Analysis of the Sexual Impulse/Analysis
The term "sexual instinct" may be said to cover the whole of the neuropsychic phenomena of reproduction which man shares with the lower animals. It is true that much discussion has taken place concerning the proper use of the term "instinct," and some definitions of instinctive action would appear to exclude the essential mechanism of the process whereby sexual reproduction is assured. Such definitions scarcely seem legitimate, and are certainly unfortunate. Herbert Spencer's definition of instinct as "compound reflex action" is sufficiently clear and definite for ordinary use.
A fairly satisfactory definition of instinct is that supplied by Dr. and Mrs. Peckham in the course of their study On the Instincts and Habits of Solitary Wasps. "Under the term 'instinct,'" they say, "we place all complex acts which are performed previous to experience and in a similar manner by all members of the same sex and race, leaving out as non-essential, at this time, the question of whether they are or are not accompanied by consciousness." This definition is quoted with approval by Lloyd Morgan, who modifies and further elaborates it (Animal Behavior, 1900, p. 21). "The distinction between instinctive and reflex behavior," he remarks, "turns in large degree on their relative complexity," and instinctive behavior, he concludes, may be said to comprise "those complex groups of co-ordinated acts which are, on their first occurrence, independent of experience; which tend to the well-being of the individual and the preservation of the race; which are due to the co-operation of external and internal stimuli; which are similarly performed by all the members of the same more or less restricted group of animals; but which are subject to variation, and to subsequent modification under the guidance of experience." Such a definition clearly justifies us in speaking of a "sexual instinct." It may be added that the various questions involved in the definition of the sexual instinct have been fully discussed by Moll in the early sections of his Untersuchungen ueber die Libido Sexualis.
Of recent years there has been a tendency to avoid the use of the term "instinct," or, at all events, to refrain from attaching any serious scientific sense to it. Loeb's influence has especially given force to this tendency. Thus, while Pieron, in an interesting discussion of the question ("Les Problemes Actuels de l'Instinct," Revue Philosophique, Oct., 1908), thinks it would still be convenient to retain the term, giving it a philosophical meaning, Georges Bohn, who devotes a chapter to the notion of instinct (La Naissance de l'Intelligence, 1909), is strongly in favor of eliminating the word, as being merely a legacy of medieval theologians and metaphysicians, serving to conceal our ignorance or our lack of exact analysis.
It may be said that the whole of the task undertaken in these Studies is really an attempt to analyze what is commonly called the sexual instinct. In order to grasp it we have to break it up into its component parts. Lloyd Morgan has pointed out that the components of an instinct may be regarded as four: first, the internal messages giving rise to the impulse; secondly, the external stimuli which co-operate with the impulse to affect the nervous centers; thirdly, the active response due to the co-ordinate outgoing discharges; and, fourthly, the message from the organs concerned in the behavior by which the central nervous system is further affected.[1]
In dealing with the sexual instinct the first two factors are those which we have most fully to discuss. With the external stimuli we shall be concerned in a future volume (IV). We may here confine ourselves mainly to the first factor: the nature of the internal messages which prompt the sexual act. We may, in other words, attempt to analyze the sexual impulse.
The first definition of the sexual impulse we meet with is that which regards it as an impulse of evacuation. The psychological element is thus reduced to a minimum. It is true that, especially in early life, the emotions caused by forced repression of the excretions are frequently massive or acute in the highest degree, and the joy of relief correspondingly great. But in adult life, on most occasions, these desires can be largely pushed into the background of consciousness, partly by training, partly by the fact that involuntary muscular activity is less imperative in adult life; so that the ideal element in connection with the ordinary excretions is almost a negligible quantity. The evacuation theory of the sexual instinct is, however, that which has most popular vogue, and the cynic delights to express it in crude language. It is the view that appeals to the criminal mind, and in the slang of French criminals the brothel is le cloaque. It was also the view implicitly accepted by medieval ascetic writers, who regarded woman as "a temple built over a sewer," and from a very different standpoint it was concisely set forth by Montaigne, who has doubtless contributed greatly to support this view of the matter: "I find," he said, "that Venus, after all, is nothing more than the pleasure of discharging our vessels, just as nature renders pleasurable the discharges from other parts."[2] Luther, again, always compared the sexual to the excretory impulse, and said that marriage was just as necessary as the emission of urine. Sir Thomas More, also, in the second book of Utopia, referring to the pleasure of evacuation, speaks of that felt "when we do our natural easement, or when we be doing the act of generation." This view would, however, scarcely deserve serious consideration if various distinguished investigators, among whom Fere may be specially mentioned, had not accepted it as the best and most accurate definition of the sexual impulse. "The genesic need may be considered," writes Fere, "as a need of evacuation; the choice is determined by the excitations which render the evacuation more agreeable."[3] Certain facts observed in the lower animals tend to support this view; it is, therefore, necessary, in the first place, to set forth the main results of observation on this matter. Spallanzani had shown how the male frog during coitus will undergo the most horrible mutilations, even decapitation, and yet resolutely continue the act of intercourse, which lasts from four to ten days, sitting on the back of the female and firmly clasping her with his forelegs. Goltz confirmed Spallanzani's observations and threw new light on the mechanism of the sexual instinct and the sexual act in the frog. By removing various parts of the female frog Goltz found that every part of the female was attractive to the male at pairing time, and that he was not imposed on when parts of a male were substituted. By removing various of the sense-organs of the male Goltz[4] further found that it was not by any special organ, but by the whole of his sensitive system, that this activity was set in action. If, however, the skin of the arms and of the breast between was removed, no embrace took place; so that the sexual sensations seemed to be exerted through this apparatus. When the testicles were removed the embrace still took place. It could scarcely be said that these observations demonstrated, or in any way indicated, that the sexual impulse is dependent on the need of evacuation. Professor Tarchanoff, of St. Petersburg, however, made an experiment which seemed to be crucial. He took several hundred frogs (Rana temporaria), nearly all in the act of coitus, and in the first place repeated Goltz's experiments. He removed the heart; but this led to no direct or indirect stoppage of coitus, nor did removal of the lungs, parts of the liver, the spleen, the intestines, the stomach, or the kidneys. In the same way even careful removal of both testicles had no result. But on removing the seminal receptacles coitus was immediately or very shortly stopped, and not renewed. Thus, Tarchanoff concluded that in frogs, and possibly therefore in mammals, the seminal receptacles are the starting-point of the centripetal impulse which by reflex action sets in motion the complicated apparatus of sexual activity.[5] A few years later the question was again taken up by Steinach, of Prague. Granting that Tarchanoff's experiments are reliable as regards the frog, Steinach points out that we may still ask whether in mammals the integrity of the seminal receptacles is bound up with the preservation of sexual excitability. This cannot be taken for granted, nor can we assume that the seminal receptacles of the frog are homologous with the seminal vesicles of mammals. In order to test the question, Steinach chose the white rat, as possessing large seminal vesicles and a very developed sexual impulse. He found that removal of the seminal sacs led to no decrease in the intensity of the sexual impulse; the sexual act was still repeated with the same frequency and the same vigor. But these receptacles, Steinach proceeded to argue, do not really contain semen, but a special secretion of their own; they are anatomically quite unlike the seminal receptacles of the frog; so that no doubt is thus thrown on Tarchanoff's observations. Steinach remarked, however, that one's faith is rather shaken by the fact that in the Esculenta, which in sexual life closely resembles Rana temporaria, there are no seminal receptacles. He therefore repeated Tarchanoff's experiments, and found that the seminal receptacles were empty before coitus, only becoming gradually filled during coitus; it could not, therefore, be argued that the sexual impulse started from the receptacles. He then extirpated the seminal receptacles, avoiding hemorrhage as far as possible, and found that, in the majority of cases so operated on, coitus still continued for from five to seven days, and in the minority for a longer time. He therefore concluded, with Goltz, that it is from the swollen testicles, not from the seminal receptacles, that the impulse first starts. Goltz himself pointed out that the fact that the removal of the testicles did not stop coitus by no means proves that it did not begin it, for, when the central nervous mechanism is once set in action, it can continue even when the exciting stimulus is removed. By extirpating the testicles some months before the sexual season he found that no coitus occurred. At the same time, even in these frogs, a certain degree of sexual inclination and a certain excitability of the embracing center still persisted, disappearing when the sexual epoch was over.
According to most recent writers, the seminal vesicles of mammals are receptacles for their own albuminous secretion, the function of which is unknown. Steinach could find no spermatozoa in these "seminal" sacs, and therefore he proposed to use Owen's name of glandulae vesiculares. After extirpation of these vesicular glands in the white rat typical coitus occurred. But the capacity for procreation was diminished, and extirpation of both glandulae vesiculares and glandulae prostaticae led to disappearance of the capacity for procreation. Steinach came to the conclusion that this is because the secretions of these glands impart increased vitality to the spermatozoa, and he points out that great fertility and high development of the accessory sexual glands go together.
Steinach found that, when sexually mature white rats were castrated, though at first they remained as potent as ever, their potency gradually declined; sexual excitement, however, and sexual inclination always persisted. He then proceeded to castrate rats before puberty and discovered the highly significant fact that in these also a quite considerable degree of sexual inclination appeared. They followed, sniffed, and licked the females like ordinary males; and that this was not a mere indication of curiosity was shown by the fact that they made attempts at coitus which only differed from those of normal males by the failure of erection and ejaculation, though, occasionally, there was imperfect erection. This lasted for a year, and then their sexual inclinations began to decline, and they showed signs of premature age. These manifestations of sexual sense Steinach compares to those noted in the human species during childhood.[6]
The genesic tendencies are thus, to a certain degree, independent of the generative glands, although the development of these glands serves to increase the genesic ability and to furnish the impulsion necessary to assure procreation, as well as to insure the development of the secondary sexual characters, probably by the influence of secretions elaborated and thrown into the system from the primary sexual glands.[7]
Halban ("Die Entstehung der Geschlechtscharaktere," Archiv fuer Gynaekologie, 1903, pp. 205-308) argues that the primary sex glands do not necessarily produce the secondary sex characters, nor inhibit the development of those characteristic of the opposite sex. It is indeed the rule, but it is not the inevitable result. Sexual differences exist from the first. Nussbaum made experiments on frogs (Rana fusca), which go through a yearly cycle of secondary sexual changes at the period of heat. These changes cease on castration, but, if the testes of other frogs are introduced beneath the skin of the castrated frogs, Nussbaum found that they acted as if the frog had not been castrated. It is the secretion of the testes which produces the secondary sexual changes. But Nussbaum found that the testicular secretion does not work if the nerves of the secondary sexual region are cut, and that the secretion has no direct action on the organism. Pflueger, discussing these experiments (Archiv fuer die Gesammte Physiologie, 1907, vol. cxvi, parts 5 and 6), disputes this conclusion, and argues that the secretion is not dependent on the action of the nervous system, and that therefore the secondary sexual characters are independent of the nervous system.
Steinach has also in later experiments ("Geschlechtstrieb und echt Sekundaere Geschlechtsmerkmale als Folge der innerskretorischen Funktion der Keimdrusen," Zentralblatt fuer Physiologie, Bd. xxiv, Nu. 13, 1910) argued against any local nervous influence. He found in Rana fusca and esculenta that after castration in autumn the impulse to grasp the female persisted in some degrees and then disappeared, reappearing in a slight degree, however, every winter at the normal period of sexual activity. But when the testicular substance of actively sexual frogs was injected into the castrated frogs it exerted an elective action on the sexual reflex, sometimes in a few hours, but the action is, Steinach concludes, first central. The testicular secretion of frogs that were not sexually active had no stimulating action, but if the frogs were sexually active the injection of their central nervous substance was as effective as their testicular substance. In either case, Steinach concludes, there is the removal of an inhibition which is in operation at sexually quiescent periods.
Speaking generally, Steinach considers that there is a process of "erotisation" (Erotisieurung) of the nervous center under the influence of the internal testicular secretions, and that this persists even when the primary physical stimulus has been removed.
The experience of veterinary surgeons also shows that the sexual impulse tends to persist in animals after castration. Thus the ox and the gelding make frequent efforts to copulate with females in heat. In some cases, at all events in the case of the horse, castrated animals remain potent, and are even abnormally ardent, although impregnation cannot, of course, result.[8]
The results obtained by scientific experiment and veterinary experience on the lower animals are confirmed by observation of various groups of phenomena in the human species. There can be no doubt that castrated men may still possess sexual impulses. This has been noted by observers in various countries in which eunuchs are made and employed.[9]
It is important to remember that there are different degrees of castration, for in current language these are seldom distinguished. The Romans recognized four different degrees: 1. True castrati, from whom both the testicles and the penis had been removed. 2. Spadones, from whom the testicles only had been removed; this was the most common practice. 3. Thlibiae, in whom the testicles had not been removed, but destroyed by crushing; this practice is referred to by Hippocrates. 4. Thlasiae, in whom the spermatic cord had simply been cut. Millant, from whose Paris thesis (Castration Criminelle et Maniaque, 1902) I take these definitions, points out that it was recognized that spadones remained apt for coitus if the operation was performed after puberty, a fact appreciated by many Roman ladies, ad seouras libidinationes, as St. Jerome remarked, while Martial (lib. iv) said of a Roman lady who sought eunuchs: "Vult futui Gallia, non parere." (See also Millant, Les Eunuques a Travers les Ages, 1909, and articles by Lipa Bey and Zambaco, Sexual-Probleme, Oct. and Dec., 1911.)
In China, Matignon, formerly physician to the French legation in Pekin, tells us that eunuchs are by no means without sexual feeling, that they seek the company of women and, he believes, gratify their sexual desires by such methods as are left open to them, for the sexual organs are entirely removed. It would seem probable that, the earlier the age at which the operation is performed, the less marked are the sexual desires, for Matignon mentions that boys castrated before the age of 10 are regarded by the Chinese as peculiarly virginal and pure.[10] At Constantinople, where the eunuchs are of negro race, castration is usually complete and performed before puberty, in order to abolish sexual potency and desire as far as possible. Even when castration is effected in infancy, sexual desire is not necessarily rendered impossible. Thus Marie has recorded the case of an insane Egyptian eunuch whose penis and scrotum were removed in infancy; yet, he had frequent and intense sexual desire with ejaculation of mucus and believed that an invisible princess touched him and aroused voluptuous sensations. Although the body had a feminine appearance, the prostate was normal and the vesiculae seminales not atrophied.[11] It may be added that Lancaster[12] quotes the following remark, made by a resident for many years in the land, concerning Nubian eunuchs: "As far as I can judge, sex feeling exists unmodified by absence of the sexual organs. The eunuch differs from the man not in the absence of sexual passion, but only in the fact that he cannot fully gratify it. As far as he can approach a gratification of it he does so." In this connection it may be noted that (as quoted by Moll) Jaeger attributes the preference of some women—noted in ancient Rome and in the East—for castrated men as due not only to the freedom from risk of impregnation in such intercourse, but also to the longer duration of erection in the castrated.
When castration is performed without removal of the penis it is said that potency remains for at least ten years afterward, and Disselhorst, who in his Die accessorischen Geschlechtsdruesen der Wirbelthiere takes the same view as has been here adopted, mentions that, according to Pelikan (Das Skopzentum in Ruessland), those castrated at puberty are fit for coitus long afterward. When castration is performed for surgical reasons at a later age it is still less likely to affect potency or to change the sexual feelings.[13] Guinard concludes that the sexual impulse after castration is relatively more persistent in man than in the lower animals, and is sometimes even heightened, being probably more dependent on external stimuli.[14]
Except in the East, castration is more often performed on women than on men, and then the evidence as to the influence of the removal of the ovaries on the sexual emotions shows varying results. It has been found that after castration sexual desire and sexual pleasure in coitus may either remain the same, be diminished or extinguished, or be increased. By some the diminution has been attributed to autosuggestion, the woman being convinced that she can no longer be like other women; the augmentation of desire and pleasure has been supposed to be due to the removal of the dread of impregnation. We have, of course, to take into account individual peculiarities, method of life, and the state of the health.
In France Jayle ("Effets physiologiques de la Castration chez la Femme," Revue de Gynecologie, 1897, pp. 403-57) found that, among 33 patients in whom ovariotomy had been performed, in 18 sexual desire remained the same, in 3 it was diminished, in 8 abolished, in 3 increased; while pleasure in coitus remained the same in 17, was diminished in 1, abolished in 4, and increased in 5, in 6 cases sexual intercourse was very painful. In two other groups of cases—one in which both ovaries and uterus were removed and another in which the uterus alone was removed—the results were not notably different.
In Germany Glaeveke (Archiv fuer Gynaekologie, Bd. xxxv, 1889) found that desire remained in 6 cases, was diminished in 10, and disappeared in 11, while pleasure in intercourse remained in 8, was diminished in 10, and was lost in 8. Pfister, again (Archiv fuer Gynaekologie, Bd. lvi, 1898), examined this point in 99 castrated women; he remarks that sexual desire and sexual pleasure in intercourse were usually associated, and found the former unchanged in 19 cases, decreased in 24, lost in 35, never present in 21, while the latter was unchanged in 18 cases and diminished or lost in 60. Keppler (International Medical Congress, Berlin, 1890) found that among 46 castrated women sexual feeling was in no case abolished. Adler also, who discusses this question (Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, 1904, p. 75 et seq.), criticises Glaeveke's statements and concludes that there is no strict relation between the sexual organs and the sexual feelings. Kisch, who has known several cases in which the feelings remained the same as before the operation, brings together (The Sexual Life of Women) varying opinions of numerous authors regarding the effects of removal of the ovaries on the sexual appetite.
In America Bloom (as quoted in Medical Standard, 1896, p. 121) found that in none of the cases of women investigated, in which ooephorectomy had been performed before the age of 33, was the sexual appetite entirely lost; in most of them it had not materially diminished and in a few it was intensified. There was, however, a general consensus of opinion that the normal vaginal secretion during coitus was greatly lessened. In the cases of women over 33, including also hysterectomies, a gradual lessening of sexual feeling and desire was found to occur most generally. Dr. Isabel Davenport records 2 cases (reported in Medical Standard, 1895, p. 346) of women between 30 and 35 years of age whose erotic tendencies were extreme; the ovaries and tubes were removed, in one case for disease, in the other with a view of removing the sexual tendencies; in neither case was there any change. Lapthorn Smith (Medical Record, vol. xlviii) has reported the case of an unmarried woman of 24 whose ovaries and tubes had been removed seven years previously for pain and enlargement, and the periods had disappeared for six years; she had had experience of sexual intercourse, and declared that she had never felt such extreme sexual excitement and pleasure as during coitus at the end of this time.
In England Lawson Tait and Bantock (British Medical Journal, October 14, 1899, p. 975) have noted that sexual passion seems sometimes to be increased even after the removal of ovaries, tubes, and uterus. Lawson Tait also stated (British Gynaecological Journal, Feb., 1887, p. 534) that after systematic and extensive inquiry he had not found a single instance in which, provided that sexual appetite existed before the removal of the appendages, it was abolished by that operation. A Medical Inquiry Committee appointed by the Liverpool Medical Institute (ibid., p. 617) had previously reported that a considerable number of patients stated that they had suffered a distinct loss of sexual feeling. Lawson Tait, however, throws doubts on the reliability of the Committee's results, which were based on the statements of unintelligent hospital patients.
I may quote the following remarks from a communication sent to me by an experienced physician in Australia: "No rule can be laid down in cases in which both ovaries have been extirpated. Some women say that, though formerly passionate, they have since become quite indifferent, but I am of opinion that the majority of women who have had prior sexual experience retain desire and gratification in an equal degree to that they had before operation. I know one case in which a young girl hardly 19 years old, who had been accustomed to congress for some twelve months, had trouble which necessitated the removal of the ovaries and tubes on both sides. Far from losing all her desire or gratification, both were very materially increased in intensity. Menstruation has entirely ceased, without loss of femininity in either disposition or appearance. During intercourse, I am told, there is continuous spasmodic contraction of various parts of the vagina and vulva."
The independence of the sexual impulse from the distention of the sexual glands is further indicated by the great frequency with which sexual sensations, in a faint or even strong degree, are experienced in childhood and sometimes in infancy, and by the fact that they often persist in women long after the sexual glands have ceased their functions.
In the study of auto-erotism in another volume of these Studies I have brought together some of the evidence showing that even in very young children spontaneous self-induced sexual excitement, with orgasm, may occur. Indeed, from an early age sexual differences pervade the whole nervous tissue. I may here quote the remarks of an experienced gynecologist: "I venture to think," Braxton Hicks said many years ago, "that those who have much attended to children will agree with me in saying that, almost from the cradle, a difference can be seen in manner, habits of mind, and in illness, requiring variations in their treatment. The change is certainly hastened and intensified at the time of puberty; but there is, even to an average observer, a clear difference between the sexes from early infancy, gradually becoming more marked up to puberty. That sexual feelings exist [it would be better to say 'may exist'] from earliest infancy is well known, and therefore this function does not depend upon puberty, though intensified by it. Hence, may we not conclude that the progress toward development is not so abrupt as has been generally supposed? … The changes of puberty are all of them dependent on the primordial force which, gradually gathering in power, culminates in the perfection both of form and of the sexual system, primary and secondary."
There appear to have been but few systematic observations on the persistence of the sexual impulse in women after the menopause. It is regarded as a fairly frequent phenomenon by Kisch, and also by Loewenfeld (Sexualleben und Nervenleiden, p. 29). In America, Bloom (as quoted in Medical Standard, 1896), from an investigation of four hundred cases, found that in some cases the sexual impulse persisted to a very advanced age, and mentions a case of a woman of 70, twenty years past the menopause, who had been long a widow, but had recently married, and who declared that both desire and gratification were as great, if not greater, than before the menopause.
Reference may finally be made to those cases in which the sexual impulse has developed notwithstanding the absence, verified or probable, of any sexual glands at all. In such cases sexual desire and sexual gratification are sometimes even stronger than normal. Colman has reported a case in which neither ovaries nor uterus could be detected, and the vagina was too small for coitus, but pleasurable intercourse took place by the rectum and sexual desire was at times so strong as to amount almost to nymphomania. Clara Barrus has reported the case of a woman in whom there was congenital absence of uterus and ovaries, as proved subsequently by autopsy, but the sexual impulse was very strong and she had had illicit intercourse with a lover. She suffered from recurrent mania, and then masturbated shamelessly; when sane she was attractively feminine. Macnaughton-Jones describes the case of a woman of 32 with normal sexual feelings and fully developed breasts, clitoris, and labia, but no vagina or internal genitalia could be detected even under the most thorough examination. In a case of Bridgman's, again, the womb and ovaries were absent, and the vagina small, but coitus was not painful, and the voluptuous sensations were complete and sexual passion was strong. In a case of Cotterill's, the ovaries and uterus were of minute size and functionless, and the vagina was absent, but the sexual feelings were normal, and the clitoris preserved its usual sensibility. Munde had recorded two similar cases, of which he presents photographs. In all these cases not only was the sexual impulse present in full degree, but the subjects were feminine in disposition and of normal womanly conformation; in most cases the external sexual organs were properly developed.[15]
Fere (L'Instinct sexuel, p. 241) has sought to explain away some of these phenomena, in so far as they may be brought against the theory that the secretions and excretions of the sexual glands are the sole source of the sexual impulse. The persistence of sexual feelings after castration may be due, he argues, to the presence of the nerves in the cicatrices, just as the amputated have the illusion that the missing limb is still there. Exactly the same explanation has since been put forward by Moll, Medizinische Klinik, 1905, Nrs. 12 and 13. In the same way the presence of sexual feelings after the menopause may be due to similar irritation determined by degeneration during involution of the glands. The precocious appearance of the sexual impulse in childhood he would explain as due to an anomaly of development in the sexual organs. Fere makes no attempt to explain the presence of the sexual impulse in the congenital absence of the sexual glands; here, however, Munde intervenes with the suggestion that it is possible that in most cases "an infinitesimal trace of ovary" may exist, and preserve femininity, though insufficient to produce ovulation or menstruation.
It is proper to mention these ingenious arguments. They are, however, purely hypothetical, obviously invented to support a theory. It can scarcely be said that they carry conviction. We may rather agree with Guinard that so great is the importance of reproduction that nature has multiplied the means by which preparation is made for the conjunction of the sexes and the roads by which sexual excitation may arrive. As Hirschfeld puts it, in a discussion of this subject (Sexual-Probleme, Feb., 1912), "Nature has several irons in the fire."
It will be seen that the conclusions we have reached indirectly involve the assumption that the spinal nervous centers, through which the sexual mechanism operates, are not sufficient to account for the whole of the phenomena of the sexual impulse. The nervous circuit tends to involve a cerebral element, which may sometimes be of dominant importance. Various investigators, from the time of Gall onward, have attempted to localize the sexual instinct centrally. Such attempts, however, cannot be said to have succeeded, although they tend to show that there is a real connection between the brain and the generative organs. Thus Ceni, of Modena, by experiments on chickens, claims to have proved the influence of the cortical centers of procreation on the faculty of generation, for he found that lesions of the cortex led to sterility corresponding in degree to the lesion; but as these results followed even independently of any disturbance of the sexual instinct, their significance is not altogether clear (Carlo Ceni, "L'Influenza dei Centri Corticali sui Fenomeni della Generazione," Revista Sperimentale di Freniatria, 1907, fasc. 2-3). At present, as Obici and Marchesini have well remarked, all that we can do is to assume the existence of cerebral as well as spinal sexual centers; a cerebral sexual center, in the strictest sense, remains purely hypothetical.
Although Gall's attempt to locate the sexual instinct in the cerebellum—well supported as it was by observations—is no longer considered to be tenable, his discussion of the sexual instinct was of great value, far in advance of his time, and accompanied by a mass of facts gathered from many fields. He maintained that the sexual instinct is a function of the brain, not of the sexual organs. He combated the view ruling in his day that the seat of erotic mania must be sought in the sexual organs. He fully dealt with the development of the sexual instinct in many children before maturity of the sexual glands, the prolongation of the instinct into old age, its existence in the castrated and in the congenital absence of the sexual glands; he pointed out that even with an apparently sound and normal sexual apparatus all sorts of psychic pathological deviations may yet occur. In fact, all the lines of argument I have briefly indicated in the foregoing pages—although when they were first written this fact was unknown to me—had been fully discussed by this remarkable man nearly a century ago. (The greater part of the third volume of Gall's Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau, in the edition of 1825, is devoted to this subject. For a good summary, sympathetic, though critical, of Gall's views on this matter, see Moebius, "Ueber Gall's Specielle Organologie," Schmidt's Jahrbuecher der Medicin, 1900, vol. cclxvii; also Ausgewahlte Werke, vol. vii.)
It will be seen that the question of the nature of the sexual impulse has been slowly transformed. It is no longer a question of the formation of semen in the male, of the function of menstruation in the female. It has become largely a question of physiological chemistry. The chief parts in the drama of sex, alike on its psychic as on its physical sides, are thus supposed to be played by two mysterious protagonists, the hormones, or internal secretions, of the testes and of the ovary. Even the part played by the brain is now often regarded as chemical, the brain being considered to be a great chemical laboratory. There is a tendency, moreover, to extend the sexual sphere so as to admit the influence of internal secretions from other glands. The thymus, the adrenals, the thyroid, the pituitary, even the kidneys: it is possible that internal secretions from all these glands may combine to fill in the complete picture of sexuality as we know it in men and women.[16] The subject is, however, so complex and at present so little known that it would be hazardous, and for the present purpose it is needless, to attempt to set forth any conclusions.
It is sufficiently clear that there is on the surface a striking analogy between sexual desire and the impulse to evacuate an excretion, and that this analogy is not only seen in the frog, but extends also to the highest vertebrates. It is quite another matter, however, to assert that the sexual impulse can be adequately defined as an impulse to evacuate. To show fully the inadequate nature of this conception would require a detailed consideration of the facts of sexual life. That is, however, unnecessary. It is enough to point out certain considerations which alone suffice to invalidate this view. In the first place, it must be remarked that the trifling amount of fluid emitted in sexual intercourse is altogether out of proportion to the emotions aroused by the act and to its after-effect on the organism; the ancient dictum omne animal post coitum triste may not be exact, but it is certain that the effect of coitus on the organism is far more profound than that produced by the far more extensive evacuation of the bladder or bowels. Again, this definition leaves unexplained all those elaborate preliminaries which, both in man and the lower animals, precede the sexual act, preliminaries which in civilized human beings sometimes themselves constitute a partial satisfaction to the sexual impulse. It must also be observed that, unlike the ordinary excretions, this discharge of the sexual glands is not always, or in every person, necessary at all. Moreover, the theory of evacuation at once becomes hopelessly inadequate when we apply it to women; no one will venture to claim that an adequate psychological explanation of the sexual impulse in a woman is to be found in the desire to expel a little bland mucus from the minute glands of the genital tract. We must undoubtedly reject this view of the sexual impulse. It has a certain element of truth and it permits an instructive and helpful analogy; but that is all. The sexual act presents many characters which are absent in an ordinary act of evacuation, and, on the other hand, it lacks the special characteristic of the evacuation proper, the elimination of waste material; the seminal fluid is not a waste material, and its retention is, to some extent perhaps, rather an advantage than a disadvantage to the organism.
Eduard von Hartmann long since remarked that the satisfaction of what we call the sexual instinct through an act carried out with a person of the opposite sex is a very wonderful phenomenon. It cannot be said, however, that the conception of the sexual act as a simple process of evacuation does anything to explain the wonder. We are, at most, in the same position as regards the stilling of normal sexual desire as we should be as regards the emptying of the bladder, supposing it were very difficult for either sex to effect this satisfactorily without the aid of a portion of the body of a person of the other sex acting as a catheter. In such a case our thoughts and ideals would center around persons of opposite sex, and we should court their attention and help precisely as we do now in the case of our sexual needs. Some such relationship does actually exist in the case of the suckling mother and her infant. The mother is indebted to the child for the pleasurable relief of her distended breasts; and, while in civilization more subtle pleasures and intelligent reflection render this massive physical satisfaction comparatively unessential to the act of suckling, in more primitive conditions and among animals the need of this pleasurable physical satisfaction is a real bond between the mother and her offspring. The analogy is indeed very close: the erectile nipple corresponds to the erectile penis, the eager watery mouth of the infant to the moist and throbbing vagina, the vitally albuminous milk to the vitally albuminous semen.[17] The complete mutual satisfaction, physical and psychic, of mother and child, in the transfer from one to the other of a precious organized fluid, is the one true physiological analogy to the relationship of a man and a woman at the climax of the sexual act. Even this close analogy, however, fails to cover all the facts of the sexual life.
A very different view is presented to us in the definition of the sexual instinct as a reproductive impulse, a desire for offspring. Hegar, Eulenburg, Naecke, and Loewenfeld have accepted this as, at all events, a partial definition.[18] No one, indeed, would argue that it is a complete definition, although a few writers appear to have asserted that it is so sometimes as regards the sexual impulse in women. There is, however, considerable mental confusion in the attempt to set up such a definition. If we define an instinct as an action adapted to an end which is not present to consciousness, then it is quite true that the sexual instinct is an instinct of reproduction. But we do not adequately define the sexual instinct by merely stating its ultimate object. We might as well say that the impulse by which young animals seize food is "an instinct of nutrition." The object of reproduction certainly constitutes no part of the sexual impulse whatever in any animal apart from man, and it reveals a lack of the most elementary sense of biological continuity to assert that in man so fundamental and involuntary a process can suddenly be revolutionized. That the sexual impulse is very often associated with a strong desire for offspring there can be no doubt, and in women the longing for a child—that is to say, the longing to fulfill those functions for which their bodies are constituted—may become so urgent and imperative that we may regard it as scarcely less imperative than the sexual impulse. But it is not the sexual impulse, though intimately associated with it, and though it explains it. A reproductive instinct might be found in parthenogenetic animals, but would be meaningless, because useless, in organisms propagating by sexual union. A woman may not want a lover, but may yet want a child. This merely means that her maternal instincts have been aroused, while her sexual instincts are still latent. A desire for reproduction, as soon as that desire becomes instinctive, necessarily takes on the form of the sexual impulse, for there is no other instinctive mechanism by which it can possibly express itself. A "reproductive instinct," apart from the sexual instinct and apart from the maternal instinct, cannot be admitted; it would be an absurdity. Even in women in whom the maternal instincts are strong, it may generally be observed that, although before a woman is in love, and also during the later stages of her love, the conscious desire for a child may be strong, during the time when sexual passion is at its highest the thought of offspring, under normally happy conditions, tends to recede into the background. Reproduction is the natural end and object of the sexual instinct, but the statement that it is part of the contents of the sexual impulse, or can in any way be used to define that impulse, must be dismissed as altogether inacceptable. Indeed, although the term "reproductive instinct" is frequently used, it is seldom used in a sense that we need take seriously; it is vaguely employed as a euphemism by those who wish to veil the facts of the sexual life; it is more precisely employed mainly by those who are unconsciously dominated by a superstitious repugnance to sex.
I now turn to a very much more serious and elaborate attempt to define the constitution of the sexual impulse, that of Moll. He finds that it is made up of two separate components, each of which may be looked upon as an uncontrollable impulse.[19] One of these is that by which the tension of the sexual organs is spasmodically relieved; this he calls the impulse of detumescence,[20] and he regards it as primary, resembling the impulse to empty a full bladder. The other impulse is the "instinct to approach, touch, and kiss another person, usually of the opposite sex"; this he terms the impulse of contrectation, and he includes under this head not only the tendency to general physical contact, but also the psychic inclination to become generally interested in a person of the opposite sex. Each of these primary impulses Moll regards as forming a constituent of the sexual instinct in both men and women. It seems to me undoubtedly true that these two impulses do correspond to the essential phenomena. The awkward and unsatisfactory part of Moll's analysis is the relation of the one to the other. It is true that he traces both impulses back to the sexual glands, that of detumescence directly, that of contrectation indirectly; but evidently he does not regard them as intimately related to each other; he insists on the fact that they may exist apart from each other, that they do not appear synchronously in youth: the contrectation impulse he regards as secondary; it is, he states, an indirect result of the sexual glands, "only to be understood by the developmental history of these glands and the object which they subserve"; that is to say, that it is connected with the rise of the sexual method of reproduction and the desirability of the mingling of the two sexes in procreation, while the impulse of detumescence arose before the sexual method of reproduction had appeared; thus the contrectation impulse was propagated by natural selection together with the sexual method of reproduction. The impulse of contrectation is secondary, and Moll even regards it as a secondary sexual character.
While, therefore, this analysis seems to include all the phenomena and to be worthy of very careful study as a serious and elaborate attempt to present an adequate psychological definition of the sexual impulse, it scarcely seems to me that we can accept it in precisely the form in which Moll presents it. I believe, however, that by analyzing the process a little more minutely we shall find that these two constituents of the sexual impulse are really much more intimately associated than at the first glance appears, and that we need by no means go back to the time when the sexual method of reproduction arose to explain the significance of the phenomena which Moll includes under the term contrectation.
To discover the true significance of the phenomena in men it is necessary to observe carefully the phenomena of love-making not only among men, but among animals, in which the impulse of contrectation plays a very large part, and involves an enormous expenditure of energy. Darwin was the first to present a comprehensive view of, at all events a certain group of, the phenomena of contrectation in animals; on his interpretation of those phenomena he founded his famous theory of sexual selection. We are not primarily concerned with that theory; but the facts on which Darwin based his theory lie at the very roots of our subject, and we are bound to consider their psychological significance. In the first place, since these phenomena are specially associated with Darwin's name, it may not be out of place to ask what Darwin himself considered to be their psychological significance. It is a somewhat important question, even for those who are mainly concerned with the validity of the theory which Darwin established on those facts, but so far as I know it has not hitherto been asked. I find that a careful perusal of the Descent of Man reveals the presence in Darwin's mind of two quite distinct theories, neither of them fully developed, as to the psychological meaning of the facts he was collecting. The two following groups of extracts will serve to show this very conclusively: "The lower animals have a sense of beauty," he declares, "powers of discrimination and taste on the part of the female" (p. 211[21]); "the females habitually or occasionally prefer the more beautiful males," "there is little improbability in the females of insects appreciating beauty in form or color" (p. 329); he speaks of birds as the most "esthetic" of all animals excepting man, and adds that they have "nearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have" (p. 359); he remarks that a change of any kind in the structure or color of the male bird "appears to have been admired by the female" (p. 385). He speaks of the female Argus pheasant as possessing "this almost human degree of taste." Birds, again, "seem to have some taste for the beautiful both in color and sound," and "we ought not to feel too sure that the female does not attend to each detail of beauty" (p. 421). Novelty, he says, is "admired by birds for its own sake" (p. 495). "Birds have fine powers of discrimination and in some few instances it can be shown that they have a taste for the beautiful" (p. 496). The "esthetic capacity" of female animals has been advanced by exercise just as our own taste has improved (p. 616). On the other hand, we find running throughout the book quite another idea. Of cicadas he tells us that it is probable that, "like female birds, they are excited or allured by the male with the most attractive voice" (p. 282); and, coming to Locustidae, he states that "all observers agree that the sounds serve either to call or excite the mute females" (p. 283). Of birds he says, "I am led to believe that the females prefer or are most excited by the more brilliant males" (p. 316). Among birds also the males "endeavor to charm or excite their mates by love-notes," etc., and "the females are excited by certain males, and thus unconsciously prefer them" (p. 367), while ornaments of all kinds "apparently serve to excite, attract, or fascinate the female" (p. 394). In a supplemental note, also, written in 1876, five years after the first publication of the Descent of Man, and therefore a late statement of his views, Darwin remarks that "no supporter of the principle of sexual selection believes that the females select particular points of beauty in the males; they are merely excited or attracted in a greater degree by one male than by another, and this seems often to depend, especially with birds, on brilliant coloring" (p. 623). Thus, on the one hand, Darwin interprets the phenomena as involving a real esthetic element, a taste for the beautiful; on the other hand, he states, without apparently any clear perception that the two views are quite distinct, that the colors and sounds and other characteristics of the male are not an appeal to any esthetic sense of the female, but an appeal to her sexual emotions, a stimulus to sexual excitement, an allurement to sexual contact. According to the first theory, the female admires beauty, consciously or unconsciously, and selects the most beautiful partner[22]; according to the second theory, there is no esthetic question involved, but the female is unconsciously influenced by the most powerful or complex organic stimulus to which she is subjected. There can be no question that it is the second, and not the first, of these two views which we are justified in accepting. Darwin, it must be remembered, was not a psychologist, and he lived before the methods of comparative psychology had begun to be developed; had he written twenty years later we may be sure he would never have used so incautiously some of the vague and hazardous expressions I have quoted. He certainly injured his theory of sexual selection by stating it in too anthropomorphic language, by insisting on "choice," "preference," "esthetic sense," etc. There is no need whatever to burden any statement of the actual facts by such terms borrowed from human psychology. The female responds to the stimulation of the male at the right moment just as the tree responds to the stimulation of the warmest days in spring. We should but obscure this fact by stating that the tree "chooses" the most beautiful days on which to put forth its young sprouts. In explaining the correlation between responsive females and accomplished males the supposition of esthetic choice is equally unnecessary. It is, however, interesting to observe that, though Darwin failed to see that the love-combats, pursuits, dances, and parades of the males served as a method of stimulating the impulse of contrectation—or, as it would be better to term it, tumescence—in the male himself,[23] he to some extent realized the part thus played in exciting the equally necessary activity of tumescence in the female.
The justification for using the term "tumescence," which I here propose, is to be found in the fact that vascular congestion, more especially of the parts related to generation, is an essential preliminary to acute sexual desire. This is clearly brought out in Heape's careful study of the "sexual season" in mammals. Heape distinguishes between the "pro-estrum," or preliminary period of congestion, in female animals and the immediately following "estrus," or period of desire. The latter period is the result of the former, and, among the lower animals at all events, intercourse only takes place during the estrus, not during the pro-estrum. Tumescence must thus be obtained before desire can become acute, and courtship runs pari passu with physiological processes. "Normal estrus," Heape states, "occurs in conjunction with certain changes in the uterine tissue, and this is accompanied by congestion and stimulation or irritation of the copulatory organs. … Congestion is invariably present and is an essential condition. … The first sign of pro-estrum noticed in the lower mammals is a swollen and congested vulva and a general restlessness, excitement, or uneasiness. There are other signs familiar to breeders of various mammals, such as the congested conjunctiva of the rabbit's eye and the drooping ears of the pig. Many monkeys exhibit congestion of the face and nipples, as well as of the buttocks, thighs, and neighboring parts; sometimes they are congested to a very marked extent, and in some species a swelling, occasionally prodigious, of the soft tissues round the anal and generative openings, which is also at the time brilliantly congested, indicates the progress of the pro-estrum. … The growth of the stroma-tissue [in the uterus of monkeys during the pro-estrum] is rapidly followed by an increase in the number and size of the vessels of the stroma; the whole becomes richly supplied with blood, and the surface is flushed and highly vascular. This process goes on until the whole of the internal stroma becomes tense and brilliantly injected with blood. … In all essential points the menstruation or pro-estrum of the human female is identical with that of monkeys. … Estrus is possible only after the changes due to pro-estrum have taken place in the uterus. A wave of disturbance, at first evident in the external generative organs, extends to the uterus, and after the various phases of pro-estrum have been gone through in that organ, and the excitement there is subsiding, it would seem as if the external organs gain renewed stimulus, and it is then that estrus takes place. … In all animals which have been investigated coition is not allowed by the female until some time after the swelling and congestion of the vulva and surrounding tissue are first demonstrated, and in those animals which suffer from a considerable discharge of blood the main portion of that discharge, if not the whole of it, will be evacuated before sexual intercourse is allowed." (W. Heape, "The 'Sexual Season' of Mammals," Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, vol. xliv, Part I, 1900. Estrus has since been fully discussed in Marshall's Physiology of Reproduction.) This description clearly brings out the fundamentally vascular character of the process I have termed "tumescence"; it must be added, however, that in man the nervous elements in the process tend to become more conspicuous, and more or less obliterate these primitive limitations of sexual desire. (See "Sexual Periodicity" in the first volume of these Studies.)
Moll subsequently restated his position with reference to my somewhat different analysis of the sexual impulse, still maintaining his original view ("Analyse des Geschlechtstriebes," Medizinische Klinik, Nos. 12 and 13, 1905; also Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, vol. ii, Nos. 9 and 10). Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch fuer Sexeuelle Zwischenstufen, 1904, p. 592) accepts contrectation, tumescence, and detumescence as all being stages in the same process, contrectation, which he defines as the sexual craving for a definite individual, coming first. Robert Mueller (Sexualbiologie, 1907, p. 37) criticises Moll much in the same sense as I have done and considers that contrectation and detumescence cannot be separated, but are two expressions of the same impulse; so also Max Katte, "Die Praeliminarien des Geschlechtsaktes," Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft, Oct., 1908, and G. Saint-Paul, L'Homosexualite et les Types Homosexuels, 1910, p. 390.
While I regard Moll's analysis as a valuable contribution to the elucidation of the sexual impulse, I must repeat that I cannot regard it as final or completely adequate. As I understand the process, contrectation is an incident in the development of tumescence, an extremely important incident indeed, but not an absolutely fundamental and primitive part of it. It is equally an incident, highly important though not primitive and fundamental, of detumescence. Contrectation, from first to last; furnishes the best conditions for the exercise of the sexual process, but it is not an absolutely essential part of the process and in the early stages of zooelogical development it had no existence at all. Tumescence and detumescence are alike fundamental, primitive, and essential; in resting the sexual impulse on these necessarily connected processes we are basing ourselves on the solid bedrock of nature.
Moreover, of the two processes, tumescence, which in time comes first, is by far the most important, and nearly the whole of sexual psychology is rooted in it. To assert, with Moll, that the sexual process may be analyzed into contrectation and detumescence alone is to omit the most essential part of the process. It is much the same as to analyze the mechanism of a gun into probable contact with the hand, and a more or less independent discharge, omitting all reference to the loading of the gun. The essential elements are the loading and the discharging. Contrectation is a part of loading, though not a necessary part, since the loading may be effected mechanically. But to understand the process of firing a gun and to comprehend the mechanism of the discharge, we must insist on the act of loading and not merely on the contact of the hand. So it is in analyzing the sexual impulse. Contrectation is indeed highly important, but it is important only in so far as it aids tumescence, and so may be subordinated to tumescence, exactly as it may also be subordinated to detumescence. It is tumescence which is the really essential part of the process, and we cannot afford, with Moll, to ignore it altogether.
Wallace opposed Darwin's theory of sexual selection, but it can scarcely be said that his attitude toward it bears critical examination. On the one hand, as has already been noted, he saw but one side of that theory and that the unessential side, and, on the other hand, his own view really coincided with the more essential elements in Darwin's theory. In his Tropical Nature he admitted that the male's "persistency and energy win the day," and also that this "vigor and liveliness" of the male are usually associated with intense coloration, while twenty years later (in his Darwinism) he admitted also that it is highly probable that the female is pleased or excited by the male's display. But all that is really essential in Darwin's theory is involved, directly or indirectly, in these admissions.
Espinas, in 1878, in his suggestive book, Des Societes Animales, described the odors, colors and forms, sounds, games, parades, and mock battles of animals, approaching the subject in a somewhat more psychological spirit than either Darwin or Wallace, and he somewhat more clearly apprehended the object of these phenomena in producing mutual excitement and stimulating tumescence. He noted the significance of the action of the hermaphroditic snails in inserting their darts into each other's flesh near the vulva in order to cause preliminary excitation. He remarks of this whole group of phenomena: "It is the preliminary of sexual union, it constitutes the first act of it. By it the image of the male is graven on the consciousness of the female, and in a manner impregnates it, so as to determine there, as the effects of this representation descend to the depths of the organism, the physiological modifications necessary to fecundation." Beaunis, again, in an analysis of the sexual sensations, was inclined to think that the dances and parades of the male are solely intended to excite the female, not perceiving, however, that they at the same time serve to further excite the male also.[24]
A better and more comprehensive statement was reached by Tillier, who, to some extent, may be said to have anticipated Groos. Darwin, Tillier pointed out, had not sufficiently taken into account the coexistence of combat and courtship, nor the order of the phenomena. Courtship without combat, Tillier argued, is rare; "there is a normal coexistence of combat and courtship."[25] Moreover, he proceeded, force is the chief factor in determining the possession of the female by the male, who in some species is even prepared to exert force on her; so that the female has little opportunity of sexual selection, though she is always present at these combats. He then emphasized the significant fact that courtship takes place long after pairing has ceased, and the question of selection thus been eliminated. The object of courtship, he concluded, is not sexual selection by the female, but the sexual excitement of both male and female, such excitement, he asserted, not only rendering coupling easier, but favoring fecundation. Modesty, also, Tillier further argued, again anticipating Groos, works toward the same end; it renders the male more ardent, and by retarding coupling may also increase the secretions of the sexual glands and favor the chances of reproduction.[26]
In a charming volume entitled The Naturalist in La Plata (1892) Mr. W.H. Hudson included a remarkable chapter on "Music and Dancing in Nature." In this chapter he described many of the dances, songs, and love-antics of birds, but regarded all such phenomena as merely "periodical fits of gladness." While, however, we may quite well agree with Mr. Hudson that conscious sexual gratification on the part of the female is not the cause of music and dancing performances in birds, nor of the brighter colors and ornaments that distinguish the male, such an opinion by no means excludes the conclusion that these phenomena are primarily sexual and intimately connected with the process of tumescence in both sexes. It is noteworthy that, according to H.E. Howard ("On Sexual Selection in Birds," Zooelogist, Nov., 1903), color is most developed just before pairing, rapidly becoming less beautiful—even within a few hours—after this, and the most beautiful male is most successful in getting paired. The fact that, as Mr. Hudson himself points out, it is at the season of love that these manifestations mainly, if not exclusively, appear, and that it is the more brilliant and highly endowed males which play the chief part in them, only serves to confirm such a conclusion. To argue, with Mr. Hudson, that they cannot be sexual because they sometimes occur before the arrival of the females, is much the same as to argue that the antics of a kitten with a feather or a reel have no relationship whatever to mice. The birds that began earliest to practise their accomplishments would probably have most chance of success when the females arrived. Darwin himself said that nothing is commoner than for animals to take pleasure in practising whatever instinct they follow at other times for some real good. These manifestations are primarily for the sake of producing sexual tumescence, and could not well have been developed to the height they have reached unless they were connected closely with propagation. That they may incidentally serve to express "gladness" one need not feel called upon to question.
Another observer of birds, Mr. E. Selous, has made observations which are of interest in this connection. He finds that all bird-dances are not nuptial, but that some birds—the stone-curlew (or great plover), for example—have different kinds of dances. Among these birds he has made the observation, very significant from our present point of view, that the nuptial dances, taken part in by both of the pair, are immediately followed by intercourse. In spring "all such runnings and chasings are, at this time, but a part of the business of pairing, and one divines at once that such attitudes are of a sexual character. … Here we have a bird with distinct nuptial (sexual) and social (non-sexual) forms of display or antics, and the former as well as the latter are equally indulged in by both sexes." (E. Selous, Bird Watching, pp. 15-20.)
The same author (ibid., pp. 79, 94) argues that in the fights of two males for one female—with violent emotion on one side and interested curiosity on the other—the attitude of the former "might gradually come to be a display made entirely for the female, and of the latter a greater or less degree of pleasurable excitement raised by it, with a choice in accordance." On this view the interest of the female would first have been directed, not to the plumage, but to the frenzied actions and antics of the male. From these antics in undecorated birds would gradually develop the interest in waving plumes and fluttering wings. Such a dance might come to be of a quite formal and non-courting nature.
Last, we owe to Professor Haecker what may fairly be regarded, in all main outlines, as an almost final statement of the matter. In his Gesang der Voegel (1900) he gives a very clear account of the evolution of bird-song, which he regards as the most essential element in all this group of manifestations, furnishing the key also to the dancing and other antics. Originally the song consists only of call-cries and recognition-notes. Under the parallel influence of natural selection and sexual selection they become at the pairing season reflexes of excitement and thus develop into methods of producing excitement, in the male by the muscular energy required, and in the female through the ear; finally they become play, though here also it is probable that use is not excluded. Thus, so far as the male bird is concerned, bird-song possesses a primary prenuptial significance in attracting the female, a secondary nuptial significance in producing excitement (p. 48). He holds also that the less-developed voices of the females aid in attaining the same end (p. 51). Finally, bird-song possesses a tertiary extranuptial significance (including exercise play, expression of gladness). Haecker points out, at the same time, that the maintenance of some degree of sexual excitement beyond pairing time may be of value for the preservation of the species, in case of disturbance during breeding and consequent necessity for commencing breeding over again.
Such a theory as this fairly coincides with the views brought forward in the preceding pages,—views which are believed to be in harmony with the general trend of thought today,—since it emphasizes the importance of tumescence and all that favors tumescence in the sexual process. The so-called esthetic element in sexual selection is only indirectly of importance. The male's beauty is really a symbol of his force.
It will be seen that this attitude toward the facts of tumescence among birds and other animals includes the recognition of dances, songs, etc., as expressions of "gladness." As such they are closely comparable to the art manifestations among human races. Here, as Weismann in his Gedanken ueber Musik has remarked, we may regard the artistic faculty as a by-product: "This [musical] faculty is, as it were, the mental hand with which we play on our own emotional nature, a hand not shaped for this purpose, not due to the necessity for the enjoyment of music, but owing its origin to entirely different requirements."
The psychological significance of these facts has been carefully studied and admirably developed by Groos in his classic works on the play instinct in animals and in men.[27] Going beyond Wallace, Groos denies conscious sexual selection, but, as he points out, this by no means involves the denial of unconscious selection in the sense that "the female is most easily won by the male who most strongly excites her sexual instincts." Groos further quotes a pregnant generalization of Ziegler: "In all animals a high degree of excitement of the nervous system is necessary to procreation, and thus we find an excited prelude to procreation widely spread."[28] Such a stage, indeed, as Groos points out, is usually necessary before any markedly passionate discharge of motor energy, as may be observed in angry dogs and the Homeric heroes. While, however, in other motor explosions the prelude may be reduced to a minimum, in courtship it is found in a highly marked degree. The primary object of courtship, Groos insists, is to produce sexual excitement.
It is true that Groos's main propositions were by no means novel. Thus, as I have pointed out, he was at most points anticipated by Tillier. But Groos developed the argument in so masterly a manner, and with so many wide-ranging illustrations, that he has carried conviction where the mere insight of others had passed unperceived. Since Darwin wrote the Descent of Man the chief step in the development of the theory of sexual selection has been taken by Groos, who has at the same time made it clear that sexual selection is largely a special case of natural selection.[29] The conjunction of the sexes is seen to be an end only to be obtained with much struggle; the difficulty of achieving sexual erethism in both sexes, the difficulty of so stimulating such erethism in the female that her instinctive coyness is overcome, these difficulties the best and most vigorous males,[30] those most adapted in other respects to carry on the race, may most easily overcome. In this connection we may note what Marro has said in another connection, when attempting to answer the question why it is that among savages courtship becomes so often a matter in which persuasion takes the form of force. The explanation, he remarks, is yet very simple. Force is the foundation of virility, and its psychic manifestation is courage. In the struggle for life violence is the first virtue. The modesty of women—in its primordial form consisting in physical resistance, active or passive, to the assaults of the male—aided selection by putting to the test man's most important quality, force. Thus it is that when choosing among rivals for her favors a woman attributes value to violence.[31] Marro thus independently confirms the result reached by Groos.
The debate which has for so many years been proceeding concerning the validity of the theory of sexual selection may now be said to be brought to an end. Those who supported Darwin and those who opposed him were, both alike, in part right and in part wrong, and it is now possible to combine the elements of truth on either side into a coherent whole. This is now beginning to be widely recognized; Lloyd Morgan,[32] for instance, has readjusted his position as regards the "pairing instinct" in the light of Groos's contribution to the subject. "The hypothesis of sexual selection," he concludes, "suggests that the accepted male is the one which adequately evokes the pairing impulse. … Courtship may thus be regarded from the physiological point of view as a means of producing the requisite amount of pairing hunger; of stimulating the whole system and facilitating general and special vascular changes; of creating that state of profound and explosive irritability which has for its psychological concomitant or antecedent an imperious and irresistible craving. … Courtship is thus the strong and steady bending of the bow that the arrow may find its mark in a biological end of the highest importance in the survival of a healthy and vigorous race."
Having thus viewed the matter broadly, we may consider in detail a few examples of the process of tumescence among the lower animals and man, for, as will be seen, the process in both is identical. As regards animal courtship, the best treasury of facts is Brehm's Thierleben, while Buechner's Liebe und Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt is a useful summary; the admirable discussion of bird-dancing and other forms of courtship in Haecker's Gesang der Voegel, chapter iv, may also be consulted. As regards man, Wallaschek's Primitive Music, chapter vii, brings together much scattered material, and is all the more valuable since the author rejects any form of sexual selection; Hirn's Origins of Art, chapter xvii, is well worth reading, and Finck's Primitive Love and Love-stories contains a large amount of miscellaneous information. I have preferred not to draw on any of these easily accessible sources (except that in one or two cases I have utilized references they supplied), but here simply furnish illustrations met with in the course of my own reading.
Even in the hermaphroditic slugs (Limax maximus) the process of courtship is slow and elaborate. It has been described by James Bladon ("The Loves of the Slug [Limax cinereus]," Zooelogist, vol. xv, 1857, p. 6272). It begins toward midnight on sultry summer nights, one slug slowly following another, resting its mouth on what may be called the tail of the first, and following its every movement. Finally they stop and begin crawling around each other, emitting large quantities of mucus. When this has constituted a mass of sufficient size and consistence they suspend themselves from it by a cord of mucus from nine to fifteen inches in length, continuing to turn round each other till their bodies form a cone. Then the organs of generation are protruded from their orifice near the mouth and, hanging down a short distance, touch each other. They also then begin again the same spiral motion, twisting around each other, like a two-strand cord, assuming various and beautiful forms, sometimes like an inverted agaric, or a foliated murex, or a leaf of curled parsley, the light falling on the ever-varying surface of the generative organs sometimes producing iridescence. It is not until after a considerable time that the organs untwist and are withdrawn and the bodies separate, to crawl up the suspending cord and depart.
Some snails have a special organ for creating sexual excitement. A remarkable part of the reproductive system in many of the true Helicidae is the so-called dart, Liebespfeil, or telum Veneris. It consists of a straight or curved, sometimes slightly twisted, tubular shaft of carbonate of lime, tapering to a fine point above, and enlarging gradually, more often somewhat abruptly, to the base. The sides of the shaft are sometimes furnished with two or more blades; these are apparently not for cutting purposes, but simply to brace the stem. The dart is contained in a dart-sac, which is attached as a sort of pocket to the vagina, at no great distance from its orifice. In Helix aspersa the dart is about five-sixteenths of an inch in length, and one-eighth of an inch in breadth at its base. It appears most probable that the dart is employed as an adjunct for the sexual act. Besides the fact of the position of the dart-sac anatomically, we find that the darts are extended and become imbedded in the flesh, just before or during the act of copulation. It may be regarded, then, as an organ whose functions induce excitement preparatory to sexual union. It only occurs in well-grown specimens. (Rev. L.H. Cooke, "Molluscs," Cambridge Natural History, vol. iii, p. 143.)
Racovitza has shown that in the octopus (Octopus vulgaris) courtship is carried on with considerable delicacy, and not brutally, as had previously been supposed. The male gently stretches out his third arm on the right and caresses the female with its extremity, eventually passing it into the chamber formed by the mantle. The female contracts spasmodically, but does not attempt to move. They remain thus about an hour or more, and during this time the male shifts the arm from one oviduct to the other. Finally he withdraws his arm, caresses her with it for a few moments, and then replaces it with his other arm. (E.G. Racovitza, in Archives de Zooelogie Experimentale, quoted in Natural Science, November, 1894.)
The phenomena of courtship are very well illustrated by spiders. Peckham, who has carefully studied them, tells us of Saitis pulex: "On May 24th we found a mature female, and placed her in one of the larger boxes, and the next day we put a male in with her. He saw her as she stood perfectly still, twelve inches away; the glance seemed to excite him, and he at once moved toward her; when some four inches from her he stood still, and then began the most remarkable performances that an amorous male could offer to an admiring female. She eyed him eagerly, changing her position from time to time so that he might be always in view. He, raising his whole body on one side by straightening out the legs, and lowering it on the other by folding the first two pairs of legs up and under, leaned so far over as to be in danger of losing his balance, which he only maintained by sliding rapidly toward the lowered side. The palpus, too, on this side was turned back to correspond to the direction of the legs nearest it. He moved in a semicircle for about two inches, and then instantly reversed the position of the legs and circled in the opposite direction, gradually approaching nearer and nearer to the female. Now she dashes toward him, while he, raising his first pair of legs, extends them upward and forward as if to hold her off, but withal slowly retreats. Again and again he circles from side to side, she gazing toward him in a softer mood, evidently admiring the grace of his antics. This is repeated until we have counted one hundred and eleven circles made by the ardent little male. Now he approaches nearer and nearer, and when almost within reach whirls madly around and around her, she joining and whirling with him in a giddy maze. Again he falls back and resumes his semicircular motions, with his body tilted over; she, all excitement, lowers her head and raises her body so that it is almost vertical; both draw nearer; she moves slowly under him, he crawling over her head, and the mating is accomplished."
The same author thus describes the courtship of Dendryphantes elegans: "While from three to five inches distant from her, he begins to wave his plumy first legs in a way that reminds one of a windmill. She eyes him fiercely, and he keeps at a proper distance for a long time. If he comes close she dashes at him, and he quickly retreats. Sometimes he becomes bolder, and when within an inch, pauses, with the first legs outstretched before him, not raised as is common in other species; the palpi also are held stiffly out in front with the points together. Again she drives him off, and so the play continues. Now the male grows excited as he approaches her, and while still several inches away, whirls completely around and around; pausing, he runs closer and begins to make his abdomen quiver as he stands on tiptoe in front of her. Prancing from side to side, he grows bolder and bolder, while she seems less fierce, and yielding to the excitement, lifts up her magnificently iridescent abdomen, holding it at one time vertical, and at another sideways to him. She no longer rushes at him, but retreats a little as he approaches. At last he comes close to her, lying flat, with his first legs stretched out and quivering. With the tips of his front legs he gently pats her; this seems to arouse the old demon of resistance, and she drives him back. Again and again he pats her with a caressing movement, gradually creeping nearer and nearer, which she now permits without resistance, until he crawls over her head to her abdomen, far enough to reach the epigynum with his palpus." (G.W. Peckham, "Sexual Selection of Spiders," Occasional Papers of the Natural History Society of Wisconsin, 1889, quoted in Nature, August 21, 1890.)
The courtship of another spider, the Agelena labyrinthica, has been studied by Lecaillon ("Les Instincts et les Psychismes des Araignees," Revue Scientifique, Sept. 15, 1906.) The male enters the female's web and may be found there about the middle of July. When courtship has begun it is not interrupted by the closest observation, even under the magnifying glass. At first it is the male which seeks to couple and he pursues the female over her web till she consents. The pursuit may last some hours, the male agitating his abdomen in a peculiar way, while the female simply retreats a short distance without allowing herself to be approached. At last the female holds herself completely motionless, and then the male approaches, seizes her, places her on her side, sometimes carrying her to a more suitable part of the web. Then one of his copulative apparatus is applied to the female genital opening, and copulation begins. When completed (on an average in about two hours) the male withdraws his copulatory palpus and turns over the female, who is still inert, on to her other side, then brings his second copulatory apparatus to the female opening and starts afresh. When the process is definitely completed the male leaves the female, suddenly retiring to a little distance. The female, who had remained completely motionless for four hours, suddenly runs after the male. But she only pursues him for a short distance, and the two spiders remain together without any danger to either. Lecaillon disbelieves the statement of Romanes (in his Animal Intelligence) that the female eats the male after copulation. But this certainly seems to occur sometimes among insects, as illustrated by the following instance described by so careful an observer of insects as Fabre.
The Mantis religiosa is described by Fabre as contemplating the female for a long time in an attitude of ecstasy. She remains still and seems indifferent. He is small and she is large. At last he approaches; spreads his wings, which tremble convulsively; leaps on her back, and fixes himself there. The preludes are long and the coupling itself sometimes occupies five or six hours. Then they separate. But the same day or the following day she seizes him and eats him up in small mouthfuls. She will permit a whole series of males to have intercourse with her, always eating them up directly afterward. Fabre has even seen her eating the male while still on her back, his head and neck gone, but his body still firmly attached. (J.H. Fabre, Souvenirs Entomologiques, fifth series, p. 307.) Fabre also describes in great detail (ibid., ninth series, chs. xxi-xxii) the sexual parades of the Languedoc scorpion (Scorpio occitanus), an arachnid. These parades are in public; for their subsequent intercourse the couple seek complete seclusion, and the female finally eats the male.
An insect (a species of Empis) has been described which excites the female by manipulating a large balloon. "This is of elliptical shape, about seven millimeters long (nearly twice as long as the fly), hollow, and composed entirely of a single layer of minute bubbles, nearly uniform in size, arranged in regular circles concentric with the axis of the structure. The beautiful, glistening whiteness of the object when the sun shines upon it makes it very conspicuous. The bubbles were slightly viscid, and in nearly every case there was a small fly pressed into the front end of the balloon, apparently as food for the Empis. In all cases they were dead. The balloon appears to be made while the insect is flying in the air. Those flying highest had the smallest balloons. The bubbles are probably produced by some modification of the anal organs. It is possible that the captured fly serves as a nucleus to begin the balloon on. One case of a captured fly but no balloon was observed. After commencing, it is probable that the rest of the structure is made by revolving the completed part between the hind legs and adding more bubbles somewhat spirally. The posterior end of the balloon is left more or less open. The purpose of this structure is to attract the female. When numerous males were flying up and down the road, it happened several times that a female was seen to approach them from some choke-cherry blossoms near by. The males immediately gathered in her path, and she with little hesitation selected for a mate the one with the largest balloon, taking a position upon his back. After copulation had begun, the pair would settle down toward the ground, select a quiet spot, and the female would alight by placing her front legs across a horizontal grass blade, her head resting against the blade so as to brace the body in position. Here she would continue to hold the male beneath her for a little time, until the process was finished. The male, meanwhile, would be rolling the balloon about in a variety of positions, juggling with it, one might almost say. After the male and female parted company, the male immediately dropped the balloon upon the ground, and it was greedily seized by ants. No illustration could properly show the beauty of the balloon." (Aldrich and Turley, "A Balloon-making Fly," American Naturalist, October, 1899.)
"In many species of moths the males 'assemble' around the freshly emerged female, but no special advantage appears to attend on early arrival. The female sits apparently motionless, while the little crowd of suitors buzz around her for several minutes. Suddenly, and, as far as one can see, without any sign from the female, one of the males pairs with her and all the others immediately disappear. In these cases the males do not fight or struggle in any way, and as one watches the ceremony the wonder arises as to how the moment is determined, and why the pairing did not take place before. Proximity does not decide the point, for long beforehand the males often alight close to the female and brush against her with fluttering wings. I have watched the process exactly as I have described it in a common Northern Noctua, the antler moth (Charaeax graminis), and I have seen the same thing among beetles." (E.B. Poulton, The Colors of Animals, 1890, p. 391.) This author mentions that among some butterflies the females take the active part. The example here quoted of courtship among moths illustrates how phenomena which are with difficulty explicable by the theory of sexual selection in its original form become at once intelligible when we realize the importance of tumescence in courtship.
Of the Argentine cow-bird (Molothrus bonariensis) Hudson says (Argentine Ornithology, vol. i, p. 73): "The song of the male, particularly when making love, is accompanied with gestures and actions somewhat like those of the domestic pigeon. He swells himself out, beating the ground with his wings, and uttering a series of deep internal notes, followed by others loud and clear; and occasionally, when uttering them, he suddenly takes wing and flies directly away from the female to a distance of fifty yards, and performs a wide circuit about her in the air, singing all the time. The homely object of his passion always appears utterly indifferent to this curious and pretty performance; yet she must be even more impressionable than most female birds, since she continues scattering about her parasitical and often wasted eggs during four months in every year."
Of a tyrant-bird (Pitangus Bolivianus) Hudson writes (Argentine Ornithology, vol. i, p. 148): "Though the male and female are greatly attached, they do not go afield to hunt in company, but separate to meet again at intervals during the day. One of a couple (say, the female) returns to the trees where they are accustomed to meet, and after a time, becoming impatient or anxious at the delay of her consort, utters a very long, clear call-note. He is perhaps a quarter of a mile away, watching for a frog beside a pool, or beating over a thistle-bed, but he hears the note and presently responds with one of equal power. Then, perhaps, for half an hour, at intervals of half a minute, the birds answer each other, though the powerful call of the one must interfere with his hunting. At length he returns; then the two birds, perched close together, with their yellow bosoms almost touching, crests elevated, and beating the branch with their wings, scream their loudest notes in concert—a confused jubilant noise that rings through the whole plantation. Their joy at meeting is patent, and their action corresponds to the warm embrace of a loving human couple."
Of the red-breasted marsh-bird (Leistes superciliaris) Hudson (Argentine Ornithology, vol. i, p. 100) writes: "These birds are migratory, and appear everywhere in the eastern part of the Argentine country early in October, arriving singly, after which each male takes up a position in a field or open space abounding with coarse grass and herbage, where he spends most of his time perched on the summit of a tall stalk or weed, his glowing crimson bosom showing at a distance like some splendid flower above the herbage. At intervals of two or three minutes he soars vertically up to a height of twenty or twenty-five yards to utter his song, composed of a single long, powerful and rather musical note, ending with an attempt at a flourish, during which the bird flutters and turns about in the air; then, as if discouraged at his failure, he drops down, emitting harsh, guttural chirps, to resume his stand. Meanwhile the female is invisible, keeping closely concealed under the long grass. But at length, attracted perhaps by the bright bosom and aerial music of the male, she occasionally exhibits herself for a few moments, starting up with a wild zigzag flight, and, darting this way and that, presently drops into the grass once more. The moment she appears above the grass the male gives chase, and they vanish from sight together."
"Courtship with the mallard," says J.G. Millais (Natural History of British Ducks, p. 6), "appears to be carried on by both sexes, though generally three or four drakes are seen showing themselves off to attract the attention of a single duck. Swimming round her, in a coy and semi-self-conscious manner, they now and again all stop quite still, nod, bow, and throw their necks out in token of their admiration and their desire of a favorable response. But the most interesting display is when all the drakes simultaneously stand up in the water and rapidly pass their bills down their breasts, uttering at the same time a low single note somewhat like the first half of the call that teal and pintail make when 'showing off.' At other times the love-making of the drake seems to be rather passive than active. While graciously allowing himself to be courted, he holds his head high with conscious pride, and accepts as a matter of course any attention that may be paid to him. A proud bird is he when three or four ducks come swimming along beside and around him, uttering a curious guttural note, and at the same time dipping their bills in quick succession to right and left. He knows what that means, and carries himself with even greater dignity than before. In the end, however, he must give in. As a last appeal, one of his lady lovers may coyly lower herself in the water till only the top of her back, head, and neck is seen, and so fascinating an advance as this no drake of any sensibility can withstand."
The courting of the Argus pheasant, noted for the extreme beauty of the male's plumage, was observed by H.O. Forbes in Sumatra. It is the habit of this bird to make "a large circus, some ten or twelve feet in diameter, in the forest, which it clears of every leaf and twig and branch, till the ground is perfectly swept and garnished. On the margin of this circus there is invariably a projecting branch or high-arched root, at a few feet elevation above the ground, on which the female bird takes its place, while in the ring the male—the male birds alone possess great decoration—shows off all its magnificence for the gratification and pleasure of his consort and to exalt himself in her eyes." (H.O. Forbes, A. Naturalist's Wanderings, 1885, p. 131.)
"All ostriches, adults as well as chicks, have a strange habit known as 'waltzing.' After running for a few hundred yards they will also stop, and, with raised wings, spin around rapidly for some time after until quite giddy, when a broken leg occasionally occurs. … Vicious cocks 'roll' when challenging to fight or when wooing the hen. The cock will suddenly bump down on to his knees (the ankle-joint), open his wings, and then swing them alternately backward and forward, as if on a pivot. … While rolling, every feather over the whole body is on end, and the plumes are open, like a large white fan. At such a time the bird sees very imperfectly, if at all; in fact, he seems so preoccupied that, if pursued, one may often approach unnoticed. Just before rolling, a cock, especially if courting the hen, will often run slowly and daintily on the points of his toes, with neck slightly inflated, upright, and rigid, the tail half-drooped, and all his body-feathers fluffed up; the wings raised and expanded, the inside edges touching the sides of the neck for nearly the whole of its length, and the plumes showing separately, like an open fan. In no other attitude is the splendid beauty of his plumage displayed to such advantage." (S.C. Cronwright Schreiner, "The Ostrich," Zooelogist, March, 1897.)
As may be seen from the foregoing fairly typical examples, the phenomena of courtship are highly developed, and have been most carefully studied, in animals outside the mammal series. It may seem a long leap from birds to man; yet, as will be seen, the phenomena among primitive human peoples, if not, indeed, among many civilized peoples also, closely resemble those found among birds, though, unfortunately, they have not usually been so carefully studied.
In Australia, where dancing is carried to a high pitch of elaboration, its association with the sexual impulse is close and unmistakable. Thus, Mr. Samuel Gason (of whom it has been said that "no man living has been more among blacks or knows more of their ways") remarks concerning a dance of the Dieyerie tribe: "This dance men and women only take part in, in regular form and position, keeping splendid time to the rattle of the beat of two boomerangs; some of the women keep time by clapping their hands between their thighs; promiscuous sexual intercourse follows after the dance; jealousy is forbidden." Again, at the Mobierrie, or rat-harvest, "many weeks' preparation before the dance comes off; no quarreling is allowed; promiscuous sexual intercourse during the ceremony." The fact that jealousy is forbidden at these festivals clearly indicates that sexual intercourse is a recognized and probably essential element in the ceremonies. This is further emphasized by the fact that at other festivals open sexual intercourse is not allowed. Thus, at the Mindarie, or dance at a peace festival (when a number of tribes comes together), "there is great rejoicing at the coming festival, which is generally held at the full of the moon, and kept up all night. The men are artistically decorated with down and feathers, with all kinds of designs. The down and feathers are stuck on their bodies with blood freshly taken from their penis; they are also nicely painted with various colors; tufts of boughs are tied on their ankles to make a noise while dancing. Promiscuous sexual intercourse is carried on secretly; many quarrels occur at this time." (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxiv, November, 1894, p. 174.)
In Australian dances, sometimes men and women dance together, sometimes the men dance alone, sometimes the women. In one dance described by Eyre: "Women are the chief performers; their bodies are painted with white streaks, and their hair adorned with cockatoo feathers. They carry large sticks in their hands, and place themselves in a row in front, while the men with their spears stand in a row behind them. They then all commence their movements, but without intermingling, the males and females dancing by themselves. The women have occasionally another mode of dancing, by joining the hands together over the head, closing the feet, and bringing the knees into contact. The legs are then thrown outward from the knee, while the feet and hands are kept in their original position, and, being drawn quickly in again, a sharp sound is produced by the collision. This is also practised alone by young girls or by several together for their own amusement. It is adopted also when a single woman is placed in front of a row of male dancers to excite their passions." (E.J. Eyre, Journals of Expeditions into Central Australia, vol. ii, p. 235.)
A charming Australian folk-tale concerning two sisters with wings, who disliked men, and their wooing by a man, clearly indicates, even among the Australians (whose love-making is commonly supposed to be somewhat brutal in character), the consciousness that it is by his beauty, charm, and skill in courtship that a man wins a woman. Unahanach, the lover, stole unperceived to the river where the girls were bathing and at last showed himself carelessly sitting on a high tree. The girls were startled, but thought it would be safe to amuse themselves by looking at the intruder. "Young and with the most active figure, yet of a strength that defied the strongest emu, and even enabled him to resist an 'old man' kangaroo, he had no equal in the chase, and conscious power gave a dignity to his expression that at one glance calmed the fears of the two girls. His large brilliant eyes, shaded by a deep fringe of soft black eyelashes, gazed down upon them admiringly, and his rich black hair hung around his well-formed face, smooth and shining from the emu-oil with which it was abundantly covered." At last he persuaded them to talk and by and by induced them to call him husband. Then they went off with him, with no thought of flight in their hearts. ("Australian Folklore Stories," collected by W. Dunlop, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, new series, vol. i, 1898, p. 33.)
Of the people of Torres Straits Haddon states (Reports Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v, p. 222): "It was during the secular dance, or Kap, that the girls usually lost their hearts to the young men. A young man who was a good dancer would find favor in the sight of the girls. This can be readily understood by anyone who has seen the active, skilful, and fatiguing dances of these people. A young man who could acquit himself well in these dances must be possessed of no mean strength and agility, qualities which everywhere appeal to the opposite sex. Further, he was decorated, according to local custom, with all that would render him more imposing in the eyes of the spectators. As the former chief of Mabuiag put it, 'In England if a man has plenty of money, women want to marry him; so here, if a man dances well they too want him.' In olden days the war-dance, which was performed after a successful foray, would be the most powerful excitement to a marriageable girl, especially if a young man had distinguished himself sufficiently to bring home the head of someone he had killed."
Among the tribes inhabiting the mouth of the Wanigela River, New Guinea, "when a boy admires a girl, he will not look at her, speak to her, or go near her. He, however, shows his love by athletic bounds, posing, and pursuit, and by the spearing of imaginary enemies, etc., before her, to attract her attention. If the girl reciprocates his love she will employ a small girl to give to him an ugauga gauna, or love invitation, consisting of an areca-nut whose skin has been marked with different designs, significant of her wish to ugauga. After dark he is apprised of the place where the girl awaits him; repairing thither, he seats himself beside her as close as possible, and they mutually share in the consumption of the betel-nut." This constitutes betrothal; henceforth he is free to visit the girl's house and sleep there. Marriages usually take place at the most important festival of the year, the kapa, preparations for which are made during the three previous months, so that there may be a bountiful and unfailing supply of bananas. Much dancing takes place among the unmarried girls, who, also, are tattooed at this time over the whole of the front of the body, special attention being paid to the lower parts, as a girl who is not properly tattooed there possesses no attraction in the eyes of young men. Married women and widows and divorced women are not forbidden to take part in these dances, but it would be considered ridiculous for them to do so. (R.E. Guise, "On the Tribes of the Wanigela River," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, new series, vol. i, 1899, pp. 209, 214 et seq.)
In the island of Nias in the Malay Archipelago, Modigliani (mainly on the excellent authority of Sundermann, the missionary) states, at a wedding "dancing and singing go on throughout the day. The women, two or three at a time, a little apart from the men, take part in the dancing, which is very well adapted to emphasize the curves of the flanks and the breasts, though at the same time the defects of their legs are exhibited in this series of rhythmic contortions which constitute a Nias dance. The most graceful movement they execute is a lascivious undulation of the flanks while the face and breast are slowly wound round by the sarong [a sort of skirt] held in the hands, and then again revealed. These movements are executed with jerks of the wrist and contortions of the flanks, not always graceful, but which excite the admiration of the spectators, even of the women, who form in groups to sing in chorus a compliment, more or less sincere, in which they say: 'They dance with the grace of birds when they fly. They dance as the hawk flies; it is lovely to see.' They sing and dance both at weddings and at other festivals." (Elio Modigliani, Un Viaggio a Nias, 1890, p. 549.)
In Sumatra Marsden states that chastity prevails more, perhaps, than among any other people: "But little apparent courtship precedes their marriages. Their manners do not admit of it, the boojong and geddas (youths of each sex) being carefully kept asunder and the latter seldom trusted from under the wings of their mothers. … The opportunities which the young people have of seeing and conversing with each other are at the birnbangs, or public festivals. On these occasions the young people meet together and dance and sing in company. The men, when determined in their regard, generally employ an old woman as their agent, by whom they make known their sentiments, and send presents to the female of their choice. The parents then interfere, and the preliminaries being settled, a birnbang takes place. The young women proceed in a body to the upper end of the balli (hall), where there is a part divided off for them by a curtain. They do not always make their appearance before dinner, that time, previous to a second or third meal, being appropriated to cock-fighting or other diversions peculiar to men. In the evening their other amusements take place, of which the dances are the principal. These are performed either singly or by two women, two men, or with both mixed. Their motions and attitudes are usually slow, approaching often to the lascivious. They bend forward as they dance, and usually carry a fan, which they close and strike smartly against their elbows at particular cadences. … The assembly seldom breaks up before daylight and these birnbangs are often continued for several days together. The young men frequent them in order to look out for wives, and the lasses of course set themselves off to the best advantage. They wear their best silken dresses, of their own weaving, as many ornaments of filigree as they possess, silver rings upon their arms and legs, and ear-rings of a particular construction. Their hair is variously adorned with flowers, and perfumed with oil of benjamin. Civet is also in repute, but more used by the men. To render their skin fine, smooth, and soft they make use of a white cosmetic called poopoor [a mixture of ginger, patch-leaf, maize, sandal-wood, fairy-cotton, and mush-seed with a basis of fine rice]." (W. Marsden, History of Sumatra, 1783, p. 230.)
The Alfurus of Seram in the Moluccas, who have not yet been spoilt by foreign influences, are very fond of music and dancing. Their maku dances, which take place at night, have been described by Joest: "Great torches of dry bamboos and piles of burning resinous leaves light up the giant trees to their very summits and reveal in the distance the little huts which the Alfuras have built in the virgin forests, as well as the skulls of the slain. The women squat together by the fire, making a deafening noise with the gongs and the drums, while the young girls, richly adorned with pearls and fragrant flowers, await the beginning of the dance. Then appear the men and youths without weapons, but in full war-costume, the girdle freshly marked with the number of slain enemies. [Among the Alfuras it is the man who has the largest number of heads to show who has most chance of winning the object of his love.] They hold each other's arms and form a circle, which is not, however, completely closed. A song is started, and with small, slow steps this ring of bodies, like a winding snake, moves sideways, backward, closes, opens again, the steps become heavier, the songs and drums louder, the girls enter the circle and with closed eyes grasp the girdle of their chosen youths, who clasp them by the hips and necks, the chain becomes longer and longer, the dance and song more ardent, until the dancers grow tired and disappear in the gloom of the forest." (W. Joest, Welt-Fahrten, 1895, Bd. ii, p. 159.)
The women of the New Hebrides dance, or rather sway, to and fro in the midst of a circle formed by the men, with whom they do not directly mingle. They leap, show their genital parts to the men, and imitate the movements of coitus. Meanwhile the men unfasten the manou (penis-wrap) from their girdles with one hand, with the other imitating the action of seizing a woman, and, excited by the women, also go through a mock copulation. Sometimes, it is said, the dancers masturbate. This takes place amid plaintive songs, interrupted from time to time by loud cries and howls. (Untrodden Fields of Anthropology, by a French army-surgeon, 1898, vol. ii, p. 341.)
Among the hill tribes of the Central Indian Hills may be traced a desire to secure communion with the spirit of fertility embodied in vegetation. This appears, for instance, in a tree-dance, which is carried out on a date associated not only with the growths of the crops or with harvest, but also with the seasonal period for marriage and the annual Saturnalia. (W. Crooke, "The Hill Tribes," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, new series, vol. i, 1899, p. 243.) The association of dancing with seasonal ritual festivals of a generative character—of which the above is a fairly typical instance—leads us to another aspect of these phenomena on which I have elsewhere touched in these Studies (vol. i) when discussing the "Phenomena of Periodicity."
The Tahitians, when first discovered by Europeans, appear to have been highly civilized on the sexual side and very licentious. Yet even at Tahiti, when visited by Cook, the strict primitive relationship between dancing and courtship still remained traceable. Cook found "a dance called Timorodee, which is performed by young girls, whenever eight or ten of them can be collected together, consisting of motions and gestures beyond imagination wanton, in the practice of which they are brought up from their earliest childhood, accompanied by words which, if it were possible, would more explicitly convey the same ideas. But the practice which is allowed to the virgin is prohibited to the woman from the moment that she has put these hopeful lessons in practice and realized the symbols of the dance." He added, however, that among the specially privileged class of the Areoi these limitations were not observed, for he had heard that this dance was sometimes performed by them as a preliminary to sexual intercourse. (Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages, etc., 1775, vol. ii, p. 54.)
Among the Marquesans at the marriage of a woman, even of high rank, she lies with her head at the bridegroom's knees and all the male guests come in single file, singing and dancing—those of lower class first and the great chiefs last—and have connection with the woman. There are often a very large number of guests and the bride is sometimes so exhausted at the end that she has to spend several days in bed. (Tautain, "Etude sur le Mariage chez les Polynesiens," L'Anthropologie, November-December, 1895, p. 642.) The interesting point for us here is that singing and dancing are still regarded as a preliminary to a sexual act. It has been noted that in sexual matters the Polynesians, when first discovered by Europeans, had largely gone beyond the primitive stage, and that this applies also to some of their dances. Thus the hula-hula dance, while primitive in origin, may probably be compared more to a civilized than to a primitive dance, since it has become divorced from real life. In the same way, while the sexual pantomime dance of the Azimba girls of central Africa has a direct and recognized relationship to the demands of real life, the somewhat allied danses du ventre of the Hamitic peoples of northern Africa are merely an amusement, a play more or less based on the sexual instinct. At the same time it is important to bear in mind that there is no rigid distinction between dances that are, and those that are not, primitive. As Haddon truly points out in a book containing valuable detailed descriptions of dances, even among savages dances are so developed that it is difficult to trace their origin, and at Torres Straits, he remarks, "there are certainly play or secular dances, dances for pure amusement without any ulterior design." (A.C. Haddon, Head Hunters, p. 233.) When we remember that dancing had probably become highly developed long before man appeared on the earth, this difficulty in determining the precise origin of human dancing cannot cause surprise.
Spix and Martius described how the Muras of Brazil by moonlight would engage all night in a Bacchantic dance in a great circle, hand in hand, the men on one side, the women on the other, shouting out all the time, the men "Who will marry me?" the women, "You are a beautiful devil; all women will marry you," (Spix and Martius, Reise in Brasilien, 1831, vol. iii, p. 1117.) They also described in detail the dance of the Brazilian Puris, performed in a state of complete nakedness, the men in a row, the women in another row behind them. They danced backward and forward, stamping and singing, at first in a slow and melancholy style, but gradually with increasing vigor and excitement. Then the women began to rotate the pelvis backward and forward, and the men to thrust their bodies forward, the dance becoming a pantomimic representation of sexual intercourse (ibid., vol. i, 1823, pp. 373-5).
Among the Apinages of Brazil, also, the women stand in a row, almost motionless, while the men dance and leap in front of them, both men and women at the same time singing. (Buscalioni, "Reise zu den Apinages," Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, 1899, ht. 6, p. 650.)
Among the Gilas of New Mexico, "when a young man sees a girl whom he desires for a wife, he first endeavors to gain the good-will of the parents; this accomplished, he proceeds to serenade his lady-love, and will often sit for hours, day after day, near her home, playing on his flute. Should the girl not appear, it is a sign she rejects him; but if, on the other hand, she comes out to meet him, he knows that his suit is accepted, and he takes her to his home. No marriage ceremony is performed."[33] (H.H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific, vol. i, p. 549.)
"Among the Minnetarees a singular night-dance is, it is said, sometimes held. During this amusement an opportunity is given to the squaws to select their favorites. A squaw, as she dances, will advance to a person with whom she is captivated, either for his personal attractions or for his renown in arms; she taps him on the shoulder and immediately runs out of the lodge and betakes herself to the bushes, followed by the favorite. But if it should happen that he has a particular preference for another from whom he expects the same favor, or if he is restrained by a vow, or is already satiated with indulgence, he politely declines her offer by placing his hand in her bosom, on which they return to the assembly and rejoin the dance." It is worthy of remark that in the language of the Omahas the word watche applies equally to the amusement of dancing and to sexual intercourse. (S.H. Long, Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, 1823, vol. i, p. 337.)
At a Kaffir marriage "singing and dancing last until midnight. Each party [the bride's and the bridegroom's] dances in front of the other, but they do not mingle together. As the evening advances, the spirits and passions of all become greatly excited; and the power of song, the display of muscular action, and the gesticulations of the dancers and leapers are something extraordinary. The manner in which, at certain times, one man or woman, more excited than the rest, bounds from the ranks, leaps into the air, bounces forward, and darts backward beggars all description. These violent exercises usually close about midnight, when each party retires; generally, each man selects a paramour, and, indulging in sexual gratification, spends the remainder of the night." (W.C. Holden, The Kaffir Race, 1866, p. 192.)
At the initiation of Kaffir boys into manhood, as described by Holden, they were circumcised. "Cattle are then slaughtered by the parents, and the boys are plentifully supplied with flesh meat; a good deal of dancing also ensues at this stage of the proceedings. The ukut-shila consists in attiring themselves with the leaves of the wild date in the most fantastic manner; thus attired they visit each of the kraals to which they belong in rotation, for the purpose of dancing. These dances are the most licentious which can be imagined. The women act a prominent part in them, and endeavor to excite the passions of the novices by performing all sorts of obscene gesticulations. As soon as the soreness occasioned by the act of circumcision is healed the boys are, as it were, let loose upon society, and exempted from nearly all the restraints of law; so that should they even steal and slaughter their neighbor's cattle they would not be punished; and they have the special privilege of seizing by force, if force be necessary, every unmarried woman they choose, for the purpose of gratifying their passions." Similar festivals take place at the initiation of girls. (W.C. Holden, The Kaffir Race, 1866, p. 185.)
The Rev. J. Macdonald has described the ceremonies and customs attending and following the initiation-rites of a young girl on her first menstruation among the Zulus between the Tugela and Delagoa Bay. At this time the girl is called an intonjane. A beast is killed as a thank-offering to the ancestral spirits, high revel is held for several days, and dancing and music take place every night till those engaged in it are all exhausted or daylight arrives. "After a few days and when dancing has been discontinued, young men and girls congregate in the outer apartment of the hut, and begin singing, clapping their hands, and making a grunting noise to show their joy. At nightfall most of the young girls who were the intonjane's attendants, leave for their own homes for the night, to return the following morning. Thereafter the young men and girls who gathered into the hut in the afternoon separate into pairs and sleep together in puris naturalibus, for that is strictly ordained by custom. Sexual intercourse is not allowed, but what is known as metsha or ukumetsha is the sole purpose of the novel arrangement. Ukumetsha may be defined as partial intercourse. Every man who sleeps thus with a girl has to send to the father of the intonjane an assegai; should he have formed an attachment for his partner of the night and wish to pay her his addresses, he sends two assegais." (Rev. J. Macdonald, "Manners, etc., of South African Tribes," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xx, November, 1890, p. 117.)
Goncourt reports the account given him by a French officer from Senegal of the dances of the women, "a dance which is a gentle oscillation of the body, with gradually increasing excitement, from time to time a woman darting forward from the group to stand in front of her lover, contorting herself as though in a passionate embrace, and, on passing her hand between her thighs, showing it covered with the moisture of amorous enjoyment." (Journal, vol. ix, p. 79.) The dance here referred to is probably the Bamboula dance of the Wolofs, a spring festival which has been described by Pierre Loti in his Roman d'un Spahi, and concerning which various details are furnished by a French army-surgeon, acquainted with Senegal, in his Untrodden Fields of Anthropology. The dance, as described by the latter, takes place at night during full moon, the dancers, male and female, beginning timidly, but, as the beat of the tam-tams and the encouraging cries of the spectators become louder, the dance becomes more furious. The native name of the dance is anamalis fobil, "the dance of the treading drake." "The dancer in his movements imitates the copulation of the great Indian duck. This drake has a member of a corkscrew shape, and a peculiar movement is required to introduce it into the duck. The woman tucks up her clothes and convulsively agitates the lower part of her body; she alternately shows her partner her vulva and hides it from him by a regular movement, backward and forward, of the body." (Untrodden Fields of Anthropology, Paris, 1898, vol. ii, p. 112.)
Among the Gurus of the Ivory Coast (Gulf of Guinea), Eysseric observes, dancing is usually carried on at night and more especially by the men, and on certain occasions women must not appear, for if they assisted at fetichistic dances "they would die." Under other circumstances men and women dance together with ardor, not forming couples but often vis-a-vis: their movements are lascivious. Even the dances following a funeral tend to become sexual in character. At the end of the rites attending the funeral of a chief's son the entire population began to dance with ever-growing ardor; there was nothing ritualistic or sad in these contortions, which took on the character of a lascivious dance. Men and women, boys and girls, young and old, sought to rival each other in suppleness, and the festival became joyous and general, as if in celebration of a marriage or a victory. (Eysseric, "La Cote d'Ivoire," Nouvelles Archives des Missions Scientifiques, tome ix, 1890, pp. 241-49.)
Mrs. French-Sheldon has described the marriage-rites she observed at Taveta in East Africa. "During this time the young people dance and carouse and make themselves generally merry and promiscuously drunk, carrying the excess of their dissipation to such an extent that they dance until they fall down in a species of epileptic fit." It is the privilege of the bridegroom's four groomsmen to enjoy the bride first, and she is then handed over to her legitimate husband. This people, both men and women, are "great dancers and merry-makers; the young fellows will collect in groups and dance as though in competition one with the other; one lad will dash out from the circle of his companions, rush into the middle of a circumscribed space, and scream out 'Wow, wow!' Another follows him and screams; then a third does the same. These men will dance with their knees almost rigid, jumping into the air until their excitement becomes very great and their energy almost spasmodic, leaving the ground frequently three feet as they spring into the air. At some of their festivals their dancing is carried to such an extent that I have seen a young fellow's muscles quiver from head to foot and his jaws tremble without any apparent ability on his part to control them, until, foaming at the mouth and with his eyes rolling, he falls in a paroxysm upon the ground, to be carried off by his companions." The writer adds significantly that this dancing "would seem to emanate from a species of voluptuousness." (Mrs. French-Sheldon, "Customs among the Natives of East Africa," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxi, May, 1892, pp. 366-67.) It may be added that among the Suaheli dances are intimately associated with weddings; the Suaheli dances have been minutely described by Velten (Sitten und Gebraueche der Suaheli, pp. 144-175). Among the Akamba of British East Africa, also, according to H.R. Tate (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Jan.-June, 1904, p. 137), the dances are followed by connection between the young men and girls, approved of by the parents.
The dances of the Faroe Islanders have been described by Raymond Pilet ("Rapport sur une Mission en Islande et aux lies Feroe," Nouvelles Archives des Missions Scientifiques, tome vii, 1897, p. 285). These dances, which are entirely decorous, include poetry, music, and much mimicry, especially of battle. They sometimes last for two consecutive days and nights. "The dance is simply a permitted and discreet method by which the young men may court the young girls. The islander enters the circle and places himself beside the girl to whom he desires to show his affection; if he meets with her approval she stays and continues to dance at his side; if not, she leaves the circle and appears later at another spot."
Pitre (Usi, etc., del Popolo Siciliano, vol. ii, p. 24, as quoted in Marro's Puberta) states that in Sicily the youth who wishes to marry seeks to give some public proof of his valor and to show himself off. In Chiaramonte, in evidence of his virile force, he bears in procession the standard of some confraternity, a high and richly adorned standard which makes its staff bend to a semicircle, of such enormous weight that the bearer must walk in a painfully bent position, his head thrown back and his feet forward. On reaching the house of his betrothed he makes proof of his boldness and skill in wielding this extremely heavy standard which at this moment seems a plaything in his hands, but may yet prove fatal to him through injury to the loins or other parts.
This same tendency, which we find in so highly developed a degree among animals and primitive human peoples, is also universal among the children of even the most civilized human races, although in a less organized and more confused way. It manifests itself as "showing-off." Sanford Bell, in his study of the emotion of love in children, finds that "showing-off" is an essential element in the love of children in what he terms the second stage (from the eighth to the twelfth year in girls and the fourteenth in boys). "It constitutes one of the chief numbers in the boy's repertory of love charms, and is not totally absent from the girl's. It is a most common sight to see the boys taxing their resources in devising means of exposing their own excellencies, and often doing the most ridiculous and extravagant things. Running, jumping, dancing, prancing, sparring, wrestling, turning handsprings, somersaults, climbing, walking fences, swinging, giving yodels and yells, whistling, imitating the movements of animals, 'taking people off,' courting danger, affecting courage are some of its common forms. … This 'showing-off' in the boy lover is the forerunner of the skilful, purposive, and elaborate means of self-exhibition in the adult male and the charming coquetry in the adult female, in their love-relations." (Sanford Bell, "The Emotion of Love Between the Sexes," American Journal Psychology, July, 1902; cf. "Showing-off and Bashfulness," Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1903.)
If, in the light of the previous discussion, we examine such facts as those here collected, we may easily trace throughout the perpetual operations of the same instinct. It is everywhere the instinctive object of the male, who is very rarely passive in the process of courtship, to assure by his activity in display, his energy or skill or beauty, both his own passion and the passion of the female. Throughout nature sexual conjugation only takes place after much expenditure of energy.[34] We are deceived by what we see among highly fed domesticated animals, and among the lazy classes of human society, whose sexual instincts are at once both unnaturally stimulated and unnaturally repressed, when we imagine that the instinct of detumescence is normally ever craving to be satisfied, and that throughout nature it can always be set off at a touch whenever the stimulus is applied. So far from the instinct of tumescence naturally needing to be crushed, it needs, on the contrary, in either sex to be submitted to the most elaborate and prolonged processes in order to bring about those conditions which detumescence relieves. A state of tumescence is not normally constant, and tumescence must be obtained before detumescence is possible.[35] The whole object of courtship, of the mutual approximation and caresses of two persons of the opposite sex, is to create the state of sexual tumescence.
It will be seen that the most usual method of attaining tumescence—a method found among the most various kinds of animals, from insects and birds to man—is some form of the dance. Among the Negritos of the Philippines dancing is described by A.B. Meyer as "jumping in a circle around a girl and stamping with the feet"; as we have seen, such a dance is, essentially, a form of courtship that is widespread among animals. "The true cake-walk," again, Stanley Hall remarks, "as seen in the South is perhaps the purest expression of this impulse to courtship antics seen in man."[36] Muscular movement of which the dance is the highest and most complex expression, is undoubtedly a method of auto-intoxication of the very greatest potency. All energetic movement, indeed, tends to produce active congestion. In its influence on the brain violent exercise may thus result in a state of intoxication even resembling insanity. As Lagrange remarks, the visible effects of exercise—heightened color, bright eyes, resolute air and walk—are those of slight intoxication, and a girl who has waltzed for a quarter of an hour is in the same condition as if she had drunk champagne.[37] Groos regards the dance as, above all, an intoxicating play of movement, possessing, like other methods of intoxication,—and even apart from its relationship to combat and love,—the charm of being able to draw us out of our everyday life and lead us into a self-created dream-world.[38] That the dance is not only a narcotic, but also a powerful stimulant, we may clearly realize from the experiments which show that this effect is produced even by much less complex kinds of muscular movement. This has been clearly determined, for instance, by Fere, in the course of a long and elaborate series of experiments dealing with the various influences that modify work as measured by Mosso's ergograph. This investigator found that muscular movement is the most efficacious of all stimulants in increasing muscular power.[39] It is easy to trace these pleasurable effects of combined narcotic and stimulant motion in everyday life and it is unnecessary to enumerate its manifestations.[40]
Dancing is so powerful an agent on the organism, as Sergi truly remarks (Les Emotions, p. 288), because its excitation is general, because it touches every vital organ, the higher centers no longer dominating. Primitive dancing differs very widely from that civilized kind of dancing—finding its extreme type in the ballet—in which energy is concentrated into the muscles below the knee. In the finest kinds of primitive dancing all the limbs, the whole body, take part. For instance, "the Marquisan girls," Herman Melville remarked in Typee, "dance all over, as it were; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers,—ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads. In good sooth, they so sway their floating forms, arch their necks, toss aloft their naked arms, and glide, and swim, and whirl," etc.
If we turn to a very different people, we find this characteristic of primitive dancing admirably illustrated by the missionary, Holden, in the case of Kaffir dances. "So far as I have observed," he states, "the perfection of the art or science consists in their being able to put every part of the body into motion at the same time. And as they are naked, the bystander has a good opportunity of observing the whole process, which presents a remarkably odd and grotesque appearance,—the head, the trunk, the arms, the legs, the hands, the feet, bones, muscles, sinews, skin, scalp, and hair, each and all in motion at the same time, with feathers waving, tails of monkeys and wild beasts dangling, and shields beating, accompanied with whistling, shouting, and leaping. It would appear as though the whole frame was hung on springing wires or cords. Dances are held in high repute, being the natural expression of joyous emotion, or creating it when absent. There is, perhaps, no exercise in greater accordance with the sentiments or feelings of a barbarous people, or more fully calculated to gratify their wild and ungoverned passions." (W.C. Holden, The Kaffir Race, 1866, p. 274.)
Dancing, as the highest and most complex form of muscular movement, is the most potent method of obtaining the organic excitement muscular movement yields, and thus we understand how from the earliest zooelogical ages it has been brought to the service of the sexual instinct as a mode of attaining tumescence. Among savages this use of dancing works harmoniously with the various other uses which dancing possesses in primitive times and which cause it to occupy so large and vital a part in savage life that it may possibly even affect the organism to such an extent as to mold the bones; so that some authorities have associated platycnemia with dancing. As civilization advances, the other uses of dancing fall away, but it still remains a sexual stimulant. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, brings forward a number of quotations from old authors showing that dancing is an incitement to love.[41]
The Catholic theologians (Debreyne, Moechialogie, pp. 190-199) for the most part condemn dancing with much severity. In Protestant Germany, also, it is held that dance meetings and musical gatherings are frequent occasions of unchastity. Thus in the Leipzig district when a girl is asked "How did you fall?" she nearly always replies "At the dance." (Die Geschlechtlich-Sittliche Verhaeltnisse im Deutschen Reiche, vol. i, p. 196.) It leads quite as often, and no doubt oftener, to marriage. Rousseau defended it on this account (Nouvelle Heloise, bk. iv, letter x); dancing is, he held, an admirable preliminary to courtship, and the best way for young people to reveal themselves to each other, in their grace and decorum, their qualities and defects, while its publicity is its safeguard. An International Congress of Dancing Masters was held at Barcelona in 1907. In connection with this Congress, Giraudet, president of the International Academy of Dancing Masters, issued an inquiry to over 3000 teachers of dancing throughout the world in order to ascertain the frequency with which dancing led to marriage. Of over one million pupils of dancing, either married or engaged to be married, it was found that in most countries more than 50 per cent. met their conjugal partners at dances. The smallest proportion was in Norway, with only 39 per cent., and the highest, Germany, with 97 per cent. Intermediate are France, 83 per cent.; America, 80 per cent.; Italy, 70 per cent.; Spain, 68 per cent.; Holland, Bulgaria, and England, 65 per cent.; Australia and Roumania, 60 per cent., etc. Of the teachers themselves 92 per cent. met their partners at dances. (Quoted from the Figaro in Beiblatt "Sexualreform" to Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, 1907, p. 175.)
In civilization, however, dancing is not only an incitement to love and a preliminary to courtship, but it is often a substitute for the normal gratification of the sexual instinct, procuring something of the pleasure and relief of gratified love. In occasional abnormal cases this may be consciously realized. Thus Sadger, who regards the joy of dancing as a manifestation of "muscular eroticism," gives the case of a married hysterical woman of 21, with genital anesthesia, but otherwise strongly developed skin eroticism, who was a passionate dancer: "I often felt as though I was giving myself to my partner in dancing," she said, "and was actually having coitus with him. I have the feeling that in me dancing takes the place of coitus."[42] Normally something of the same feeling is experienced by many young women, who will expend a prodigious amount of energy in dancing, thus procuring, not fatigue, but happiness and relief.[43] It is significant that, after sexual relations have begun, girls generally lose much of their ardor in dancing. Even our modern dances, it is worthy of note, are often of sexual origin; thus, the most typical of all, the waltz, was originally (as Schaller, quoted by Groos, states) the close of a complicated dance which "represented the romance of love, the seeking and the fleeing, the playful sulking and shunning, and finally the jubilation of the wedding."[44]
Not only is movement itself a source of tumescence, but even the spectacle of movement tends to produce the same effect. The pleasure of witnessing movement, as represented by its stimulating effect on the muscular system,—for states of well-being are accompanied by an increase of power,—has been found susceptible of exact measurement by Fere. He has shown that to watch a colored disk when in motion produced stronger muscular contractions, as measured by the dynamometer, than to watch the same disk when motionless. Even in the absence of color a similar influence of movement was noted, and watching a modified metronome produced a greater increase of work with the ergograph than when working to the rhythm of the metronome without watching it.[45] This psychological fact has been independently discovered by advertisers, who seek to impress the value of their wares on the public by the device of announcing them by moving colored lights. The pleasure given by the ballet largely depends on the same fact. Not only is dancing an excitation, but the spectacle of dancing is itself exciting, and even among savages dances have a public which becomes almost as passionately excited as the dancers themselves.[46] It is in virtue of this effect of dancing and similar movements that we so frequently find, both among the lower animals and savage man, that to obtain tumescence in both sexes, it is sufficient for one sex alone, usually the male, to take the active part. This point attracted the attention of Kulischer many years ago, and he showed how the dances of the men, among savages, excite the women, who watch them intently though unobtrusively, and are thus influenced in choosing their lovers. He was probably the first to insist that in man sexual selection has taken place mainly through the agency of dances, games, and festivals.[47]
It is now clear, therefore, why the evacuation theory of the sexual impulse must necessarily be partial and inadequate. It leaves out of account the whole of the phenomena connected with tumescence, and those phenomena constitute the most prolonged, the most important, the most significant stage of the sexual process. It is during tumescence that the whole psychology of the sexual impulse is built up; it is as an incident arising during tumescence and influencing its course that we must probably regard nearly every sexual aberration. It is with the second stage of the sexual process, when the instinct of detumescence arises, that the analogy of evacuation can alone be called in. Even here, that analogy, though real, is not complete, the nervous element involved in detumescence being out of all proportion to the extent of the evacuation. The typical act of evacuation, however, is a nervous process, and when we bear this in mind we may see whatever truth the evacuation theory possesses. Beaunis classes the sexual impulse with the "needs of activity," but under this head he coordinates it with the "need of urination." That is to say, that both alike are nervous explosions. Micturition, like detumescence, is a convulsive act, and, like detumescence also, it is certainly connected with cerebral processes; thus in epilepsy the passage of urine which may occur (as in a girl described by Gowers with minor attacks during which it was emitted consciously, but involuntarily) is really a part of the process.[48]
There appears, indeed, to be a special and intimate connection between the explosion of sexual detumescence and the explosive energy of the bladder; so that they may reinforce each other and to a limited extent act vicariously in relieving each other's tension. It is noteworthy that nocturnal and diurnal incontinence of urine, as well as "stammering" of the bladder, are all specially liable to begin or to cease at puberty. In men and even infants, distention of the bladder favors tumescence by producing venous congestion, though at the same time it acts as a physical hindrance to sexual detumescence[49]; in women—probably not from pressure alone, but from reflex nervous action—a full bladder increases both sexual excitement and pleasure, and I have been informed by several women that they have independently discovered this fact for themselves and acted in accordance with it. Conversely, sexual excitement increases the explosive force of the bladder, the desire to urinate is aroused, and in women the sexual orgasm, when very acute and occurring with a full bladder, is occasionally accompanied, alike in savage and civilized life, by an involuntary and sometimes full and forcible expulsion of urine.[50] The desire to urinate may possibly be, as has been said, the normal accompaniment of sexual excitement in women (just as it is said to be in mares; so that the Arabs judge that the mare is ready for the stallion when she urinates immediately on hearing him neigh). The association may even form the basis of sexual obsessions.[51] I have elsewhere shown that, of all the influences which increase the expulsive force of the bladder, sexual excitement is the most powerful.[52] It may also have a reverse influence and inhibit contraction of the bladder, sometimes in association with shyness, but also independently of shyness. There is also reason to suppose that the nervous energy expended in an explosion of the tension of the sexual organs may sometimes relieve the bladder; it is well recognized that a full bladder is a factor in producing sexual emissions during sleep, the explosive energy of the bladder being inhibited and passing over into the sexual sphere. Conversely, it appears that explosion of the bladder relieves sexual tension. An explosion of the nervous centers connected with the contraction of the bladder will relieve nervous tension generally; there are forms of epilepsy in which the act of urination constitutes the climax, and Gowers, in dealing with minor epilepsy, emphasizes the frequency of micturition, which "may occur with spasmodic energy when there is only the slightest general stiffness," especially in women. He adds the significant remark that it "sometimes seems to relieve the cerebral tension,"[53] and gives the case of a girl in whom the aura consisted mainly of a desire to urinate; if she could satisfy this the fit was arrested; if not she lost consciousness and a severe fit followed.
If micturition may thus relieve nervous tension generally, it is not surprising that it should relieve the tension of the centers with which it is most intimately connected. Serieux records the case of a girl of 12, possessed by an impulse to masturbation which she was unable to control, although anxious to conquer it, who only found relief in the act of urination; this soothed her and to some extent satisfied the sexual excitement; when the impulse to masturbate was restrained the impulse to urinate became imperative; she would rise four or five times in the night for this purpose, and even urinate in bed or in her clothes to obtain the desired sexual relief.[54] I am acquainted with a lady who had a similar, but less intense, experience during childhood. Sometimes, especially in children, the act of urination becomes an act of gratification at the climax of sexual pleasure, the imitative symbol of detumescence. Thus Schultze-Malkowsky describes a little girl of 7 who would bribe her girl companions with little presents to play the part of horses on all fours while she would ride on their necks with naked thighs in order to obtain the pleasurable sensation of close contact. With one special friend she would ride facing backward, and leaning forward to embrace her body impulsively, and at the same time pressing the neck closely between her thighs, would urinate.[55] Fere has recorded the interesting case of a man who, having all his life after puberty been subject to monthly attacks of sexual excitement, after the age of 45 completely lost the liability to these manifestations, but found himself subject, in place of them, to monthly attacks of frequent and copious urination, accompanied by sexual day-dreams, but by no genital excitement.[56] Such a case admirably illustrates the compensatory relation of sexual and vesical excitation. This mutual interaction is easily comprehensible when we recall the very close nervous connection which exists between the mechanisms of the sexual organs and the bladder.
Nor are such relationships found to be confined to these two centers; in a lesser degree the more remote explosive centers are also affected; all motor influences may spread to related muscles; the convulsion of laughter, for instance, seems to be often in relation with the sexual center, and Groos has suggested that the laughter which, especially in the sexually minded, often follows allusions to the genital sphere is merely an effort to dispel nascent sexual excitement by liberating an explosion of nervous energy in another direction.[57] Nervous discharges tend to spread, or to act vicariously, because the motor centers are more or less connected.[58] Of all the physiological motor explosions, the sexual orgasm, or detumescence, is the most massive, powerful, and overwhelming. So volcanic is it that to the ancient Greek philosophers it seemed to be a minor kind of epilepsy. The relief of detumescence is not merely the relief of an evacuation; it is the discharge, by the most powerful apparatus for nervous explosion in the body, of the energy accumulated and stored up in the slow process of tumescence, and that discharge reverberates through all the nervous centers in the organism.
"The sophist of Abdera said that coitus is a slight fit of epilepsy, judging it to be an incurable disease." (Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, bk. ii, chapter x.) And Coelius Aurelianus, one of the chief physicians of antiquity, said that "coitus is a brief epilepsy." Fere has pointed out that both these forms of nervous storm are sometimes accompanied by similar phenomena, by subjective sensations of sight or smell, for example; and that the two kinds of discharge may even be combined. (Fere, Les Epileptiques, pp. 283-84; also "Exces Veneriens et Epilepsie," Comptes-rendus de la Societe de Biologie, April 3, 1897, and the same author's Instinct Sexuel, pp. 209, 221, and his "Priapisme Epileptique," La Medecine Moderne, February 4, 1899.) The epileptic convulsion in some cases involves the sexual mechanism, and it is noteworthy that epilepsy tends to appear at puberty. In modern times even so great a physician as Boerhaave said that coitus is a "true epilepsy," and more recently Roubaud, Hammond, and Kowalevsky have emphasized the resemblance between coitus and epilepsy, though without identifying the two states. Some authorities have considered that coitus is a cause of epilepsy, but this is denied by Christian, Struempell, and Loewenfeld. (Loewenfeld, Sexualleben und Nervenleiden, 1899, p. 68.) Fere has recorded the case of a youth in whom the adoption of the practice of masturbation, several times a day, was followed by epileptic attacks which ceased when masturbation was abandoned. (Fere, Comptes-rendus de la Socitete de Biologie, April 3, 1897.)
It seems unprofitable at present to attempt any more fundamental analysis of the sexual impulse. Beaunis, in the work already quoted, vaguely suggests that we ought possibly to connect the sexual excitation which leads the male to seek the female with chemical action, either exercised directly on the protoplasm of the organism or indirectly by the intermediary of the nervous system, and especially by smell in the higher animals. Clevenger, Spitzka, Kiernan, and others have also regarded the sexual impulse as protoplasmic hunger, tracing it back to the presexual times when one protozoal form absorbed another. In the same way Joanny Roux, insisting that the sexual need is a need of the whole organism, and that "we love with the whole of our body," compares the sexual instinct to hunger, and distinguishes between "sexual hunger" affecting the whole system and "sexual appetite" as a more localized desire; he concludes that the sexual need is an aspect of the nutritive need.[59] Useful as these views are as a protest against too crude and narrow a conception of the part played by the sexual impulse, they carry us into a speculative region where proof is difficult.
We are now, however, at all events, in a better position to define the contents of the sexual impulse. We see that there are certainly, as Moll has indicated, two constituents in that impulse; but, instead of being unrelated, or only distantly related, we see that they are really so intimately connected as to form two distinct stages in the same process: a first stage, in which—usually under the parallel influence of internal and external stimuli—images, desires, and ideals grow up within the mind, while the organism generally is charged with energy and the sexual apparatus congested with blood; and a second stage, in which the sexual apparatus is discharged amid profound sexual excitement, followed by deep organic relief. By the first process is constituted the tension which the second process relieves. It seems best to call the first impulse the process of tumescence; the second the process of detumescence.[60] The first, taking on usually a more active form in the male, has the double object of bringing the male himself into the condition in which discharge becomes imperative, and at the same time arousing in the female a similar ardent state of emotional excitement and sexual turgescence. The second process has the object, directly, of discharging the tension thus produced and, indirectly, of effecting the act by which the race is propagated.
It seems to me that this is at present the most satisfactory way in which we can attempt to define the sexual impulse.
Original footnotes[edit]
- ↑ C. Lloyd Morgan, "Instinct and Intelligence in Animals," Nature, February 3, 1898.
- ↑ Essais, livre iii, ch. v.
- ↑ Fere, "La Predisposition dans l'etiologie des perversions sexuelles," Revue de medecine, 1898. In his more recent work on the evolution and dissolution of the sexual instinct Fere perhaps slightly modified his position by stating that "the sexual appetite is, above all, a general need of the organism based on a sensation of fullness, a sort of need of evacuation," L'Instinct sexuel, 1899, p. 6. Loewenfeld (Ueber die Sexuelle Konstitution, p. 30) gives a qualified acceptance to the excretory theory, as also Rohleder (Die Zeugung beim Menschen, p. 25).
- ↑ Goltz, Centralblatt fuer die med. Wissenschaften, 1865, No. 19, and 1866, No. 18; also Beitraege zur Lehre von den Funktionen des Frosches, Berlin, 1869, p. 20.
- ↑ J. Tarchanoff, "Zur Physiologie des Geschlechtsapparatus des Frosches," Archiv fuer die Gesammte Physiologie, 1887, vol. xl, p. 330.
- ↑ E. Steinach, "Untersuchungen zur vergleichenden Physiologie der maennlicher Geschlechtsorgane insbesondere der accessorischen Geschlechtsdruesen," Archiv fuer die Gesammte Physiologie, vol. lvi, 1894, pp. 304-338.
- ↑ See, e.g., Shattock and Seligmann, "The Acquirement of Secondary Sexual Characters," Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. lxxiii, 1904, p. 49.
- ↑ For facts bearing on this point, see Guinard, art. "Castration," Richet's Dictionnaire de Physiologie. The general results of castration are summarized by Robert Mueller in ch. vii of his Sexualbiologie; also by F.H.A. Marshall, The Physiology of Reproduction, ch, ix; see also E. Pittard, "Les Skoptzy," L'Anthropologie, 1903, p. 463.
- ↑ For an ancient discussion of this point, see Schurig, Spermatologia, 1720, cap. ix.
- ↑ J.J. Matignon, Superstition, Crime, et Misere en Chine, "Les Eunuques du Palais Imperial de Pekin," 1901.
- ↑ P. Marie, "Eunuchisme et Erotisme," Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpetriere, 1906, No. 5, and Progres medical, Jan. 26, 1907.
- ↑ Pedagogical Seminary, July, 1897, p. 121.
- ↑ See, for instance, the case reported in another volume of these Studies ("Sexual Inversion"), in which castration was performed on a sexual invert without effecting any change.
- ↑ Guinard, art. "Castration," Dictionnaire de Physiologie.
- ↑ M.A. Colman, Medical Standard, August, 1895; Clara Barrus, American Journal of Insanity, April, 1895; Macnaughton-Jones, British Gynaecological Journal, August, 1902; W.G. Bridgman, Medical Standard, 1896; J.M. Cotterill, British Medical Journal, April 7, 1900 (also private communication); Paul F. Munde, American Journal of Obstetrics, March, 1899.
- ↑ See Swale Vincent, Internal Secretion and the Ductless Glands, 1912; F.H.A. Marshall, The Physiology of Reproduction, 1910, ch. ix; Munzer, Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, Nov., 1910; C. Sajous, The Internal Secretions, vol. i, 1911. The adrenal glands have been fully and interestingly studied by Glynn, Quarterly Journal of Medicine, Jan., 1912; the thyroid, by Ewan Waller, Practitioner, Aug., 1912; the internal secretion of the ovary, by A. Louise McIlroy, Proceedings Royal Society Medicine, July, 1912. For a discussion at the Neurology Section of the British Medical Association Meeting, 1912, see British Medical Journal, Nov. 16, 1912.
- ↑ Since this was written I have come across a passage in Hampa (p. 228), by Rafael Salillas, the Spanish sociologist, which shows that the analogy has been detected by the popular mind and been embodied in popular language: "A significant anatomico-physiological concordance supposes a resemblance between the mouth and the sexual organs of a woman, between coitus and the ingestion of food, and between foods which do not require mastication and the spermatic ejaculation; these representations find expression in the popular name papo given to women's genital organs. 'Papo' is the crop of birds, and is derived from 'papar' (Latin, papare), to eat soft food such as we call pap. With this representation of infantile food is connected the term leche [milk] as applied to the ejaculated genital fluid." Cleland, it may be added, in the most remarkable of English erotic novels, The Memoirs of Fanny Hill, refers to "the compressive exsuction with which the sensitive mechanism of that part [the vagina] thirstily draws and drains the nipple of Love," and proceeds to compare it to the action of the child at the breast. It appears that, in some parts of the animal world at least, there is a real analogy of formation between the oral and vaginal ends of the trunk. This is notably the case in some insects, and the point has been elaborately discussed by Walter Wesche, "The Genitalia of Both the Sexes in Diptera, and their Relation to the Armature of the Mouth," Transactions of the Linnean Society, second series, vol. ix, Zooelogy, 1906.
- ↑ Naecke now expresses himself very dubiously on the point; see, e.g., Archiv fuer Kriminal-Anthropologie, 1905, p. 186.
- ↑ Untersuchungen ueber die Libido Sexualis, Berlin, 1897-98.
- ↑ Moll adopts the term "impulse of detumescence" (Detumescenztrieb) instead of "impulse of ejaculation," because in women there is either no ejaculation or it cannot be regarded as essential.
- ↑ I quote from the second edition, as issued in 1881.
- ↑ This is the theory which by many has alone been seen in Darwin's Descent of Man. Thus even his friend Wallace states unconditionally (Tropical Nature, p. 193) that Darwin accepted a "voluntary or conscious sexual selection," and seems to repeat the same statement in Darwinism (1889), p. 283. Lloyd Morgan, in his discussion of the pairing instinct in Habit and Instinct (1896), seems also only to see this side of Darwin's statement.
- ↑ In his Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, Darwin was puzzled by the fact that, in captivity, animals often copulate without conceiving and failed to connect that fact with the processes behind his own theory of sexual selection.
- ↑ Beaunis, Sensations Internes, ch. v, "Besoins Sexuels," 1889. It may be noted that many years earlier Burdach (in his Physiologie als Erfahrungswissenschaft, 1826) had recognized that the activity of the male favored procreation, and that mental and physical excitement seemed to have the same effect in the female also.
- ↑ It is scarcely necessary to point out that this is too extreme a position. As J.G. Millais remarks of ducks (Natural History of British Ducks, p. 45), in courtship "success in winning the admiration of the female is rather a matter of persistent and active attention than physical force," though the males occasionally fight over the female. The ruff (Machetes pugnax) is a pugnacious bird, as his name indicates. Yet, the reeve, the female of this species, is, as E. Selous shows ("Sexual Selection in Birds," Zooelogist, Feb. and May, 1907), completely mistress of the situation. "She seems the plain and unconcerned little mistress of a numerous and handsome seraglio, each member of which, however he flounce and bounce, can only wait to be chosen." Any fighting among the males is only incidental and is not a factor in selection. Moreover, as R. Mueller points out (loc. cit., p. 290), fighting would not usually attain the end desired, for if the males expend their time and strength in a serious combat they merely afford a third less pugnacious male a better opportunity of running off with the prize.
- ↑ L. Tillier, L'Instinct Sexuel, 1889, pp. 74, 118, 119, 124 et seq., 289.
- ↑ K. Groos, Die Spiele der Thiere, 1896; Die Spiele der Menschen, 1899; both are translated into English.
- ↑ Prof. H.E. Ziegler, in a private letter to Professor Groos, Spiele der Thiere, p. 202.
- ↑ Die Spiele der Thiere, p. 244. This had been briefly pointed out by earlier writers. Thus, Haeckel (Gen. Morph., ii, p. 244) remarked that fighting for females is a special or modified kind of struggle for existence, and that it acts on both sexes.
- ↑ It may be added that in the human species, as Bray remarks ("Le Beau dans la Nature," Revue Philosophique, October, 1901, p. 403), "the hymen would seem to tend to the same end, as if nature had wished to reinforce by a natural obstacle the moral restraint of modesty, so that only the vigorous male could insure his reproduction." There can be no doubt that among many animals pairing is delayed so far as possible until maturity is reached. "It is a strict rule amongst birds," remarks J.G. Millais (op. cit., p. 46), "that they do not breed until both sexes have attained the perfect adult plumage." Until that happens, it seems probable, the conditions for sexual excitation are not fully established. We know little, says Howard (Zooelogist, 1903, p. 407), of the age at which birds begin to breed, but it is known that "there are yearly great numbers of individuals who do not breed, and the evidence seems to show that such individuals are immature."
- ↑ A. Marro, La Puberte, 1901, p. 464.
- ↑ Lloyd Morgan, Animal Behavior, 1900, pp. 264-5. It may be added that, on the esthetic side, Hirn, in his study (The Origins of Art, 1900), reaches conclusions which likewise, in the main, concord with those of Groos.
- ↑ It may be noted that the marriage ceremony itself is often of the nature of a courtship, a symbolic courtship, embodying a method of attaining tumescence. As Crawley, who has brought out this point, puts it, "Marriage-rites of union are essentially identical with love charms," and he refers in illustration to the custom of the Australian Arunta, among whom the man or woman by making music on the bull-roarer compels a person of the opposite sex to court him or her, the marriage being thus completed. (E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 318.)
- ↑ The more carefully animals are observed, the more often this is found to be the case, even with respect to species which possess no obvious and elaborate process for obtaining tumescence. See, for instance, the detailed and very instructive account—too long to quote here—given by E. Selous of the preliminaries to intercourse practised by a pair of great crested grebes, while nest-building. Intercourse only took place with much difficulty, after many fruitless invitations, more usually given by the female. ("Observational Diary of the Habits of the Great Crested Grebe," Zoeologist, September, 1901.) It is exactly the same with savages. The observation of Foley (Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie de Paris, November 6, 1879) that in savages "sexual erethism is very difficult" is of great significance and certainly in accordance with the facts. This difficulty of erethism is the real cause of many savage practices which to the civilized person often seem perverse; the women of the Caroline Islands, for instance, as described by Finsch, require the tongue or even the teeth to be applied to the clitoris, or a great ant to be applied to bite the parts, in order to stimulate orgasm. Westermarck, after quoting a remark of Mariner's concerning the women of Tonga,—"it must not be supposed that these women are always easily won; the greatest attentions and the most fervent solicitations are sometimes requisite, even though there be no other lover in the way,"—adds that these words "hold true for a great many, not to say all, savage and barbarous races now existing." (Human Marriage, p. 163.) The old notions, however, as to the sexual licentiousness of peoples living in natural conditions have scarcely yet disappeared. See Appendix A; "The Sexual Instinct in Savages."
- ↑ In men a certain degree of tumescence is essential before coitus can be effected at all; in women, though tumescence is not essential to coitus, it is essential to orgasm and the accompanying physical and psychic relief. The preference which women often experience for prolonged coitus is not, as might possibly be imagined, due to sensuality, but has a profound physiological basis.
- ↑ Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 223.
- ↑ See Lagrange's Physiology of Bodily Exercise, especially chapter ii. It is a significant fact that, as Sergi remarks (Les Emotions, p. 330), the physiological results of dancing are identical with the physiological results of pleasure.
- ↑ Groos, Spiele der Menschen, p. 112. Zmigrodzki (Die Mutter bei den Volkern des Arischen Stammes, p. 414 et seq.) has an interesting passage describing the dance—especially the Russian dance—in its orgiastic aspects.
- ↑ Fere, "L'Influence sur le Travail Volontaire d'un muscle de l'activite d'autres muscles," Nouvelles Iconographie de la Salpetriere, 1901.
- ↑ "The sensation of motion," Kline remarks ("The Migratory Impulse," American Journal of Psychology, October, 1898, p. 62), "as yet but little studied from a pleasure-pain standpoint, is undoubtedly a pleasure-giving sensation. For Aristippus the end of life is pleasure, which he defines as gentle motion. Motherhood long ago discovered its virtue as furnished by the cradle. Galloping to town on the parental knee is a pleasing pastime in every nursery. The several varieties of swings, the hammock, see-saw, flying-jenny, merry-go-round, shooting the chutes, sailing, coasting, rowing, and skating, together with the fondness of children for rotating rapidly in one spot until dizzy and for jumping from high places, are all devices and sports for stimulating the sense of motion. In most of these modes of motion the body is passive or semipassive, save in such motions as skating and rotating on the feet. The passiveness of the body precludes any important contribution of stimuli from kinesthetic sources. The stimuli are probably furnished, as Dr. Hall and others have suggested, by a redistribution of fluid pressure (due to the unusual motions and positions of the body) to the inner walls of the several vascular systems of the body."
- ↑ Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii., sect. ii, mem. ii, subs. iv.
- ↑ Sadger, "Haut-, Schleimhaut-, und Muskel-erotik," Jahrbuch fuer psychoanalytische Forschungen, Bd. iii, 1912, p. 556.
- ↑ Marro (Puberta, p. 367 et seq.) has some observations on this point. It was an insight into this action of dancing which led the Spanish clergy of the eighteenth century to encourage the national enthusiasm for dancing (as Baretti informs us) in the interests of morality.
- ↑ It is scarcely necessary to remark that a primitive dance, even when associated with courtship, is not necessarily a sexual pantomime; as Wallaschek, in his comprehensive survey of primitive dances, observes, it is more usually an animal pantomime, but nonetheless connected with the sexual instinct, separation of the sexes, also, being no proof to the contrary. (Wallaschek, Primitive Music, pp. 211-13.) Grosse (Anfaenge der Kunst, English translation, p. 228) has pointed out that the best dancer would be the best fighter and hunter, and that sexual selection and natural selection would thus work in harmony.
- ↑ Fere, "Le plaisir de la vue du Mouvement," Comptes-rendus de la Societe de Biologie, November 2, 1901; also Travail et Plaisir, ch. xxix.
- ↑ Groos repeatedly emphasizes the significance of this fact (Spiele der Menschen, pp. 81-9, 460 et seq.); Grosse (Anfaenge der Kunst, p. 215) had previously made some remarks on this point.
- ↑ M. Kulischer, "Die Geschlechtliche Zuchtwahl bei den Menschen in der Urzeit," Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, 1876, p. 140 et seq.
- ↑ Sir W.R. Gowers, Epilepsy, 2d ed., 1901, pp. 61, 138.
- ↑ Guyon, Lecons Cliniques sur les Maladies des Voies Urinaires, 3d ed., 1896, vol. ii, p. 397.
- ↑ See, e.g., Fere, L'Instinct Sexuel, pp. 222-23: Brantome was probably the first writer in modern times who referred to this phenomenon. MacGillicuddy (Functional Disorders of the Nervous System in Women, p. 110) refers to the case of a lady who always had sudden and uncontrollable expulsion of urine whenever her husband even began to perform the marital act, on which account he finally ceased intercourse with her. Kubary states that in Ponape (Western Carolines) the men are accustomed to titillate the vulva of their women with the tongue until the excitement is so intense that involuntary emission of urine takes place; this is regarded as the proper moment for intercourse.
- ↑ Thus Pitres and Regis (Transactions of the International Medical Congress, Moscow, vol. iv, p. 19) record the case of a young girl whose life was for some years tormented by a groundless fear of experiencing an irresistible desire to urinate. This obsession arose from once seeing at a theater a man whom she liked, and being overcome by sexual feeling accompanied by so strong a desire to urinate that she had to leave the theater. An exactly similar case in a young woman of erotic temperament, but prudish, has been recorded by Freud (Zur Neurosenlehre, Bd. i, p. 54). Morbid obsessions of modesty involving the urinary sphere and appearing at puberty are evidently based on transformed sexual emotion. Such a case has been recorded by Marandon de Montyel (Archives de Neurologie, vol. xii, 1901, p. 36); this lady, who was of somewhat neuropathic temperament, from puberty onward, in order to be able to urinate found it necessary not only to be absolutely alone, but to feel assured that no one even knew what was taking place.
- ↑ H. Ellis, "The Bladder as a Dynamometer," American Journal of Dermatology, May, 1902.
- ↑ Sir W. Gowers, "Minor Epilepsy," British Medical Journal, January 6, 1900; ib., Epilepsy, 2d ed., 1901, p. 106; see also H. Ellis, art. "Urinary Bladder, Influence of the Mind on the," in Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine.
- ↑ Serieux, Recherches Cliniques sur les Anomalies de l'Instinct Sexuel, p. 22.
- ↑ Emil Schultze-Malkowsky, "Der Sexuelle Trieb in Kindesalter," Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, vol. ii, part 8, p. 372.
- ↑ Fere, "Note sur un Cas de Periodicite Sexuelle chez l'Homme," Comptes-rendus Societe de Biologie, July 23, 1904.
- ↑ It is a familiar fact that, in women, occasionally, a violent explosion of laughter may be propagated to the bladder-center and produce urination. "She laughed till she nearly wetted the floor," I have heard a young woman in the country say, evidently using without thought a familiar locution. Professor Bechterew has recorded the case of a young married lady who, from childhood, wherever she might be—in friends' houses, in the street, in her own drawing-room—had always experienced an involuntary and forcible emission of urine, which could not be stopped or controlled, whenever she laughed; the bladder was quite sound and no muscular effort produced the same result. (W. Bechterew, Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1899.) In women these relationships are most easily observed, partly because in them the explosive centers are more easily discharged, and partly, it is probable, so far as the bladder is concerned, because, although after death the resistance to the emission of urine is notably less in women, during life about the same amount of force is necessary in both sexes; so that a greater amount of energy flows to the bladder in women, and any nervous storm or disturbance is thus specially apt to affect the bladder.
- ↑ "Every pain," remarks Marie de Manaceine, "produces a number of movements which are apparently useless: we cry out, we groan, we move our limbs, we throw ourselves from one side to the other, and at bottom all these movements are logical because by interrupting and breaking our attention they render us less sensitive to the pain. In the days before chloroform, skillful surgeons requested their patients to cry out during the operation, as we are told by Gratiolet, who could not explain so strange a fact, for in his time the antagonism of movements and attention was not recognized." (Marie de Manaceine, Archives Italiennes de Biologie, 1894, p. 250.) This antagonism of attention by movement is but another way of expressing the vicarious relationship of motor discharges.
- ↑ Joanny Roux, Psychologie de l'Instinct Sexuel, 1899, pp. 22-23. It is disputed whether hunger is located in the whole organism, and powerful arguments have been brought against the view. (W. Cannon, "The Nature of Hunger," Popular Science Monthly, Sept., 1912.) Thirst is usually regarded as organic (A. Mayer, La Soif, 1901).
- ↑ If there is any objection to these terms it is chiefly because they have reference to vascular congestion rather than to the underlying nervous charging and discharging, which is equally fundamental, and in man more prominent than the vascular phenomena.