pp. 292, 293.

[23] Konrad Lange—“Das Wesen der Kunst” (“The Nature of Art”), pp. 361-364; Berlin, 1901—has ably exposed the subjective grounds of this ancient dispute, and has shown their untenability.

CHAPTER V
PSYCHICAL DIFFERENTIAL SEXUAL CHARACTERS—THE WOMAN’S QUESTION
(Appendix: SEXUAL SENSIBILITY IN WOMAN)

“Among all the higher activities and movements of our time, the struggle of our sisters to attain an equality of position with the strong, the dominant, the oppressive sex, appears to me, from the purely human point of view, most beautiful and most interesting; indeed, I regard it as possible that the coming century will obtain its historical characterization, not from any of the social and economical controversies of the world of men, but that this century will be known to subsequent history distinctively as that in which the solution of the ‘woman’s question’ was obtained.”—Georg Hirth.