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 The evolution of modesty, the phenomena 
 
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STUDIES 
 
 IN THE 
 
 Psychology of Sex 
 
 BY 
 
 HAVELOCK ELLIS 
 
STUDIES IN THE 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 (Complete in Six Volumes.) 
 
 I. The Evolution of Modesty, the Phenomena 
 
 of Sexual Periodicity and Auto-erotism. 
 $2.50, net. 
 
 II. Sexual loversion. $2.00, net. 
 
 III. Analysis of the Sexual Impulse. $2.50, net. 
 
 IV. Sexual Selection in Man. $2.00, net. 
 
 V. Erotic Symbolism. The Mechanism of Detu- 
 
 mescence. The Psychic State in Preg- 
 nancy. $2.00, net. 
 
 VI. Sex in Relation to Society. $3.00, net. 
 
 Each volume is sold separately, and is 
 complete in itself. 
 
 This is the only edition in English pub- 
 lished by the author's permission. 
 
STUDIES 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY 
 
 THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY 
 
 AUTO-EROTISM 
 
 HAVELOCK ELLIS 
 
 THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 F. A. DAVIS COMPANY, PUBLISHEES 
 1913 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1900, 
 
 BY 
 
 THE F. A. DAVIS COMPANY. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1910, 
 
 BY 
 
 F. A. DAVIS COMPANY. 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa., U. S. A. 
 
 Press of F, A. Davis Company 
 
 1914-16 Cherry Street 
 
GBFEEAL PEEPACE. 
 
 The origin of these Studies dates from many years 
 back. As a youth I was faced, as others are, by the problem 
 of sex. Living partly in an Australian city where the ways 
 of life were plainly seen, partly in the solitude of the bush, 
 I was free both to contemplate and to meditate many things. 
 A resolve slowly grew up within me : one main part of my 
 life-work should be to make clear the problems of sex. 
 
 That was more than twenty years ago. Since then I 
 can honestly say that in all that I have done that resolve 
 has never been very far from my thoughts. I have always 
 been slowly working up to this central problem; and in a 
 book published some three years ago — Man and Woman: 
 a Study of Human Secondary Sexual Characters — I put 
 forward what was, in my own eyes, an introduction to the 
 study of the primary questions of sexual psychology. 
 
 Now that I have at length reached the time for begin- 
 ning to publish my results, these results scarcely seem to 
 me large. As a youth, I had hoped to settle problems for 
 those who came after; now I am quietly content if I do 
 little more than state them. For even that, I now think, is 
 much ; it is at least the half of knowledge. In this particular 
 field the evil of ignorance is magnified by our efforts to 
 suppress that which never can be suppressed, though in the 
 effort of suppression it may become perverted. I have at 
 least tried to find out what are the facts, among normal 
 people as well as among abnormal people; for, while it 
 seems to me that the physician's training is necessary in 
 order to ascertain the facts, the physician for the most part 
 only obtains the abnormal facts, which alone bring little 
 light. I have tried to get at the facts, and, having got at 
 
 (iii) 
 
ly PEErACE. 
 
 the facts, to look them simply and squarely in the face. If 
 I cannot perhaps turn the lock myself, I bring the key which 
 can alone in the end rightly open the door: the key of 
 sincerity. That is my one panacea : sincerity. 
 
 I know that many of my friends, people on whose 
 side I, too, am to be found, retort with another word: 
 reticence. It is a mistake, they say, to try to uncover these 
 things; leave the sexual instincts alone, to grow up and 
 develop in the shy solitude they love, and they will be 
 sure to grow up and develop wholesomely. But, as a 
 matter of fact, that is precisely what we can not and will not 
 ever allow them to do. There are very few middle-aged 
 men and women who can clearly recall the facts of their 
 lives and tell you in all honesty that their sexual instincts 
 have developed easily and wholesomely throughout. And 
 it should not be difficult to see why this is so. Let my 
 friends try to transfer their feelings and theories from the 
 reproductive region to, let us say, the nutritive i"egion, the 
 only other which can be compared to it for importance. 
 Suppose that eating and drinking was never spoken of 
 openly, save in veiled or poetic language, and that no one 
 ever ate food publicly, because it was considered immoral 
 and immodest to reveal the mysteries of this natural func- 
 tion. We know "what would occur. A considerable propor- 
 tion of the community, more especially the more youthful 
 members, possessed by an instinctive and legitimate curios- 
 ity, would concentrate their thoughts on the subject. They 
 would have so many problems to puzzle over : How often 
 ought I to eat? What ought I to eat? Is it wrong to eat 
 fruit, which I like? Ought I to eat grass, which I don't 
 like? Instinct notwithstanding, we may be quite sure that 
 only a small minority would succeed in eating reasonably 
 and wholesomely. The sexual secrecy of life is even more 
 disastrous than such a nutritive secrecy would be; partly 
 because we expend such a wealth of moral energy in directing 
 or misdirecting it, partly because the sexual impulse normally 
 develops at the same time as the intellectual impulse, not in 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 the early years of life, when wholesome instinctive habits 
 might be formed. And there is always some ignorant and 
 foolish friend who is prepared still further to muddle 
 things : Eat a meal every other day ! Eat twelve meals a 
 day! Never eat fruit! Always eat grass! The advice 
 emphatically given in sexual matters is usually not less 
 absurd than this. When, however, the matter is fully 
 open, the problems of food are not indeed wholly solved, 
 but everyone is enabled by the experience of his fellows to 
 reach some sort of situation suited to his own case. And 
 when the rigid secrecy is once swept away a sane and 
 natural reticence becomes for the first time possible. 
 
 This secrecy has not always been maintained. When 
 the Catholic Church was at the summit of its power and 
 influence it fully realized the magnitude of sexual problems 
 and took an active and inquiring interest in all the details 
 of normal and abnormal sexuality. Even to the present 
 time there are certain phenomena of the sexual life which 
 have scarcely been accurately described except in ancient 
 theological treatises. As the type of such treatises I will 
 mention the great tome of Sanchez, De Matrimonio. Here 
 you will find the whole sexual life of men and women 
 analyzed in its relationships to sin. Everything is set forth, 
 as clearly and as concisely as it can be — without morbid 
 prudery on the one hand, or morbid sentimentality on the 
 other — in the coldest scientific language ; the right course of 
 action is pointed out for all the cases that may occur, and 
 we are told what is lawful, what a venial sin, what a mortal 
 sin. Now I do not consider that sexual matters concern the 
 theologian alone, and I deny altogether that he is competent 
 to deal with them. In his hands, also, undoubtedly, they 
 sometimes become prurient, as they can scarcely fail to 
 become on the non-natural and unwholesome basis of ascet- 
 icism, and as they with difficulty become in the open-air 
 light of science. But we are bound to recognize the thor- 
 oughness with which the Catholic theologians dealt with 
 these, matters, and, from their own point of view, indeed. 
 
Tl PREFACE. 
 
 the entire reasonableness; we are bound to recognize the 
 admirable spirit in which, successfully or not, they sought to 
 approach them. We need to-day the same spirit and temper 
 applied from a different standpoint. These things concern 
 everyone; the study of these things concerns the physiolo- 
 gist, the psychologist, the moralist. We want to get into 
 possession of the actual facts, and from the investigation of 
 the facts we want to ascertain what is normal and what is 
 abnormal, from the point of view of physiology and of 
 psychology. We want to know what is naturally lawful 
 under the various sexual chances that may befall man, not 
 as the born child of sin, but as a naturally social animal. 
 What is a venial sin against nature, what a mortal sin 
 against nature ? The answers are less easy to reach than the 
 theologians' answers generally were, but we can at least put 
 ourselves in the right attitude; we may succeed in asking 
 that question which is sometimes even more than the half 
 of knowledge. 
 
 It is perhaps a mistake to show so plainly at the outset 
 that I approach what may seem only a psychological ques- 
 tion not without moral fervour. But I do not wish any 
 mistake to be made. I regard sex as the central problem 
 of life. And now that the problem of religion has practi- 
 cally been settled, and that the problem of labor has at 
 least been placed on a practical foundation, the question of 
 sex — with the racial questions that rest on it — stands before 
 the coming generations as the chief problem for solution. 
 Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to 
 reverence life until we know how to understand sex. — So, at 
 least, it seems to me. 
 
 Having said so much, I will try to present such results 
 as I have to record in that cold and dry light through which 
 alone the goal of knowledge may truly be seen. 
 
 Havelock Ellis. 
 July, 1897. 
 
PEEPACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 The first edition of this volume was published "in 1899, fol- 
 lowing "Sexual Inversion," which now forms Volume II. The 
 second edition, issued by the present publishers and substantially 
 identical with the first edition, appeared in the following year. 
 Ten years have elapsed since then and this new edition will be 
 found to reflect the course of that long interval. Not only is 
 the volume greatly enlarged, but nearly every page has been 
 partly rewritten. This is mainly due to three causes: Much 
 new literature required to be taken into account ; my own knowl- 
 edge of the historical and ethnographic aspects of the sexual 
 impulse has increased; many fresh illustrative cases of a 
 valuable and instructive character have accumulated in my 
 hands. It is to these three sources of improvement that the 
 book owes its greatly revised and enlarged condition, and not 
 to the need for modifying any of its essential conclusions. 
 These, far from undergoing any change, have by the new 
 material been greatly strengthened. 
 
 It may be added that the Greneral Preface to the whole 
 work, which was originally published in 1898 at the beginning 
 of "Sexual Inversion," now finds its proper place at the outset 
 of the present volume. 
 
 Havelock Ellis. 
 
 Carbis Bay, 
 
 Cornwall, Eng. 
 
 (vii) 
 
PEEFACB TO THE PIBST EDITION". 
 
 The present volume contains three studies which seem to 
 me to be necessary prolegomena to that analysis of the sexual 
 instinct which must form the chief part of an investigation into 
 the psychology of sex. The first sketches the main outlines of 
 a complex emotional state which is of fundamental importance 
 in sexual psychology; the second, by bringing together evidence 
 from widely different regions, suggests a tentative explanation 
 of facts that are still imperfectly known ; the third attempts to 
 show that even in fields where we assume our knowledge to be 
 adequate a broader view of the phenomena teaches us to sus- 
 pend judgment and to adopt a more cautious attitude. So far 
 as they go, these studies are complete in themselves; their spe- 
 cial use, as an introduction to a more comprehensive analysis of 
 sexual phenomena, is that they bring before us, under varying 
 aspects, a characteristic which, though often ignored, is of the 
 first importance in obtaining a clear understanding of the facts : 
 the tendency of the sexual impulse to appear in a spontaneous 
 and to some extent periodic manner, affecting women differently 
 from men. This is a tendency which, later, I hope to make still 
 more apparent, for it has practical and social, as well as psycho- 
 logical, implications. Here — and more especially in the study 
 of those spontaneous solitary manifestations which I call auto- 
 erotic — I have attempted to clear the ground, and to indicate 
 the main lines along which the progress of our knowledge in 
 these fields may best be attained. 
 
 It may surprise many medical readers that in the third and 
 longest study I have said little, save incidentally, either of treat- 
 ment or prevention. The omission of such considerations at this 
 stage is intentional. It may safely be said that in no other field 
 of human activity is so vast an amount of strenuous didactic 
 
 (ix) 
 
X PEEFACE. 
 
 morality founded on so slender a basis of facts. In most other 
 departments of life we at least make a pretence of learning 
 before we presume to teach; in the field of sex we content our- 
 selves with the smallest and vaguest minimum of information, 
 often ostentatiously second-hand, usually unreliable. I wish to 
 emphasize the fact that before we can safely talk either of curing 
 or preventing these manifestations we must know a great deal 
 more than we know at present regarding their distribution, 
 etiology, and symptomatology; and we must exercise the same 
 coolness and caution as — if our work is to be fruitful — ^we 
 require in any other field of serious study. We must approach 
 these facts as physicians, it is true, but also as psychologists, 
 primarily concerned to find out the workings of such manifesta- 
 tions in fairly healthy and normal people. If we found a 
 divorce-court judge writing a treatise on marriage we should 
 smile. But it is equally absurd for the physician, so long as his 
 knowledge is confined to disease, to write regarding sex at large ; 
 valuable as the facts he brings forward may be, he can never be 
 in a position to generalize concerning them. And to me, at all 
 events, it seems that we have had more than enough pictures of 
 gross sexual perversity, whether furnished by the asylum or the 
 brothel. They are only really instructive when they are seen in 
 their proper perspective as the rare and ultimate extremes of a 
 chain of phenomena which we may more profitably study nearer 
 home. 
 
 Yet, although we are, on every hand, surrounded by the 
 normal manifestations of sex, conscious or unconscious, these 
 manifestations are extremely difficult to observe, and, in those 
 cases in which we are best able to observe them, it frequently 
 happens that we are unable to make any use of our knowledge. 
 Moreover, even when we have obtained our data, the difficulties — 
 at all events, for an English investigator — are by no means over- 
 come. He may take for granted that any serious and precise 
 study of the sexual instinct will not meet with general approval; 
 his work will be misunderstood; his motives will be called in 
 question; among those for whom he is chiefly working he will 
 find indifference. Indeed, the pioneer in this field may well 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 count himself happy if he meets with nothing worse than indif- 
 ference. Hence it is that the present volume will not be pub- 
 lished in England, but that, availing myself of the generous 
 sympathy with which my work has been received in America, I 
 have sought the wider medical and scientific audience of the 
 United States. In matters of faith, "liberty of prophesying" was 
 centuries since eloquently vindicated for Englishmen ; the liberty 
 of investigating facts is still called in question, under one pre- 
 tence or another, and to seek out the most vital facts of life is 
 still in England a perilous task. 
 
 I desire most heartily to thank the numerous friends and 
 correspondents, some living in remote parts of the world, who 
 have freely assisted me in my work with valuable information 
 and personal histories. To Mr. E. H. Perry-Coste I owe an ap- 
 pendix which is by far the most elaborate attempt yet made to 
 find evidence of periodicity in the spontaneous sexual manifesta- 
 tions of sleep ; my debts to various medical and other correspond- 
 ents are duly stated in the text. To many women friends and 
 correspondents I may here express my gratitude for the manner 
 in which they have furnished me with intimate personal records, 
 and for the cross-examination to which they have allowed me to 
 subject them.. I may already say here, what I shall have occa- 
 sion to say more emphatically in subsequent volumes, that with- 
 out the assistance I have received from women of fine intelligence 
 and high character my work would be impossible. I regret that 
 I cannot make my thanks more specific. 
 
 Haveloce: Ellis. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 The Evolution of Modesty. 
 
 I. 
 
 The Definition of Modesty — The Significance of Modesty — DiSiculties 
 in the Way of Its Analysis — The Varying Phenomena of 
 Modesty Among Diflferent Peoples and in Diilerent Ages 1 
 
 11. 
 
 Modesty an Agglomeration of Fears — Children in Relation to Mod- 
 esty — Modesty in Animals — The Attitude of the Medieean 
 Venus — The Sexual Factor of Modesty Based on Sexual period- 
 icity and on the Primitive Phenomena of Courtship — The Neces- 
 sity of Seclusion in Primitive Sexual Intercourse — The Meaning 
 of Coquetry — The Sexual Charm of Modesty — ^Modesty as an 
 Expression of Feminine Erotic Impulse — The Fear of Causing 
 Disgust as a Factor of Modesty — The Modesty of Savages in 
 Regard to Eating in the Presence of Others — The Sacro-Pubie 
 Region as a Focus of Disgust — The Idea of Ceremonial Unclean- 
 liness — The Custom of Veiling the Face — Ornaments and Cloth- 
 ing — ^Modesty Becomes Concentrated in the Garment — The 
 Economic Factor in Modesty — The Contribution of Civilization 
 to Modesty — The Elaboration of Social Ritual 36 
 
 III. 
 
 The Blush the Sanction of Modesty — The Phenomena of Blushing 
 — Influences Which Modify the Aptitude to Blush — Darkness, 
 Concealment of the Face, Etc 72 
 
 IV. 
 
 Summary of the Factors of Modesty — The Future of Modesty — 
 
 Modesty an Essential Element of Love 80 
 
 The Phenomena of Sexual Pekiodicitt. 
 
 I. 
 
 The Various Physiological and Psychological Rhythms — Menstru- 
 ation — The Alleged Influence of the Moon — Frequent Suppres- 
 sion of Menstruation among Primitive Races — Mittelschmerz 
 —Possible Tendency to a Future Intermenstrual Cycle — Men- 
 struation among Animals — ^Menstruating Monkeys and Apes — 
 What is Menstruation — Its Primary Cause Still Obscure — The 
 Relation of Menstruation to Ovulation — The Occasional 
 Absence of Menstruation in Health — The Relation of Menstru- 
 
 (xiii) 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 ation to "Heat" — The Prohibition of Intercourse during 
 Menstruation — The Predominance of Sexual Excitement at and 
 around the Menstrual Period — It^ Absence during the Period 
 Frequently Apparent only 85 
 
 II. 
 
 The Question of a Monthly Sexual Cycle in Men — The Earliest 
 Suggestions of a, General Physiological Cycle in Men — Period- 
 icity in Disease — Insanity, Heart Disease, etc. — The Alleged 
 Twenty-three Days' Cycle — The Physiological Periodicity of 
 Seminal Emissions during Sleep — Original Observations — 
 Fortnightly and Weekly Rhythms 106 
 
 III. 
 
 The Annual Sexual Rhythm — In Animals — In Man — Tendency of 
 the Sexual Impulse to become Heightened in Spring and 
 Autumn — The Prevalence of Seasonal Erotic Festivals — The 
 Feast of Fools — The Easter and Midsummer Bonfires — The 
 Seasonal Variations in Birthrate — The Causes of those Varia- 
 tions — The Typical Conception-rate Curve for Europe — The 
 Seasonal Periodicity of Seminal Emissions During Sleep — 
 Original Observations — Spring and Autumn the Chief Periods 
 of Involuntary Sexual Excitement — The Seasonal Periodicity 
 of Rapes — Of Outbreaks among Prisoners — The Seasonal Curves 
 of Insanity and Suicide — The Growth of Children According 
 to Season — The Annual Curve of Bread-consumption in Prisons 
 — Seasonal Periodicity of Scarlet Fever — The Underlying 
 Causes of these Seasonal Phenomena 122 
 
 Auto-erotism : A Study of the Spontaneous Mani- 
 festations OF the Sexual Impulse. 
 
 I. 
 
 Definition of Auto-erotism — Masturbation only Covers a Small 
 Portion of the Auto-erotic Field — The Importance of this 
 Study, especially To-day — Auto-erotic Phenomena in Animals — 
 Among Savage and Barbaric Races — The Japanese rin-no-tama 
 and other Special Instruments for Obtaining Auto-erotic Grati- 
 fication — Abuse of the Ordinary Implements and Objects of 
 Daily Life — The Frequency of Hairpin in the Bladder — The 
 Influence of Horse-exercise and Railway Traveling — The 
 Sewing-machine and the Bicycle — Spontaneous Passive Sexual 
 Excitement — Delectatio Morosa — Day-dreaming — PoUutio — 
 Sexual Excitement During Sleep — Erotic Dreams — The Analogy 
 of Nocturnal Enuresis — Differences in the Erotic Dreams of 
 Men and Women — The Auto-erotic Phenomena of Sleep in the 
 Hysterical— Their Frequently Painful Character 161 
 
 II. 
 
 Hysteria and the Question of Its Relation to the Sexual Emotiong 
 —The Early Greek Theories of its Nature and Causation— The 
 Gradual Rise of Modern Views— Charcot— The Revolt Against 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Charcot's Too Absolute Conclusions — Fallacies Involved — ■ 
 Charcot's Attitude the Outcome of his Personal Temperament 
 — Breuer and Freud — Their Views Supplement and Complete 
 Charcot's — ^At the Same Time they Furnish a Justification for 
 the Earlier Doctrine of Hysteria — But They Must Not be 
 Regarded as Final — The Diflfused Hysteroid Condition in Nor- 
 mal Persons — The Physiological Basis of Hysteria — True Path- 
 ological Hysteria is Linked on to almost Normal States, 
 especially to Sex-hunger 209 
 
 III. 
 
 The Prevalence of Masturbation — Its Occurrence in Infancy and 
 Childhood — Is it More Frequent in Males or Females? — ^After 
 Adolescence Apparently more Frequent in Women — ^Reasons 
 for the Sexual Distribution of Masturbation — The Alleged Evils 
 of Masturbation — ^Historical Sketch of the Views Held on 
 This Point — The Symptoms and Results of Masturbation — Its 
 Alleged Influence in Causing Eye Disorders — Its Relation to 
 Insanity and Nervous Disorders — ^The Evil ElTects of Mastur- 
 bation Usually Occur on the Basis of a Congenitally Morbid 
 Nervous System — Neurasthenia Probably the Commonest 
 Accompaniment of Excessive Masturbation — Precocious Mas- 
 turbation Tends to Produce Aversion to Coitus — ^Psychic 
 Results of Habitual Masturbation — ^Masturbation in Men of 
 Genius — ^Masturbation as a Nervous Sedative — Typical Cases 
 — The Greek Attitude toward Masturbation — Attitude of the 
 Catholic Theologians — The Mohammedan Attitude — The Modern 
 Scientific Attitude — In What Sense is Masturbation Normal ? 
 — ^The Immense Part in Life Played by Transmuted Auto-erotic 
 Phenomena 235 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 The Influence of Menstruation on the Position of Women 284 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 Sexual Periodicity in Men 297 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 The Auto-erotic Factor in Religion 310 
 
 Index 327 
 
 DiAQEAMS 341 
 
THE EVOLUTION OP MODESTY. 
 I. 
 
 The Definition of Jlodesty — The Significance of Modesty — Diffi- 
 •culties in the Way of Its Analysis — The Varying Phenomena of Modesty 
 Among Different Peoples and in Difl'erent Ages. 
 
 Modesty, which may be provisionally defined as an almost 
 instinctive fear prompting to concealment and usually centering 
 around the sexual processes, while common to both sexes is 
 more peculiarly feminine, so that it may almost be regarded as the 
 chief secondary sexual character of women on the psychical side. 
 The woman who is lacking in this kind of fear is lacking, also, 
 in sexual attractiveness to the normal and average man. The 
 apparent exceptions seem to prove the rule, for it will generally 
 be found that the women who are, not immodest (for immodesty 
 is more closely related to modesty than mere negative absence of 
 the sense of modesty), but without that fear which implies the 
 presence of a complex emotional feminine organization to defend, 
 •only make a strong sexual appeal to men who are themselves 
 lacking in the complementary masculine qualities. As a psy- 
 chical secondary sexual character of the first rank, it is necessary, 
 before any psychology of sex can be arranged in order, to obtain 
 a clear view of modesty. 
 
 The immense importance of feminine modesty in creating mascu- 
 line passion must be fairly obvious. I may, however, quote the observa- 
 tions of two writers who have shown evidence of insight and knowledge 
 regarding this matter. 
 
 Casanova describes how, when at Berne, he went to the baths, and 
 "was, according to custom, attended by a young girl, whom he selected 
 from a group of bath attendants. She undressed him, proceeded to un- 
 dress herself, and then entered the bath with him, and rubbed him 
 thoroughly all over, the operation being performed in the most serious 
 manner and without a word being spoken. When all was over, how- 
 ever, he perceived that the girl had expected him to make advances, and 
 he proceeds to describe and discuss his own feelings of indiflFerence under 
 such circumstances. "Though without gazing on the girl's figure, I had 
 
 1 (1) 
 
2 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 seen enough to recognize that she had all that a man can desire to find 
 in a, woman: a beautiful face, lively and well-formed eyes, a beautiful 
 mouth, with good teeth, a healthy complexion, well-developed breasts, 
 and everything in harmony. It is true that I had felt that her hands 
 could have been smoother, but I could only attribute this to hard work; 
 moreover, my Swiss girl was only eighteen, and yet I remained entirely 
 cold. What was the cause of this? That was the question that I asked 
 myself." 
 
 "It is clear," wrote Stendhal, "that three parts of modesty are 
 taught. This is, perhaps, the only law born of civilization which pro- 
 duces nothing but happiness. It has been observed that birds of prey 
 hide themselves to drink, because, being obliged to plunge their heads 
 in the water, they are at that moment defenceless. After having con- 
 sidered what passes at Otaheite, I can see no other natural foundation 
 for modesty. Love is the miracle of civilization. Among savage and 
 very barbarous races we find nothing but physical love of a gross char- 
 acter. It is modesty that gives to love the aid of imagination, and in 
 so doing imparts life to it. Modesty is very early taught to little girls 
 by their mothers, and with extreme jealousy, one might say, by esprit 
 de corps. They are watching in advance over the happiness of the 
 future lover. To a timid and tender woman there ought to be no 
 greater torture than to allow herself in the presence of a man some- 
 thing which she thinks she ought to blush at. I am convinced that a 
 proud woman would prefer a, thousand deaths. A slight liberty taken 
 on the tender side by the man she loves gives a woman a moment of 
 keen pleasure, but if he has the air of blaniing her for it, or only of not 
 enjoying it with transport, an awful doubt must be left in her mind. 
 For a woman above the vulgar level there is, then, everything to gain 
 by very reserved manners. The play is not equal. She hazards against 
 a, slight pleasure, or against the advantage of appearing a little amiable, 
 the danger of biting remorse, and a feeling of shame which must render 
 even the lover less dear. An evening passed gaily arid thoughtlessly, 
 without thinking of what comes after, is dearly paid at this price. The 
 sight of a lover with whom one fears that one has had this kind of 
 wrong must become odious for several days. Can one be surprised at 
 the force of a habit, the slightest infractions of which are punished with 
 siieh atrocious sh.ime? As to the utility of modesty, it is the mother 
 of love. As to the mechanism of the feeling, nothing is simpler. The 
 mind is absorbed in feeling shame instead of being occupied with desire. 
 Desires are forbidden, and desires lead to actions. It is evident that 
 every tender and proud woman— and these two things, being cause and 
 effect, naturally go together— must contract habits of coldness which 
 the people whom she diseonoerta call prudery. The power of modesty 
 is so great that a tender woman betrays herself with her lover rather 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 6 
 
 by deeds than by words. The evil of modesty is that it constantly 
 leads to falsehood." (Stendhal, De V Amour, Chapter XXIV.) 
 
 It thus happens that, as Adier remarks (Die Mangelhafte 
 Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, p. 133 ) , the sexual impulse in 
 women is fettered by an inhibition which has to be conquered. A thin 
 veil of reticence, shyness, and anxiety is constantly cast anew over a 
 woman's love, and her wooer, in every act of courtship, has the enjoy- 
 ment of conquering afresh an oft-won woman. 
 
 An interesting testimony to the part played by modesty in efifeeting 
 the union of the sexes is furnished by the fact — to which attention has 
 often been called — that the special modesty of women usually tends 
 to diminish, though not to disappear, with the complete gratification of 
 the sexual impulses. This may be noted ^among savage as well as among 
 civilized women. Tiie comparatively evanescent character of modesty 
 has led to the argument (Venturi, Degenerazioni Psioo-sessuali, pp. 92- 
 93) that modesty (pudore) is possessed by women alone, men exhibiting, 
 instead, a, sense of decency which remains at about the same level of 
 persistency throughout life. Viazzi ("Pudore nell 'uomo e nella donna," 
 Rivista Mensile di PsicMatria Forense, 1898), on the contrary, follow- 
 ing Sergi, argues that men are, throughout, more modest than women; 
 but the points he brings forward, though often just, scarcely justify his 
 conclusion. While the young virgin, however, is more modest and shy 
 than the young man of the same age, the experienced married woman is 
 usually less so than her husband, and in a woman who is a mother 
 the shy reticences of virginal modesty would be rightly felt to be ridicu- 
 lous. ("Les petites pudeurs n'existent pas pour les mfires," remarks 
 Goncourt, Journal des Goncourt, vol. iii, p. 5.) She has put off a sexual 
 livery that has no longer any important part to play in life, and would, 
 indeed, be inconvenient and harmful, just as a bird loses its sexual 
 plumage when the pairing season is over. 
 
 Madame Celine Renooz, in an elaborate study of the psychological 
 sexual differences between men and women (Psychologie Comparie de 
 I'Homme et de la Femme, 1898, pp. 85-87 ) , also believes that modesty is not 
 really a feminine characteristic. "Modesty," she argues, "is masculine 
 shame attributed to women for two reasons : first, because man believes 
 that woman is subject to the same laws as himself; secondly, because 
 the course of human evolution has reversed the psychology of the sexes, 
 attributing to women the psychological results of masculine sexuality. 
 This is the origin of the conventional lies which by a. sort of social 
 suggestion have intimidated women. They have, in appearance at least, 
 accepted the rule of shame imposed on them by men, but only custom 
 inspires the modesty for which they are praised; it is really an out- 
 rage to their sex. This reversal of psychological laws has, however, only 
 been accepted by women with a struggle. Primitive woman, proud of 
 
4 PSTCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 her womanhood, for a long time defended her nakedness which ancient 
 art has always represented. And in the actual life of the young girl 
 to-day there is a moment when, by a secret atavism, she feels the pride 
 of lier sex, the intuition of her moral superiority, and cannot understand 
 why she must hide its cause. At this moment, wavering between the 
 laws of Nature and social conventions, she scarcely knows if nakedness 
 should or should not affright her. A sort of confused atavistic memory 
 recalls to her a period before clothing was known, and reveals to her as 
 a paradisiacal ideal the customs of that human epoch." 
 
 In support of this view the authoress proceeds to point out that 
 the dicollete constantly reappears in feminine clothing, never in male; 
 that missionaries experience great difficulty in persuading women to 
 cover themselves; that, while women accept with facility an examina- 
 tion by male doctors, men cannot force themselves to accept examination 
 by a woman doctor, etc. (These and similar points had already been 
 independently brought forward by Sergi, Archivio di Psichiatria, vol. 
 xiii, 1892.) 
 
 It cannot be said that Madame Renooz's arguments will all bear 
 examination, if only on the ground that nakedness by no means involves 
 absence of modesty, but the point of view which she expresses is one 
 which usually fails to gain recognition, though it probably contains an 
 important element of truth. It is quite true, as Stendhal said, that 
 modesty is very largely taught; from the earliest years, a girl child is 
 trained to show a modesty which she quickly begins really to feel. This 
 fact cannot fail to strike any one who reads the histories of pseudo- 
 hermaphroditic persons, really males, who have from infancy been 
 brought up in the belief that they are girls, and who show, and feel, 
 all the shrinking reticence and blushing modesty of their supposed sex. 
 But when the error is discovered, and they are restored to their proper 
 sex, this is quickly changed, and they exhibit all the boldness of 
 masculinity. (See e.g., Neugebauer, "Beobachtungen aus dem Gebiete 
 des Scheinzwittertumes, Jahrhuch fur Sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Jahrgang 
 iv, 1902, esp. p. 92.) At the same time this is only one thread in the 
 tangled skein with which we are here concerned. The mass of facts 
 which meets us when we turn to the study of modesty in women cannot 
 be dismissed as a group of artifically-imposed customs. They gain rather 
 than lose in importance if we have to realize that the organic sexual 
 demands of women, calling for coyness in courtship, lead to the tem- 
 porary suppression of another feminine instinct of opposite, though 
 doubtless allied, nature. 
 
 But these somewhat conflicting, though not really contradictory, state- 
 ments serve to bring out the fact that a woman's modesty is often an 
 incalculable element. The woman who, under some circumstances and 
 at some times, ia extreme in her reticences, under other circumstances 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 5 
 
 or at other times, may be extreme in her abandonment. Not that her 
 modesty is an artificial garment, which she throws oflf or on at will. 
 It is organic, but like the snail's shell, it sometimes forms an impene- 
 trable covering, and sometimes glides off almost altogether. A man's 
 modesty is more rigid, with little tendency to deviate toward either 
 extreme. Thus it is, that, when uninstructed, a man is apt to be im- 
 patient with a woman's reticences, and yet shocked at her abandonments. 
 
 The significance of our inquiry becomes greater when we 
 reflect that to the reticences of sexual modesty, in their pro- 
 gression, expansion, and complication, we largely owe, not only 
 the refinement and development of the sexual emotions, — "la 
 pudeur," as Guyau remarked, "a civilise I'amour," — ^but the 
 subtle and pervading part which the sexual instinct has played 
 in the evolution of all human culture. 
 
 "It is certain that very much of what is best in religion, art, and 
 lifi," remark Stanley Hall and Allin, "owes its charm to the pro- 
 gressively-widening irradiation of sexual feeling. Perhaps the reluctance 
 of the female first long-circuited the exquisite sensations connected with 
 sexual organs and acts to the antics of animal and human courtship, 
 while restraint had the physiological function of developing the colors, 
 plumes, excessive activity, and exuberant life of the pairing season. To 
 keep certain parts of the body covered, irradiated the sense of beauty to 
 eyes, hair, face, complexion, dress, form, etc., while many savage dances, 
 costumes and postures are irradiations of the sexual act. Thus reticence, 
 concealment, and restraint are among the prime conditions of religion and 
 human culture." (Stanley Hall and Allin, "The Psychology of Tickling," 
 American Journal of Psychology, 1897, p. 31.) 
 
 Groos attributes the deepening of the conjugal relation among birds 
 to the circumstance that the male seeks to overcome the reticence of the 
 female by the display of his charms and abilities. "And in the human 
 world," he continues, "it is the same; without the modest reserve of the 
 woman that must, in most cases, be overcome by lovable qualities, the 
 sexual relationship would with difficulty find a singer who would extol 
 in love the highest movements of the human soul." (Groos, Spiele der 
 Menschen, p. 341.) 
 
 I have not, however, been able to find that the subject of 
 modesty has been treated in any comprehensive way by psychol- 
 ogists. Though valuable facts and suggestions bearing on the 
 sexual emotions, on disgust, the ori,B;ins of tatooing, on ornament 
 and clothing, have been brought forward by physiologists, psy- 
 
6 PSYCHOLOGY OF SES. 
 
 chologists, and ethnographists, few or no attempts appear to 
 have been made to reach a general synthetic statement of these 
 facts and suggestions. It is true that a great many unreliable, 
 slight, or fragmentary efforts have been made to ascertain the 
 constitution or basis of this emotion. ^ Many psychologists 
 have regarded modesty simply as the result of clothing. This 
 view is overturned by the well-ascertained fact that many races 
 which go absolutely naked possess a highly-developed sense of 
 modesty. These writers have not realized that physiological 
 modesty is earlier in appearance, and more fundamental, than 
 anatomical modesty. A partial contribution to the analysis of 
 modesty has been made by Professor James, who, with his usual 
 insight and lucidity, has set forth certain of its characteristics, 
 especially the element due to "the application to ourselves of 
 judgments primarily passed upon our mates." Guyau, in a very 
 brief discussion of modesty, realized its great significance and 
 touched on most of its chief elements.^ Westermarck, again, 
 followed by Grosse, has very ably and convincingly set forth 
 certain factors in the origin of ornament and clothing, a 
 subject which many writers imagine to cover the whole field of 
 modesty. More recently Eibot, in his work on the emotions, has 
 vaguely outlined most of the factors of modesty, but has not 
 developed a coherent view of their origins and relationships. 
 
 Since the present Biudy first appeared, Hohenemser, who considers 
 that my analysis of modesty is unsatisfactory, has made a notable at- 
 tempt to define the psychological mechanism of shame. ("Versuch einer 
 Analyse der Scham," Archiv fiir die Gesamte Psychologie, Bd. II, Heft 
 2-3, 1903.) He regards shame as a general psycho-physical phenomenon, 
 "a definite tension of the -whole soul," with an emotion superadded. 
 "Tlie state of shame consists in a certain psychic lameness or inhibition," 
 sometimes accompanied by physical phenomena of paralysis, such as 
 sinking of the head and inability to meet the eye. It is a special case 
 of Lipps's psychic stasis or damming up {psychische Stauung) , always 
 
 1 The earliest theory I have met with is that of St. Augustine, who 
 states {De Givitate Dei, Bk. XIV, Ch. XVII) that erections of the penis 
 never occurred until after the Fall of Man. It was the occurrence of 
 this "shameless novelty" which made nakedness indecent. This theory 
 fails to account for modesty in women. 
 
 2 Guyau, L'Irreligion de I'Avenir, Ch. VII. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 7 
 
 produced when the psychic activities are at the same time drawn in two 
 or more different directions. In shame there is always something pres- 
 ent in consciousness which conflicts with the rest of the personality, 
 and cannot be brought into harmony with it, which cannot be brought, 
 that is, into moral (not logical) relationship with it. A young man 
 in love with a girl is ashamed when told that he is in love, because 
 his reverence for one whom he regards as a higher being cannot be 
 brought into relationship with his own lower personality. A child in 
 the same way feels shame in approaching a big, grown-up person, 
 who seems a, higher sort of being. Sometimes, likewise, we feel shame 
 in approaching a stranger, for a new person tends to seem higher and 
 more interesting than ourselves. It is not so in approaching a new 
 natural phenomenon, because we do not compare it with ourselves. 
 Another kind of shame is seen when this mental contest is lower than 
 our personality, and on this account in conflict with it, as when we 
 are ashamed of sexual thoughts. Sexual ideas tend to evoke shame, 
 Hohenemser remarks, because they so easily tend to pass into sexual 
 feelings; when they do not so pass (as in scientific discussions) they 
 do not evoke shame. 
 
 It will be seen that this discussion of modesty is highly gen- 
 eralized and abstracted; it deals simply with the formal mechanism 
 of the process. Hohenemser admits that fear is a form of psychic 
 stasis, and I have sought to show that modesty is a complexus of fears. 
 We may very well accept the conception of psychic stasis at the outset. 
 The analysis of modesty has still to be carried very much further. 
 
 The discussion of modesty is complicated by the difficulty, 
 and even impossibility, of excluding closely-allied emotions — 
 shame, shyness, bashfulness, timidity, etc. — all of which, inde(;d, 
 however defined, adjoin or overlap modesty.^ It is not, how- 
 ever, impossible to isolate the main body of the emotion of 
 modesty, on account of its special connection, on the whole, with 
 
 1 Timidity, as understood by Dugas, in his interesting essay on that 
 subject, is probably most remote. Dr. H. Campbell's "morbid shyness" 
 {British Medical Journal, September 26, 1896) is, in part, identical with 
 timidity, in part, with modesty. The matter is further complicated by 
 the fact that modesty itself has in English (like virtue) two distinct 
 meanings. In its original form it has no special connection with sex or 
 women, but may rather be considered as a masculine virtue. Cicero 
 regards "modestia" as the equivalent of the Greek <ruitj>pB(Tiv7). This is 
 the "modesty" which Mary Wollstonecraft eulogized in the last century, 
 the outcome of knowledge and reflection, "soberness of mind," "the grace- 
 ful calm virtue of maturity." In French, it is possible to avoid the con- 
 fusion, and modestie is entirely distinct from pudeur. It is, of course, 
 mainly with pudeur that I am here concerned. 
 
8 rSYCHOLOGY OP SEX. 
 
 the consciousness of sex. I here attempt, however imperfectir, 
 to sketch out a fairly-complete analysis of its constitution and to 
 trace its development. 
 
 In entering upon this investigation a few facts with regard to the 
 various manifestations of modesty may be helpful to us. I have selected 
 these from scattered original sources, and have sought to bring out 
 the variety and complexity of the problems with which we are here 
 concerned. 
 
 The New Georgians of the Solomon Islands, so low a race that 
 they are ignorant both of pottery and weaving, and wear only a loin 
 cloth, "have the same ideas of what is decent with regard to certain 
 acts and exposures that we ourselves have;" so that it is difficult to 
 observe whether they practice circumcision. (Somerville, Journal of the 
 Anthropological Institute, 1897, p. 394.) 
 
 In the New Hebrides "the closest secrecy is adopted with regard 
 to the penis, not at all from a sense of decency, but to avoid Narak, 
 the sight even of that of another man being considered most dangerous. 
 Tlie natives of this savage island, accordingly, wrap the penis around 
 with many yards of calico, and other like materials, winding and fold- 
 ing them until a preposterous bundle 18 inches, or 2 feet long, and 2 
 inches or more in diameter is formed, which is then supported upward 
 by means of a. belt, in the extremity decorated with flowering grasses, 
 etc. The testicles are left naked." There is no other body covering. 
 (Somerville, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1894, p. 368.) 
 
 In the Pelew Islands, says Kubary, as quoted by Bastian, it is said 
 that when the God Irakaderugel and his wife were creating man and 
 woman ( he forming man and she forming woman ) , and were at work on 
 the sexual organs, the god wished to see his consort's handiwork. She, 
 however, was cross, and persisted in concealing what she had made. Ever 
 since then women wear an apron of pandanus-leaves and men go naked. 
 (A. Bastian, Inselgruppen in Oceanien, p. 112.) 
 
 In the Pelew Islands, Semper tells us that when approaching a 
 large water-hole he was surprised to hear an affrighted, long-dra-sra 
 cry from his native friends. "A girl's voice answered out of the bushes, 
 and my people held us back, for there were women bathing there who 
 would not allow us to pass. When I remarked that they were only 
 women, of whom they need not be afraid, they replied that it was not 
 so, that women had an unbounded right to punish men who passed them 
 when bathing without their permission, and could inflict iines or even 
 death. On this account, the women's bathing place is a safe and 
 favorite spot for a secret rendezvous. Fortunately a, lad^^s toilet lasts 
 but a short time in this island." (Carl Semper, Die Palau-Inseln, 
 1873, p. 68.) 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 9 
 
 Among the Western Tribes of Torres Strait, Haddon states, "the 
 men were formerly nude, and the women wore only a leaf petticoat, hut 
 I gather that they were a decent people; now both sexes are prudish. 
 A man would never go nude before me. The women would never volun- 
 tarily expose their breasts to white men's gaze; this applies to quite 
 young girls, less so to old women. Amongst themselves they are, of 
 course, much less particular, but I believe they are becoming more so. 
 . . . Formerly, I imagine, there was no restraint in speech; now 
 there is a great deal of prudery; for instance, the men were always 
 much ashamed when I asked for the name of the sexual parts of a, 
 woman." (A. C. Haddon, "Ethnography of the Western Tribes of Torres 
 Straits," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1890, p. 336.) After 
 a subsequent expedition to the same region, the author reiterates his 
 observations as to the "ridiculously prudish manner" of the men, at- 
 tributable to missionary influence during the past thirty years, and 
 notes that even the children are affected by it. "At Mabuiag, some small 
 children were paddling in the water, and a boy of about ten years of 
 age reprimanded a little girl of five or six years because she held up her 
 dress too high." {Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition 
 to Torres Straits, vol. v, p. 272.) 
 
 "Although the women of New Guinea," Vahness says, "are very 
 slightly clothed, they are by no means lacking in a well-developed 
 sense of decorum. If they notice, for instance, that any one is paying 
 special attention to their nakedness, they become ashamed and turn 
 round." When a woman had to climb the fence to enter the wild-pig 
 enclosure, she would never do it in Vahness's presence. {Zeitschrift fiir 
 Ethnologie, Verhdlgen., 1900, Heft 5, p. 415.) 
 
 In Australia "the feeling of decency is decidedly less prevalent 
 among males than females;" the clothed, females retire out of sight to 
 bathe. {Cnrr, Australian Race.) 
 
 "Except for waist-bands, forehead-bands, necklets, and armlets, and 
 a conventional pubic tassel, shell, or, in the case of the women, a small 
 apron, the Central Australian native is naked. The pubic tassel is a 
 diminutive structure, about the size of a five-shilling piece, made of a few 
 short strands of fur-strings flattened out into a fan-shape and attached 
 to the pubic hair. As the string, especially at corrohhoree times, is 
 covered with white kaolin or gypsum, it serves as a decoration rather 
 than a covering. Among the Arunta and Luritcha the women usually 
 wear nothing, but further north, a small apron is made and worn." 
 (Baldwin Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 
 572.) 
 
 Of the Central Australians Stirling says : "No sense of shame of 
 exposure was exhibited by the men on removal of the diminutive articles 
 worn as conventional coverings; they were taken off coram populo, 
 
10 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 and bartered without hesitation. On the other hand, some little per- 
 suasion was necessary to allow inspection of the effect of [urethral] 
 sub-incision, assent being given only after dismissal to a distance of 
 the women and young children. As to the women, it was nearly always 
 observed that when in camp without clothing they, especially the 
 younger ones, exhibited by their attitude n keen sense of modesty, if, 
 indeed, a consciousness of their nakedness can be thus considered. 
 When we desired to take a photograph of a, group of young women, 
 they were very coy at the proposal to remove their scanty garments, 
 and retired behind a wall to do so; but once in a state of nudity they 
 made no objection to exposure to the camera.'' {Report of the Horn 
 Scientific Expedition, 1896, vol. iv, p. 37.) 
 
 In Northern Queensland "phalloerypts," or "penis-concealers,'" only 
 used by the males at corrobhorees and other public rejoicings, are either 
 formed of pearl-shell or opossum-string. The koom-pa-ra, or opossum- 
 string form of phallocrypt, forms a, kind of tassel, and is colored red; 
 it is hung from the waist-belt in the middle line. In both sexes the 
 privates are only covered on special public occasions, or when in close 
 proximity to white settlements. (W. Roth, Ethnological Studies among 
 the Northwest-Central-Queensland Alioriginies, 1897, pp. 114-115.) 
 
 "The principle of chastity," said Forster, of his experiences in 
 the South Sea Islands in their unspoilt state, "we found in many 
 families exceedingly well understood. I have seen many fine women 
 who, with a modesty mixed with politeness, refuse the greatest and 
 most tempting offers made them by our forward youths; often they 
 excuse themselves with a simple tirra-tane, 'I am married,' and at 
 other times they smiled and declined it with epia, 'no.' . . . 
 Virtuous women hear a joke without emotion, which, amongst us, 
 might put some men to the blush. Neither austerity and anger, nor 
 joy and ecstasy is the consequence, but sometimes a modest, dignified, 
 serene smile spreads itself over their face, and seems gently to rebuke 
 the uncouth jester." (J. E. Forster, Observations made During a Voy- 
 age Round the World, 1728, p. 392.) 
 
 Captain Cook, at Tahiti, in 1769, after performing Divine ser- 
 vice on Sunday, witnessed "Vespers of a very different kind. A young 
 man, near six feet high, performed the rites of Venus with a little girl 
 about eleven or twelve years of age, before several of our people and 
 a great number of the natives, without the least sense of its being in- 
 decent or improper, but, as it appeared, in perfect conformity to the cus- 
 tom of the place. Among the spectators were several women of superior 
 rank, who may properly be said to have assisted at the ceremony; for 
 they gave instructions to the girl how to perform her part, which, young 
 as she was, she did not seem much to stand in need of." (J. Hawkes- 
 worth, Account of the Voyages, etc., 1775, vol. i, p. 469.) 
 
THE EVOLUTION OE MODESTY. 11 
 
 At Tahiti, according to Cook, it was customary to "gratify every 
 appetite and passion before witnesses," and it is added, "in the conversa- 
 tion of these people, that which is the principal source of their pleasure 
 is always the principal topic; everything is mentioned without any re- 
 straint or emotion, and in the most direct terms, hy both sexes." 
 (Hawkesworth, op. cit., vol ii, p. 45.) 
 
 "I have observed," Captain Cook wrote, "tliat our friends in the 
 South Seas have not even the idea of indecency, with respect to 
 any object or any action, but this was by no means the ease with the 
 inhabitants of New Zealand, in whose carriage and conversation there 
 was as much modest reserve and decorum with respect to actions, which 
 yet in their opinion were not criminal, as are to be found among the 
 politest people in Europe. The women were not impregnable ; but the terms 
 and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among 
 us, and according to their notions, the agreement was as innocent. When 
 any of our people made an overture to any of their young women, he 
 was given to understand that the consent of her friends was necessary, 
 and by the influence of a proper present it was generally obtained; but 
 when these preliminaries were settled, -it was also necessary to treat the 
 wife for a night with the same delicacy that is here required by the 
 wife for life, and the lover who presumed to take any liberties by which 
 this was violated, was sure to be disappointed." (Hawkesworth, op. oit., 
 vol. ii, p. 254.) 
 
 Cook found that the people of New Zealand "bring the prepuce 
 over the gland, and to prevent it from being drawn back by contraction 
 of the part, they tie the string which hangs from the girdle round the 
 end of it. The glans, indeed, seemed to be the only part of their body 
 which they were solicitous to conceal, for they frequently threw ofT all 
 their dress but the belt and string, with the most careless indiflference, 
 biit showed manifest signs of confusion when, to gratify our curiosity, 
 they were requested to untie the string, and never consented but with 
 the utmost reluctance and shame. . . . The women's lower garment 
 was always bound fast round them, except when they went into the 
 water to catch lobsters, and then they took great care not to be seen 
 by the men. We surprised several of them at this employment, and the 
 chaste Diana, with her nymphs, could not have discovered more confusion 
 and distress at the sight of ActsEon, than these women expressed upon 
 our approach. Some of them hid themselves among the rocks, and the 
 rest crouched down in the sea till they had made themselves a. girdle 
 and apron of such weeds as they could find, and when they came out, 
 even with this veil, we could see that their modesty suffered much 
 pain by our presence." (Hawkesworth, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 257-258.) 
 
 In Eotuma, in Polynesia, where the women enjoy much freedom, 
 but where, at all events in old days, married people were, as a rule. 
 
12 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 faithful to each other, "the language is not chaste according to our ideas, 
 and there is a great deal of freedom in speaking of immoral vices. In 
 this connection a, man and his wife will speak freely to one another 
 before their friends. I am informed, though, by European traders well 
 conversant with the language, that there are grades of language, and that 
 certain coarse phrases would never be used to any decent woman ; so that 
 probably, in their way, they have much modesty, only we cannot appre- 
 ciate it." (J. Stanley Gardiner, "The Natives of Rotuma," Journal of 
 the Anthropological Institute, May, 1898, p. 481.) 
 
 The men of Rotuma, says the same writer, are very clean, the 
 women also, bathing twice a day in the sea; but "bathing in public 
 without the J;uJculuga, or sulu [loin-cloth, which is the ordinary dress], 
 around the waist is absolutely unheard of, and would be much looked 
 down upon." {Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1898, p. 410.) 
 
 In ancient Samoa the only necessary garment for either man or 
 woman was an apron of leaves, but they possessed so "delicate a sense 
 of propriety" that even "while bathing they have a girdle of leaves or 
 some other covering around the waist." (Turner, Samoa a Hundred 
 Years Ago, p. 121.) 
 
 After babyhood the Indians of Guiana are never seen naked. When 
 they change their single garment they retire. The women wear a little 
 apron, now generally made of European beads, but the Warraus still 
 make it of the inner bark of a tree, and some of seeds. (Everard 
 im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, 1883.) 
 
 The Mandurucu women of Brazil, according to Tocantins (quoted 
 by Mantegazza ) , are completely naked, but they are careful to avoid any 
 postures which might be considered indecorous, and they do this so 
 skilfully that it is impossible to tell when they have their menstrual 
 periods. (Mantegazza, Fisiologia della Donna, cap 9.) 
 
 The Indians of Central Brazil have no "private parts." In men the 
 little girdle, or string, surrounding the lower part of the abdomen, hides 
 nothing; it is worn after puberty, the penis being often raised and 
 placed beneath it to lengthen the prepuce. The Avomen also use a little 
 strip of bast that goes down the groin and passes between the thighs. 
 Among some tribes (Karibs, Tupis, Nu-Arwaks) a little, triangular, 
 coquettishly-made piece of bark-bast comos just below the mons veneris; 
 it is only a few centimetres in width, and is called the uluri. In loth 
 sexes concealment of the sexual mucous memhrane is attained. These 
 articles cannot be called clothing. "The red thread of the Trumai, the 
 elegant uluri. and the variegated flag of the Boror6 attract attention, 
 like ornaments, instead of drawing attention away." Von den Steinen 
 thinks this proceeding ii necessary protection against the attacks of 
 insects, which are often serious in Brazil. He does think, however, that 
 there is more than this, and that the people are ashamed to show the 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 13 
 
 glans penis. (Karl von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvolkern .Zentral- 
 Brasiliens, 1894, pp. 190 et seq.) 
 
 Other travelers mention that on the Amazon among some tribes 
 the women are clothed and the men naked; among others the women 
 naked, and the men clothed. Thus, among the Guaycurus the men are 
 quite naked, while the women wear a. short petticoat; among the 
 XJaupfls the men always wear a loin-eloth, while the women are quite 
 naked. 
 
 "The feeling of modesty is very developed among the Fuegians, who 
 are accustomed to live naked. They manifest it in their bearing and in 
 the ease with which they show themselves in a state of nudity, com- 
 pared with the awkwardness, blushing, and shame which both men and 
 women exhibit if one gazes at certain parts of their bodies. Among them- 
 selves this is never done even between husband and wife. There is no 
 Fuegian word for modesty, perhaps because the feeling is universal 
 among them." The women wear a minute triangular garment of skin 
 suspended between the thighs and never removed, being merely raised 
 during conjugal relations. (Hyades and Deniker, Mission Scientifique 
 du Cap Horn, vol. vii, pp. 239, 307, and 347.) 
 
 Among the Crow Indians of Montana, writes Dr. Holder, who has 
 lived with them for several years, "a sense of modesty forbids the 
 attendance upon the female in labor of any male, white man or Indian, 
 physician or layman. This antipathy to receiving assistance at the 
 hands' of the physician is overcome as the tribes progress toward civiliza- 
 tion, and it is especially noticeable that half-breeds almost constantly 
 seek the physician's aid." Dr. Holder mentions the case of a young 
 woman who, although brought near the verge of death in a very diflBcult 
 first confinement, repeatedly refused to allow him to examine her; at 
 last she consented; "her modest preparation was to take bits of quilt 
 and cover thighs and lips of vulva, leaving only the aperture ex- 
 posed. . . . Their modesty would not be so striking were it not 
 that, almost to a woman, the females of this tribe are prostitutes, and 
 for a consideration will admit the connection of any man." (A. B. 
 Holder, American Journal of Obstetrics, vol. xxv. No. 6, 1892.) 
 
 "In every North American tribe, from the most northern to the 
 most southern, the skirt of the woman is longer than that of the men. In 
 Esquimau land the parka of deerskin and sealskin reaches to the knees. 
 Throughout Central North America the buckskin dress of the women 
 reached quite to the ankles. The West-Coast women, from Oregon to 
 the Gulf of California, wore a petticoat of shredded bark, of plaited 
 grass, or of strings, upon which were strung hundreds of seeds. Even 
 in the most tropical areas the rule was universal, as anyone can see from 
 the codices or in pictures of the natives.'' (Otis T. Mason, "Woman's 
 Share in Primitive Culture, p. 237.) 
 
14 PSYCHOLOGY Oi' SEX. 
 
 Describing the loin-cloth worn by Nioobarese men, Man says: 
 "From the clumsy mode in which this garment is worn by the Shorn 
 Pen — necessitating frequent readjustment of the folds — one is led to infer 
 that its use is not de rigueur, but reserved for special occasions, as when 
 receiving or visiting strangers." (E. H. Man, Journal of the An- 
 thropological Institute, 1886, p. 442.) 
 
 The semi-nude natives of the island of Nias in the Indian Ocean 
 are "modest by nature," paying no attention to their own nudity or 
 that of others, and much scandalized by any attempt to go beyond the 
 limits ordained by custom. When they pass near places where women 
 are bathing they raise their voices in order to warn them of their 
 presence, and even although any bold youth addressed the women, and 
 the latter replied, no attempt would be made to approach them; any 
 such attempt would be severely punished by the head man of the 
 village. (Modigliani, Un Viaggio a Nias, p. 460.) 
 
 Man says that the Andamanese in modesty and self-respect com- 
 pare favorably with many classes among civilized peoples. "Women 
 are so modest that they will not renew their leaf-aprons in the presence 
 of one another, but retire to a secluded spot for this purpose; even 
 when parting with one of their hod appendages [tails of leaves suspended 
 from back of girdle] to a female friend, the delicacy they manifest for 
 the feelings of the bystanders in their mode of removing it amounts 
 to prudishness; yet they wear no clothing in the ordinary sense." 
 {Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1883, pp. 94 and 331.) 
 
 Of the Garo women of Bengal Dalton says: "Their sole garment 
 is a, piece of cloth less than a, foot in width that just meets around 
 the loins, and in order that it may not restrain the limbs it is only 
 fastened where it meets under the hip at the upper corners. The girls 
 are thus greatly restricted in the positions they may modestly assume, 
 but decorum is, in their opinion, sufficiently preserved if they only keep 
 their legs well together when they sit or kneel." (E. T. Dalton, Eth- 
 nology of Bengal, 1872, p. 66.) 
 
 Of the Naga women ot Assam it is said: "Of clothing there was 
 not much to see; but in spite of this I doubt whether we could excel 
 them in true decency and modesty. Ibn Muhammed Wall had already 
 remarked in his history of the conquest of Assam (1662-63), that the 
 Naga women only cover their breasts. They declare that it is absurd 
 to cover those parts of the body which everyone has been able to see 
 from their births, but that it is different with the breasts, which ap- 
 peared later, and are, therefore, to be covered. Dalton {Journal of the 
 Asiatic Society, Bengal, 41, 1, 84) adds that in the presence of strangers 
 Naga women simply cross their arms over their breasts, without caring 
 much what other charms they may reveal to the observer. As regards 
 some elans of the naked Nagas, to whom the Banpara belong, this may 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 15 
 
 still hold good." (K. Klemm, "Peal's Ausflug nach Banpara," Zeitschrift 
 fur Ethnologie, 1898, Heft 5, p. 334.) 
 
 "In Ceylon, a woman always bathes in public streams, but she 
 never removes all her clothes. She washes under the cloth, bit by bit, 
 and then slips on the dry, new cloth, and pulls out the wet one from 
 underneath (much in the same sliding way as servant girls and young 
 women in England). This is the common custom in India and the 
 Malay States. The breasts are always bare in their own houses, but in 
 the public roads are covered whenever a European passes. The vulva is 
 never exposed. They say that a devil, imagined as a, white and hairy 
 being, might have intercourse with them." (Private communication.) 
 
 In Borneo, "the sirat, called chawal by the Malays, is a. strip of 
 cloth a yard wide, worn round the loins and in between the thighs, so 
 as to cover the pudenda and perinaeum; it is generally six yards or so 
 in length, but the younger men of the present generation use as much 
 as twelve or fourteen yards (sometimes even more), which they twist 
 and coil with great precision round and round their body, until the 
 waist and stomach are fully enveloped in its folds." (H. Ling Eoth, 
 "Low's Natives of Borneo," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 
 1892, p. 36.) 
 
 "In their own houses in, the depths of the forest the Dwarfs are 
 said to neglect coverings for decency in the men as in the women, but 
 certainly when they emerge from the forest into the villages of the 
 agricultural Negroes, they are always observed to be wearing some small 
 piece of bark-cloth or skin, or a bunch of leaves over the pudenda. 
 Elsewhere in all the regions of Africa visited by the writer, or de- 
 scribed by other observers, a neglect of decency in the male has only 
 been recorded among the Efik people of Old Calabar. The nudity of 
 women is another question. In parts of West Africa, between the 
 Niger and the Gaboon (especially on the Cameroon River, at Old Cala- 
 bar, and in the Niger Delta ) , it is, or was, customary for young 
 women to go about completely nude, before they were married. In 
 Swaziland, until quite recently, unmarried women and very often 
 matrons went stark naked. Even amongst the prudish Baganda, who 
 made it a punishable offense for a man to expose any part of his leg 
 above the knee, the wives of the King would attend at his Court per- 
 fectly naked. Among the Kavirondo, all unmarried girls are completely 
 nude, and although women who have become mothers are supposed to 
 wear a tiny covering before and behind, they very often completely 
 neglect to do so when in their own villages. Yet, as a general rulfl, 
 among the Nile Negroes, and still more markedly among the Hamites 
 and people of Masai stock, the women are particular about concealing the 
 pudenda, whereas the men are ostentatiously naked. The Baganda hold 
 nudity in the male to be such an abhorrent thing that for centuries they 
 
16 . PSYCHOLOGY Or SEX. 
 
 have referred with scorn and disgust to the Nile Negroes as the 'naked 
 people.' Male nudity extends northwest to within some 200 miles of 
 Khartum, or, in fact, wherever the Nile Negroes of the Dinka-Aoholi 
 stock inhabit the country." (Sir H. H. Johnston, Uganda Protectorate, 
 vol. ii, pp. 669-672.) 
 
 Among the Nilotic Ja-luo, Johnston states that "unmarried men 
 go naked. Married men who have children wear a small piece of goat 
 skin, which, though quite inadequate for purposes of decency, is, never- 
 theless, a very important thing in etiquette, for a married man with 
 a, child must on no account call on his mother-in-law without wearing 
 this piece of goat's skin. To call on her in a state of absolute nudity 
 would he regarded as a serious insult, only to be atoned for by the 
 payment of goats. Even if under the new dispensation he wears 
 European trousers, he must have a piece of goat's skin underneath. 
 Married women wear a tail of strings behind." It is very bad manners 
 for a woman to serve food to her husband without putting on this tail. 
 (Sir H. H. Johnston, Uganda Protectorate, vol. ii, p. 781.) 
 
 Mrs. French-Sheldon remarks that the Masai and other East 
 African tribes, with regard to menstruation, "observe the greatest deli- 
 oacy, and are more than modest." {Journal of the Anthropological 
 Institute, 1894, p. 383.) 
 
 At the same time the Masai, among whom the penis is of enormous 
 size, consider it disreputable to conceal that member, and in the highest 
 degree reputable to display it, even ostentatiously. ( Sir H. H. Johnston, 
 Kilima-njaro Expedition, p. 413.) 
 
 Among the African Dinka, who are scrupulously clean and delicate 
 (smearing themselves with burnt cows' dung, and washing themselves 
 daily with cows' urine), and are exquisite cooks, reaching in many 
 respects a higher stage of civilization, in Schweinfurth's opinion, than is 
 elsewhere attained in Africa, only the women wear aprons. The neigh- 
 boring tribes of the red soil — Bongo, Mittoo, Niam-Niam, etc. — are called 
 "women" by the Dinka, because among these tribes the men wear an 
 apron, while the women obstinately refuse to wear any clothes whatso- 
 ever of skin or stuff, going into the woods every day, hoAvever, to get 
 a supple bough for a girdle, with, perhaps, a bundle of fine grass. 
 (Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, vol. i, pp. 152, etc.) 
 
 Lombroso and Carrara, examining some Dinka negroes brought 
 from the White Nile, remark: "As to their psychology, what struck us 
 iirst was the exaggeration of their modesty; not in a single case would 
 the men allow us to examine their genital organs or the women their 
 breasts ; we examined the tattoo-marks on the chest of one of the women, 
 and she remained sad and irritable for two days afterw£ird." They add 
 that in sexual and all other respects these people are highly moral. 
 (Lombroso and Carrara, Archivio di Psichiatria, 1896, vol. xvii, fasc. 4.) 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 17 
 
 "Tlie negro is very rarely kno\yingiy indecent or addicted to 
 lubricity," says Sir H. H. Johnston. "In this land of nudity, which I 
 have known for seven years, I do not remember once having seen an 
 indecent gesture on the part of either man or woman, and only very 
 rarely (and that not among unspoiled savages) in the case of that most 
 shameless member of the community — the little boy." He adds that the 
 native dances are only an apparent exception, being serious in character, 
 though indecent to our eyes, almost constituting a religious ceremony. 
 The only really indecent dance indigenous to Central Africa "is one 
 which originally represented the act of coition, but it is so altered to a 
 stereotyped formula that its exact purport is not obvious until explained 
 somewhat shyly by the natives. ... It may safely be asserted that 
 the negro race in Central Africa is much more truly modest, is much 
 more free from real vice, than are most European nations. Neither boys 
 nor girls wear clothing (unless they are the children of chiefs) until' 
 nearing the age of puberty. Among the Wankonda, practically no cover- 
 ing is worn by the men except a ring of brass wire around the stomach. 
 The Wankonda women are likewise almost entirely naked, but generally 
 cover the pudenda with a tiny bead-work apron, often a piece of very 
 beautiful workmanship, and exactly resembling the same article worn 
 by Kaffir women. A like degree of nudity prevails among many of the 
 Awemba, among the A-lungu, the Batumbuka, and the Angoni. Most 
 of the Angoni men, however, adopt the Zulu fashion of covering the 
 glans penis with a small wooden ease or the outer shell of a fruit. The 
 Wa-Yao have a strong sense of decency in matters of this kind, which 
 is the more curious since they are more given to obscenity in their rites, 
 ceremonies, and dances than any other tribe. Not only is it extremely 
 rare to see any Yao uncovered, but both men and women have the 
 strongest dislike to exposing their persons even to the inspection of a 
 doctor. The Atonga and many of the A-nyanga people, and all the tribes 
 west of Nyassa (with the exception possibly of the A-lunda) have not 
 the Yao regard for decency, and, although they can seldom or ever be 
 accused of a deliberate intention to expose themselves, the men are 
 relatively indifferent as to whether their nakedness is or is not con- 
 cealed, though the women are modest and careful in this respect." 
 (H. H. Johnston, British Central Africa, 1897, pp. 408-419.) 
 
 In Azimba land, Central Africa, H. Crawford Angus, who has 
 spent many years in this part of Africa, writes : "It has been my ex- 
 perience that the more naked the people, and the more to us obscene 
 and shameless their manners and customs, the more moral and strict 
 they are in the matter of sexual intercourse." He proceeds to give a 
 description of the chensamimli, or initiation ceremony of girls at 
 puberty, a, season of rejoicing when the girl is initiated into all the 
 secrets of marriage, amid songs and dances referring to the act of 
 
 2 
 
18 PSYCHOLOGY OP SEX. 
 
 coition. "Tlie wliole matter is looked upon as a matter of course, and 
 not as a thing to be ashamed of or to hide, and, being thus openly 
 treated of and no secrecy made about it, you find in this tribe that the 
 women are very virtuous. They know from the first all that is to be 
 known, and cannot see any reason for secrecy concerning natural laws 
 or the powers and senses that have been given them from birth.'' 
 (Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, 1898, Heft 6, p. 479.) 
 
 Of the Monbuttu of Central Africa, another observer says: "It 
 is surprising how a Monbuttu woman of birth can, without the aid of 
 dress, impress others with her dignity and modesty.'' {British Medical 
 Journal, June 14, 1890.) 
 
 "The women at Upoto wear no clothes whatever, and came up 
 to us in the most unreserved manner. An interesting gradation in 
 the arrangement of the female costume has been observed by us: as 
 we ascended the Congo, the higher up the river we found ourselves, the 
 higher the dress reached, till it has now, at last, culminated in absolute 
 nudity." (T. H. Parke, Mi/ Personal Experiences in Equatorial Africa, 
 1891, p. 61.) 
 
 "There exists throughout the Congo population a marked appre- 
 ciation of the sentiment of decency and shame as applied to private 
 actions," says Mr. Herbert Ward. In explanation of the nudity of the 
 women at Upoto, a chief remarked to Ward that "concealment is food 
 for the inquisitive." {Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1895, 
 p. 293.) 
 
 In the Gold Coast and surrounding countries complete nudity is 
 extremely rare, except when circumstances make it desirable; on occa- 
 sion clothing is abandoned with unconcern. "I have on several occa- 
 sions," says Dr. Freeman, "seen women at Accra walk from the beach, 
 where they have been bathing, across the road to their houses, where 
 they would proceed to dry themselves, and resume their garments; and 
 women may not infrequently be seen bathing in pools by the wayside, 
 conversing quite unconstrainedly with their male acquaintances, who 
 are seated on the bank. The mere unclothed body conveys to their 
 minds no idea of indecency. Immodesty and indelicacy of manner are 
 practically unknown." He adds that the excessive zeal of missionaries 
 in urging their converts to adopt European dress — which they are only 
 too ready to do — is much to be regretted, since the close-fitting, thin 
 garments are really less modest than the loose clothes they replace, 
 besides being much less cleanly. (R. A. Freeman, Travels and Life in 
 Ashanti and Jaman, 1898, p. 379.) 
 
 At Loango, says Peehuel-Loesche, "the well-bred negress likes to 
 cover her bosom, and is sensitive to critical male eyes; if she meets a 
 European when without her overgarment, she instinctively, though not 
 without coquetry, takes the attitude of the Medicean Venus." Men 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 19 
 
 and -vvomen bathe separately, and hide themselves from each other when 
 naked. The women also exhibit shame when discovered suckling their 
 babies. {Zeifschrift fiir Eihnologie, 1878, pp. 27-31.) 
 
 The Koran (Sura XXIV) forbids showing the pudenda, as well 
 as the face, yet a veiled Mohammedan woman, Stern remarks, even in 
 the streets of Constantinople, will stand still and pull up her clothes to 
 scratch her private parts, and in Beyrout, he saw Turkish prostitutes, 
 still veiled, place themselves in the position for coitus. (B. Stern, 
 Medizin, etc., in der Tilrkei, vol. ii, p. 162.) 
 
 "An Englishman surprised a woman while bathing in the Eu- 
 phrates; she held her hands over her face, without troubling as to 
 what else the stranger might see. In Egypt, I have myself seen quite 
 naked young peasant girls, who hastened to see us, after covering their 
 faces. (C. Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung naeh Arabien, 1774, vol. i, 
 p. 165.) 
 
 When Heifer was taken to visit the ladies in the palace of the 
 Imam of Muskat, at Buscheir, he found that their faces were covered 
 with black masks, though the rest of the body might be clothed in a 
 transparent sort of crape; to look at a naked face was very painful to 
 the ladies themselves; even a mother never lifts the mask from the 
 face of her daughter after the age of twelve; that is reserved for her 
 lord and husband. "I observed that the ladies looked at me with a cer- 
 tain confusion, and after they had glanced into my face, lowered their 
 eyes, ashamed. On making inquiries, I found that my uncovered face 
 was indecent, as a naked person would be to us. They begged me to 
 assume a mask, and when a waiting-woman had bound a splendidly 
 decorated one round my head, they all exclaimed: 'Tahip! tahip!' — 
 beautiful, beautiful." ( J. W. Heifer, Reisen in Vorderasian und Indien, 
 vol. ii, p. 12.) 
 
 In Algeria — in the provinces of Constantine, in Biskra, even Aures, 
 • — -"among the women especially, not one is restrained by any modesty 
 in unfastening her girdle to any comer" (when a search was being 
 made for tattoo-marks on the lower extremities ) . "In spite of the 
 great licentiousness of the manners," the same writer continues, "the 
 Arab and the Kabyle possess great, personal modesty, and with difficulty 
 are persuaded to exhibit the body nude ; is it the result of real modesty, 
 or of their inveterate habits of active pederasty? Whatever the cause, 
 they always hide the sexual organs with their hands or their handker- 
 chiefs, and are disagreeably affected even by the slightest touch of the 
 doctor." (Batut, Archives d'Anthropologie Oriminelle, January 15, 
 1893.) 
 
 "Moslem modesty," remarks Wellhauaen, "was carried to great 
 lengths, insufficient clothing being forbidden. It was marked even 
 among the heathen Arabs, as among Semites and old civilizations gener- 
 
20 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 ally; we must not be deceived by the occasional examples of immodesty 
 in individual cases. The Sunna prescribes that a man shall not un- 
 cover himself even to himself, and shall not wash naked — from fear 
 of God and of spirits; Job did so, and atoned for it heavily. When 
 in Arab antiquity gi-own-up persons showed themselves naked, it was 
 only under extraordinary circumstances, and to attain unusual ends. 
 . . . Women when mourning uncovered not only the face and bosom, 
 but also tore all their garmenta. The messenger who brought bad 
 news tore his garments. A mother desiring to bring pressure to bear 
 on her son took off her clothes. A man to whom vengeance is forbidden 
 showed his despair and disapproval by uncovering his posterior and 
 strewing earth on his head, or by raising his garment behind and cover- 
 ing his head with it. This was done also in fuliilling natural necessi- 
 ties." (Wellhausen, Reste Arahisehen Heidentums, 1897, pp. 173, 
 195-196.) 
 
 Mantegazza mentions that a Lapland woman refused even for the 
 sum of 150 francs to allow him to photograph her naked, though the 
 men placed themselves before the camera in the costume of Adam for 
 a much smaller sum. In the same book Mantegazza remarks that in 
 the eighteenth century, travelers found it extremely difficult to persuade 
 Samoyed women to show themselves naked. Among the same people, 
 he says, the newly-married wife must conceal her face from her husband 
 for two months after marriage, and only then yield to his embraces. 
 (Mantegazza, La Donna, cap. IV.) 
 
 "The beauty of a Chinese woman," says Dr. Matignon, "resides 
 largely in her foot. 'A foot which is not deformed is a dishonor,' says 
 a poet. For the husband the foot is more interesting than the face. 
 Only the husband may see his wife's foot naked. A Chinese woman is 
 as reticent in showing her feet to a man as a European woman her 
 breasts. I have often had to treat Chinese women with ridiculously 
 small feet for wounds and excoriations, the result of tight-bandaging. 
 They exhibited the prudishness of school-girls, blushed, turned their 
 backs to unfasten the bandages, and then concealed the foot in a cloth, 
 leaving only the affected part uncovered. Modesty is a question of 
 convention; Chinese have it for their feet." (J. Matignon, "A propos 
 d'un Pied de Chinoise," Archives d'Anthropologie Oriminelle, 1898, p. 
 445.) 
 
 Among the Yakuts of Northeast Siberia, "there was a well-known 
 custom according to which a bride should avoid showing herself or her 
 uncovered body to her father-in-law. In ancient times, they say, a bride 
 concealed herself for seven years from her father-in-law, and from the 
 brothers and other masculine relations of her husband. . . . The 
 men also tried not to meet her, saying, 'Tlie poor child will be ashamed.' 
 If a meeting could not be avoided the young woman put a mask on her 
 
THE EVOLUTION OE MODESTY. 21 
 
 face. . . . Nowadays, the young wives only avoid showing to their 
 male relatives-in-law the uncovered body. Amongst the rich they avoid 
 going about in the presence of these in the chemise alone. In some places, 
 they lay especial emphasis on the fact that it is a shame for young 
 wives to show their uncovered hair and feet to the male relatives of 
 their husbands. On the other side, the male relatives of the husband 
 ought to avoid showing to the young wife the body uncovered above 
 the elbow or the sole of the foot, and they ought to avoid indecent 
 expressions and vulgar vituperations in her presence. . . . That 
 these observances are not the result of a specially delicate modesty, 
 is proved by the fact that even young girls constantly twist thread 
 upon the naked thigh, unembarrassed by the presence of men who do 
 not belong to the household; nor do they show any embarrassment if a 
 strange man comes upon them when uncovered to the waist. The one 
 thing which they do not like, and at which they show anger, is that such 
 persons look carefully at their uncovered feet. . . . The former 
 simplicity, with lack of shame in uncovering the body, is disappearing." 
 ( Sieroshevski, "The Yakuts," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 
 Jan.-June, 1901, p. 93.) 
 
 "In Japan (Captain tells me), the bathing- place of the 
 
 women was perfectly open (the shampooing, indeed, was done by a man) , 
 and Englishmen were offered no obstacle, nor excited the least repug- 
 nance; indeed, girls after their bath would freely pass, sometimes as if 
 holding out their hair for innocent admiration, and this continued until 
 countrymen of ours, by vile laughter and jests, made them guard them- 
 selves from insult by secrecy. So corruption spreads, and heathenism is 
 blacker by our contact." (Private communication.) 
 
 "Speaking once with a Japanese gentleman, I observed that we 
 considered it an act of indecency for men and women to wash together. 
 He shrugged his shoulders as he answered: 'But these Westerns have 
 such prurient minds!'" (Mitford, Tales of Old Japan, 1871.) 
 
 Dr. Carl Davidsohn, who remarks that he had ample opportunity 
 of noting the great beauty of the Japanese women in a national dance, 
 performed naked, points out that the Japanese have no aesthetic sense 
 for the nude. "This was shown at the Jubilee Exposition at Kyoto. 
 Here, among many rooms full of art objects, one was devoted to oil 
 pictures in the European manner. Among these only one represented a 
 nude figure, a Psyche, or Truth. It was the first time such a picture 
 had been seen. Men and women crowded around it. After they had 
 gazed at it for a time, most began to giggle and laugh; some by their 
 air and gestures clearly showed their disgust; all found that it was 
 not aesthetic to paint a naked woman, though in Nature, nakedness was 
 in no way offensive to them. In the middle of the same city, at a 
 fountain reputed to possess special virtues, men and women will stand 
 
22 PSYCHOLOGY 0]? SEX. 
 
 together naked and let the water run over them." (Carl Davidsohn, 
 "Das Naokte bei den Japanern," Globus, 1896, No. 16.) 
 
 "It is very difficult to investigate the hairiness of Ainu women," 
 Baelz remarks, "for they possess a really incredible degree of modesty. 
 Even when in summer they bathe — which happens but seldom — they 
 keep their clothes on." He records that he was once asked to examine 
 a girl at the Mission School, in order to advise as regards the treat- 
 ment of a diseased spine; although she had been at the school for seven 
 years, she declared that "she would rather die than show her back to 
 a man, even though a doctor." (Baelz, "Die Aino," Zeitschrift fiir 
 Ethnologie, 1901, Heft 2, p. 178.) 
 
 The Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, appear to have been ac- 
 customed to cover the foreskin with the Icynodesme (a band), or the 
 pMda (a ring), for custom and modesty demanded that the glans should 
 be concealed. Such covering is represented in persons who were com- 
 pelled to be naked, and is referred to by Celsus as "deeori causS.." 
 (L. Stieda, "Anatomisch-archaologische Studien," Anatomische Befte, 
 Bd. XIX, Heft 2, 1902.) 
 
 "Among the Lydians, and, indeed, among the barbarians generally, 
 it is considered a deep disgrace, even for a man, to be seen naked." 
 {Herodotus, Book I, Chapter X.) 
 
 "The simple dress which is now common was first worn in Sparta, 
 and there, more than anywhere else, the life of the rich was assimilated 
 to that of the people. The Laeedsemonians, too, were the first who, in 
 their athletic exercises, stripped naked and rubbed themselves over with 
 oil. This was not the ancient e^lstom; athletes formerly, even when 
 they were contending at Olympia, wore girdles about their loins 
 [earlier still, the Mycenseans had always worn a loin-cloth], a practice 
 which lasted until quite lately, and still persists among barbarians, espe- 
 cially those of Asia, where the combatants at boxing and wrestling 
 matches wear girdles." ( Thucydides, History, Book I, Chapter VI. ) 
 
 "The notion of the women exercising naked in the schools with 
 the men ... at the present day would appear truly ridiculous. 
 . . . Not long since it was thought discreditable and ridiculous 
 among the Greeks, as it is now among most barbarous nations, for 
 men to be seen naked. And when the Cretans first, and after them 
 the Laeedsemonians, began the practice of gymnastic exercises, the wits 
 of the time had it in their power to make sport of those novelties. 
 ... As for the man who laughs at the idea of undressed women 
 going through gymnastic exercises, as a means of revealing what is 
 most perfect, his ridicule is but 'unripe fruit plucked from the tree of 
 wisdom.'" (Plato, RepuUic, Book V.) 
 
 According to Plutarch, however, among the Spartans, at all events, 
 nakedness in women was not ridiculous, since the institutes of Lycurgus 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 23 
 
 ordained that at solemn feasts and sacrifices the young women should 
 dance naked and sing, the young men standing around in a oircle to 
 see and hear them. Aristotle says that in his time Spartan girls only 
 wore a very slight garment. As described by Pausanias, and as shown 
 by a statue in the Vatican, the ordinary tunic, which was the sole 
 garment worn by women when running, left bare the right shoulder 
 and breast, and only reached to the upper third of the thighs. (M. M. 
 Evans, Chapters on Greek Dress, p. 34.) 
 
 Among the Greeks who were inclined to accept the doctrines of 
 Cynicism, it was held that, while shame is not unreasonable, what is 
 good may be done and discussed before all men. There are a, number 
 of authorities who say that Crates and Hipparchia consummated their 
 marriage in the presence of many spectators. Lactantius {Inst, iii, 15) 
 says that the practice was common, but this Zeller is inclined to doubt. 
 (Zeller, Socrates and the Socratio Schools, translated from the Third 
 German Edition, 1897.) 
 
 "Among the Tyrrhenians, who carry their luxury to an extraor- 
 dinary pitch, Timseus, in his first book, relates that the female servants 
 wait on the men in a state of nudity. And Theopompus, in the forty- 
 third book of his History, states that it is a, law among the Tyr- 
 rhenians that all their women should be in common; and that the 
 women pay the greatest attention to their persons, and often practice 
 gymnastic exercises, naked, among the men, and sometimes with one 
 another; for that it is not accounted shameful for them to be seen 
 naked. . . . Nor is it reckoned among the Tyrrhenians at all dis- 
 graceful either to do or suffer anything in the open air, or to be seen 
 while it is going on; for it is quite the custom of their country, and 
 they are so far from thinking it disgraceful that they even say, when 
 the master of the house is indulging his appetite, and anyone asks for 
 him, that he is doing so and so, using the coarsest possible words. 
 . . . And they are very beautiful, as is natural for people to be who 
 live delicately, and who take care of their persons." (Athenseus, Deip- 
 nosophists, Yonge's translation, vol. iii, p. 829.) 
 
 Dennis throws doubt on the foregoing statement of Athenseus re- 
 garding the Tyrrhenians or Etruscans, and points out that the repre- 
 sentations of women in Etruscan tombs shows them as clothed, even the 
 breast being rarely uncovered. Nudity, he remarks, was a Greek, not 
 an Etruscan, characteristic. "To the nudity of the Spartan women I 
 need but refer; the Thessalian women are described by Persseus dancing 
 at banquets naked, or with a very scanty covering ( apud Athenaeus, xiii, 
 u. 86). The maidens of Chios wrestled naked with the youths in the 
 gymnasium, which Athenseus (xiii, 20) pronounces to be 'a beautiful 
 sight.' And at the marriage feast of Caranus, the Macedonian women 
 
24 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 tumblers performed naked before the guests (Athenaeus, iv, 3)." (G. 
 Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 1883, vol. i, p. 321.) 
 
 In Rome, "when there was at first much less freedom in this mat- 
 ter than in Greece, the bath became common to both sexes, and though 
 each had its basin and hot room apart, they could see each other, 
 meet, speak, form intrigues, arrange meetings, and multiply adulteries. 
 At first, the baths were so dark that men and women could wash side 
 by side, without recognizing each other except by the voice; but soon 
 the light of day was allowed to enter from every side. 'In the bath 
 of Scipio,' said Seneca, 'there were narrow ventholes, rather than 
 windows, hardly admitting enough light to outrage modesty; but nowa- 
 days, baths are called caves if they do not receive the sun's rays through 
 large windows.' . . . Hadrian severely prohibited this mingling of 
 men and women, and ordained separate lavaera for the sexes. Marcus 
 Aurelius and Alexander Severus renewed this edict, but in the interval, 
 Heliogabalus had authorized the sexes to meet in the baths.'' (Dufour, 
 Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. ii, Ch. XVIII; cf. Smith.' s Dictionary of 
 Greek and Roman Antiquities, Art. Balneae.) 
 
 In Home, according to ancient custom, actors were compelled to 
 wear drawers (subligaculum) on the stage, in order to safeguard the 
 modesty of Roman matrons. Respectable women, it seems, also always 
 wore some sort of suhligaculum, even sometimes when bathing. The 
 name was also applied to a leathern girdle laced behind, which they 
 were occasionally made to wear as a girdle of chastity. (Dufour, op. dt., 
 vol. ii, p. 150.) Greek women also wore a cloth round the loins when 
 taking the bath, as did the men who bathed there; and a woman is 
 represented bathing and wearing a sort of thin combinations reaching to 
 the middle of the thigh. (Smith's Dictionary, loo. cit.) At a later 
 period, St. Augustine refers to the compestria, the drawers or apron 
 worn by young men who stripped for exercise in the campus. {De 
 Civitate Dei, Bk. XIV, Ch. XVII.) 
 
 Lecky (History of ilorals, vol. ii, p. 318), brings together in- 
 stances of women, in both Pagan and early Christian times, who showed 
 their modesty by drawing their garments around them, even at the 
 moment that they were being brutally killed. Plutarch, in his essay 
 on the "Virtues of Women," — moralizing on the well-known story of the 
 young women of Milesia, among whom an epidemic of suicide was only 
 brought to an end by the decree that in future women who hanged 
 themselves should be carried naked through the market-places, — observes : 
 "They, who had no dread of the most terrible things in the world, 
 death and pain, could not abide the imagination of dishonor, and ex- 
 posure to shame, even after death." 
 
 In the second century the physician Aretseus, writing at Rome, 
 remarks : "In many cases, owing to involuntary restraint from modesty 
 
THE EVOLUTION" OE MODESTY. 25 
 
 at assemblies, and at banquets, the bladder becomes distended, and 
 from the consequent loss of its contractile power, it no longer evacuates 
 the urine." (On the Causes and Symptoms of Acute Diseases, Book 
 II, Chapter X.) 
 
 Apuleius, writing in the second century, says: "Most women, in 
 order to exhibit their native gracefulness and allurements, divest them- 
 selves of all their garments, and long to show their naked beauty, being 
 conscious that they shall please more by the rosy redness of their skin 
 than by the golden splendor of their robes." (Thomas Taylor's trans- 
 lation of Metamorphosis, p. 28.) 
 
 Christianity seems to have profoundly affected habits of thought 
 and feeling by uniting together the merely natural emotion of sexual 
 reserve with, on the one hand, the masculine virtue of modesty — modestia 
 — and, on the other, the prescription of sexual abstinence. Tertullian 
 admirably illustrates this confusion, and his treatises De Pudicitia and 
 De Oultu Feminarum are instructive from the present point of view. 
 In the latter he remarks (Book II, Chapter I) : "Salvation — and not of 
 women only, but likewise of men — consists in the exhibition, principally, 
 of modesty. Since we are all tbe temple of God, modesty is the sacris- 
 tan and priestess of that temple, who is to suffer nothing unclean or 
 profane to enter it, for fear that the God wlio inhabits it should be 
 offended. . . . Most women, either from simple ignorance or from 
 dissimulation, have the hardihood so to walk as if modesty consisted 
 only in the integrity of the flesh, and in turning away from fornication, 
 and there were no need for anything else, — -in dress and ornament, the 
 studied graces of form, — ^wearing in their gait the self-same appearance 
 as the women of the nations from whom the sense of true modesty is 
 absent." 
 
 The earliest Christian ideal of modesty, not long maintained, is 
 well shown in an epistle which, there is some reason to suppose, was 
 written by Clement of Rome. "And if we see it to be requisite to stand 
 and pray for the sake of the woman, and to speak words of exhortation 
 and edification, we call the brethren and all the holy sisters and maidens, 
 likewise all the other women who are there, with all modesty and becom- 
 ing behavior, to come and feast on the truth. And those among us who 
 are skilled in speaking, speak to them, and exhort them in those words 
 which God has given us. And then we pray, and salute one another, 
 the men the men. But the women and the maidens will wrap their 
 hands in their garments; we also, with circumspection and with all 
 purity, our eyes looking upward, shall wrap our right hand in our gar- 
 ments ; and then they will come and give us the salutation on our right 
 hand, wrapped in our garments. Then we go where God permits us." 
 {Two Epistles Concerning Virginity;" Second Epistle, Chapter III, 
 vol. xiv. Ante-Nicene Christian Library, p. 384.) 
 
26 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 "Women ivill scarce strip naked before their own husbands, affect- 
 ing a plausible pretense of modesty," writes Clement of Alexandria, 
 about the end of the second century, "but any others who wish may 
 see them at home, shut up in tlieir own baths, for they are not ashamed 
 to strip before spectators, as if exposing their persons for sale. The 
 baths are opened promiscuously to men and women; and there they 
 strip for licentious indulgence (for, from looking, men get to loving), 
 as if their modesty had been washed away in the bath. Those who 
 have not become utterly destitute of modesty shut out strangers, but 
 bathe with their own servants, and strip naked before their slaves, and 
 are rubbed by them, giving to the crouching menial liberty to lust, by 
 permitting fearless handling, for those who are introduced before their 
 naked mistresses while in the bath, study to strip themselves in order to 
 show audacity in lust, casting oflf fear in consequence of the wicked 
 custom. The ancient athletes, ashamed to exhibit a man naked, pre- 
 served their modesty by going through the contest in drawers; but 
 these women, divesting themselves of their modesty along with their 
 chemise, wish to appear beautiful, but, contrary to their wish, are simply 
 proved to be wicked." (Clement of Alexandria, Pwdagogus, Book III, 
 Chapter V. For elucidations of this passage, see Migne's Patrologiod 
 Cursus Completus, vol. vii.) Promiscuous bathing was forbidden by the 
 early Apostolical Constitutions, but Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, found 
 it necessary, in the third century, to upbraid even virgins vowe"d to 
 chastity for continuing the custom. "What of those," he asks, "who 
 frequent baths, who prostitute to eyes that are curious to lust, bodies 
 that are dedicated to chastity and modesty? They who disgracefully 
 behold naked men, and are seen naked by men? Do they not them- 
 selves afford enticement to vice? Do they not solicit and invite the 
 desires of those present to their o^vn corruption and wrong? 'Let every 
 one,' say you, 'look to the disposition with which he comes thither: 
 my care is only that of refreshing and washing my poor body.' That 
 kind of defence does not clear you, nor does it excuse the crime of 
 lasciviousness and wantonness. Such a washing defiles; it does not 
 Xmrify nor cleanse the limbs, but stains them. You behold no one 
 immodestly, but you, yourself, are gazed upon immodestly; you do 
 not pollute your eyes with disgraceful delight, but in delighting others 
 you yourself are polluted; you make a show of the bathing- place; the 
 places where you assemble are fouler than a theatre. There all modesty 
 is put off; together with the clothing of garments, the honor and 
 modesty of the body is laid aside, virginity is exposed, to be pointed 
 at and to be handled. . . . Let your baths be performed with women, 
 whose behavior is modest towards you." (Cyprian, De Balitu Vir- 
 ginum, cap. 19, 21.) The Church carried the same spirit among the 
 barbarian.s of northern Europe, and several centuries later the pro- 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 27 
 
 misouous bathing of men and' women was prohibited in some of the 
 Penitentials. (The custom was, however, preserved here and there in 
 Northern Europe, even to the end of the eighteenth century, or later. 
 In Eudeelc's Geschichte der ijffentliohen SitUichkeit in Deutschland, 
 an interesting chapter, with contemporary illustrations, is devoted to 
 this custom; also. Max Bauer, Das Geschlechtsleben in der Deutschen 
 Vergangenheit, pp. 216-265.) 
 
 "Women," says Clement again, "should not seek to be graceful by 
 avoiding broad drinking vessels that oblige them to stretch their mouths, 
 in order to drink from narrow alabastra that cause them indecently 
 to throw back the head, revealing to men their necks and breasts. The 
 mere thought of what she is ought to inspire a woman with modesty. 
 . . . On no account must a woman be permitted to show to a. man 
 any portion of her body naked, for fear lest both fall: the one by 
 gazing eagerly, the other by delighting to attract those eager glances." 
 {Pwdagogiis, Book II, Chapter V.) 
 
 James, Bishop of Nisibis, in the fourth century, was a man of great 
 holiness. We are told by Thedoret that once, when James had newly 
 come into Persia, it was vouchsafed to him to perform a miracle under 
 the following circumstances: He chanced to pass by a fountain where 
 young women were washing their linen, and, his modesty being pro- 
 foundly shocked by the exposure involved in this occupation, he cursed 
 the fountain, which instantly dried up, and he changed the hair of the 
 girls from black to a sandy color. (Jortin, Remarks on Ecclesiastical 
 History, vol. iii, p. 4.) 
 
 Procopius, writing in the sixth century after Christ, and narrating 
 how the Empress Theodora, in early life, would often appear almost 
 naked before the public in the theatre, adds that she would willingly 
 have appeared altogether nude, but that "no woman is allowed to ex- 
 pose herself altogether, unless she wears at least short drawers over the 
 lower part of the abdomen." Chrysostom mentions, at the end of the 
 fourth century, that Arcadius attempted to put down the August 
 festival (Majuma) , during which women appeared naked in the theatres, 
 or swimming in large baths. 
 
 In mediaeval days, "ladies, at all events, as represented by the 
 jioets, were not, on the whole, very prudish. Meleranz surprised a lady 
 who was taking a bath under a lime tree; the bath was covered with 
 samite, and by it was a. magnificent ivory bed, surrounded by tapestries 
 representing the history of Paris and Helen, the destruction of Troy, 
 the adventures of ^neas, etc. As Meleranz rides by, the lady's, waiting- 
 maids run away; she herself, however, with quick decision, raises the 
 samite which covers the tub, and orders him to wait on her in place 
 of the maids. He brings her shift and mantle, and shoes, and then 
 stands aside till she is dressed; when she has placed herself on the bed. 
 
28 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 she calls him back and commands him to drive away the flies while 
 she sleeps. Strange to say, the men are represented as more modest 
 than the women. When two maidens prepared a bath for Parzival, 
 and proposed to bathe him, according to custom, the inexperienced 
 young knight was shy, and would not enter the bath until they had 
 gone; on another occasion, he jumped quickly into bed when the maidens 
 entered the room. When Wolfdieterieh was about to undress, he had to 
 ask the ladies who pressed around him to leave him alone for a short 
 time, as he was ashamed they should see him naked. When Amphous 
 of Spain, bewitched by his step-mother into a were-wolf, was at last 
 restored, and stood suddenly naked before her, he was greatly ashamed. 
 The maiden who healed Iwein was tender of his modesty. In his love- 
 madness, the hero wanders for a time naked through the wood; three 
 women find him asleep, and send a waiting-maid to annoint him with 
 salve; when he came to himself, the maiden hid herself. On the whole, 
 however, the ladies were not so delicate; they had no hesitation in 
 bathing with gentlemen, and on these occasions would put their finest 
 ornaments on their heads. I know no pictures of the twelfth and thir- 
 teenth centuries representing such a scene, but such baths in common 
 are clearly represented in miniatures of the fifteenth century." (A. 
 Schultz, Das hofische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesdnger, vol. i, p. 225.) 
 
 "In the years 14.50-70, the use of the cod-piece was introduced, 
 whereby the attributes of manhood were accentuated in the most 
 shameless manner. It was, in fact, the avov.'ed aim at that period to 
 attract attention to these parts. The cod-piece was sometimes colored 
 differently from the rest of the garments, often stuflfed out to enlarge 
 it artificially, and decorated with ribbons.'' (Rudeck, GeschicTite der 
 offentUchen SittlichJceit in Deutschland, pp. 45-48; Dufour, Histoire de 
 la Prostitution, vol. vi, pp. 21-23. Groos refers to the significance of 
 this fashion, Spiele der Menscheru, p. 337.) 
 
 "The first shirt began to be worn [in Germany] in the sixteenth 
 century. From this fact, as well as from the custom of public bathing, 
 we reach the remarkable result, that for the German people, the sight 
 of complete nakedness was the daily rule up to the sixteenth century. 
 Everyone undressed completely before going to bed, and, in the vapor- 
 baths, no covering was used. Again, the dances, both of the peasants 
 and the townspeople, were characterized by very high leaps into the 
 air. It was the chief delight of the dancers for the male to raise his 
 partner as high as possible in the air, so that her dress flew up. That 
 feminine modesty was in this respect very indifferent, we know from 
 countless references made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It 
 must not be forgotten that throughout the middle ages women wore 
 no underclothes, and even in the seventeenth century, the wearing of 
 drawers by Italian women was regarded as singular. That with the dis- 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 29 
 
 appearance of the baths, and the use of body-linen, a powerful influence 
 was exerted on the creation of modesty, there can be little doubt." 
 (Rudtck, op. ait., pp. 57, 399, etc.) 
 
 In 1461, when Louis XI entered Paris, three very beautiful 
 maidens, quite naked, represented the Syrens, and declaimed poems 
 before him; they were greatly admired by the public. In 1468, when 
 Charles the Bold entered Lille, he was specially pleased, among the 
 various festivities, with a representation of the Judgment of Paris, in 
 which the three goddesses were nude. When Charles the Fifth entered 
 Antwerp, the most beautiful maidens of the city danced before him, 
 in nothing but gauze, and were closely contemplated by Durer, as he 
 told his friend, Melancthon. (B. Hitter, "Nuditaten im Mittelalter," 
 Jahrhiicher fur Wissenschaft und Kunst, 1855, p. 227; this writer 
 shows how luxury, fashion, poverty, and certain festivals, all com- 
 bined to make nudity familiar; cf. Fahne, Der Carneval, p. 249. Du- 
 laure quotes many old writers concerning the important part played by 
 nude persons in ancient festivals, Des Divinitis Geniratrices, Cltapter 
 XIV.) 
 
 Passek, a Polish officer who wrote an account of his campaigns, 
 admired the ladies of Denmark in 1658, but considered their customs 
 immodest. "Everyone sleeps naked as at birth, and none consider it 
 shameful to dress or undress before others. No notice, even, is taken of 
 the guest, and in the light one garment is taken off after another, even 
 the chemise is hung on the hook. Then the door is bolted, the light 
 blown out, and one goes to bed. As we blamed their ways, saying that 
 among us a woman would not act so, even in the presence of her husband 
 alone, they replied that they knew nothing of such shame, and that 
 there was no need to be ashamed of limbs which God had created. 
 Moreover, to sleep without a shift was good, because, like the other 
 garments, it sufficiently served the body during the day. Also, why 
 take fleas and other insects to bed with one? Although our men teased 
 them in various ways, they would not change their habits." (Passek, 
 Denkvmrdigkeiten, German translation, p. 14.) 
 
 Until late in the seventeenth century, women in England, as well 
 as France, suffered much in childbirth from the ignorance and super- 
 stition of incompetent midwives, owing to the prevailing conceptions 
 of modesty, which rendered it impossible (as it is still, to some extent, 
 in some semi-civilized lands) for male physicians to attend them. Dr. 
 Willoughby, of Derby, tells how, in 1658, he had to creep into the chamber 
 of a lying-in woman on his hands and knees, in order to examine her 
 unpereeived. In France, Clement was employed secretly to attend the 
 mistresses of Louis XIV in their confinements; to the first he was con- 
 ducted blindfold, while the King was concealed among the bed- 
 curtains, and the face of the lady was enveloped in a network of lace. 
 
30 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 (E. Malins, "Midwifery and Midwives," British Medical Journal, June 
 22, 1901; Witlcowski, Eistoire des Accouchement s, 1887, pp. 689 et seq.) 
 Even until the Revolution, the examination of women in France in cases 
 of rape or attempted outrage was left to a jury of matrons. In old 
 English manuals of midwifery, even in the early nineteenth century, we 
 still find much insistence on the demands of modesty. Thus, Dr. John 
 Burns, of Glasgow, in his Principles of Midwifery, states that "some 
 women, from motives of false delicacy, are averse from examination 
 until the pains become severe." He adds that "it is usual for the room 
 to be darkened, and the bed-curtains drawn close, during an examina- 
 tion." Many old pictures show the accoucheur groping in the dark, 
 beneath the bed-clothes, to perform operations on women in childbirth. 
 (A. Kind, "Das Weib als Gebiirerin in der Kunst," Oeschleoht und 
 Gesellschaft, Bd. 11, Heft 5, p. 203.) 
 
 In Iceland, Winkler stated in 1861 that he sometimes slept in 
 the same room as a whole family; "it is often the custom for ten or 
 more persons to use the same room for living in and sleeping, young 
 and old, master and servant, male and female, and from motives of 
 economy, all the clothes, without exception, are removed." (G. Winkler, 
 Island; seine Bewohner, etc., pp. 107, 110.) 
 
 "At Cork," saye Fynes Moryson, in 1617, "I have seen with these 
 eyes young maids stark naked grinding corn with certain stones to make 
 cakes thereof." (Moryson, Itinerary, Part 3, Book III, Chapter V.) 
 
 "In the more remote parts of Ireland," Moryson elsewhere says, 
 where the English laws and manners are unlcnown, "the very chief 
 of the Irish, men as well as women, go naked in very winter-time, 
 only having their privy parts covered with a rag of linen, and their 
 bodies with a loose mantle. This I spealc of my own experience." He 
 goes on to tell of a Bohemian baron, just come from the North of Ire- 
 land, who "told me in great earnestness that he, coming to the house 
 of Ocane, a great lord among them, was met at the door with sixteen 
 women, all naked, excepting their loose mantles; whereof eight or ten 
 were very fair, and two seemed very nymphs, with which strange sight, 
 his eyes being dazzled, they led him into the house, and then sitting 
 down by the fire with crossed legs, like tailors, and so low as could 
 not but oifend chaste eyes, desired him to sit down with them. Soon 
 after, Ocane, the lord of the country, came in, all nalced excepting a 
 loose mantle, and shoes, which he put off as soon as he came in, and 
 entertaining the baron after his best manner in the Latin tongue, desired 
 him to put off his apparel, which he thought to be a burthen to him, 
 and to sit naked by the fire with this naked company. But the 
 baron ... for shame, durst not put off his apparel." (7B. Part 3, 
 Book IV, Chapter II. ) 
 
 Coryat, when traveling in Italy in the early part of the seven- 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 31 
 
 teenth century, found that in Lombardy many of tlie women and chil- 
 dren wore only smocks, or shirts, in the hot weather. At Venice and 
 Padua, he found that wives, widows, and maids, walk with naked 
 breasts, many with backs also naked, almost to the middle. (Coryat, 
 Crudities, 1611. The fashion of decollete garments, it may be re- 
 marked, only began in the fourteenth century; previously, the women 
 of Europe generally covered themselves up to the neck.) 
 
 In Northern Italy, some years ago, a iire occurred at night in a 
 house in which two girls were sleeping, naked, according to the custom. 
 One threw herself out and was saved, the other returned for a garment, 
 and was burnt to death. The narrator of the incident [a man] ex- 
 pressed strong approval of the more modest girl's action. (Private com- 
 munication.) It may be added that the custom of sleeping naked is 
 still preserved, also (according to Lippert and Stratz), in Jutland, in 
 Iceland, in some parts of Norway, and sometimes even in Berlin. 
 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montague writes in 1717, of the Turkish ladies 
 at the baths at Sophia: "The first sofas were covered with cushions 
 and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies, and on the second, their slaves 
 behind them, but without any distinction of rank in their dress, all 
 being in a state of Nature; that is, in plain English, stark naked, 
 without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least 
 wanton smile or immodest gesture among them. They walked and 
 moved with the same majestic grace which Milton describes of our 
 general mother. I am here convinced of the truth of a reflection I had 
 often made, that if it was the fashion to go naked, the face would be 
 hardly observed." {Letters and Works, 1866, vol. i, p. 285.) 
 
 At St. Petersburg, in 1774, Sir Nicholas Wraxall observed "the 
 promiscuous bathing of not less than two hundred persons, of both 
 sexes. There are several of these public bagnios," he adds, "in Peters- 
 burg, and every one pays a few copecks for admittance. There are, 
 indeed, separate spaces for the men and women, but they seem quite 
 regardless of this distinction, and sit or bathe in a state of absolute 
 nudity among each other." (Sir N. Wraxall, A Tour Through Some of 
 the Northern Parts of Europei, 3d ed., 1776, p. 248.) It is still usual 
 for women in the country parts of Russia to bathe naked in the 
 streams. 
 
 In 1790, Wedgwood wrote to Flaxman: "The nude is so general 
 in the work of the ancients, that it will be very difficult to avoid the 
 introduction of naked figures. On the other hand, it is absolutely 
 necessary to do so, or to keep the pieces for our own use; for none, 
 either male or female, of the present generation will take or apply 
 them as furniture if the figures are naked." (Meteyard, Life of Wedg- 
 wood, vol. ii, p. 589.) 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft quotes (for reprobation and not for approval) 
 
32 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 the following remarks: "Tlie lady who asked the question whether 
 women may be instructed in the modern system of hotany, was ac- 
 cused of ridiculous prudery; nevertheless, if she had proposed the ques- 
 tion to me, I should certainly have answered: 'They cannot!'" She 
 further quotes from an educational book: "It would be needless to 
 caution you against putting your hand, by chance, under your neck- 
 handkerchief; for a modest woman never did so." (Mary Wollstone- 
 craft. The Rights of Woman, 1792, pp. 277, 289.) 
 
 At the present time a knowledge of the physiology of plants 
 is not usually considered inconsistent with modesty, but a knowledge 
 of animal phj'siology is still so considered by many. Dr. H. R. Hopkins, 
 of New York, wrote in 1895, regarding the teaching of physiology: "How 
 can we teach growing girls the functions of the various parts of the 
 human body, and still leave them their modesty? That is the practical 
 question that has puzzled me for years.'' 
 
 In England, the use of drawers was almost unknown among 
 women halt a century ago, and was considered immodest and unfemi- 
 nine. Tilt, a distinguished gynecologist of that period, advocated such 
 garments, made of fine calico, and not to descend below the knee, on 
 hygienic grounds. "Thus understood," he added, "the adoption of 
 drawers will doubtless become more general in this country, as, being 
 worn without the knowledge of the general observer, they will be robbed 
 of the prejudice usually attached to an appendage deemed masculine.'' 
 (Tilt, Elements of Health, 1852, p. 193.) Drawers came into general 
 use among women during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Drawers are an Oriental garment, and seem to have reached 
 Europe through Venice, the great channel of communication with the 
 East. Like many other refinements of decency and cleanliness, they 
 were at first chiefly cultivated by prostitutes, and, on this account, 
 there was long a prejudice against them. Even at the present day, it 
 is said that in France, a young peasant girl will exclaim, if asked 
 whether she wears drawers: "I wear drawers, Madame? A respectable 
 girl!" Drawers, however, quickly became acclimatized in France, and 
 Dufour {op. cit., vol. vi, p. 28) even regards them as essentially a French 
 garment. They were introduced at the Court towards the end of the 
 fourteenth century, and in the sixteenth century were rendered almost 
 necessary by the new fashion of the vertugale, or farthingale. In 
 1615, a lady's calegons are referred to as apparently an ordinary gar- 
 ment. It is noteworthy that in London, in the middle of the same cen- 
 tury, young Mrs. Pepys, who was the daughter of French parents, 
 usually wore drawers, which were seemingly of the closed kind. {Diary 
 of S. Pepys, ed. Wheatley, May 15, 1663, vol. iii.) They were probably 
 not worn by Englishwomen, and even in France, with the decay of the 
 farthingale, they seem to have dropped out of use during the seven- 
 
THE EVOLUTION OE MODESTY. 33 
 
 teenth century. In a technical and very complete book, L'Art de la 
 Lingerie, published in 1771, women's drawers are not even mentioned, 
 and Mercier (Tableau de Paris, 1783, vol. vii, p. 54) says that, ex- 
 cept actresses, Parisian women do not wear drawers. Even by ballet 
 dancers and actresses on the stage, they were not invariably worn. 
 Camargo, the famous dancer, who first shortened the skirt in dancing, 
 «arly in the eighteenth century, always observed great decorum, never 
 showing the leg above the knee; when appealed to as to whether she 
 wore drawers, she replied that she could not possibly appear without 
 such a "precaution." But they were not necessarily worn by dancers, 
 and in 1727 a young ballerina, having had her skirt accidentally torn 
 away by a piece of stage machinery, the police issued an order that in 
 future no actress or dancer should appear on the stage without drawers ; 
 this regulation does not appear, however, to have been long strictly main- 
 tained, though Schulz ( Ueher Paris und die Pariser, p. 145 ) refers to it as 
 in force in 1791. (The obscure origin and history of feminine drawers 
 "have been discussed from time to time in the IntermSdiaire des Cher- 
 tiheurs et Curieux, especially vols, xxv, lii, and liii.) 
 
 Prof. Irving Rosse, of Washington, refers to "New England pru- 
 dishness," and "the colossal modesty of some New York policemen, who 
 in certain cases want to give written, rather than oral testimony." He 
 adds: "I have known this sentiment carried to such an extent in a 
 Massachusetts small tovm, that a shop-keeper was obliged to drape a 
 small, but innocent, statuette displayed in his window." ( Irving Rosse, 
 Virginia Medical Monthly, October, 1892.) I am told that popular feel- 
 ing in South Africa would not permit the exhibition of the nude in the 
 Art Collections of Cape To\vn. Even in Italy, nude statues are dis- 
 :flgured by the addition of tin fig-leaves, and sporadic manifestations 
 •of horror at the presence of nude statues, even when of most classic 
 type, are liable to occur in all parts of Europe, including France and 
 Crermany. (Examples of this are recorded from time to time in Sexual- 
 reform, published as an appendix to Geschlecht und Gesellsohaft.) 
 
 Some years ago, (1898), it was stated that the Philadelphia 
 Ladies' Home Journal had decided to avoid, in future, all reference to 
 ladies' under-linen, because "the treatment of this subject in print 
 ■calls for minutiw of detail which is extremely and pardonably offensive 
 to refined and sensitive women." 
 
 "A man, married twenty years, told me that he had never seen 
 his wife entirely nude. Such concealment of the external reproductive 
 •organs, by married people, appears to be common. Judging from my 
 ■own inquiry, very few women care to look upon male nakedness, and 
 many women, though not wanting in esthetic feeling, find no beauty 
 in man's form. Some are positively repelled by the sight of nakedness, 
 <even that of a husband or lover. On the contrary, most men delight in 
 
 3 
 
34 PSTCHOLOGT OF SEX. 
 
 gazing upon the uncovered figure of women. It seems that only highly- 
 cultivated and imaginative women enjoy the spectacle of a. finely-shaped 
 nude man (especially after attending art classes, and drawing from the 
 nude, as I am told by a lady artist). Or else the majority of women 
 dissemble their curiosity or admiration. A woman of seventy, mother 
 of several children, said to a young wife with whom I am acquainted: 
 'I have never seen a naked man in my life.' This old lady's sister 
 confessed that she had never looked at Aer own nakedness in the whole 
 course of her life. She said that it 'frightened' her. She was the mother 
 of three sons. A maiden woman of the same family told her niece that 
 women were 'disgusting, because they have monthly discharges.' The 
 niece suggested that women have no choice in the matter, to which the 
 aunt replied: 'I know that; but it doesn't make them leas disgusting.' 
 I have heard of a girl who died from heemorrhage of the womb, refusing, 
 through shame, to make the ailment known to her family. The misery 
 sufl'ered by some women at the anticipation of a medical examination, 
 appears to be very acute. Husbands have told me of brides who sob 
 and tremble with fright on the wedding-night, the hysteria being some- 
 times alarming. E, aged 25, refused her husband for six weeks after 
 marriage, exhibiting the greatest fear of his approach. Ignorance of 
 the nature of the sexual connection is often the cause of exaggerated 
 alarm. In Jersey, I used to hear of a bride who ran to the window and 
 screamed 'murder,' on the wedding-night." (Private communication.) 
 
 At the present day it is not regarded as incompatible with modesty 
 to exhibit the lower part of the thigh when in swimming costume, but 
 it is immodest to exhibit the upper part of the thigh. In swimming 
 competitions, a minimum of clothing must be combined with the demands 
 of modesty. In England, the regulations of the Swimming Clubs affili- 
 ated to the Amateur Swimming Association, require that the male swim- 
 mer's costume shall extend not less than eight inches from the 
 bifurcation downward, and that the female swimmer's costume shall 
 extend to within not more than three inches from the knee. (A pro- 
 longed discussion, we are told, arose as to whether the costume should 
 come to one, two, or three inches from the knee, and the proposal of the 
 youngest lady swimmer present, that the costume ought to be very 
 scanty, met with little approval.) The modesty of women is thus seen 
 to be greater than that of men by, roughly speaking, about two inches. 
 The same difiference may be seen in the sleeves; the male sleeve must 
 extend for two inches, the female sleeve four inches, down the arm. 
 (Daily Papers, September 26, 1898.) 
 
 "At , bathing in a state of Nature was d,e rigueur for the 
 
 ilite of the bathers, while our Sunday visitors from the slums frequently 
 made a great point of wearing bathing costumes; it was frequently 
 noticed that those who were most anxious to avoid exposing, their per- 
 
THE EVOLUTION 01' MODESTY. 35 
 
 sons were distinguished by the foulness of their language. My impres- 
 sion was that their foul-mindedness deprived them of the consciousness 
 of safety from coarse jests. If I were bathing alone among blackguards, 
 I should probably feel uncomfortable myself, if without costume." 
 ( Private communication. ) 
 
 A lady in a little city of the south of Italy, told Paola Lombroso 
 that young middle-class girls there are not allowed to go out except 
 to Mass, and cannot even show themselves at the window except under 
 their mother's eye; yet they do not think it necessary to have a. cabin 
 when sea-bathing, and even dispense with a. bathing costume without 
 consciousness of immodesty. (P. Lombroso, ArcMvio di Psichiatria, 
 1901, p. 306.) , 
 
 "A woman mentioned to me that a man came to her and told her 
 in confidence his distress of mind : he feared he had corrupted his wife 
 because she got into a bath in his presence, with her baby, and enjoyed 
 his looking at her splashing about. He was deeply distressed, thinking 
 he must have done her harm, and destroyed her modesty. The woman 
 to whom this was said felt naturally indignant, but also it gave her 
 the feeling as if every man may secretly despise a woman for the very 
 things he teaches her, and only meets her confiding delight with regret 
 or dislike." (Private communication.) 
 
 "Women will occasionally be found to hide diseases and symptoms 
 from a bashfulness and modesty so great and perverse as to be hardly 
 credible," writes Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, an experienced coroner. "I 
 have known several cases of female deaths, reported as sudden, and of 
 cause unknown, when the medical man called in during the latter hours 
 of life has been quite unaware that his lady patient was dying of gan- 
 giene of a strangulated femoral hernia, or was bleeding to death from 
 the bowel, or from ruptured varices of the vulva." (British Medical 
 Journal, Feb. 29, 1908.) 
 
 The foregoing selection of facts might, of course, be indefinitely 
 enlarged, since I have not generally quoted from any previous collection 
 of facts bearing on the question of modesty. Such collections may be 
 found in Ploss and Max Bartels Das Weib, a, work that is constantly 
 appearing in new and enlarged editions; Herbert Spencer, Descriptive 
 Bociology (especially under such headings as "Clothing," "Moral Senti- 
 ments," and ".Esthetic Products") ; W. G. Sumner, Folkways, Ch. 
 XI; Mantegazza, Amori degli Uomini, Chapter II; Westermarck, 
 Marriage, Chapter IX; Letourneau, L'Evolution de la Morale, pp. 126 
 et seq.; G. Mortimer, Chapters on Human Love, Chapter IV; and 
 in the general anthropological work? of Waitz-Gerland, Peschel, Eatzel 
 and others. 
 
II. 
 
 Modesty an Agglomeration of Fears — Children in Relation to Mod- 
 esty — Modesty in Animals — The Attitude of the Medieean Venus — ^The 
 Sexual Factor of Modesty Based on Sexual Periodicity and on the 
 Primitive Phenomena of Courtship — ^The Necessity of Seclusion in 
 Primitive Sexual Intercourse — The Meaning of Coquetry — The Sexual 
 Charm of Modesty — Modesty as an Expression of Feminine Erotic Im- 
 pulse — The Fear of Causing Disgust as a Factor of Modesty — The Mod- 
 esty of Savages in Regard to Eating in the Presence of Others — ^The 
 Sacro-Pubic Region as a Focus of Disgust — ^The Idea of Ceremonial 
 Uncleanliness — The Custom of Veiling the Face — Ornaments and Cloth- 
 ing — ^Modesty Becomes Concentrated in the Garment — ^The Economic 
 Factor in Modesty — The Contribution of Civilization to Modesty — ^The 
 Elaboration of Social Ritual. 
 
 That modesty — ^like all the closely-allied emotions — is based 
 on fear, one of the most primitive of the emotions, seems to be 
 fairly evident. ^ The association of modesty and fear is even 
 a very ancient observation, and is found in the fragments of 
 Epicharmus, while according to one of the most recent defi- 
 nitions, "modesty is the timidity of the body." Modesty is, 
 indeed, an agglomeration of fears, especially, as I hope to show, 
 of two important and distinct fears: one of much earlier than 
 human origin, and supplied solely by the female; the other of 
 more distinctly human character, and of social, rather than 
 sexual, origin. 
 
 A child left to itself, though very bashful, is wholly devoid 
 of modesty.2 Everyone is familiar with the shocking inconven- 
 
 1 Fliess {Die Beziehungen zwischen Nose und weiblichen Oesdh- 
 Icchts-Orgunen, p. 194) remarks on the fact that, in the Bible narrative 
 of Eden, shame and fear are represented as being brought into the world 
 ■together: Adam feared God because he was naked. Melinaud ("Psy- 
 chologie de la Pudeur," La Revue, Nov. 15, 1901) remarks that shame 
 differs from modesty in being, not a fear, but a kind of grief; this posi- 
 tion seems untenable. 
 
 2 Bashfulness in children has been dealt with by Professor Baldwin; 
 see especially his Mental Development in the Child and the Race, 
 Chapter VI, pp. 146 et seq., and Social Interpretations in Mental De- 
 velopment, Chapter VI. 
 
 (36) 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 37 
 
 ances of children in speech and act, with the charming ways in 
 which they innocently disregard the conventions of modesty 
 their elders thrust upon them, or, even when anxious to carry 
 them out, wholly miss the point at issue : as when a child thinks 
 that to put a little garment round the neck satisfies the demands 
 of modesty. Julius Moses states that modesty in the uncovering 
 of the sexual parts begins about the age of four. But in cases 
 when this occurs it is difficult to exclude teaching and ex- 
 ample. Under civilized conditions the convention of modesty 
 long precedes its real development. Bell has found that in love 
 affairs before the age of nine the girl is more aggressive than the 
 boy and that at that age she begins to be modest. ^ It may fairly 
 be said that complete development of modesty only takes 
 place at the advent of puberty.^ We may admit, with Perez, one 
 of the very few writers who touch on the evolution of this 
 emotion, that modesty may appear at a very early age if sexual 
 desire appears early.^ We should not, however, be justified in 
 asserting that on this account modesty is a purely sexual 
 phenomenon. The social impulses also develop about puberty, 
 and to that coincidence the compound nature of the emotion of 
 modesty may well be largely due. 
 
 The sexual factor is, however, the simplest and most primi- 
 tive element of modesty, and may, therefore, be mentioned first. 
 Anyone who watches a bitch, not in heat, when approached by a 
 dog with tail wagging gallantly, may see the beginnings of mod- 
 esty. When the dog's attentions become a little too marked, the 
 bitch squats firmly down on the front legs and hind quarters 
 though when the period of oestrus comes her modesty may be 
 flung to the air and she eagerly turns her hind quarters to her 
 admirer's nose and elevates her tail high in the air. Her atti- 
 tude of refusal is equivalent, that is to say, to that •which in the 
 human race is typified by the classical example of womanly 
 
 1 Bell, "A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love Between the 
 Sexes," American Journal Psychology, July, 1902. 
 
 2 Professor Starbuck {Psychology of Religion, Chapter XXX) refers 
 to unpublished investigations shoYSfing that recognition of the rights of 
 others also exhibits a sudden increment at the age of puberty. 
 
 3 Perez, L'Enfant de Trois A Sept Ans, 1886, pp. 267-277. 
 
38 PSYCHOLOGY OJ SEX. 
 
 modesty in the Medicean Venus, who withdraws the pelvis, at 
 the same time holding one hand to guard the pubes, the other to 
 guard the breasts. ^ The essential expression in each case is that 
 of defence of the sexual centers against the undesired advances of 
 the male.^ 
 
 Stratz, who criticizes the above statement, argues (with photo- 
 graphs of nu^e women in illustration) that the normal type of 
 European surprised modesty is shown by an attitude in which the 
 arms are crossed over the breast, the moat sexually attractive region, 
 ■while the thighs are pressed together, one b?ing placed before the other, 
 the shoulder raised and the back slightly curved; occasionally, he adds, 
 the hands may be used to cover the face, and then the crossed arms con- 
 ceal the breasts. The Medicean Venus, he remarks, is only a pretty 
 woman coquetting with her body. Canova's Venus in the Pitti (who has 
 drapery in front of her, and presses her arms across her breast) being 
 a more accurate rendering of the attitude of modesty. But Stratz ad- 
 mits that when a surprised woman is gazed at for some time, she turns 
 her head away, sinks or closes her eyes, and covers her pubes (or any 
 other part she thinks is being gazed at) with one hand, while with 
 , the other she hides her breast or face. This he terms the secondary 
 4 expression of modesty. (Stratz, Die Frauenhleidung, third ed., p. 23.) 
 It is certainly true that the Medicean Venus merely represents 
 an artistic convention, a generalized tradition, not founded on exact 
 and precise observation of the gestures of modesty, and it is equally 
 true that all the instinctive movements noted by Stratz are commonly 
 resorted to by a woman whose nakedness is surprised. But in the 
 absence of any series of carefully recorded observations, one may doubt 
 
 1 It must be remembered that the Medicean Venus is merely a com- 
 paratively recent and familiar embodiment of a natural attitude which 
 is very ancient, and had impressed scvilptors at a far earlier period. 
 Eeinach, indeed, believes ("La Sculpture en Europe," L' Anthropologic, 
 No. 5, 1895) that the hand was first brought to the breast to press out 
 the milk, and expresses the idea of exuberance, and that the attitude 
 of the Venus of Medici as a symbol of modesty came later; he re- 
 marks that, as regards both hands, this attitude may be found in a 
 figurine of Cj^rus, 2,000 years before Christ. This is, no doubt, cor- 
 rect, and I may add that Babylonian figurines of Ishtar, the goddess 
 of fertility, represent her as clasping her hands to her breasts or 
 her womb. 
 
 2 When there is no sexual fear the impulse of modesty may be 
 entirely inhibited. French ladies under the old Regime (as A. Franklin 
 points out in his Vie PrivSe d' Autrefois) sometimes showed no modesty 
 towards their valets, not admitting the possibility of any sexual ad- 
 vance, and a lady would, for example, stand up 'in her bath while a 
 valet added hot water by pouring it between her separated feet. 
 
THE EVOLDTION OF MODESTY. 89 
 
 whether the distinctioD drawa by Stratz between the primary and the 
 secondary expression of modesty can be upheld as the general rule, while 
 it is most certainly not true for every case. When a young women is 
 surprised in a state of nakedness by a person of the opposite, or even 
 of the same, sex, it is her instinct to conceal the primary centers of 
 sexual function and attractiveness, in the first place, the pubes, in the 
 second place the breasts. The exact attitude and the particular ges- 
 tures of the hands in achieving the desired end vary with the individual, 
 and with the circumstances. The hand may not be used at all as a 
 veil, and, indeed, the instinct of modesty itself may inhibit the use of the 
 hand for the protection of modesty (to turn the back towards the be- 
 holder is often the chief impulse of blushing modesty, even when 
 clothed), but the application of the hand to this end is primitive and 
 natural. The lowly Fuegian woman, depicted by Hyades and Deniker, 
 who holds her hand to her pubes while being photographed, is one 
 at this point with the Roman Venus described by Ovid {Ars Amatoria, 
 Book II) :— 
 
 Ipsa Venus pubem, quoties velamnia ponit, 
 
 Protegitur Iseva semireducta manus." 
 
 It may be added that young men of the lower social classes, at all events 
 in England, when bathing at the seaside in complete nudity, com- 
 monly grasp the sexual organs with one hand, for concealment, as they 
 walk up from the sea. ' 
 
 The sexual modesty of the female animal is rooted in the 
 sexual periodicity of the female, and is an involuntary expression 
 of the organic fact that the time for love is not now. Inasmuch 
 as this fact is true of the greater part of the lives of all female 
 animals below man, the expression itself becomes so habitual that 
 it even intrudes at those moments when it has ceased to be in 
 place. We may see this again illustrated in the bitch, who, when 
 in heat, herself runs after the male, and again turns to flee, per- 
 haps only submitting with much persuasion to his embrace. 
 Thus, modesty becomes something more than a mere refusal of the 
 male ; it becomes an invitation to the male, and is mixed up with 
 his ideas of what is sexually desirable in the female. This would 
 alone serve to account for the existence of modesty as a psychical 
 secondary sexual character. In this sense, and in this sense only, 
 we may say, with Colin Scott, that "the feeling of shame is made 
 to be overcome," and is thus correlated with its physical repre- 
 sentative, the hymen, in the rupture of which, as Groos remarks. 
 
40 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 there is, in some degree, a disruption, also of modesty. The sexual 
 modesty of the female is thus an inevitable by-product of the 
 naturally aggressive attitude of the male in sexual relationships, 
 and the naturally defensive attitude of the female, this again 
 being founded on the fact that, while — ^in man and the species 
 allied to him — ^the sexual function in the female is periodic, and 
 during most of life a function to be guarded from the opposite 
 sex, in the male it rarely or never needs to be so guarded.^ 
 
 Both male and female, however, need to guard themselves 
 during the exercise of their sexual activities from jealous rivals, 
 as well as from enemies who might take advantage of their posi- 
 tion to attack them. It is highly probable that this is one impor- 
 tant sexual factor in the constitution of modesty, and it helps to 
 explain how the male, not less than the female, cultivates modesty, 
 and shuns publicity, in the exercise of sexual functions. Forth- 
 cote has especially emphasized this element in modesty, as 
 originating in the fear of rivals. "That from this seeking after 
 secrecy from motives of fear should arise an instinctive feeling 
 that the sexual act must always be hidden, is a natural enough 
 sequence. And since it is not a long step between thinking of an 
 act as needing concealment and thinking of it as wrong, it is 
 easily conceivable that sexual intercourse comes to be regarded 
 as a stolen and therefore, in some degree, a sinful pleasure."^ 
 
 Animals in a state of nature usually appear to seek seclusion 
 for sexual intercourse, although this instinct is lost under 
 domestication. Even the lowest savages, also, if imcorrupted by 
 civilized influences, seek the solitude of the forest or the pro- 
 
 1 1 do not hereby mean to deny a certain degree of normal peri- 
 odicity even to the human male; but such periodicity scarcely involves 
 any element of sexual fear or attitude of sexual defence, in man because 
 it is too slight to invblve complete latency of the sexual functions, in 
 other species because latency of sexual function in the male is always 
 accompanied by corresponding latency in the female. 
 
 2H. Northcote, Christianity and the Sex ProUem, p. 8. Crawley 
 had previously argued {The Mystic Rose, pp. 134, 180) that this same 
 necessity for solitude during the performance of nutritive, sexual, and 
 excretory functions, is a factor in investing such functions with a po- 
 tential sacredness, so that the concealment of them became a relisious 
 duty. ^ 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 41 
 
 tection of their huts for the same purpose; the rare cases in 
 which coitus is public seem usually to involve a ceremonial or 
 social observance, rather than mere personal gratification. At 
 Loango, for instance, it would be highly improper to have inter- 
 course in an exposed spot ; it must only be performed inside the 
 hut, with closed doors, at night, when no one is present.^ 
 
 ) It is on the sexual factor of modesty, existing in a well-marked 
 form even among animals, that coquetry is founded. I am glad to find 
 myself on this point in agreement with Professor Groos, who, in his 
 elaborate study of the play-instinct, has reached the same conclusion. 
 So far from being the mere heartless play by which a woman shows 
 her power over a man, Groos points out that coquetry possesses "high 
 biological and psychological significance," being rooted in the antagon- 
 ism between the sexual instinct and inborn modesty. He refers to the 
 roe, who runs away from the stag — but in a circle. (Groos, Die Bpiele 
 der Menschen, 1899, p. 339 ; also the same author's Die Spiele der Thiere, 
 pp. 288 et seq.) Another example of coquetry is furnished by the fe- 
 male kingfisher {Alcedo ispida) , which will spend all the morning in 
 teasing and flying away from the male, but is careful constantly to look 
 back, and never to let him out of her sight. (Many examples are given 
 by Biichner, in Liehe und Liebesleben in der Tier/welt.) Robert Miiller 
 ( SexuaTbiologie, p. 302 ) emphasizes the importance of coquetry as a lure 
 to the male. 
 
 "It is quite true,'' a lady writes to me in a private letter, "that 
 'coquetry is a poor thing,' and that every milkmaid can assume it, but 
 a woman uses it principally in self-defence, while she is finding out what 
 the man himself is like." This is in accordance with the remark of 
 Marro, that modesty enables a woman "to put lovers to the test, in order 
 to select him who is best able to serve the natural ends of love." It 
 is doubtless the necessity for this probationary period, as a test of mascu- 
 line qualities, which usually leads a woman to repel instinctively a too 
 hasty and impatient suitor, for, as Arthur Macdonald remarks, "It 
 seems to be instinctive in young women to reject the impetuous lover, 
 without the least consideration of his character, ability, and fitness." 
 
 This essential element in courtship, this fundamental atti- 
 tude of pursuer and pursued, is clearly to be seen even in animals 
 and savages ; it is equally pronounced in the most civilized men 
 and women, manifesting itself in crude and subtle ways alike. 
 
 1 Zeitschrift fiXr Ethnologie, 1878, p. 26. 
 
42 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 Shakespeare's Angelo, whose virtue had always resisted the 
 temptations of vice, discovered at last that 
 
 "modesty may more betray our sense 
 Thau woman's lightness." 
 
 "What," asked the wise Montaigne, "is the object of that 
 virginal shame, that sedate coldness, that severe countenance, 
 that pretence of not knowing things which they understand bptter 
 than we who teach them, except to increase in us the desire to 
 conquer and curb, to trample under our appetite, all that cere- 
 mony and those obstacles? For there is not only matter for 
 pleasure, but for pride also, in ruffling and debauchiug that soft 
 sweetness and infantine modesty."^ The masculiue attitude in 
 the face of feminine coyness may easily pass into a kind of sadism, 
 but is nevertheless in its origin an innocent and instinctive 
 impulse. Eestif de la Bretonne, describing his own shame and 
 timidity as a pretty boy whom the girls would run after and 
 kiss, adds : "It is surprising that at the same time I would 
 imagine the pleasure I should have in embracing a girl who 
 resisted, in inspiring her with timidity, in making her flee and 
 in pursuing her; that was a part which I burned to play.^ It 
 is the instinct of the sophisticated and the unsophisticated alike. 
 The Arabs have developed an erotic ideal of sensuality, but they 
 emphasize the importance of feminine modesty, and declare that 
 the best woman is "she who sees not men and whom they see 
 not. "3 This deep-rooted modesty of women towards men in 
 courtship is intimately interwoven with the marriage customs 
 and magic rites of even the most primitive peoples, and has sur- 
 vived in many civilized practices to-day.^ The prostitute must be 
 able to simulate the modesty she may often be far from feeling, 
 and the immense erotic advantage of the innocent over the vicious 
 woman lies largely in the fact that in her the exquisite reactions of 
 
 1 Essais, livre ii, Ch. XV. 
 
 2 Monsieur Nicolas, vol. i, p. 89. 
 
 3 Lane, Arabian Society, p. 228. The Arab insistence on the value 
 of virginal modesty is well brought out in one of the most charming 
 stories of the Arabian Nights, "The History of the Mirror of Virginity." 
 
 4 This has especially been emphasized by Crawley, The Mystic Rose, 
 pp. 181, 324 et seq., 353. j j, j > 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 43 
 
 modesty are fresh and vigorous. "I cannot imagine anything 
 that is more sexually exciting/' remarks Hans Men j ago, "than to 
 observe a person of the opposite sex, who, by some external or 
 internal force, is compelled to iight against her physical modesty. 
 The more modest she is the more sexually exciting is the picture 
 she presents."! It is notable that even in abnormal, as well as in 
 normal, erotic passion the desire is for innocent and not for 
 vicious women, and, in association with this, the desired favor to 
 be keenly relished must often be gained by sudden surprise and 
 not by mutual agreement. A foot f etichist writes to me : "It is 
 the stolen glimpse of a pretty foot or ankle which produces the 
 greatest effect on me." A urolagnie symbolist was chiefly 
 excited by the act of urination when he caught a young woman 
 unawares in the act. A fetiehistic admirer of the nates only 
 desired to see this region in innocent girls, not in prostitutes. 
 The exhibitionist, almost invariably, only exposes himself to 
 apparently respectable girls. 
 
 A Russian correspondent, wto feels this charm of women in a 
 particularly strong degree, is inclined to think that there is an element 
 of perversity in it. "In the erotic action of the idea of feminine 
 enjoyment," he writes, "I think there are traces of a certain perversity. 
 In fact, owing to the impressions of early youth, woman (even if we 
 feel contempt for her in theory) is placed above us, on a certain pedestal, 
 as an almost sacred being, and the more so because mysterious. Now 
 sensuality and sexual desire are considered as rather vulgar, and a little 
 dirty, even ridiculous and degrading, not to say bestial. The woman who 
 enjoys it, is, therefore, rather like a profaned altar, or, at least, like 
 a divinity who has descended on to the earth. To give enjoyment to a 
 woman is, therefore, like perpetrating a sacrilege, or at least like 
 taking a liberty with a god. The feelings bequeathed to us by a long 
 social civilization maintain themselves in spite of our rational and 
 deliberate opinions. Reason tells' us that there is nothing evil in 
 sexual enjoyment, whether in man or woman, but an unconscious feel- 
 ing directs our emotions, and this feeling (having a germ that was 
 placed in modern men by Christianity, and perhaps by still older re- 
 ligions) says that woman ought to be an absolutely pure being, with 
 ethereal sensations, and that in her sexual enjoyment is out of place, 
 improper, scandalous. To arouse sexual emotions in a woman, if not 
 to profane a sacred host, is, at all events, the staining of an immacu- 
 
 1 Gesehlecht und Gesellsehaft, Bd. II, Heft 8, p. 358. 
 
44 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 late peplos; if not sacrilege, it is, at least, irreverence or impertinence. 
 For all men, the chaster a woman is, the more agreeable it is to bring 
 her to the orgasm. That is felt as a triumph of the body over the 
 soul, of sin over virtue, of earth over heaven. There is something dia- 
 bolic in such pleasure, especially when it is felt by a man intoxicated 
 with love, and full of religious respect for the virgin of his election. 
 This feeling is, from a rational point of view, absurd, and in its ten- 
 dencies, immoral ; but it is delicious in its sacredly voluptuous subtelty. 
 Defloration thus has its powerful fascination in the respect consciously 
 or unconsciously felt for woman's chastity. In marriage, the feeling is 
 yet more complicated: in deflowering his bride, the Christian (that is, 
 any man brought up in a Christian civilization) has the feeling of 
 committing a sort of sin (for the "flesh" is, for him, always connected 
 with sin) which, by a special privilege, has for him become legitimate. 
 He has received a, special permit to corrupt innocence. Hence, the pecu- 
 liar prestige for civilized Christians, of the wedding night, sung by 
 Shelley, in ecstatic verses: — 
 
 'Oh, joy! Oh, fear! WTiat will be done 
 
 In the absence of the sun!'" 
 
 This feeling has, however, its normal range, and is not, per se, a 
 perversity, though it may doubtless become so when unduly heightened by 
 Christian sentiment, and especially if it leads, as to some extent it has 
 led in my Russian correspondent, to an abnormal feeling of the sexual 
 attraction of girls who have only or scarcely reached the age of puberty. 
 The sexual charm of this period of girlhood is well illustrated in many 
 of the poems of Thomas Ashe, and it is worthy of note, as perhaps 
 siipporting the contention that this attraction is based on Christian 
 feeling, that Ashe had been a clergyman. An attentiveness to the 
 woman's pleasure remains, in itself, very far from a perversion, but 
 increases, as Colin Scott has pointed out, with civilization, while its 
 absence— the indifference to the partner's pleasure — ^is a perversion of 
 the most degraded kind. 
 
 3?here is no such instinctive demand on the woman's part 
 for innocence in the man.i In the nature of things that could 
 
 1 This, however, is not always or altogether true of experienced 
 women. Thus, the Russian correspondent already referred to, who as a, 
 youth was accustomed, partly out of shyness, to feign complete ignorance 
 of sexual matters, informs me that it repeatedly happened to him at 
 this time that young married women took pleasure in imposing on them- 
 selves, not without shyness but with evident pleasure, the task of 
 initiating him, though they always hastened to tell him that it was 
 for his good, to preserve him from bad women and masturbation. 
 Prostitutes, also, often take pleasure in innocent men, and Hans Ostwald 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 45 
 
 not be. Such emotioa is required for properly playing the part 
 of the pursued; it is by no means an added attraction on the 
 part of the pursuer. There is, however, an allied and corres- 
 pondiag desire which is very often clearly or latently present in 
 the woman : a longing for pleasure that is stolen or forbidden. 
 It is a mistake to suppose that this is an indication of viciousness 
 or perversity. It appears to be an impulse that occurs quite 
 naturally in altogether innocent women. The exciting charm of 
 the risky and dangerous naturally arises on a background of 
 feminine shyness and timidity. We may trace its recognition at 
 a very early stage of history in the story of Eve and the forbidden 
 fruit that has so often been the symbol of the masculine organs 
 of sex. It is on this ground that many have argued the folly of 
 laying external restrictions on women in matters of love. Thus 
 in quoting the great Italian writer who afterwards became Pope 
 Pius II, Eobert Burton remarked: "I am of ^neas Sylvius' 
 mind, 'Those jealous Italians do very ill to lock up their wives ; 
 for women are of such a disposition they will mostly covet that 
 which is denied most, and offend least when they have free liberty 
 to trespass.' "^ 
 
 It is the spontaneous and natural instinct of the lover to 
 desire modesty in his mistress, and by no means any calculated 
 opinion on his part that modesty is the sign of sexual emotion. 
 It remains true, however, that modesty is an expression of 
 feminine erotic impulse. We have here one of the instances, 
 of which there are so many, of that curious and instinctive 
 harmony by which Nature has sought the more effectively 
 to bring about the ends of courtship. As to the fact itself 
 there can be little doubt. It constantly ■ forces itself on the 
 notice of careful observers, and has long been decided in the 
 affirmative by those who have discussed the matter. Venette, one 
 
 tells (SexualrProbleme, June, 1908, p. 357) of a prostitute who fell 
 violently in love with a youth who had never known a woman before; 
 she had never met an innocent man before, and it excited her greatly. 
 And I have been told of an Italian prostitute who spoke of the exciting 
 pleasure which an unspoilt youth gave her by his freshness, tutta quesia 
 freschezza. 
 
 1 Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Sect. III. Mem. IV. Subs. I. 
 
46 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 of the earliest writers on the psychology of sex, after discussing 
 the question at length, decided that the timid woman is a more 
 ardent lover than the bold woman. ^ "It is the most pudent girl," 
 remarked Eestif de la Bretonne whose experience of women was 
 so extensive, "the girl who blushes most, who is most disposed to 
 the pleasures of love ;" he adds that, in girls and boys alike, shy- 
 ness is a premature consciousness of sex.^ This observation has 
 even become embodied in popular proverbs. "Do as the lasses do 
 — say no, but take it," is a Scotch saying, to which corresponds 
 the Welsh saying, "The more prudish the more unchaste."^ 
 
 It is not, at first, quite clear wliy an excessively shy and modest 
 woman should be the most apt for intimate relationships with a man, 
 and in such a case the woman is often charged with hypocrisy. There is, 
 however, no hypocrisy in the matter. The shy and reserved woman holds 
 herself aloof from intimacy in ordinary friendship, because she is acutely 
 sensitive to the judgments of others, and fears that any seemingly immod- 
 est action may make an unfavorable opinion. With a lover, however, in 
 whose eyes she feels assured that her actions can not be viewed unfavorably, 
 these barriers of modesty fall down, and the resulting intimacy becomes 
 all the more fascinating to the woman because of its contrast with the 
 extreme reserve she is impelled to maintain in other relationships. It 
 thus happens that many modest women who, in non-sexual relationships 
 with their own sex, are not able to act with the physical unreserve 
 not uncommon with women among themselves, yet feel no such reserve 
 with a man, when they are once confident of his good opinion. Much 
 the same is true of modest and sensitive men in their relations with 
 women. 
 
 This fundamental animal factor of modesty, rooted in the 
 natural facts of the sexual life of the higher mammals, and 
 especially man, obviously will not explain all the phenomena of 
 modesty. We must turn to the other great primary element 
 of modesty, the social factor. 
 
 We cannot doubt that one of the most primitive and uni- 
 versal of the social characteristics of man is an aptitude for 
 disgust, founded, as it is, on a yet more primitive and animal 
 aptitude for disgust, which has little or no social significance. 
 
 1 N. Venette, La 06niration de I'Eomme, Part II, Ch. X. 
 
 2 Monsieur Nicolas, vol. i, p. 94. 
 
 3 KpvTTTddia, vol. ii, p. 26, 31. /6. vol. iii, p. 162. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 47 
 
 In nearly all races, even the most savage, we seem to find distinct 
 traces of this aptitude for disgust in the presence of certain 
 actions of others, an emotion naturally reflected in the indi- 
 vidual's own actions, and hence a guide to conduct. Notwith- 
 standing our gastric community of disgust with lower animals, 
 it is only in man that this disgust seems to become transformed 
 and developed, to possess a distinctly social character, and to 
 serve as a guide to social conduct. '^ The objects of disgust vary 
 infinitely acgording to the circumstances and habits of particular 
 races, but the reaction of disgust is fundamental throughout. 
 
 The best study of the phenomena of disgust known to me is, 
 without doubt, Professor Eichet's.2 Eichet concludes that it is 
 the dangerous and the useless which evoke disgust. The digestive 
 and sexual excretions and secretions, being either useless or, in 
 accordance with wide-spread primitive ideas, highly dangerous, 
 the genito-anal region became a concentrated focus of digust.^ 
 It is largely for this reason, no doubt, that savage men exhibit 
 modesty, not only toward women, but toward their own sex, and 
 that so many of the lowest savages take great precautions in 
 obtaining seclusion for the fulfillment of natural functions. The 
 statement, now so often made, that the primary object of clothes 
 is to accentuate, rather than to conceal, has in it — as I shall point 
 out later — a large element of truth, but it is by no means a 
 complete account of the matter. It seems difficult not to admit 
 that, alongside the impulse to accentuate sexual differences, 
 there is also in both men and women a genuine impulse to 
 concealment among the most primitive peoples, and the invin- 
 cible repugnance often felt by savages to remove the girdle or 
 
 1 "Modesty is, at first," said Renouvier, "a fear which we have 
 of displeasing others, and of blushing at our own natural imperfections." 
 (Renouvier and Prat, La Nouvelle Monadologie, p. 221.) 
 
 2 C. Richet, "Les Causes du Degoflt," L'Homme et V Intelligence, 
 1884. This eminent physiologist's elaborate study of disgust was not 
 written as a contribution to the psychology of modesty, but it forms 
 an admirable introduction to the investigation of the social factor of 
 modesty. 
 
 3 It is interesting to note that where, as among the Eskimo, urine, 
 for instance, is preserved as a highly-valuable commodity, the act of 
 urination, even at table, is not regarded as in the slightest degree dis- 
 gusting or immodest (Bourke, Scatologic Rites, p. 202). 
 
48 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 apron, is scarcely accounted for by the theory that it is solely a 
 sexual lure. 
 
 In this connection it seems to me instructive to consider a 
 special form of modesty very strongly marked among savages 
 in some parts of the world. I refer to the feeling of immodesty 
 in eating. Where this feeling exists, modesty is ofEended when 
 one eats in public; the modest man retires to eat. Indecency, 
 said Cook, was utterly unl^nown among the Tahitians ; but they 
 would not eat together; even brothers and sisters had their 
 separate baskets of provisions, and generally sat some yards 
 apart, with their backs to each other, when they ate.^ The 
 Warrua of Central Africa, Cameron found, when offered a drink, 
 put up a cloth before their faces while they swallowed it, and 
 would not allow anyone to see them eat or drink ; so that every 
 man or woman must have his own fire and cook for himself.^ 
 Karl von den Steinen remarks, in his interesting book on Brazil, 
 that though the Bakairi of Central Brazil have no feeling of 
 shame about nakedness, they are ashamed to eat in public ; they 
 retire to eat, and hung their heads in shame-faced confusion 
 when they saw him innocently eat in public. Hrolf Vaughan 
 Stevens found that, when he gave an Orang-Laut (Malay) woman 
 anything to eat, she not only would not eat it if her husband were 
 present, but if any man were present she would go outside 
 before eating or giving her children to eat.^ Thus among these 
 peoples the act of eating in public produces the same feelings 
 as among ourselves the indecent exposure of the body in public* 
 
 1 Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages, etc., 1775, vol. ii, p. 62. 
 
 2 Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. vi, p. 173. 
 
 3 Stevens, "Mitthftilungen aus dem Frauenleben der Orang Belen- 
 das," Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologic, Heft 4, p. 167, 1896. Crawley, (Mystic 
 Rose, Ch. VIII, p. 439) gives numerous other instances, even in Europe, 
 with, however, special reference to sexual taboo. I may remark that 
 English people of lower class, especially women, are often modest about 
 eating in the presence of people of higher class. This feeling is, no doubt, 
 due, in part, to the consciousness of defective etiquette, but that very 
 consciousness is, in part, a development of the fear of causing disgust, 
 which is a component of modesty. 
 
 4 Shame in regard to eating, it may be added, occasionally appears 
 as a neurasthenic obsession in civilization, and has been studied as a 
 form of psychasthenia by Janet. See e.g., (Raymond and Janet, Les 
 Obsessions et la PsychastMnie, vol. ii, p. 386) the case of a young girl 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 49 
 
 It is quite easy to understand how this arises. Whenever 
 there is any pressure on the means of subsistence, as among 
 savages at some time or another there nearly always is, it must 
 necessarily arouse a profound and mixed emotion of desire and 
 disgust to see another person putting into his stomach what one 
 might just as well have put into one's own.i The special secrecy 
 sometimes observed by women is probably due to the fact that 
 women would be less able to resist the emotions that the act of 
 eating would arouse in onlookers. As social feeling develops, a 
 man desires not only to eat ia safety, but also to avoid being an 
 object of disgust, and to spare his friends all impleasant emo- 
 tions. Hence it becomes a requirement of ordinary decency to 
 eat in private. A man who eats in public becomes — ^like the 
 man who in our cities exposes his person in public — an object 
 of disgust and contempt. 
 
 Long ago, when a hospital student on midwifery duty in 
 London slums, I had occasion to observe that among the women 
 of the poor, and more especially in those who had lost the first 
 bloom of youth, modesty consisted chiefly in the fear of being 
 di<!gusting. There was an almost pathetic anxiety, in the face 
 of pain and discomfort, not to be disgusting in the doctor's 
 eyes. This anxiety expressed itself in. the ordinary symptoms 
 of modesty. But, as soon as the woman realized that I found 
 nothing disgusting in whatever was proper and necessary to be 
 done under the circumstances, it almost invariably happened 
 that every sign of modesty at once disappeared.^ In the special 
 
 of 24, who, from the age of 12 or 13 (the epoch of puberty) had been 
 ashamed to eat in public, thinking it nasty and ugly to do so, and argu- 
 ing that it ought only to be done in private, like urination. 
 
 1 "Desire and disgust are curiously blended," remarks Crawley 
 {The Mystic Rose, p. 139), "when, with one's own desire unsatisfied, 
 one sees the satisfaction of another; and here we may see the altruistic 
 stage beginning; this has two sides, the fear of causing desire in 
 others, and the fear of causing disgust; in each case, personal isolation 
 is the psychological result." 
 
 SHohenemser argues that the fear of causing disgust cannot be 
 a part of shame. But he also argues that shame is simply psychic 
 stasis, and it is quite easy to see, as in the above case, that the fear 
 of causing disgust is simply a manifestation of psychic stasis. There 
 is a conflict in the woman's mind between the idea of herself which she 
 has already given, and the more degraded idea of herself which she 
 
 4 
 
60 PSYCHOLOGY OP SEX. 
 
 and elementary conditions of parturition, modesty is reduced to 
 this one fear of causing disgust; so tlaat, when that is negated, 
 the emotion is non-existent, and the subject becomes, without 
 effort, as direct and natural as a little child. A fellow-student 
 on similar dutj^, who also discovered for himself the same char- 
 acter of modesty — that if he was careful to guard her modesty 
 the woman was careful also, and that if he was not the woman 
 was not — remarked on it to me with sadness; it seemed to him 
 derogatory to womanhood that what he had been accustomed 
 to consider its supreme grace should be so super^cial that he 
 could at will set limits to it.^ I thought then, as I think still, 
 that that was rather a perversion of the matter, and that noth- 
 ing becomes degrading because we happen to have learned some- 
 thing about its operations. But I am more convinced than ever 
 that the fear of causing disgust — a fear quite distinct from that 
 of losing a sexual lure or breaking a rule of social etiquette — 
 
 fears she is likely to give, and this conflict is settled when she is made 
 to feel that the first idea may still be maintained under the new cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 1 We neither of us knew that we had merely made afresh a very 
 ancient discovery. Casanova, more than a century ago, quoted the re- 
 mark of a friend of his, that the easiest way to overcome the modesty 
 of a woman is to suppose it non-existent; and he adds a saying, which 
 he attributes to Clement of Alexandria, that modesty, which seeins so 
 deeply rooted in women, only resides in the linen that covers them, and 
 vanishes when it vanishes. The passage to which Casanova referred oc- 
 curs in the Pasdagogus, and has already been quoted. The observation 
 seems to have appealed strongly to the Fathers, always glad to mako 
 a point against women, and I have met with it in Cyprian's De HnTiitu, 
 Feminarum. It also occurs in Jerome's treatise against Jovinian. 
 Jerome, with more scholarly instinct, rightly presents the remark as a 
 quotation : "Scrihit Herodotus quod mulier cum veste deponat et vere- 
 cundiam,." In Herodotus the saying is attributed to Gyges (Book I, 
 Chapter VIII). We may thus trace very far back into antiquity an 
 observation which in English has received its classical expression from 
 Chaucer, who, in his "Wife of Bath's Prologue," has: — 
 
 "He sayde, a woman cast hir shame away, 
 When she cast of hir smok." 
 
 I need not point out that the analysis of modesty offered above robs 
 this venerable saying of any sting it may have possessed as a slur upon 
 women. In such a case, modesty is largely a doubt as to the spectator's 
 attitude, and necessarily disappears when that doubt is satisfactorily 
 resolved. _As we have seen, the Central Australian maidens were very 
 modest with regard to the removal of their single garment, but when 
 that removal was accomplished and accepted, they were fearless. 
 
THE EVOLUTION Oi- MODESTY. 61 
 
 plays a very large part in the modesty of the more modest sex, 
 and in modesty generally. Our Venuses, as Lucretius long since 
 remarked and Montaigne after him, are careful to conceal from 
 their lovers the vitw postscenia, and that fantastic fate which 
 placed so near together the supreme foci of physical attraction 
 and physical repugnance, has immensely contributed to build up 
 all the subtlest coquetries of courtship. Whatever stimulates 
 self-confidence and lulls the fear of evoking disgust — whether 
 it is the presence of a beloved person in whose good opinion 
 complete confidence is felt, or whether it is merely the grosser 
 narcotizing influence of a slight degree of intoxication — always 
 automatically lulls the emotion of modesty. ^ Together with the 
 animal factor of sexual refusal, this social fear of evoking dis- 
 gust seems to me the most fundamental element in modesty. 
 
 It is, of course, impossible to argue that the fact of the 
 sacro-pubic region of the body being the chief focus of conceal- 
 ment proves the importance of this factor of modesty. But it 
 may fairly be argued that it owes this position not merely to 
 being the sexual centre, but also as being the excretory centre. 
 Even among many lower mammals, as well as among birds and 
 insects, there is a well-marked horror of dirt, somewhat dis- 
 guised by the varying ways in which an animal may be said to 
 define "dirt." Many animals spend more time and energy in 
 the duties of cleanliness than human beings, and they often 
 show well-marked anxiety to remove their own excrement, or 
 to keep away from it.^ Thus this element of modesty also may 
 be said to have an animal basis. 
 
 It is on this animal basis that the human and social fear of 
 arousing disgust has developed. Its probably wide extension is 
 indicated not only by the strong feeling, attached to the constant 
 presence of clothing on this part of the body, — such constant 
 presence being quite uncalled for if the garment or ornament 
 
 1 The same result occurs more markedly under the deadening influ- 
 ence of insanity. Grimaldi {II Manicomio Moderno, 1888) found that 
 modesty is lacking in 50 per cent, of the insane. 
 
 2 For some facts bearing on this point, see Houssay, Industries of 
 Animals, Chapter VII. "The Defence and Sanitation of Dwellings;" also 
 P. Ballion, De I'Instinct de Propreti ohez les Animaux. 
 
52 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 is merely a sort of sexual war-paint, — but by the repugnance 
 felt by many savages very low down in the scale to the public 
 satisfaction of natural needs, and to their more than civilized 
 cleanliness in this connection ;i it is further of interest to note 
 that in some parts of the world the covering is not in front, 
 but behind; though of this fact there are probably other ex- 
 planations. Among civilized people, also, it may be added, the 
 final and invincible seat of modesty is sometimes not around the 
 pubes, but the anus; that is to say, that in such cases the fear 
 of arousing disgust is the ultimate and most fundamental ele- 
 ment of modesty.2 
 
 The concentration of modesty around the anus is sometimes very 
 marked. Many women feel so high a degree of shame and reserve with 
 regard to this region, that they are comparatively indifferent to an 
 anterior examination of the sexual organs. A' similar feeling is not 
 seldom found in men. "I would permit of an examination of my genitals 
 by a medical man, without any feeling of discomfort," a correspondent 
 wiites, "but I think I would rather die than submit to any rectal ex- 
 amination." Even physicians have been known to endure painful rectal 
 disorders for years, rather than undergo examination. 
 
 "Among ordinary English girls,'' a medical correspondent writes, 
 "I have often noticed that the dislike and shame of allowing a man 
 to have sexual intercourse with them, when newly married, is simply 
 duo to the fact that the sexual aperture is so closely apposed to the 
 anus and bladder. If the vulva and vagina were situated between a 
 woman's shoulder blades, and a man had u, separate instrument for 
 coitus, not used for any excretory purpose, I do not think women 
 would feel about intercourse as they sometimes do. Again, in their 
 ignorance of anatomy, women often look upon the vagina and womb 
 as part of the bowel and its exit of discharge, and sometimes say, for 
 
 1 Thus, Stevens mentions {Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, p. 1S2, 1897) 
 that the Dyaks of Malacca always wash the sexual organs, even after 
 urination, and are careful to use the left hand in doing so. The left 
 hand is also reser\ed for such uses among the Jekris of the Niger coast 
 {Journal of the Anthropological Institute, p. 122, 1898). 
 
 2Lombroso and Ferrcro — who adopt the derivation of pudor from 
 putere; i.e., from the repugnance caused by the decomposition of the 
 vaginal secretions — consider that the fear of causing disgust to men is 
 the sole origin of modesty among savaa;e women, as also it remains the 
 sole form of modesty among some prostitutes to-day. (La Donna Delin- 
 quente, p. 540.) Important as this factor is in the constitution of the 
 emotion of modesty, I need scarcely add that I regard so exclusive a 
 theory as altogether untenable. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 53 
 
 instance, 'inflammation of the howel, when they mean womb. Again, 
 many, perhaps most, women believe that they pass water through the 
 vagina, and are ignorant of the existence of the separate urethral 
 orifice. Again, women associate the vulva with the anus, and so feel 
 ashamed of it; even when speaking to their husbands, or to a doctor, or 
 among themselves; they have absolutely no name for the vulva (I mean 
 among the upper classes, and people of gentle birth), but speak of it 
 as 'down below,' 'low down,' etc." 
 
 Even though this feeling is largely based on wrong and ignorant 
 ideas, it must still be recognized that it is to some extent natural and 
 inevitable. "How much is risked," exclaims Dugas, "in the privacies of 
 love! The results may be disillusion, disgust, the consciousness of 
 physical imperfection, of brutality or coldness, of sesthetic disenchant- 
 ment, of a sentimental shock, seen or divined. To be without modesty, 
 that is to say, to have no fear of the ordeals of love, one must be 
 sure of one's self, of one's grace, of one's physical emotions, of one's 
 feelings, and be sure, moreover, of the effect of all these on the 
 nerves, the imagination, and the heart of another person. Let 
 us suppose modesty reduced to sesthetic discomfort, to a woman's fear 
 of displeasing, or of not seeming beautiful enough. Even thus defined, 
 how can modesty avoid being always awake and restless ? What woman 
 could repeat, without risk, the tranquil action of Phryne? And even 
 in that action, who knows how much may not have been due to mere 
 professional insolence!" (Dugas, "La Pudeur," Revue Philosophique, 
 November, 1903.) "Men and Women," Schurtz points out {Altersklassen 
 und Mannerbiinde, pp. 41-51), have certainly the capacity mutually to 
 supplement and enrich each other ; but when this completion fails, or is 
 not sought, the difference may easily become a strong antipathy;'' and 
 he proceeds to develop the wide-reaching significance of this psychic fact. 
 
 I have emphasized the proximity of the excretory centres to 
 the sexual focus in discussing this important factor of modesty, 
 because, in analyzing so complex and elusive an emotion as 
 modesty it is desirable to keep as near as possible to the essential 
 and fundamental facts on which it is based. It is scarcely neces- 
 sary to point out that, in ordinary civilized society, these funda- 
 mental facts are not usually present at the surface of conscious- 
 ness and may even be absent altogether; on the foundation of 
 them may arise all sorts of idealized fears, of delicate reserves, of 
 aesthetic refinements, as the emotions of love become more com- 
 plex and more subtle, and the crude simplicity of the basis on 
 which they finally rest becomes inevitably concealed. 
 
54 PSYCHOLOGY OF SES. 
 
 Another factor of modesty, which reaches a high development 
 in savagery, is the ritual element, especially the idea of ceremonial 
 uncleanness, based on a dread of the supernatural influences 
 which the sexual organs and functions are supposed to exert. It 
 may be to some extent rooted in the elements already referred to, 
 and it leads us into a much wider field than that of modesty, so 
 that it is only necessary to touch slightly on it here ; it has been 
 exhaustively studied by Frazer and by Crawley. Offences against 
 the ritual rendered necessary by this mysterious dread, though 
 more serious than offences against sexual reticence or the fear of 
 causing disgust, are so obviously allied that they all reinforce 
 one another and cannot easily be disentangled. 
 
 Nearly everywhere all over the world at a primitive stage 
 of thought, and even to some extent in the highest civilization, 
 the sight of the sexual organs or of the sexual act, the image or 
 even the names of the sexual parts of either man or woman, are 
 believed to have a curiously potent influence, sometimes benefi- 
 cent, but quite as often maleficent. The two kinds of influence 
 may even be combined, and Eiedel, quoted by Ploss and Bartels,^ 
 states that the Ambon islanders carve a schematic representation 
 of the vulva on their fruit trees, in part to promote the produc- 
 tiveness of the trees, and in part to scare any unauthorized per- 
 son who might be tempted to steal the fruit. The precautions 
 prescribed as regards coitus at Loango^ are evidently associated 
 with religious fears. In Ceylon, again (as a medical correspond- 
 ent there informs me), where the penis is worshipped and held 
 sacred, a native never allows it to be seen, except under compul- 
 sion, by a doctor, and even a wife must neither see it nor touch 
 it nor ask for coitus, though she must grant as much as the hus- 
 band desires. All savage and barbarous peoples who have 
 attained any high degree of ceremonialism have iucluded the 
 functions not only of sex, but also of excretion, more or less 
 stringently within the bounds of that ceremonialism.^ It is only 
 necessary to refer to the Jewish ritual books of the Old Testa- 
 
 lZ)as Weih, Ch. VI. 
 
 2 For references as to a similar feeling among other savages, see 
 Westermarek, History of Human Marriage, p. 152. 
 
 3 See e.g., Bourke, Scatologio Rites, pp. 141, 145, etc. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 55 
 
 ment, to Hesiod, and to the customs prevalent among Mohamme- 
 dan peoples. Modesty in eating, also, has its roots by no means 
 only in the fear of causing disgust, but very largely in this kind 
 of ritual, and Crawley has shown how numerous and frequent 
 among primitive peoples are the religious implications of eating 
 and drinking.! So profound is this dread of the sacred mystery 
 of sex, and so widespread is the ritual based upon it, that some 
 have imagined that here alone we may find the complete explana- 
 tion of modesty, and Salomon Eeinach declares that "at the 
 origin of the emotion of modesty lies a taboo."^ 
 
 Durkheim ("La Prohibition de I'lnceste," L' Annie Sociologique, 
 1898, p. 50), arguing that whatever sense of repugnance women may 
 inspire must necessarily reach the highest point around the womb, which 
 is hence subjected to the most stringent taboo, incidentally suggests that 
 here is an origin of modesty. "The sexual organs must be veiled at an 
 early period, to prevent the dangerous effluvia which they give oflF from 
 reaching the environment. The veil is often a, method of intercepting 
 magic action. Once constituted, the practice would be maintained and 
 transformed." 
 
 It was doubtless as a secondary and derived significance that the 
 veil became, as Reinaeh ("Le Voile de I'Oblation,'' op. cit., pp. 299-311) 
 shows it was, alike among the Romans and in the Catholic Church, the 
 sign of consecration to the gods. 
 
 At an early stage of culture, again, menstruation is re- 
 garded as a process of purification, a dangerous expulsion of 
 vitiated humors. Hence the term katharsis applied to it by 
 the Greeks. Hence also the medieval view of women : "MuUer 
 speciosa templum cedificatum super cloacam," said Boethius. The 
 sacro-pubic region in women, because it includes the source of 
 menstruation, thus becomes a specially heightened seat of taboo. 
 According to the Mosiac law (Leviticus, Chapter XX, t. 18), if 
 a man uncovered a menstruating woman, both were to be cut off. 
 
 It is probable that the Mohammedan custom of veiling the 
 face and head really has its source solely in another aspect of this 
 ritual factor of modesty. It must be remembered that this cus- 
 tom is not Mohammedan in its origin, since it existed long pre- 
 
 1 Crawley, op. cit., Ch. VII. 
 
 2 S. Reinaeh, Cultes, Mythes et Religions, p. 172. 
 
56 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 viously among the Arabians, and is described by Tertullian.i In 
 early Arabia very handsome men also veiled their faces, in order 
 to preserve themselves from the evil eye, and it has been conjec- 
 tured with much probability that the origin of the custom of 
 women veiling their faces may be traced to this magico-religious 
 precaution.2 Among the Jews of the same period, according to 
 Biichler,^ the women had their heads covered and never cut their 
 hair; to appear in the streets without such covering would be 
 like a prostitute and was adequate ground for divorce ; adulterous 
 women were punished by uncovering their heads and cutting their 
 hair. It is possible, though not certain, that St. Paul's obscure 
 injunction to women to cover their heads "because of the angels," 
 may really be based on the ancient reason, that when uncovered 
 they would be exposed to the wanton assaults of spirits (1 Cor- 
 inthians, Ch. XI, vv. 5-6),* exactly as Singhalese women believe 
 that they must keep the vulva covered lest demons should have 
 intercourse with them. Even at the present day St. Paul's 
 injunction is still observed by Christendom, which is, however, 
 far from accepting, or even perhaps understanding, the folk-lore 
 ground on which are based such injunctions. 
 
 Crawley thus summarizes some of the evidence concerning the 
 significance of tlie veil : — 
 
 "Sexual shyness, not only in woman, but in man, is intensified 
 at marriage, and forms a chief feature of the dangerous sexual proper- 
 ties mutually feared. When fully ceremonial, the idea takes on the 
 meaning that satisfaction of these feelings will lead to their neu- 
 tralization, as, in fact, it does. The bridegroom in ancient Sparta 
 supped on the wedding night at the men's mess, and then visited hia 
 bride, leaving her before daybreak. This practice was continued, and 
 sometimes children were born before the pair had ever seen each other's 
 faces by day. At weddings in the Babar Islands, the bridegroom has 
 
 1 Tertullian, De Yirginibus Yelandis, cap. 17. Hottentot women, 
 also (Fritsch, Eingeborene Sudafrika's, p. 311), cover their head witlv 
 a cloth, and will not be persuaded to remove it. 
 
 2Wellhausen, Reste AraUschen Heidentums, p. 196. The same 
 custom is found among Tuareg men though it is not imperative for the 
 women (Duveyrier, Les Touaregs du Nord, p. 291). 
 
 3 Quoted in Zentralblatt fiir Anthropologic, 1906, Heft 1, p. 21. 
 
 4 Or rather, perhaps, because the sight of their nakedness might 
 lead the angels into sin. See W. G. Sumner, Folkways, p. 431 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 57 
 
 to hunt for his hride in a darkened room. This lasts a good while if 
 she is shy. In South Africa, the bridegroom may not see his bride 
 till the whole of the marriage ceremonies have been performed. In 
 Persia, a husband never sees his wife till he has consummated the 
 marriage. At marriages in South Arabia, the bride and bridegroom 
 have to sit immovable in the same position from noon till midnight, 
 fasting, in separate rooms. The bride is attended by ladies, and the 
 groom by men. They may not see each other till the night of the fourth 
 day. In Egjpt, the groom cannot see the face of his hride, even by a sur- 
 reptitious glance, till she is in his absolute possession. Then comes the 
 ceremony, which he performs, of uncovering her face. In Egypt, of 
 course, this has been accentuated by the seclusion and veiling of 
 women. In Morocco, at the feast before the marriage, the hride and 
 groom sit together on a sort of throne; all the time, the poor bride's 
 eyes are firmly closed, and she sits amidst the revelry as immovable as 
 a statue. On the next day is the marriage. She is conducted after 
 dark to her future home, accompanied by a crowd with lanterns and 
 candles. She is led with closed eyes along the street by two relatives, 
 each holding one of her hands. The bride's head is held in its proper 
 position by a female relative, who walks behind her. She wears a veil, 
 and is not allowed to open her eyes until she is set on the bridal bed, 
 with a girl friend beside her. Amongst the Zulus, the bridal party pro- 
 ceeds to the house of the groom, having the bride hidden amongst 
 them. They stand facing the groom, while the bride sings a song. 
 Her companions then suddenly break away, and she is discovered 
 standing in the middle, with a fringe of beads covering her .face. 
 Amongst the people of Kumaun, the husband sees his wife first after 
 the joining of hands. Amongst the Bedui of North East Africa, the 
 bride is brought on the evening of the wedding-day by her girl friends, 
 to the groom's house. She is closely muflSed up. Amongst the Jews of 
 Jerusalem, the bride, at the marriage ceremony, stands under the 
 nuptial canopy, her eyes being closed, that she may not behold the face of 
 her future husband before she reaches the bridal chamber. In Melan- 
 esia, the bride is carried to her new home on some one's back, wrapped 
 in many mats, with palm-fans held about her face, because she is sup- 
 posed to be modest and shy. Among the Damaras, the groom cannot see 
 his bride for four days after marriage. When a Damara woman is asked 
 in marriage, she covers her face for a time with the flap of a head- 
 dress made for this purpose. At the Thlinkeet marriage ceremony, the 
 bride must look down, and keep her head bowed all the time; during 
 the wedding-day, she remains hiding in a corner of the house, and 
 the groom is forbidden to enter. At a Yezedee marriage, the bride is 
 covered from head to foot with a thick veil, and when arrived at her 
 new home, she retires behind a curtain in the corner of a darkened room. 
 
58 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 where she remains for three days before her husband is permitted to 
 see her. In Corea, the bride has to cover her face with her long sleeves, 
 when meeting the bridegroom at the wedding. The Manehurian bride 
 iineovers her face for the first time when she descends from the nuptial 
 couch. It is dangerous even to see dangerous persons. Sight is a 
 method of contagion in primitive science, and- the idea coincides with 
 the psychological aversion to see dangerous things, and with sexual 
 shyness and timidity. In the customs noticed, we can distinguish the 
 feeling that it is dangerous to the bride for her husband's eyes to 
 be upon her, and the feeling of bashfulness in her which induces her 
 neither to see him nor to be seen by him. These ideas explain the origin 
 of the bridal veil and similar concealments. The bridal veil is used, to 
 take a few instances, in China, Burmah, Corea, Russia, Bulgaria, Man- 
 churia, and Persia, and in all these oases it conceals the face entirely." 
 (E. Crawley, The Mystio Rose, pp. 328 et scq.) 
 
 Alexander Walker, writing in 1846, remarks: "Among old- 
 fashioned people, of whom a good example may be found in old country 
 people of the middle class in England, it is indecent to be seen with the 
 head unclothed; such a woman is terrified at the chance of being seen 
 in that condition, and if intruded on at that time, she shrieks with 
 terror, and flies to conceal herself." (A. Walker, Beauty, p. 15.) This 
 fear of being seen with the head uncovered exists still, M. Van Geunep 
 informs me, in some regions of France, as in Brittany. 
 
 So far it has only been necessary to refer incidentally to the 
 connection of modesty with clothing. I have sought to em- 
 phasize the unquestionable, but often forgotten, fact that mod- 
 esty is in its origin independent of clothing, that physiological 
 modesty takes precedence of anatomical modesty, and that the 
 primary factors of modesty were certainly developed long before 
 the discovery of either ornament or garments. The rise of 
 clothing probably had its first psychical basis on an emotion of 
 modesty already compositely formed of the elements we have 
 traced. Both the main elementary factors, it must be noted, 
 must naturally tend to develop and unite in a more complex, 
 though — it may well be — much less intense, emotion. The im- 
 pulse which leads the female animal, as it leads some African 
 women when found without their girdles, to squat firmly down 
 on the earth, becomes a more refined and extended play "of ges- 
 ture and ornament and garment. A very notable advance, I may 
 remark, is made when this primary attitude of defence against 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 59 
 
 the action of the male becomes a defence against his eyes. We 
 may thus explaia the spread of modesty to various parts of the 
 body, even when we exclude the more special influence of the 
 evil eye. The breasts very early become a focus of modesty in 
 women; this may be observed among many naked, or nearly 
 naked, negro races; the tendency of the nates to become the 
 chief seat of modesty in many parts of Africa may probably be, in 
 large part, thus explained, since the full development of the 
 gluteal regions is often the greatest attraction an African woman 
 can possess. 1 The same cause contributes, doubtless, to the face 
 becoming, in some races, the centre of modesty. We see the 
 influence of this defence against strange eyes in the special 
 precautions in gesture or clothing taken by the women in various 
 parts of the world, against the more offensive eyes of civilized 
 Europeans. 
 
 But in thus becoming directed only against sight, and 
 not against action, the gestures of modesty are at once free to 
 become merely those of coquetry. When there is no real 
 danger of offensive action, there is no need for more than play- 
 ful defence, and no serious anxiety should that defence be taken 
 as a disguised invitation. Thus the road is at once fully open 
 toward the most civilized manifestations of the comedy of 
 courtship. 
 
 In the same way the social fear of arousing disgust com- 
 bines easily and perfectly with any new development in the ia- 
 vention of ornament or clothing as sexual lures. Even among 
 the most civilized races it has often been noted that the fashion 
 of feminine garments (as also sometimes the use of scents) has 
 the double object of concealing and attracting. It is so with 
 the little apron of the young savage belle. The heightening of 
 the attraction is, indeed, a logical outcome of the fear of evoking 
 disgust. 
 
 1 In Moruland, Emin Bey remarked that women are mostly naked, 
 but some wear a girdle, with a few leaves hanging behind. The women 
 of some negro tribes, who thus cover themselves behind, if deprived of 
 this sole covering, immediately throw themselves on the ground on their 
 backs, in order to hide their nakedness. 
 
60 PSYCHOLOGY OP SEX. 
 
 It is possible, as some ethnographists have observed,i that 
 intercrural cords and other primitive garments have a physical 
 ground, inasmuch as they protect the most sensitive and unpro- 
 tected part of the body, especially in women. We may note in 
 this connection the significant remarks of K. von den Steiaen, 
 who argues that among Brazilian tribes the object of the uluri, 
 etc., is to obtain a maximum of protection for the mucous mem- 
 brane with a minimum of concealment. Among the Eskimo, 
 as Nansen noted, the corresponding intercrural cord is so thin 
 as to be often practically invisible ; this may be noted, I may add, 
 in the excellent photographs of Eskimo women given by Holm. 
 
 But it is evident that, in the beginning, protection is to little 
 or no extent the motive for attaching foreign substances to the 
 body. Thus the tribes of Central Australia wear no clothes, 
 although they often suffer from the cold. But, in addition to 
 armlets, neck-bands and head-bands, they have string or hair 
 girdles, with, for the women, a very small apron and, for the men, 
 a pubic tassel. The latter does not conceal the organs, being 
 no larger than a coin, and often brilliantly coated with white pipe- 
 clay, especially during the progress of corobborrees, when a large 
 number of men and women meet together ; it serves the purpose of 
 drawing attention to the organs.^ When Porster visited the 
 unspoilt islanders of the Pacific early in the eighteenth century, 
 he tells us that, though they wore no clothes, they found it 
 necessary to cover themselves with various ornaments, especially 
 on the sexual parts. "But though their males," he remarks, 
 "were to all appearances equally anxious in this respect with their 
 females, this part of their dress served only to make that more 
 conspicuous which it intended to hide."^ He adds the significant 
 remark that "these ideas of decency and modesty are only 
 observed at the age of sexual maturity," just as in Central 
 Australia women may only wear aprons after the initiation of 
 puberty. 
 
 1 E.g., Letourneau, L'Evolution de la Morale, p. 146. 
 
 2 Spencer and Gillen, northern Trihes of Central Australia, p. 683. 
 
 3 J. R. Forster, Observations Made During a Votiage Round the 
 World, 1728, p. 395. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 61 
 
 "There are certain things," said Montaigne, "which are 
 hidden in order to be shown;" and there can be no doubt that 
 the contention of Westermarck and others, that ornament and 
 clothing were, in the first place, intended, not to conceal or even 
 to protect the body, but, in large part, to render it sexually 
 attractive, is fully proved, i We cannot, in the light of all that 
 has gone before, regard ornaments and clothing as the sole cause 
 of modesty, but the feelings that are thus gathered aroimd the gar- 
 ment constitute a highly important factor of modesty. 
 
 Among some Australian tribes it is said that the sexual organs are 
 only covered during their erotic dances; and it is further said that in 
 some parts of the world only prostitutes are clothed. "The scanty cov- 
 ering," as Westermarck observes, "was found to act as the most power- 
 ful obtainable sexual stimulus." It is undoubtedly true that this state- 
 ment may be made not merely of the savage, but of the moat civilized 
 world. All observers agree that the complete nudity of savages, unlike 
 the civilized decolletd or detroussi, has no suggestion of sexual allure- 
 ment. (Westmarck quotes numerous testimonies on this point, op. cit., 
 pp. 192 et seq.) Br. R. W. Felkin remarks concerning Central Africa, 
 that he has never met more indecency than in Uganda, where the pen- 
 alty of death is inflicted on an adult found naked in the street. 
 {Edinburgh Medical Journal, April, 1884.) A study of pictures or 
 statuary will alone serve to demonstrate that nakedness is always 
 chaster in its effects than partial clothing. As a well-known artist, 
 Du Maurier, has remarked (in Trilby), it is "a fact well known to all 
 painters and sculptors who have used the nude model (except a few 
 shady pretenders, whose purity, not being of the right sort, has gone 
 rank from too much watching) that nothing is so chaste as nudity. 
 Yenus herself, as she drops her garments and steps on to the model- 
 throne, leaves behind her on the floor every weapon in her armory 
 by which she can pierce to the grosser passions of men." Burton, in 
 the Anatomy of Melancholy (Part III, Sect. II, Subsect. 3), deals at 
 length with the "Allurements of Love," and concludes that "the greatest 
 provocations of lust are from our apparel." The artist's model, as 
 one informs me, is much less exposed to liberties from men when nude 
 
 1 Westermarck {Bistory of Human Marriage, Ch. IX) ably sets 
 forth this argument, with his usual wealth of illustration. Crawley 
 [Mystic Rose, p. 135) seeks to qualify this conclusion by arguing that 
 tattooing, etc., of the sex organs is not for ornament but for the 
 purpose of magically insulating the organs, and is practically a perma- 
 nent amulet or charm. 
 
62 PSYCHOLOGi' 01' SEX. 
 
 than when she is partially clothed, and it may be noted that in Paris 
 studios the model who poses naked undresses behind a screen. 
 
 An admirable poetic rendering of this element in the philosophy of 
 clothing has been given by Herrick, that master of erotic psychology, 
 in "A Lily in Crystal," where he argues that a lily in crystal, and 
 amber in a, stream, and strawberries in cream, gain an added delight 
 from semi-concealment; and so, he concludes, we obtain 
 
 "A rule, how far, to teach. 
 Your nakedness must reacri 
 
 In this connection, also, it is worth noting that Stanley Hall, In a 
 report based on returns from nearly a thousand persons, mostly teach- 
 ers ("The Early Sense of Self," American Journal of Psychologif, 1898, 
 p. 366 ) , finds that of the three functions of clothes — protection, orna- 
 ment, and Lotzean "self-feeling" — the second is by far the most con- 
 spicuous in childhood. The attitude of children is testimony to the 
 primitive attitude toward clothing. 
 
 It cannot, however, be said that the use of clothing for the sake 
 of showing the natural forms of the body has everywhere been developed. 
 In Japan, where nakedness,^ accepted without shame, clothes are 
 worn to cover and conceal'fand not to reveal, the body. It is so, also, 
 in China. A distinguisljed Chinese gentleman, who had long resided in 
 Europe, once told Baelz that Jie had gradually learnt to grasp the 
 European point of view, but that it would be impossible to persuade 
 his fellow-countrymen that a woman who used her clothes to show off 
 her figure could possibly possess the least trace of modesty. (Baelz, 
 Zeitschrift fur Ethnologic, 1901, Heft 2, p. 179.) 
 
 The great artistic elaboration often displayed by articles of 
 ornament or clothing, even when very small, and the fact— as 
 shown by Karl von den Steinen regarding the Brazilian uluri 
 — that they may serve as common motives in general decoration, 
 sufficiently prove that such objects attract rather than avoid 
 attention. And while there is an invincible repugnance among 
 some peoples to remove these articles, such repugnance being 
 often strongest when the adornment is most minute, others have 
 no such repugnance or are quite indifferent whether or not their 
 aprons are accurately adjusted. The mere presence or posses- 
 sion of the article gives the required sense of self-respect, of 
 human dignity, of sexual desirability. Thus it is that to nn- 
 clothe a person is to humiliate him; this was so even in Ho- 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 63 
 
 meric times, for we may recall the threat of Ulysses to strip 
 Thyestes.i 
 
 When clothing is once established, another element, this 
 time a social-economic element, often comes in to emphasize its 
 importance and increase the anatomical modesty of women. I 
 mean the growth of the conception of women as property. 
 Waitz, followed by Schurtz and Letourneau, has insisted that 
 the jealousy of husbands is the primary origin of clothing, and, 
 indirectly, of modesty. Diderot in the eighteenth century had 
 already given clear expression to the same view. It is undoubt- 
 edly true that only married women are among some peoples 
 clothed, the unmarried women, though full grown, remaining 
 naked. In many parts of the world, also, as Mantegazza and 
 others have shown, where the men are naked and the women 
 covered, clothing is regarded as a sort of disgrace, and men can 
 only with difficulty be persuaded to adopt it. Before marriage a 
 woman was often free, and not bound to chastity, and at the same 
 time was often naked; after marriage she was clothed, and no 
 longer free. To the husband's mind, the garment appears — 
 illogically, though naturally — a moral and physical protection 
 against any attack on his property.^ Thus a new motive was 
 furnished, this time somewhat artificially, for making nakedness, 
 in women at all events, disgraceful. As the conception of 
 property also extended to the father's right over his daughters, 
 and the appreciation of female chastity developed, this motive 
 spread to unmarried as well as married women. A woman on 
 the west coast of Africa must always be chaste because she is 
 first the property of her parents and afterwards of her husband,^ 
 and even in the seventeenth century of Christendom so able a 
 thinker as Bishop Burnet furnished precisely the same reason 
 
 1 Iliad, II, 262. Waitz gives instances {Anthropology, p. 301) 
 showing that nakedness is sometimes a, marli of submission. 
 
 2 The Celtic races, in their days of developed barbarism, seem to 
 have been relatively free from the idea of proprietorship in women, and 
 it was probably among the Irish (as we learn from the seventeenth 
 century Itinerary of Fynes Moryson) that the habit of nakedness was 
 longest preserved among the upper social class women of Western 
 Europe. 
 
 3 A. B. Ellis, Tshi-Speaking Peoples, p. 286. 
 
64 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 for feminine chastity. ^ This conception probably constituted 
 the chief and most persistent element furnished to the com- 
 plex emotion of modesty by the barbarous stages of human 
 civilization. 
 
 This economic factor necessarily involved the introduction 
 of a new moral element into modesty. If a woman's chastity is 
 the property of another person, it is essential that she shall be 
 modest in order that men may not be tempted to incur the penal- 
 ties involved by the infringement of property rights. Thus 
 modesty is strictly inculcated on women in order that men may be 
 safeguarded from temptation. The fact was overlooked that 
 modesty is itself a temptation. Immodesty being, on this ground, 
 disapproved by men, a new motive for modesty is furnished to 
 women. In the book which the Knight of the Tower, Landry, 
 wrote in the fourteenth century, for the instruction of his 
 daughters, this factor of modesty is naively revealed. He tells 
 his daughters of the trouble that David got into through the 
 thoughtlessness of Bathsheba, and warns them that "every 
 woman ought religiously to conceal herself when dressing and 
 washing, and neither out of vanity nor yet to attract attention 
 show either her hair, or her neck, or her breast, or any part which 
 ought to be covered." Hinton went so far as to regard what he 
 termed "body modesty," as entirely a custom imposed upon 
 women by men with the object of preserving their own virtue. 
 While this motive is far from being the sole source of modesty, 
 it must certainly be borne in mind as an inevitable outcome of 
 the economic factor of modesty.. 
 
 In Europe it seems probable that the generally accepted 
 conceptions of mediaeval chivalry were not without influence in 
 constituting the forms in which modesty shows itself among us. 
 In the early middle ages there seem's to have been a much greater 
 degree of physical familiarity between the sexes than is com- 
 monly found among barbarians elsewhere. There was certainly 
 considerable promiscuity in bathing and indifference to naked- 
 ness. It seems probable, as Durkheim points out,^ that this 
 
 1 Burnet, Life and Death of Rochester, p. 110. 
 
 2 L'Annie Sociologique, seventh year, 1904, p. '439. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OE MODESTY. 65 
 
 state of things was modified in part by the growing force of the 
 dictates of Christian morality^ which regarded all intimate 
 approaches between the sexes as sinful, and in part by the 
 influence of chivalry with its assthetic and moral ideals of women, 
 as the representative of all the delicacies and elegancies of civili- 
 zation. This ideal was regarded as incompatible with the 
 familiarities of the existing social relationships between the 
 sexes, and thus a separation, which at first existed only in art 
 and literature, began by a curious reaction to exert an influence 
 on real life. 
 
 The chief new feature — it is scarcely a new element — - 
 added to modesty when an advanced civilization slowly emerges 
 from barbarism is the elaboration of its social ritual.^ Civiliza- 
 tion expands the range of modesty, and renders it, at the same 
 time, more changeable. The French seventeenth century, and 
 the English eighteenth, represent early stages of modern Euro- 
 pean civilization, and they both devoted special attention to the 
 elaboration of the minute details of modesty. The frequenters 
 of the Hotel Eambouillet, the precieuses satirized by Moliere, 
 were not only engaged in refining the language; they were re- 
 fining feelings and ideas and enlarging the boundaries of 
 modesty.2 In England such famous and popular authors as 
 Swift and Sterne bear witness to a new ardor of modesty in the 
 sudden reticences, the dashes, and the asterisks, which are found 
 throughout their works. The altogether new quality of liter- 
 ary prurience, of which Sterne is still the classical example, 
 could only have arisen on the basis of the new modesty which 
 was then overspreading society and literature. Idle people, 
 
 1 Tallemont des Reaux, who began to write his Historiettes in 1657, 
 says of the Marquise de Eambouillet: "Elle est nn peu trop delicate 
 . . . on n'oscrait prononcer le mot de cul. Cela va dans I'exees." 
 Half a century later, in England, Mandeville, in the Kemarlfs appended 
 to his Fable of the Bees, refers to the almost prudish modesty inculcated 
 on children from their earliest years. 
 
 2 In one of its civilized developments, this ritualized modesty be- 
 comes prudery, which is defined by Forel (Die Secouelle Frage, Fifth ed., 
 p. 125) as "codified sexual morality." Prudery is fossilized modesty, 
 and no longer reacts vitally. True modesty, in an intelligent civilized 
 person, is instinctively affected by motives and circumstances, responding 
 sensitively to its relationships. 
 
 5 
 
66 PSTCnOLOGT OF SEX. 
 
 mostly, no doubt, the women in salons and drawing-rooms, 
 people more familiar with books than with the realities of life, 
 BOW laid down the rules of modesty, and were ever enlarging it, 
 ever inventing new subtleties of gesture and speech, which it 
 would be immodest to neglect, and which are ever being rendered 
 vulgar by use and ever changing. 
 
 It was at this time, probably, that the custom of inventing an arbi- 
 trary private vocabulary of words and phrases for the purpose of disguis- 
 ing references to functions and parts of the body regarded as immodest 
 and indecent, first began to become common. Such private slang, 
 glowing up independently in families, and especially among women, 
 as well as between lovers, is now almost universal. It is not eon^ 
 fined to any European country, and has been studied in Italy by 
 Niceforo {II Oergo, 1897, cap. 1 and 2), who regards it as a weapon of 
 socjal defence against an inquisitive or hostile environment, since it en- 
 ables things to be said with a meaning which is unintelligible to all but 
 the initiated person. While it is quite true that the custom is supported 
 by the consciousness of its practical advantages, it has another source 
 in a desire to avoid what is felt to be the vulgar immodesty of direct 
 speech. This is sufficiently shown by the fact that such slang is 
 mostly concerned with the sacro-pubie sphere. It is one of the chief 
 contributions to the phenomeAa of modesty furnished by civilization. 
 The claims of modesty having efl^ected the clothing of the body, the 
 impulse of modesty finds a further sphere of activity — ^half-playful, yet 
 wholly imperative — in the clothing of language. 
 
 Modesty of speech has, however, a deep and primitive basis, al- 
 though in modern Europe it only became conspicuous at the begin- 
 ning of the eighteenth century. "All over the world," as Dufour put 
 it, "to do is good, to say is bad." Reticences of speech are not 
 adequately accounted for by the statement that modesty tends to irra- 
 diate from the action to the words describing the action, for there is 
 a tendency for modesty to be more deeply rooted in the words than in 
 the actions. "Modest women," as Kleinpaul truly remarks, " have a 
 much greater horror of saying immodest things than of doing them; 
 they believe that fig-leaves were especially made for the mouth." (Klein- 
 paul, Sprache ohne Worte," p. 309.) It is a tendency which is linked 
 on to the religious and ritual feeling which we have already found to 
 be a factor of modesty, and which, even when applied to language, 
 appears to have an almost or quite instinctive basis, for it is found 
 among the most primitive savages, who very frequently regard a name 
 as too sacred or dangerous to utter. Among the tribes of Central 
 Australia, in addition to his ordinary name, each individual has his 
 
THE EVOLUTION OP MODESTY. 67 
 
 sacred or secret name, only known to the older and fully initiated mem- 
 bers of his own totemic group; among the Warramunga, it is not per- 
 mitted to women to utter even a man's ordinary name,- though she 
 knows it. (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 
 p. 581.) In the mysterious region of sex, this feeling easily takes root. 
 In many parts of the world, men use among themselves, and women 
 use among themselves, words and even languages which they may not 
 use without impropriety in speaking to persons of the opposite sex, and 
 it has been shown that exogamy, or the fact that the wife belongs to 
 a different tribe, will not always account for this phenomenon. 
 (Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 46.) A special vocabulary for the genera- 
 tive organs and functions is very widespread. Thus, in northwest 
 Central Queensland, there is both a decent and an indecent vocabulary 
 for the sexual parts; in Mitakoodi language, for instance, me-ne may 
 be used for the vulva in the best aboriginal society, but koon-ja and 
 pukkil, which are names for the same parts, are the most blackguardly 
 words known to the natives. (W. Roth, Ethnological Studies Among the 
 Queensland Aborigines, p. 184.) Among the Malays, puki is also a 
 name for the vulva which it is very indecent to utter, and it is only 
 used in public by people under the influence of an obsessive nervous 
 disorder. (W. Oilman Ellis, "Latah," Journal of Mental Science, Jan., 
 1897.) The Swahili women of Africa have a private metaphorical 
 language of their own, referring to sexual matters (Zache, Zeitschrift 
 fiir Ethnologic, 1899, Heft 2-3, pp. 70 et seq.) , and in Samoa, again, 
 young girls have a euphemistic name for the penis, aualuma, which 
 is not that in common use {Zeitschrift filr Ethnologic, 1899, Heft 1, 
 p. 31); exactly the same thing is found in Europe, to-day, and is some- 
 times more marked among young peasant women than among those 
 of better social class, who often avoid, under all circumstances, the 
 necessity for using any definite name. 
 
 Singular as it may seem, the Romans, who in their literature 
 impress us by their vigoroiis and naked grip of the most private facts 
 of life, showed in familiar intercourse a dread of obscene language — 
 a dread untimately founded, it is evident, on religious grounds — far 
 exceeding that which prevails among' ourselves to-day in civilization. 
 "It is remarkable," Dufour observes, "that the prostitutes of ancient 
 Rome would have blushed to say an indecent word in public. The 
 little tender words used between lovers and their mistresses were not 
 less correct and innocent when the mistress was a courtesan and the 
 lover an erotic poet. He called her his rose, his queen, his goddess, 
 his dove, his light, his star, and she replied by calling him her jewel, 
 her honey, her bird, her ambrosia, the apple of her eye, and never 
 with any licentious interieetion, but only 'I will love!' {Amalo), a, fre- 
 quent exclamation, summing up a whole life and vocation. When inti- 
 
68 PSYCHOLOGY OJF SEX. 
 
 mate relations began, they treated each other as Tjrother' and 'sister.' 
 These appellations were common among the humblest and the proudest 
 courtesans alike." (Dufour, Bistoire de la Prostitution, vol. ii, p. 78.) 
 So excessive was the Roman horror of obscenity that even physicians 
 were compelled to use a euphemism for urina, and though the urinal or 
 vas urinarium was openly used at the dining- table (following a custom 
 introduced by the Sybarites, according to Athenseus, Book XII, cap. 17), 
 the decorous guest could not ask for it by name, but only by a snap 
 of the fingers (Dufour, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 174). 
 
 In modern Europe, as seems fairly evident from the early realistic 
 dramatic literature of various countries, no special horror of speak- 
 ing plainly regarding the sacro-pubic regions and their functions ex- 
 isted among the general population until the seventeenth century. 
 There is, however, one marked exception. Such a feeling clearly 
 existed as regards menstruation. It is not diflBcult to see why it should 
 have begun at this function. We have here not only a function confined 
 to one sex and, therefore, easily lending itself to a vocabulary confined 
 to one sex; but, what is even of more importance, the belief which 
 existed among the Romans, as elsewhere throughout the world, con- 
 cerning the specially dangerous and mysterious properties of menstrua- 
 tion, survived throughout mediaeval times. (See e.g., Ploss and Bar- 
 tels. Das Weib, Bd. I, XIV; also Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, 
 fourth ed. Ch. XI.) The very name, menses ("monthlies"), is a 
 euphemism, and most of the old scientific names for this function are 
 similarly vague. As regards popular feminine terminology previous 
 to the eighteenth century, Sehurig gives us fairly ample information 
 {Pa.rtJienologia, 1729, pp. 27 et seq:). He remarks that both in Latin 
 and Germanic countries, menstruation was commonly designated by 
 some term equivalent to "flowers," because, he says, it is a, blossoming 
 that indicates the possibility of fruit. German peasant women, he tells 
 ns, called it the rose-wreath ( Rosenkrantz ) . Among the other current 
 feminine names for menstruation which he gives, some are purely fanci- 
 ful; thus, the Italian women dignified the function with the title of 
 "marchese magnifico;" German ladies, again, would use the locution, 
 "I have had a. letter," or would say that their cousin or aunt had 
 arrived. These are closely similar to the evfphemisms still used by 
 women. 
 
 It should be added that euphemisms for menstruation are not 
 confined to Europe, and are found among savages. According to Hill 
 Tout {Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1904, p. 320; and 1905, 
 p. 137), one of these euphemisms was "putting on the moccasin," and 
 in another branch of the same people, "putting the knees together," 
 "going outside" (in allusion to the customary seclusion at this period 
 in a solitary hut) , and so on. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. i69 
 
 It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that this process 
 is an intensification of modesty. It is, on the contrary, an 
 attenuation of it. The observances of modesty become merely a 
 part of a vast body of rules of social etiquette, though a some- 
 what stringent part on account of the vague sense still persisting 
 of a deep-lying natural basis. It is a significant coincidence that 
 the eighteenth century, which was marked by this new exten- 
 sion of the social ritual of modestj-, also saw the first appearance 
 of a new philosophic impulse not merely to analyze, but to dis- 
 solve the conception of modesty. This took place more especially 
 in France. 
 
 The swift rise to supremacy, during the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, of logical and rational methods of thinking, in con- 
 junction with the new development of geometrical and math- 
 ematical science, led in the eighteenth century to a widespread 
 belief in France that human customs and human society ought to 
 be founded on a strictly logical and rational basis. It was a 
 belief which ignored those legitimate claims of the emotional 
 nature which the nineteenth century afterwards investigated and 
 developed, but it was of immense service to mankind in clearing 
 away useless prejudices and superstitions, and it culminated in 
 the reforms of the great Eevolution which most other nations 
 have since been painfully struggling to attain. Modesty offered 
 a tempting field for the eighteenth century philosophic spirit to 
 explore. 
 
 The manner in. which the most distinguished and adven- 
 turous minds of the century approached it, can scarcely be 
 better illustrated than by a conversation, reported by Madame 
 d'Epinay, which took place in 1750 at the table of Mile. Quin- 
 ault, the eminent actress. "A fine virtue," Duclos remarked, 
 "which one fastens on in the morning with pins !" He proceeded 
 to argue that "a moral law must hold good always and every- 
 where, which modesty does not." Saint-Lambert, the poet, 
 observed that "it must be acknowledged that one can say nothing 
 good about innocence without being a little corrupted," and 
 Duclos added "or of modesty without being impudent.'" Saint- 
 Lambert finally held forth with much poetic enthusiasm con- 
 
70 PSYCHOLOGY OF SES, 
 
 cerning the desirability of consTimmating marriages in public. ^ 
 This view of modesty, combined with the introduction of Greek 
 fashions, gained ground to such an extent that towards the end of 
 the century women, to the detriment of their health, were some- 
 times content to dress in transparent gauze, and even to walk 
 abroad in the Champs Blysees without any clothing; that, how- 
 ever, was too much for the public.^ The final outcome of the 
 eighteenth century spirit in this direction was, as we know, by 
 no means the dissolution of modesty. But it led to a clearer 
 realization of what is permanent in its organic foundations and 
 what is merely temporary in its shifting manifestations. That 
 is a realization which is no mean task to achieve, and is difficult 
 for many, even yet. So intelligent a traveler as Mrs. Bishop 
 (Miss Bird), on her first visit to Japan came to the conclusion 
 that Japanese women had no modesty, because they had no 
 objection to being seen naked when bathing. Twenty years 
 later she admitted to Dr. Baelz that she had made a mistake, and 
 that "a woman may be naked and yet behave like a lady."^ In 
 civilized countries the observances of modesty differ in different 
 regions, and in different social classes, but, however various the 
 forms may be, the impulse itself remains persistent.* 
 
 Modesty has thus come to have the force of a tradition, 
 a vague but massive force, bearing with special power on those 
 who cannot reason, and yet having its root in the instincts of all 
 people of all classes.^ It has become mainly transformed into 
 
 1 Memoires de Madame d'Epinay, Part I, Ch. V. Thirty years 
 earlier, Mandeville had -written, in England, that "the modesty of 
 women is the result of custom and education." 
 
 2 CJoneourt, Histoire de la Societe Frangaise pendoMt le Directoire, 
 p. 422. Clothes became so gauze-like, and receded to such an extent 
 from the limbs, that for a time the chemise was discarded as an 
 awkward and antiquated garment. 
 
 ^Zeitschrift filr Ethnologic, 1901, Heft 2, p. 179. 
 
 4 In the rural districts of Hanover, Pastor Grashoif states, "even 
 when natural necessities are performed with the greatest possible free- 
 dom, there is no offence to modesty, in rural opinion." But he makes 
 a statement which is both contradictory and false, when he adds that 
 "modesty is, to the country man in general, a foreign idea." 
 (Geachlechtlich-Sittliche VerKdltnisse im Deutsche Reiche, vol. ii, p. 45.) 
 
 Bit is frequently stated that prostitutes are devoid of modesty, 
 but this is incorrect ; they possess a partial and diminished modesty which, 
 for a considerable period, still remains genuine (see e.ff., Eeuss, La Prosti- 
 
THE EVOLDTION OF MODESTY. 71 
 
 the allied emotioii of decency, which has been described as 
 "modesty fossilized into social customs." The emotion yields 
 more readily than in its primitive state to any sufficiently-strong 
 motive. Even fashion in the more civilized countries can easily 
 inhibit anatomical modesty, and rapidly exhibit or accentuate, in 
 turn, almost any part of the body, whUe the savage Indian woman 
 of America, the barbarous woman of some Mohammedan coun- 
 tries, can scarcely sacrifice her modesty in the pangs of child- 
 birth. Even when, among uncivilized races, the focus of modesty 
 may be said to be eccentric and arbitrary, it still remains very 
 rigid. In such savage and barbarous countries modesty possesses 
 the strength of a genuine and irresistible instinct. In civilized 
 coimtries, however, anyone who places considerations of modesty 
 before the claims of some real human need excites ridicule and 
 contempt. 
 
 tution, p. 58). Lombroso and Ferrero {La Donna, p. 540) refer to the 
 objection of prostitutes to be examined during the monthly periods 
 as often greater than that of respectable women. Again, Callari states 
 ( "Prostituzione in Sicilia," Archivio di Psiohiatria, 1903, p. 205), that 
 Sicilian prostitutes can only with difficulty be persuaded to expose them- 
 selves naked in the practice of their profession. Aretino long since 
 remarked (in La Pippa) that no women so d2test gratuitous d6col- 
 letage as prostitutes. When prostitutes do not possess modesty, they fre- 
 quently simulate it, and Ferriani remarks (in his Delinquenti Minorenni) 
 that of ninety-seven minors (mostly females) accused of offences against 
 public decency, seventy-five simulated a modesty which, in his opinion, 
 they were entirely without. 
 
III. 
 
 The Blush the Sanction of Modesty — The Phenomena of Blushing — 
 Influences Which Modify the Aptitude to Blush — Darkness, Concealment 
 of the Face, Etc. 
 
 It is impossible to contemplate this series of phenomena, 
 so radically persistent whatever its changes of form, and so 
 constant throughout every stage of civilization, without feeling 
 that, although modesty cannot properly be called an instinct, 
 there must be some physiological basis to support it. Undoubt- 
 edly such a basis is formed by that vasomotor mechanism of 
 which the most obvious outward sign is, in human beings, the 
 blush. All the allied emotional forms of fear — shame, bashful- 
 ness, timidity — are to some extent upheld by this mechanism, 
 but such is especially the case with the emotion we are now 
 concerned with.i The blush is the sanction of modesty. 
 
 The blush is, indeed, only a part, almost, perhaps, an accidental 
 part, of the organic turmoil with which it is associated. Partridge, who has 
 studied the phenomena of blushing in one hundred and twenty cases 
 (Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1897), finds that the following are the 
 general symptoms: tremors near the waist, weakness in the limbs, 
 pressure, trembling, warmth, weight or beating in the chest, warm 
 wave from feet upward, quivering of heart, stoppage and then rapid 
 beating of heart, coldness all over followed by heat, dizziness, tingling 
 of toes and fingers, numbness, something rising in throat, smarting 
 of eyes, singing in ears, prickling sensations of face, and pressure 
 inside head. Partridge considers that the disturbance is primarily cen- 
 tral, a change in the cerebral circulation, and that the actual redness of 
 the surface comes late in the nerve storm, and is really but a small part 
 of it. 
 
 1 Melinaud ( "Pourquoi Rougit-on 1" Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Oo- 
 tobre, 1893) points out that blushing is always associated with fear, and 
 indicates, in the various conditions under which it may arise, — modesty, 
 timidity, confusion, — that we have something to conceal which we fear 
 may be discovered. "All the evidence," Partridge states, "seems to point 
 to the conclusion that the mental state underlying blushing belongs to 
 the fear family. The presence of the feeling of dread, the palpitation of 
 the heart, the impulse to escape, to hide, the shock, all confirms this 
 view." 
 
 (72) 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 73 
 
 There has been some discussion as to why, and indeed how far, 
 blushing is confined to the face. Henle (Oeher das Errothen) thought 
 that we blush in the face because all nervous phenomena produced by 
 mental states appear first in the face, owing to the anatomical arrange- 
 ment of the nerves of the body. Darwin (Expression of the Emotions) 
 argued that attention to a part tends to produce capillary activity in 
 the part, and that the face has been the chief object of attention. It 
 has also been argued, on the other hand, that the blush is the vestigial 
 remains of a general erethism of sex, in which shame originated; that 
 the blush was thus once more widely difl'used, and is so still among 
 the women of some lower races, its limitation to the face being due 
 to sexual selection and the enhanced beauty thus achieved. FerS once 
 had occasion to examine, when completely nude, a boy of thirteen 
 whose sexual organs were deformed; when accused of masturbation 
 he became covered by a blush which spread uniformly over his face, neck, 
 body and limbs, before and behind, except only the hands and feet. 
 F6r6 asks whether such a, universal blush is more common than we 
 imagine, or whether the state of nudity favors its manifestation. 
 (Comptes Rendus, Sociiii de Biologie, April 1, 1905.) It may be added 
 that Partridge mentions one case in which the hands blushed. 
 
 The sexual relationships of blushing are unquestionable. It 
 occurs chiefly in women ; it attains its chief intensity at puberty 
 and during adolescence ; its most common occasion is some more 
 or less sexual suggestion; among one hundred and sixty-two 
 occasions of blushing enumerated by Partridge, by far the most 
 frequent cause was teasing, usually about the other sex. "An 
 erection," it has been said, "is a blushing of the penis." Stanley 
 Hall seems to suggest that the sexual blush is a vicarious genital 
 flushing of blood, diverted from the genital sphere by an 
 inhibition of fear, just as, in girls, giggling is also very fre- 
 quently a vicarious outlet of shame; the sexual blush would 
 thus be the outcome of an ancestral sex-fear; it is as an 
 irradiation of sexual erethism that the blush may contain an 
 element of pleasure.^ 
 
 Bloch remarks that the blush is sexual, because reddening of the 
 face, as well as of the genitals, is an accompaniment of sexual emotion 
 {Beitrage zur JEtiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil II, p. 39). 
 
 IG. Stanley Hall, "A Study of Fears," American Journal Psy- 
 chology., 1897. 
 
74 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 "Do you not think," a correspondent writes, "that the sexual blush, at 
 least, really represents a vaso-relaxor effect quite the same as erection? 
 The embarrassment which arises is due to a perception of this fact under 
 circumstances which are felt to be unsuited for such a condition. There 
 may arise the fear of awakening disgust by the exhibition of a state 
 which is out of place. I have noticed that such a blush is produced 
 when a suflBciently young and susceptible woman is pumped full of 
 compliments. This blush seems accompanied by pleasure which does 
 not always change to fear or disgust, but is felt to be attractive. When 
 discomfort arises, most women say that they feel this because 'it looks 
 as if they had no control over themselves.' When they feel that there 
 is no need for control, they no longer feel fear, and the relaxor effect 
 has a wider field of operation, producing a, general rosiness, erection 
 of spinal sexual organs, etc. Such a blush would thus be a partial 
 sexual equivalent, and allow of the inhibition of other sexual effects, 
 through the warning it gives, and the fear aroused, as well as being 
 in itself a slight outlet of relaxor energy. When the relationships of the 
 persons concerned allow freedom to the special sexual stimuli, as in 
 marriage, blushing does not occur so often, and when it does it has not 
 so often the consequent of fear." 
 
 There can be no doubt that the blush is sexually attractive. The 
 blush is the expression of an impulse to concealment and flight, which 
 tends automatically to arouse in the beholder the corresponding impulse 
 of pursuit, so that the central situation of courtship is at once pre- 
 sented. Women are more or less conscious of this, as well as men, and 
 this recognition is an added source of embarrassment when it cannot 
 become a source of pleasure. The ancient use of rouge testifies to the 
 beauty of the blush, and Darwin stated that, in Turkish slave-mar- 
 kets, the girls who readily blushed fetched the highest prices. To 
 evoke a blush, even by producing embarrassment, is very commonly a 
 cause of masculine gratification. 
 
 Savages, both men and women, blush even beneath a dusky skin 
 (for the phenomenon of blushing among different races, see Waitz, 
 Anihropologie der Naturvolker, Bd. I, pp. 149-150), and it is possible 
 tliat natural selection, as well as sexual selection, has been favorable 
 to the development of the blush. It is scarcely an accident that, as has 
 been often observed, criminals, or the antisocial element of the com- 
 munity — whether by the habits of their lives or by congenital abnormal- 
 itj' — blush less easily than normal persons. Kroner (Das korperliche 
 Gefiihl, 1887, p. 130) remarks: "The origin of a specific connection 
 between shame and blushing is the work of a social selection. It is 
 certainly an immediate advantage for a man not to blush; indirectly, 
 however, it is a disadvantage, because in other ways he will be known 
 as shameless, and on that account, as a rule, he will be shut out from 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 75 
 
 propagation. This social selection will be specially exercised on the 
 female sex, and on this account, women blush to a greater extent, and 
 more readily, than men." 
 
 The importance of the blush, and the emotional confusion 
 behind it, as the sanction of modesty is shown by the significant 
 fact that, by lulling emotional confusion, it is possible to inhibit 
 the sense of modesty. In other words, we are here in the 
 presence of a fear — to a large extent a sex-fear — ^impelling to 
 concealment, and dreading self-attention; this fear naturally 
 disappears, even though its ostensible cause remains, when it 
 becomes apparent that there is no reason for fear. 
 
 That is the reason why nakedness in itself has nothing to 
 do with modesty or immodesty ; it is the conditions under which 
 the nakedness occurs which determine whether or not modesty 
 will be roused. If none of the factors of modesty are violated, 
 if no embarrassing self-attention is excited, if there is a con- 
 sciousness of perfect propriety alike in the subject and in the 
 spectator, nakedness is entirely compatible with the most 
 scrupulous modesty. A. Duval, a pupil of Ingres, tells that a 
 female model was once quietly posing, completely nude, at the 
 Ecole des Beaux Arts. Suddenly she screamed and ran to cover 
 herself with her garments. She had seen a workman on the roof 
 gazing inquisitively at her through a skylight. ^ And Paola 
 Lombroso describes how a lady, a diplomatist's wife, who went 
 to a gathering where she found herself the only woman in 
 evening dress, felt, to her own surprise, such sudden shame that 
 she could not keep back her tears. 
 
 It thus comes about that the emotion of modesty necessarily 
 
 1 Men are also very sensitive to any such inquisitiveness on the 
 part of the opposite sex. To this cause, perhaps,' and possibly, also, to the 
 fear of causing disgust, may be ascribed the objection of men to un- 
 dress before vi^omen artists and women doctors. I am told there is 
 often difficulty in getting men to pose nude to women artists. Sir 
 Jonathan Hutchinson was compelled, some years ago, to exclude lady 
 members of the medical profession from the instructive demonstrations 
 at his museum, "on account of the unwillingness of male patients to 
 undress before them." A similar unwillingness is not found among 
 women patients, but it must be remembered that, while women are 
 accustomed to men as doctors, men (in England) are not yet accustomed 
 to women as doctors. 
 
76 PSYCHOLOGY 01" SEX. 
 
 depends on the feelings of the people around. The absence of 
 the emotion by no means signifies immodesty, provided that the 
 reactions of modesty are at once set in motion under the stress 
 of a spectator's eye that is seen to be lustful, inquisitive, or 
 reproachful. This is proved to be the case among primitive 
 peoples everywhere. The Japanese woman, naked as in daily 
 life she sometimes is, remains unconcerned because she excites 
 no disagreeable attention, but the inquisitive and unmannerly 
 European's eye at once causes her to feel confusion. Stratz, a, 
 physician, and one, moreover, who had long lived among the 
 Javanese who frequently go naked, found that naked Japanese 
 women felt no embarrassment in his presence. 
 
 It is doubtless as a cloak to the blush that we must explaia 
 the curious influence of darkness in restraining the manifesta- 
 tions of modesty, as many lovers have discovered, and as we may 
 notice in our cities after dark. This influence of darkness in 
 inhibiting modesty is a very ancient observation. Burton, in the 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, quotes from Dandinus the saying "Nox- 
 facit impudentes" directly associating this with blushing, and 
 Bargagli, the Siennese novelist, wrote in the sixteenth century 
 that, "it is commonly said of women, that they will do in the dark 
 what they would not do in the light." It is true that the 
 immodesty of a large city at night is to some extent explained 
 by the irruption of prostitutes at that time; prostitutes, being 
 habitually nearer to the threshold of immodesty, are more 
 markedly affected by this influence. But it is an influence to 
 which the most modest women are, at all events in some degree, 
 susceptible. It has, indeed, been said that a woman is always 
 more her real self in the dark than in the glare of daylight ; this 
 is part of what Chamberlain calls her night-inspiration. 
 
 "Traces of the night-inspiration, of the influence of the primitive 
 fire-group, abound in woman. Indeed, it may be said (the life of 
 Southern Europe and of American society of to-day illustrates this 
 point abundantly) that she is, in a sense, a night-being, for the activity, 
 physical and moral, of modern women (revealed e.g. in the dance and 
 the nocturnal intellectualities of society) in this direction is remarkable. 
 Perhaps we may style a good deal of her ordinary day-labor as rest, or 
 the commonplaces and banalities of her existence, her evening and night 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 77 
 
 life being the true side of her activities'' (A. F. Cliamberlain, "Work 
 and Rest," Popular Science Monthly, March, 1902). Giessler, who 
 has studied the general influence of darkness on human psychic life, 
 reaches conclusions Mhich harmonize with these (C. M. Giessler, "Der 
 Einfluss der Dunkelheit auf das Seelenleben des Menschen," Vierteljahrs- 
 schiift fiir icissenschaftUche Philosophic, 1904, pp. 255-279). I have 
 not been able to see Giessler's paper, but, according to a summary 
 of it, he comes to the result that in the dark the soul's activities are 
 nearer to its motor pole than to its sensitive pole, and that there is a 
 tendency for phenomena belonging to the early period of development 
 to be prominent, motor memory functioning more than representative 
 memory, attention more than apperception, imagination more than 
 logical thinking, egoistic more than altruistic morals. 
 
 It is curious to note that short-sightedness, naturally, 
 though illogically, tends to exert the same influence as darkness 
 in this respect; I am assured by short-sighted persons of both 
 sexes that they are much more liable to the emotions of shyness 
 and modesty with their glasses than without them ; such persons 
 with difficulty realize that they are not so dim to others as others 
 are to them. To be in the company of a blind person seems also 
 to be a protection against shyness, i It is interesting to learn 
 that congenitally blind children are as sensitive to appearances 
 as normal children, and blush as readily.^ This would seem to 
 be due to the fact that the habitually blind have permanently 
 adjusted their mental focus to that of normal persons, and react 
 in the same manner as normal persons; blindness is not for 
 them, as it is for , the short-sighted without their glasses, a 
 temporary and relative, almost unconscious refuge from clear 
 vision. 
 
 It is, of course, not as the mere cloak of a possible blush 
 that darkness gives courage; it is because it lulls detailed self- 
 realization, such conscious self-realization being always a source 
 
 1 "I am acquainted with the case of a shy man," writes Dr. Harry 
 Campbell, in his interesting study of "Jlorbid Shjoiess" (British Medical 
 Journal, September 26, 1896), "who will make himself quite at home in 
 the house of a blind person, and help himself to wine with the utmost' 
 confidence, whereas if a member of the family, who can see, comes into 
 the room, all his old shyness returns, and he wishes himself far away." 
 
 2 Stanley Hall ("Showing OIT and Bashfulness," Pedagogical Semi- 
 ■nary, June, 1903 ) , _quotes Dr. Anagnos, of the Perkins Institute for the 
 Blind, to this effect. 
 
78 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 of fears, and the blush their definite symbol and visible climax. 
 It is to the blush that we must attribute a curious complementary 
 relationship between the face and the sacro-pubie region as centres 
 of anatomical modesty. The women of some African tribes who 
 go naked, Emin Bey remarked, cover the face with the hand under 
 the influence of modesty. Martial long since observed (Lib. iii, 
 LXVIII) that when an innocent girl looks at the penis she gazes 
 through her fingers. Wliere, as among many Mohammedan 
 peoples, the face is the chief focus of modesty, the exposure of 
 the rest of the body, including sometimes even the sacro-pubic 
 region, and certainly the legs and thighs, often becomes a matter 
 of indifference. 1 
 
 This concealment of the face is more than a convention; it 
 has a psychological basis. We may observe among ourselves the 
 well-marked feminine tendency to hide the face in order to 
 cloak a possible blush, and to hide the eyes as a method of lulling 
 self-consciousness, a method fabulously attributed to the ostrich 
 with the same end of concealment.^ A woman who is shy with 
 
 1 Thus, Sonnini, in the eighteenth century, noted that the country 
 women in Egypt only wore a single garment, open from the armpits 
 to the knees on each side, so that it revealed the body at every move- 
 ment; "but this troubles the women little, provided the face is not ex- 
 posed." {Voyage dans la Haute et Basse Egypte, 1779, vol. i, p. 289.) 
 When Casanova was at Constantinople, the Comte de Bonneval, a con- 
 vert to Islam, assured him that he was mistaken in trying to see a 
 woman's face when he might easily obtain greater favors from her. 
 "The most reserved of Turkish women," the Comte assured him, "only 
 carries her modesty in her face, and as soon as her veil is on she is sure 
 that she will never blush at anything." (Mimoires, vol. i, p. 429.) 
 
 2 It is worth noting that this impulse is rooted in the natural in- 
 stinctive acts and ideas of childhood. Stanley Hall, dealing with the 
 "Early Sense of Self," in the report already mentioned, refers to the 
 eyes as perhaps even more than the hands, feet, and mouth, "the centres 
 of that kind of self-consciousness which is always mindful of how the self 
 appears to others," and proceeds to mention "the very common im- 
 pression of young children that if the eyes are covered or closed they 
 cannot be seen. Some think the entire body thus vanishes from sight 
 of others; some, that the head also ceases to be visible; and a, still 
 higher form of this curious psychosis is that, when they are closed, the 
 soul cannot be seen." (American Journal of Psychology, vol. ix. No. 3, 
 1898.) The instinctive and unreasoned character of this act is fur- 
 ther shown by its occurrence in idiots. Niicke mentions that he once 
 had occasion to examine the abdomen of an idiot, who, thereupon, at- 
 tempted to draw down his shirt with the left hand, while with the right 
 he covered his eyes- 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 79 
 
 her lover will sometimes experience little or no difficulty in 
 showing any part of her person provided she may cover her face. 
 When, in gynseeological practice, examination of the sexual organs 
 is necessary, women frequently find evident satisfaction in con- 
 cealing the face with the hands, although not the slightest atten- 
 tion is being directed toward the face, and when an unsophis- 
 ticated woman is betrayed into a confession which affects her 
 modesty she is apt to turn her back to her interlocutor. "When 
 the face of woman is covered," it has been said, "her heart is 
 bared," and the Catholic Church has recognized this psycho- 
 logical truth by arranging that in the confessional the penitent's 
 face shall not be visible. The gay and innocent freedom of 
 southern women during Carnival is due not entirely to the per- 
 mitted license of the season or the concealment of identity, but 
 to the mask that hides the face. In England, during Queen 
 Elizabeth's reign and at the Eestoration, it was possible for 
 respectable women to be present at the theatre, even during the 
 performance of the most free-spoken plays, because they wore 
 masks. The fan has often subserved a similar end.^ 
 
 All such facts serve to show that, though the forms of 
 modesty may change, it is yet a very radical constituent of 
 human nature in all stages of civilization, and that it is, to a large 
 extent, maintained by the mechanism of blushing. 
 
 1 Cf. Stanley Hall and T. Smith, "Showing Ofif and Bashfulness,' 
 American Journal of Psychology, June, 1903, 
 
IV. 
 
 Summary, of the Factors of Modesty — ^The Future of Modesty^ 
 Modesty an Essential Element of Love.- 
 
 We have seen that the factors of modesty are numerous. To 
 attempt to explain modesty by dismissing it as merely an ex- 
 ample of psychic paralysis, of Stauung, is to elude the problem 
 by the statement of what is little more than a truism. Modesty 
 is a complexus of emotions with their concomitant ideas which 
 we must unravel to comprehend. 
 
 We have found among the factors of modesty: (1) the 
 primitive animal gesture of sexual refusal on the part of the 
 female, when she is not at that moment of her generative life 
 at which she desires the male's advances; (3) the fear of 
 arousing disgust, a fear primarily due to the close proximity of 
 the sexual centre to the points of exit of those excretions which 
 are useless and unpleasant, even in many eases to animals; (3) 
 the fear of the magic influence of sexual phenomena, and the 
 ceremonial and ritual practices primarily based on this fear, and 
 ultimately passing into simple rules of decorum which are signs 
 and guardians of modesty; (4) the development of ornament and 
 clothing, concomitantly fostering alike the modesty which re- 
 presses male sexual desire and the coquetry which seeks to allure 
 it; (5) the conception of women as property, imparting a new 
 and powerful sanction to an emotion already based on more 
 natural and primitive facts. 
 
 It must always be remembered that these factors do not 
 usually occur separately. Very often they are all of them implied 
 in a single impulse of modesty. We unravel the cord in order to 
 investigate its construction, but in real life the strands are more 
 or less indistinguishably twisted together. 
 
 It may still be asked finally whether, on the whole, modesty 
 
 really becomes a more prominent emotion as civilization advances. 
 
 I do not think this position can be maintained. It is a great 
 
 mistake, as we have seen, to suppose that in becoming extended 
 
 (80) 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 81 
 
 modesty also becomes intensified. On the contrary, this very 
 extension is a sign of weakness. Among savages, modesty is far 
 more radical and invincible than among the civilized. Of 
 the Araucanian women of Chile, Treutler has remarked that 
 they are distinctly more modest than the Christian white popu- 
 lation, and such observations might be indefinitely extended. 
 It is, as we have already noted, in a new and crude civilization, 
 eager to mark its separation from a barbarism it has yet 
 scarcely escaped, that we find an extravagant and fantastic 
 anxiety to extend the limits of modesty in life, and art, and litera- 
 ture. In older and more mature civilizations — in classical an- 
 tiquity, in old Japan, in Prance — ^modesty, while still a very 
 real influence, becomes a much less predominant and all-pervad- 
 ing influence. In life it becomes subservient to human use, in 
 art to beauty, in literature to expression. 
 
 Among ourselves we may note that modesty is a much more 
 invincible motive among the lower social classes than among the 
 more cultivated classes. This is so even when we should expect 
 the influence of occupation to induce familiarity. Thus I have 
 been told of a ballet-girl who thinks it immodest to bathe in the 
 fashion customary at the sea-side, and cannot make up her mind 
 to do so, but she appears on the stage every night in tights as a 
 matter of course; while Fanny Kemble, in her Reminiscences, 
 tells of an actress, accustomed to appear in tights, who died a 
 martyr to modesty rather than allow a surgeon to see her inflamed 
 knee. Modesty is, indeed, a part of self-respect, but in the 
 fully-developed human being self-respect itself holds in check any 
 excessive modesty. ^ 
 
 We must remember, moreover, that there are more definite 
 grounds for the subordination of modesty with the development 
 
 1 Freud remarks that one may often hear, concerning elderly ladies, 
 that in their youth in the country, they suflfered, almost to col- 
 lapse, from haemorrhages from the genital passage, because they 
 were too modest to seek medical advice and examination; he adds 
 that it is extremely rare to find such an attitude among our young 
 women to-day. (S. Freud, Zur Neurosenlehre, 1906, p. 182.) It would 
 be easy to find evidence of the disappearance of misplaced signs of 
 modesty formerly prevalent, although this mark of increasing civiliza- 
 tion has not always penetrated to our laws and regulations. 
 
 6 
 
82 PSYCHOLOGY OE SEX. 
 
 of civilization. We have seen that the factors of modesty are 
 many, and that most of them are based on emotions which make 
 little urgent appeal save to races in a savage or barbarous con- 
 dition. Thus, disgust, as Eichet has truly pointed out, neces- 
 sarily decreases as knowledge increases.^ As we analyze and 
 understand our experiences better, so they cause us less dis- 
 gust. A rotten egg is disgusting, but the chemist feels no disgust 
 toward sulphuretted hydrogen; while a solution of propylamin 
 does not produce the disgusting impression of that human phys- 
 ical uncleanliness of which it is an odorous constituent. As 
 disgust becomes analyzed, and as self-respect tends to increased 
 physical purity, so the factor of disgust in modesty is mini- 
 mized. The factor of ceremonial uncleanness, again, which 
 plays so urgent a part in modesty at certain stages of culture, is 
 to-day without influence except in so far as it survives in etiquette. 
 In the same way the social-economic factor of modesty, based 
 on the conception of women as property, belongs to a stage of 
 human development which is wholly alien to an advanced civiliza- 
 tion. Even the most fundamental impulse of all, the gesture of 
 sexual refusal, is normally only imperative among animals and 
 savages. Thus civilization tends to subordinate, if not to 
 minimize, modesty, to render it a grace of life rather than a 
 fundamental social law of life. But an essential grace of life it 
 still remains, and whatever delicate variations it may assume w© 
 can scarcely conceive of its disappearance. 
 
 In the art of love, however, it is more than a grace ; it must 
 always be fundamental. Modesty is not indeed the last word of 
 love, but it is the necessary foundation for all love's most 
 exquisite audacities, the foundation which alone gives worth and 
 sweetness to what Senancour calls its "delicious impudence."^ 
 Without modesty we could not have, nor rightly value at its true 
 worth, that bold and pure candor which is at once the final 
 revelation of love and the seal of its sinceritv. 
 
 1 "Disgust," he remarks, "is a sort of synthesis which attaches to 
 the total form of objects, and which must diminish and disappear as 
 scientific analysis separates into parts what, as a wliole, is so repugnant." 
 
 2 Senancour, De I'Amour, 1834, vol. i, p. 316. He remarlcs that a 
 useless and false reserve is due to stupidity rather than to modesty. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY. 83 
 
 Even Hohenemser — who argues that for the perfect man there could 
 be no shame, because shame rests on an inner conflict in one's own 
 personality, and "the perfect man knows no inner conflict"' — believes 
 that, since humanity is imperfect, modesty possesses a high and, indeed, 
 symptomatic value, for "its presence shows that according to the 
 measure of a man's ideal personality, his valuations are established." 
 
 Dugas goes further, and asserts that the ideals of modesty develop 
 with human development, and forever take on new and finer forms. 
 "There is," he declares, "a very close relationship between naturalness, 
 or sincerity, and modesty, for in love, naturalness is the ideal attained, 
 and modesty is only the fear of coming short of that ideal. Natural- 
 ness is the sign and the test of perfect love. It is the sign of it, for, 
 when love can show itself natural and true, one may conclude that 
 it is purified of its unavowable imperfections or defects, of its alloy 
 of wretched and petty passions, its grossness, its chimerical notions, 
 that it has become strong and healthy and vigorous. It is the ordeal 
 of it, for to show itself natural, to be always true, without shrinking, 
 it must have all the lovable qualities, and have them without seeking, 
 as a second nature. What we call 'natural,' is indeed really acquired; 
 it is the gift of a physical and moral evolution which it is precisely 
 the object of modesty to keep. Modesty is the feeling of the true, that 
 is to say, of the healthy, in love; it long exists as a vision, not yet at- 
 tained; vague, yet suflSciently clear for all that deviates from it to be 
 repelled as offensive and painful. At first, a remote and seemingly 
 inaccessible ideal, as it ccmes nearer it grows human and individual, 
 and emerges from the region of dream, ceasing not to be loved as 
 ideal, even when it is possessed as real. 
 
 "At first sight, it seems paradoxical to define modesty as an 
 aspiration towards truth in love; it seems, on the contrary, to be an 
 altogether factitious feeling. But to simplify the problem, we have 
 to suppose modesty reduced to its normal functions, disengaged from 
 its superstitions, its variegated customs and prejudices, the true mod- 
 esty of simple and healthy natures, as far removed from prudery as 
 from immodesty. And what we term the natural, or the true in love, 
 is the singular mingling of two forms of imaginations, wrongly sup- 
 posed to be incompatible: ideal aspiration and the sense for the 
 realities of life. Thus defined, modesty not only repudiates that cold 
 and dissolving criticism which deprives love of all poetry, and prepares 
 the way for a brutal realism ; it also excludes that light and detached 
 imagination which floats above love, the mere idealism of heroic senti- 
 ments, which cherishes poetic illusions, and passes, without seeing it, 
 the love that is real and alive. True modesty implies a love not 
 addressed to the heroes of vain romances, but to living people, with 
 their feet on the earth. But on the other hand, modesty is the respect 
 
84 PSYCHOLOGY 0]? SEX. 
 
 o£ love; if it is not shocked by its physical necessities, if it accepts 
 physiological and psychological conditions, it also maintains the ideal 
 of those moral proprieties outside of which, for all of us, love cannot 
 be enjoyed. When love is really felt, and not vainly imagined, modesty 
 is the requirement of an ideal of dignity, conceived as the very condition 
 of that love. Separate modesty from love, that is, from love which is not 
 floating in the air, but crystallized around a real person, and its 
 psychological reality, its poignant and tragic character, disappears." 
 (Dugas, "La Pudeur," Revue Philosophilque, Nov., 1903.) So conceived, 
 modesty becomes a virtue, almost identical with the Roman modesUa. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PEEIODICITY. 
 
 The Various Physiological and Psychological Khythms — ^Menstru- 
 ation — The Alleged Influence of the Moon — Frequent Suppression of 
 Menstruation among Primitive Races — Mittelschmerz — Possible Tend- 
 ency to a Future Intermenstrual Cycle — ^Menstruation among Animals — 
 Menstruating Monkeys and Apes — What is Menstruation — Its Primary 
 Cause Still Obscure — ^The Relation of Menstruation to Ovulation — The 
 Occasional Absence of Menstruation in Health — ^The Relation of Menstru- 
 ation to "Heat" — The Prohibition of Intercourse during Menstruation — 
 The Predominance of Sexual Excitement at and around the Menstrual 
 Period — Its Absence during the Period Frequently Apparent only. 
 
 Throughout the vegetable and animal worlds the sexual 
 functions are periodic. From the usually annual period of 
 flowering in plants, with its play of sperm-cell and germ-cell 
 and consequent seed-production, through the varying sexual 
 energies of animals, up to the monthly effervescence of the gen- 
 erative organism in woman, seeking not without the shedding 
 of blood for the gratification of its reproductive function, from 
 first to last we find unfailing evidence of the periodicity of sex. 
 At first the sun, and then, as some have thought, the moon, have 
 marked throughout a rhythmic impress on the phenomena of 
 sex. To understand these phenomena we have not only to recog- 
 nize the bare existence of that periodic fact, but to realize its im- 
 plications. 
 
 Ehythm, it is scarcely necessary to remark, is far from 
 characterizing sexual activity alone. It is the character of all 
 biological activity, alike on the physical and the psychic sides. 
 All the organs of the body appear to be in a perpetual process 
 of rhythmic contraction and expansion. The heart is rhythmic, 
 so is the respiration. The spleen is rhythmic, so also the bladder. 
 The uterus constantly undergoes regular rhythmic contractions 
 at brief intervals. The vascular system, down to the smallest 
 capillaries, is acted on by three series of vibrations, and every 
 
 (85) 
 
86 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 separate fragment of muscular tissue possesses rhythmic contrac- 
 tility. Growth itself is rhythmic, and, as Malling-Hansen and 
 subsequent observers have found, follows a regular annual course 
 as well as a larger cycle. On the psychic sides attention is 
 rhythmic. We are always irresistibly compelled to impart a 
 rhythm to every succession of sounds, however uniform and 
 monotonous. A familiar example of this is the rhythm we can 
 seldom refrain from hearing in the puffing of an engine. A 
 series of experiments, by Bolton, on thirty subjects showed that 
 the clicks of an electric telephone connected in an induction- 
 apparatus nearly always fell into rhythmic groups, usually of two 
 or four, rarely of three or five, the rhythmic perception being 
 accompanied by a strong impulse to make corresponding muscular 
 movements.! 
 
 It is, however, with the influence — to some extent real, to 
 some extent, perhaps, only apparent — of cosmic rhythm that we 
 are here concerned. The general tendency, physical and psy- 
 chic, of nervous action to fall into rhythm is merely interesting 
 from the present point of view as showing a biological predis- 
 position to accept any periodicity that is habitually imposed 
 upon the organism.^ Menstruation has always been associated 
 with the lunar revolutions.^ Darwin, without specifically men- 
 tioning menstruation, has suggested that the explanation of the 
 allied cycle of gestation in mammals, as well as incubation in 
 birds, may be found in the condition under which ascidians live 
 at high and low water in consequence of the phenomena of tidal 
 change.'* It must, however, be remembered that the aseidian 
 
 1 Thaddeus L. Bolton, "Khythm/' American Journal of Psychology, 
 January, 1894. 
 
 2 It is scarcely necessary to warn the reader that this statement 
 does not prejudge the question of the inheritance of acquired characters, 
 although it fits in with Seraon's Mnemic theory. We can, however, very 
 well suppose that the organism became adjusted to the rhythms of its 
 environment by a series of congenital variations. Or it might be held, 
 on the basis of Weismann's doctrine, that the germ-plasm hag been 
 directly modified by the environment. 
 
 3 Thug, the Papuans, in some digtricts, believe that the first men- 
 struation is due to an actual connection, during sleep, with the moon in 
 the shape of a man, the girl dreaming that a real man is embracing 
 her. {Reports Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v, p. 206.) 
 
 4 Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 164. 
 
THE PHENOMElSrA OF SEXUAL PEEIODICITY. 87 
 
 origin of the vertebrates has since been contested from many 
 sides, and, even if we admit that at all events some such allied 
 conditions in the early history of vertebrates and their ancestors 
 tended to impress a lunar cycle on the race, it must still be re- 
 membered that the monthly periodicity of menstruation only 
 becomes well marked in the human species. ^ Bearing in mind 
 the influence exerted on both the habits and the emotions even 
 of animals by the brightness of moonlight nights, it is perhaps 
 not extravagant to suppose that, on organisms already ancestrally 
 predisposed to the influence of rhythm in general and of cosmic 
 rhythm in particular, the periodically recurring full moon, not 
 merely by its stimulation of the nervous system, but possibly by 
 the special opportunities which it gave for the exercise of the 
 sexual functions, served to implant a lunar rhythm on menstru- 
 ation. How important such a factor may be we have evidence 
 in the fact that the daily life of even the most civilized peoples is 
 still regulated by a weekly cycle which is apparently a segment 
 of the cosmic lunar cycle. 
 
 Mantegazza has suggested that the sexual period became 
 established with relation to the lunar period because moonlight 
 nights were favorable to courting,^ and Nelson remarks that in 
 his experience young and robust persons are subject to recurrent 
 periods of wakefulness at night which they attribute to the 
 action of the full moon. One may perhaps refer also to the tend- 
 ency of bright moonlight to stir the emotions of the young, 
 
 1 While in the majority of women the menstrual cycle is regular 
 for the individual, and corresponds to the lunar month of 28 days, it 
 must be added that in a considerable minority it is rather longer, or, 
 more usually, shorter than this, and in many individuals is not con- 
 stant. Osterloh found a regular type of menstruation in 68 per cent, 
 healthy women, four weeks being the most usual length of the cycle; 
 in 21 per cent, the cycle was always irregular. See Nacke, "Die Menstru- 
 ation und ihr Einfluss bei chronischen Psychosen,"' Arehiv fur Psychiatrie, 
 
 1896, Bd. 28, Heft 1. 
 
 2 Among the Duala and allied negro peoples of Bantu stock dances 
 of markedly erotic character take place at full moon. Gason describes 
 the dances and sexual festivals of the South Australian blacks, generally 
 followed by promiscuous intercourse, as taking place at full moon. 
 (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, November, 1894, p. 174.) In 
 all parts of the world, indeed, including Christendom, festivals are fre- 
 quently regulated by the phases of the moon. 
 
88 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 especially at puberty, a tendency which in neurotic persons may 
 become almost morbid. ^ 
 
 It is interesting to point out that, the farther back we are 
 able to trace the beginnings of culture, the more important we 
 find the part played by the moon. ISText to the alteration of 
 day and night, the moon's changes are the most conspicuous 
 and startling phenomena of Nature; they first suggest a basis 
 for reckoning time; they are of the greatest use in primitive 
 agriculture; and everywhere the moon is held to have vast in- 
 fluence on the whole of organic life. Hahn has suggested that 
 the reason why mythological systems do not usually present the 
 moon in the supreme position which we should expect, is that its 
 immense importance is so ancient a fact that it tends, with mytho- 
 logical development, to become overlaid by other elements.^ 
 According to Seler, Quetzalcouatl and Tezeatlipoca, the two most 
 considerable figures in the Mexican pantheon, are to be regarded 
 mainly as complementary forms of the moon divinity, and the 
 moon was the chief Mexican measurer of time.^ Even in Baby- 
 lonia, where the sun was most specially revered, at the earliest 
 period the moon ranked higher, being gradually superseded by the 
 worship of the sun.^ Although such considerations as these will 
 by no means take us as far back as the earliest appearance of 
 menstruation, they may serve to indicate that the phases of the 
 moon probably played a large part in the earliest evolution of 
 man. With that statement we'must at present rest content. 
 
 It is possible that the monthly character of menstruation, 
 while representing a general tendency of the human race, always 
 and everywhere prevalent, may be modified in the future. It is 
 
 1 It has often been held that the course of insanity is influenced by 
 the moon. Of comparatively recent years, this thesis has been main- 
 tained by Koster (Veher die Oesetze des periodischen Irreseins und 
 verwandter Nervenzustatide, Bonn, 1882), who argues in detail that 
 periodic insanity tends to fall into periods of seven days or multiples of 
 seven. 
 
 2 Ed. Hahn, Demeter und Baulo, p. 23. 
 
 3 E. Seler, Zeitschrift filr Ethnologic, 1907, Heft 1, p. 39. And as 
 regards the primitive importance of the moon, see also Frazer, Adonis, 
 AtUs, Osiris, Ch. VIII. 
 
 4 Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia, 1898, pp. 68, 73-79, 461. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 89 
 
 a noteworthy fact that among many primitive races menstruation 
 only occurs at long intervals. Thus among Eskimo women 
 menstruation follows the peculiar cosmic conditions to which 
 the people are subjected; Cook, the ethnologist of the Peary 
 North Greenland expedition, found that menstruation only 
 began after the age of nineteen, and that it was usually sup- 
 pressed during the winter months, when there is no sun, only 
 about one in ten women continuing to menstruate during this 
 period.! j^ -^^g stated by Velpeau that Lapland and Greenland 
 women usually only menstruate every three months, or even 
 only two or three times during the year. On the Faroe Islands 
 it is said that menstiuation is frequently absent. Among the 
 Samoyeds, Mantegazza mentions that menstruation is so slight 
 that some travelers have denied its existence. Azara noted 
 among the Guaranis of Paraguay that menstruation was not 
 only slight in amount, but the periods were separated by long 
 intervals. Among the Indians in North America, again, men- 
 struation appears to be scanty. Thus, Holder, speaking of his 
 experience with the Crow Indians of Montana, says : "I am 
 quite sure that full-blood Indians jn this latitude do not men- 
 struate so freely as white women, not usually exceeding three 
 days."^ Among the naked women of Tierra del Fuego, it is 
 said that there is often no physical sign of the menses for six 
 months at a time. These observations are noteworthy, though 
 they clearly indicate, on the whole, that primitiveness in race is 
 a very powerless factor without a cold climate. On the other 
 hand, again, there is some reason to suppose that in Europe 
 there is a latent tendency in some women for the menstrual 
 cycle to split up further into two cycles, by the appearance of 
 a latent minor climax in the middle of the monthly interval. I 
 allude to the phenomenon usually called Mittelschmerz, middle 
 period, or intermenstrual pain. 
 
 1 Even in England, Barnes has known women of feeble sexual con- 
 stitution who meni5truated only in summer (R. Barnes, Diseases of 
 Women, 1878, p. 192). 
 
 2 A. B. Holder, "Gyneoic Notes among American Indians," Ameri- 
 can Journal of Olstetrics, No. 6, 1892. 
 
90 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 Since the investigations of Goodman, Stephenson, Van Ott, Eeinl, 
 Jaeobi, and others, it has been generally recognized that menstruation 
 is a continuous process, the flow being merely the climax of a menstrual 
 cycle, a physiological wave which is in constant flux or reflux. This 
 cycle manifests itself in all a woman's activities, in metabolism, respira- 
 tion, temperature, etc., as well as on the nervous and psychic side. 
 The healthier the woman is, the less conscious is the cyclic return of 
 her life, but the cycle may be traced (as Hegar has found) even before 
 puberty takes place, while Salerni has found that even in amenorrhoea 
 the menstrual cycle still manifests itself in the temperature and respira- 
 tion. {Rwista Sperimentale di Freniatria, XXX, fasc. 2-3.) 
 
 For a summary of the phenomena of the menstrual cycle, see 
 Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth ed., revised and enlarged, Ch. 
 XI; "The Functional Periodicity of Women." Cf. Keller, Archives 
 Genirales de Mddecine, May, 1897; Hegar, AUgemeine Zeitschrift fiir 
 Psychiatrie, 1901, Heft 2 and 3 ; Helen MacMurehy, Lancet, Oct. 5. 
 1901; A. E. Giles, Transactions Obstetrical Society London, vol. xxxix, 
 p. 115j etc. 
 
 Mitielschmers is a condition of pain occurring about the middle 
 of the intermenstrual period, either alone or accompanied by a slight 
 sanguineous discharge, or, more frequently, a non-sanguineous discharge. 
 (In a case described by Van Voornveld, the manifestation was confined 
 to a regularly occurring rise of temperature.) The phenomenon 
 varies, but seems usually to occur about the fourteenth day, and to 
 last two or three days. Laycock, in 1840 {Nervous Diseases of Women, 
 p. 46), gave instances of women with an intermenstrual period. Depaul 
 and Gueniot {Dictionnaire Encyclop6dique des Sciences Midicales, 
 Art., "Menstruation," p. 694) speak of intermenstrual symptoms, and 
 even actual flow, as occurring in women who are in a perfect state of 
 health, and constituting genuine "regies surnumeraries." The condition 
 is, however, said to have been first fully described by Valleix; then, in 
 1872, by Sir William Priestley; and subsequently by Fehling, Fas- 
 bender, Sorel, Halliday Croom, Findley, Addinsell, and others. (See, for 
 instance, "Mittelschmerz," by J. Halliday Croom, Transactions of Edin- 
 burgh Obstetrical Society, vol. xxi, 1896. Also, Krieger, Menstrua- 
 tion, pp. 68-69.) Fliess {Die Beziehungen zwischen Nase und weib- 
 lichen Geschlechis-Organen, p. 118) goes so far as to assert that an 
 intermenstrual period of menstrual symptoms — ^which he terms Neben- 
 menstruation — is "a phenomenon well known to most healthy women." 
 Observations are at present too few to allow any definite conclusions, 
 and in some of the cases so far recorded a pathological condition of the 
 sexual organs has been found to exist. Rosner, of Cracow, however, 
 found that only in one case out of twelve was there any disease pres- 
 ent {La Oynioologie, June, 1905), and Storer, who has met with twenty 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PEKIODICITT. 91 
 
 cases, insists on the remarkable and definite regularity of the mani- 
 festations, wholly unlike those of neuralgia {Boston Medical and Sur- 
 gical Journal, April 19, 1900). There is no agreement as to the 
 cause of Mittelschmera Addinsell attributed it to disease of the Fal- 
 lopian tubes. This, however, is denied by such competent authorities 
 as Cullingworth and Bland Sutton. Others, like Priestley, and sub- 
 sequently Marsh (American Journal of Obstetrics, July, 1897), have 
 sought to find the explanation in the occurrence of ovulation. This 
 theory is, however, unsupported by facts, and eventually rests on the 
 exploded belief that ovulation is the cause of idenstruation. Rosner, 
 following Richelet, vaguely attributes it to the difi'used hypersemia which 
 is generally present. Van de Velde also attributes it to an abnormal 
 fall of vascular tone, causing passive congestion of the pelvic viscera. 
 Others again, like Armand Eouth and MacLean, in the course of an in- 
 teresting discussion on Mittelschmers at the Obstetric Society of London, 
 on the second day of March, 1898, believe that we may trace here a double 
 menstruation, and would explain the phenomenon by assuming that 
 in certain cases there is an intermenstrual as well as a menstrual cycle. 
 The question is not yet ripe for settlement, though it is fully evident 
 that, looking broadly at the phenomena of rut and menstruation, the 
 main basis of their increasing frequency as we rise toward civilized man 
 is increase of nutrition, heat and sunlight being factors of nutrition. 
 When dealing with civilized man, however, we are probably concerned 
 not merely with general nutrition, but with the nervous direction of that 
 nutrition. 
 
 At this stage it is natural to inquire what the corresponding 
 phenomena are among animals. Unfortunately, imperfect as is 
 our comprehension of the human phenomena, our knowledge 
 of the corresponding phenomena among animals is much more 
 fragmentary and incomplete. Among most animals menstrua- 
 tion does not exist, being replaced by what is known as heat, 
 or oestrus, which usually occurs once or twice a year, in spring 
 and in autumn, sometimes affecting the male as well as the 
 female.^ There is, however, a great deal of progression in the 
 upward march of the phenomena, as we approach our own and 
 
 1 In the male, the phenomenon is termed rut, and is most familiar 
 in the stag. I quote from Marshall and Jolly some remarks on the 
 infrequeney of rut: "'The male wild Cat,' Mr. Cocks informs us, 
 (like the stag), 'has a rutting season, calls loudly, almost day and 
 night, making far more noise than the female.' This information is 
 of' interest, inasmuch as the males of most carnivores, although they 
 undoubtedly show signs of increased sexual activity at some times 
 more than at others, are not known to have anything of the nature of a 
 
92 PSYCHOLOGY 01' SEX. 
 
 allied zoological series. Heat in domesticated cows usually 
 occurs every three weeks. The female hippopotamus- in the 
 Zoological Gardens has been observed to exhibit monthly sexual 
 excitement, with swelling and secretion from the vulva. Pro- 
 gression is not only toward greater frequency with higher evolu- 
 tion or with increased domestication, but there is also a change in 
 the character of the flow. As Wiltshire,^ in his remarkable 
 lectures on the "Comparative Physiology of Menstruation," 
 asserted as a law, the more highly evolved the animal, the more 
 sanguineous the catamenial flow. 
 
 It is not until we reach the monkeys that this character of 
 the flow becomes well marked. Monthly sanguineous discharges 
 have been observed among many monkeys. In the seventeenth 
 century various observers in manj^ parts of the world — ^Bohnius, 
 Peyer, Helbigius, Van der Wiel, and others — noted menstrua- 
 tion in monkeys.2 Buffon observed it among various monkeys 
 as well as in the orang-utan. J. G. St. Hilaire and Cuvier, 
 many years ago, declared that menstruation exists among a 
 variety of monkeys and lower apes. Kengger described a vagi- 
 nal discharge in a species of cebus in Paraguay, while Eaciborski 
 observed in the Jardin des Plantes that the menstrual haemor- 
 rhage in guenons was so abundant that the floor of the cage 
 was covered by it to a considerable extent; the same variety of 
 monkey was observed at Surinam, by Hill, a surgeon in the 
 Dutch army, who noted an abundant sanguineous flow occur- 
 ring at every new moon, and lasting about three days, the animal 
 at this time also showing signs of sexual excitement.^ 
 
 regularly, recurrent rutting season. Nothing of tlie kind is known in 
 the Dog, nor, so far as we are aware, in the males of the domestic Cat, 
 or the Ferret, all of ^Yhiell seem to be capable of copulation at any time 
 of the year. On the other hand, the males of Seals appear to have a rut- 
 ting season at the same time as the sexual season of the female." 
 (Marshall and Jolly, "Contributions to the Physiology of Mammalian 
 Keproduction," Philosophical Transactions, 1905, B. 19S.) 
 
 1 A. Wiltshire, British Medical Journal, March, 1883. The best 
 account of heat known to me is contained in Ellenberger's Vergleichende 
 Physiologic der Eaussailgethiere, 1S92, Band 4, Theil 2, pp. 276-284. 
 
 2 Schurig {Parthenologia, 1729, p. 125), gives numerous refer- 
 ences and quotations. 
 
 3 Quoted by leard, La Fcmme, etc., p. 63. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OE SEXUAL PEHIODIOITT. 93 
 
 The macaque and the baboon appear to be the non-human 
 animals, in which menstruation has been most carefully ob- 
 served. In the former, besides the flow. Bland Sutton remarks 
 that "all the naked or pale-colored parts of the body, such as 
 the face, neck, and ischial regions, assume a lively pink color ; in 
 some cases, it is a vivid red."i The flow is slight, but the color- 
 ing lasts several days, and in warm weather the labia are much 
 swollen. 
 
 Heape^ has most fully and carefully described menstruation 
 in monkeys. He found at Calcutta that the Macacus cynomolgus 
 menstruated regularly on the 20th of December, 20th of Jan- 
 uary, and about the 30th of February. The Cynocephalus porcaria 
 and the Semnopitheciis entellus both menstruated each month for 
 about four days. In the Macaci rhesus and cynomolgus at men- 
 struation "the nipples and vulva become swollen and deeply 
 congested, and the skin of the buttocks swollen, tense, and of a 
 brilliant-red or even purple color. The abdominal wall also, for 
 a short space upward, and the inside of the thighs, sometimes 
 as far down as the heel, and the under surface of the tail for 
 half its length or more, are all colored a vivid red, while the 
 skin of the face, especially about the eyes, is flushed or blotched 
 with red." In late gestation the coloring is still more vivid. 
 Something similar is to be seen in the males also. 
 
 Distant, who kept a female baboon for some time, has re- 
 corded the dates of menstruation during a year. He found that 
 nine periods occurred during the year. The average length be- 
 tween the periods was nearly six weeks, but they occurred more 
 frequently in the late autumn and the winter than in the 
 summer.3 
 
 It is an interesting fact, Heape noted, that, notwithstanding 
 menstruation, the seasonal influence, or rut, still persisted in the 
 monkeys he investigated. 
 
 1 Bland Sutton, Surgical Diseases of the Ovaries, and British 
 Gynecological Journal, vol. ii. 
 
 2 W. Heape, "The Menstruation of Semnopithecus Entellus," Philo- 
 sophical Transactions, 1894; "Menstruation and Ovulation of Macacus 
 Rhesus," Philosophical Transactions, 1897. 
 
 3 W. L. Distant, "Notes on the Chaema Baboon," Zoologist, Janu- 
 ary, 1897, p. 29. 
 
94 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 In the anthropoid apes, Hartmann remarks that several ob- 
 servers have recorded periodic menstruation in the chimpanzee, 
 with flushing and enlargement of the external parts, and pro- 
 trusion of the external lips, which are not usually visible, while 
 there is often excessive enlargement and reddening of these 
 parts and of the posterior callosities during sexual excitement. 
 Very little, however, appears to be definitely known regarding 
 any form of menstruation in the higher apes. M. Deniker, who 
 has made a special study of the anthropoid apes, informs me 
 that he has so far been unable to make definite observations re- 
 garding the existence of menstruation. Moll remarks that he 
 received information regarding such a phenomenon in the orang- 
 utan. A pair of orang-utans was kept in the Berlin Zoolog- 
 ical Gardens some years ago, and the female was stated to have at 
 intervals a menstrual flow resembling that of women, and during 
 this period to refrain from sexual congress, which was other- 
 wise usually exercised at regular intervals, at least every two or 
 three days; Moll adds, however, that, while his informant is a 
 reliable man, the length of time that has elapsed may have led 
 him to make mistakes in details. Keith, in a paper read before 
 the Zoological Society of London, has described menstruation in 
 a chimpanzee; it occurred every twenty-third or twenty-fourth 
 day, and lasted for three days; the discharge was profuse, and 
 first appeared in about the ninth or tenth year.i 
 
 What is menstruation? It is easy to describe it, by its 
 obvious symptoms, as a monthly discharge of blood from the 
 uterus, but nearly as much as that was known in the infancy 
 of the world. When we seek to probe more intimately into the 
 nature of menstruation we are still baffled, not merely as re- 
 gards its cause, but even as regards its precise mechanism. "The 
 primary cause of menstruation remains unexplained" ; "the cause 
 of menstruation remains as obscure as ever"; so conclude two 
 of the most thorough and cautious investigators into this sub- 
 ject.2 It is, however, widely accepted that the main cause of 
 
 1 'Nature, March 23, 1899. 
 
 2 W. Heape, "The Monatruation of Semnopithecus Bntellus," Philo- 
 sophical Transactions, 1894, p. 483; Bland Sutton, Surgical Diseases of 
 the Ovaries, 1896. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PEBIODICITT. 95 
 
 menstruation is a rhythmic contraction of the uterus, — ^the result 
 of a disappointed preparation for impregnation, — a kind of 
 miniature childbirth. This seems to be the most reasonable view 
 of menstruation; i.e., as an abortion of a decidua. Burdach 
 (according to Beard) was the iirst who described menstruation as 
 an abortive parturition. "The hypothesis," Marshall and Jolly 
 conclude, "that the entire pro-oestrous process is of the nature of 
 a. preparation for the lodgment of the ovum is in accordance 
 with the facts." 1 Fortunately, since we are here primarily 
 concerned with its psychological aspects, the precise biological 
 cause and physiological nature of menstruation, do not greatly 
 concern us. 
 
 There is, however, one point which of late years has been 
 definitely determined, and which should not be passed without 
 mention: the relation of menstruation to ovulation. It was 
 once supposed that the maturation of an ovule in the ovaries 
 was the necessary accompaniment, and even cause, of menstrua- 
 tion. We now know that ovulation proceeds throughout the 
 whole of life, even before birth, and during gestation,^ and that 
 removal of the ovaries by no means necessarily involves a ces- 
 sation of menstruation. It has been shown that regular and 
 even excessive menstruation may take place in the congenital 
 absence of a trace of ovaries or Fallopian tubes.^ On the other 
 hand, a rudimentary state of the uterus, and a complete absence 
 of menstruation, may exist with well-developed ovaries and 
 
 1 T. Bryce and J. Teacher ( Contributions to the Study of the Early 
 Development of the Human Ovum, 1908 ) , putting the matter somewhat 
 differently, regard menstruation as a cyclical process, providing for the 
 maintenance of the endometrium in a suitable condition of immaturity 
 for the production of the decidua of pregnancy, which they believe may 
 take place at any time of the month, though most favorably shortly 
 before or after a menstrual period which has been accompanied by 
 ovulation. 
 
 2 Robinson, American Oynecological and Obstetrical Journal, Au- 
 gust, 1905. 
 
 SBossi, Annali di Ostetrica e Oinecologia, September, 1896; sum- 
 marized in the British Medical Journal, October 31, 1896. As regards 
 the more normal influence of the ovaries over the uterus, see e.g. Car- 
 michael and F. H. A. Marshall, "Correlation of the Ovarian and Uterine 
 Functions," Proceedings Royal Society, vol. 79, Series B, 1907. 
 
96 PSYCHOLOGY Or SEX. 
 
 normal ovulation. ^ We must regard the uterus as to some ex- 
 tent an independent organ, and menstruation as a process which 
 arose, no doubt, with the object, teleologically speaking, of co- 
 operating more efEectively with ovulation, but has become largely 
 independent.^ 
 
 It is sometimes stated that menstruation may be entirely absent 
 in perfect health. Few cases of this condition have, however, been 
 recorded with the detail necessary to prove the assertion. One such 
 case was investigated by Dr. H. W. Mitchell, and described in a paper 
 read to the JSlew York County Medical Society, February 22, 1892 (to 
 be found in Medical Reprints, June, 1892). The subject was a young, 
 unmarried woman, 24 years of age. She was born in Ireland, and, until 
 her emigration, lived quietly at home with her parents. Being then 
 twenty years of age, she left home and came to New York. Up to that 
 time no signs of menstruation had appeared, and she had never heard 
 that such a function existed. Soon after her arrival in New York, she 
 obtained a situation as a waiting-maid, and it was noticed, after a time, 
 that she was not unwell at each month. Friends filled her ears with 
 wild stories about the dreadful effects likely to follow the absence of 
 menstruation. This worried her greatly, and as a consequence she 
 became pale and anaemic, with loss of flesh, appetite, and sleep, and a 
 long train of imaginary nervous symptoms. She presented herself for' 
 treatment, and insisted upon a uterine examination. This revealed no 
 
 1 Beuttner, OentralMatt fur GyniiTcologie, No. 49, 1893; summarized 
 in British Medical Journal, December, 1893. Many cases show that 
 pregnancy may occur in the absence of menstruation. See, e.g., Nou- 
 velles Archives d'Obstitrique et de Cfynicologie, 25 Janvier, 1894, supple- 
 ment, p. 9. 
 
 2 It is still possible, and even probable, that the primordial cause of 
 both phenomena is the same. Heape (Transactions Oistetrical Society 
 of London, 1898, vol. xl, p. 161) argues that both menstruation and 
 ovulation are closely connected with and influenced by congestion, and 
 that in the primitive condition they are largely due to the same cause. 
 This primary cause he is inclined to regard as a ferment, due to a 
 change in the constitution of the blood brought about by climatic influ- 
 ences and food, which he proposes to call gonadin. (W. Heape, Por- 
 ceedings of Royal Society, 1905, vol. B. 76, p. 266.) Marshall, who has 
 found that in the ferret and other animals, ovulation may be dependent 
 upon copulation, also considers that ovulation and menstruation, 
 though connected and able to react on each other, may both be de- 
 pendent upon a common cause; he finds that in bitches and rats heat 
 can be produced by injection of extract from ovaries in the oestrous state 
 
 (F. H. A. Marshall, Philosophical Transactions, 1903, vol. B. 196-; also 
 Marshall and Jolly, id., 1905, B. 198). Of. C. J. Bond, "An Inquiry 
 Into Some Points in Uterine and Ovarian Physiology and Pathology in 
 Kabbits," British Medical Journal, July 21, 1906. 
 
THE PHEKOMENA OP SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 97 
 
 pathological condition of her uterus. She was assured that she would 
 not die, or become insane, nor a chronic invalid. In consequence she 
 soon forgot that she differed in any way from other girls. A course 
 of chalybeate tonics, generous diet, and proper care of her general 
 health, soon restored her to her normal condition. After close observa- 
 tion for several years, she submitted to a thorough examination, al- 
 though entirely free from any abnormal symptoms. The examination 
 revealed the following physical condition: Weight, 105 pounds (her 
 weight before leaving Ireland was 130) ; girth of chest, twenty-nine and 
 a half inches; girth of abdomen, twenty-five inches; girth of pelvis, 
 thirty-four and a half inches; girth of thigh, upper third, twenty 
 inches; heart healthy, sounds and rhythm perfectly normal; pulse, 76; 
 lungs healthy; respiratory murmur clear and distinct over every part; 
 respiration, easy and twenty per minute; the mammae are well de- 
 veloped, firm, and round; nipples, small, no areola; her skin is soft, 
 smooth, and healthy; figure erect, plump, and symmetrical; her bowels 
 are regular; kidneys, health}'. She has a good appetite, sleeps well, and 
 in no particular shows any sign of ill health. The uterine examina- 
 tion reveals a short vagina, and a small, round cervix uteri, rather 
 less in size than the average, and projecting very slightly into the vaginal 
 canal. Depth of uterus from os to fundus, two and a, quarter inches, 
 .is very nearly normal. No external sign of abnormal ovaries. She is 
 a well-developed, healthy young woman, performing all her physiological 
 functions naturally and regularly, except the single function of 
 menstruation. No vicarious menstruation takes the place of the natural 
 function, though she has been watched very closely during the past 
 two years, nor the least periodical excitement. It is added that, though 
 the clitoris is normal, the mons veneris is almost destitute of hair, 
 and the labia rather undeveloped, while, "as far as is known,'' sexual 
 instincts and desire are entirely absent. These latter facts, I may 
 add, would seem to suggest that, in spite of the health of the subject, 
 there is yet some concealed lack of development of the sexual system, 
 of congenital character. In a, case recorded by Plant {Centralilatt filr 
 Kii/ndkologie, No. 9, 1896, summarized in the British Medical Journal, 
 April 4, 1896), in which the internal sexual organs were almost wholly 
 undeveloped, and menstruation absent, the labia were similarly unde- 
 Teloped, and the pubic hair scanty, while the axillary hair was wholly 
 absent, though that of the head was long and strong. 
 
 We may now regard as purely academic the discussion for- 
 merly carried on as to whether menstruation is to be regarded as 
 analogous to heat in female animals. For many centuries at 
 least the resemblance has been sufficiently obvious. Eaciborski 
 
98 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 and Pouchet, who first established the regular periodicity of 
 ovulation in mammals, identified heat and menstruation.^ Dur- 
 ing the past century there was, notwithstanding, an occasional 
 tendency to deny any real connection. No satisfactory grounds 
 for this denial have, however, been brought forward. Lawson 
 Tait, indeed, and more recently Beard, have stated that menstrua- 
 tion cannot be the period of heat, because women have a dis- 
 inclination to the approach of the male at that time.^ But, as we 
 shall see later, this statement is unfounded. An argument 
 which might, indeed, be brought forward is the very remarkable 
 fact that, while in animals the period of heat is the only period 
 for sexual intercourse, among all human races, from the very 
 lowest, the period of menstruation is the one period during which 
 sexual intercourse is strictly prohibited, sometimes under severe 
 penalties, even life itself. This, however, is a social, not a 
 physiological, fact. 
 
 Ploss and Bartels call attention to the curious contrast, in this 
 respect, between heat and menstruation. The same avtthors also men- 
 tion that in the Middle Ages, however, preachers found it necessary 
 to warn their hearers against the sin of intercourse during the men- 
 strual period. It may be added that Aquinas and many other early 
 theologians held, not only that such intercourse was a deadly sin, but 
 that it engendered leprous and monstrous children. Some later theo- 
 logians, however, like Sanchez, argued that the Mosaic enactments (such 
 as Leviticus, Ch. XX, v. 18) no longer hold good. Modern theologians — 
 in part influenced by the tolerant traditions of Liguori, and, in part, 
 like Debreyne (Moechialogie, pp. 275 et seq.) informed by medical 
 science — no longer prohibit intercourse during menstruation, or regard 
 it as only a venial sin. 
 
 We have here a remarkable, but not an isolated, example 
 of the tendency of the human mind in its development to rebel 
 against the claims of primitive nature. The whole of religion is 
 a similar remolding of nature, a repression of natural impulses, 
 
 1 Pouchet, Theorie de I'Ovulation Spontanie, 1847. As Blair Bell 
 and Pontland Plick remark ("Menstruation," British Medical Journal, 
 March 6, 1909), the repeated CEstrus of unimpregnated animals (once a 
 fortnight in rabbits) is surely comparable to menstruation. 
 
 2 Tait, Provincial Medical Journal, May, 1891; J. Beard, The Span 
 of Gestation, 1897, p. 69. Lawson Tait is reduced to the assertion that 
 ovulation and menstruation are identical. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PEEIODICITY. 99 
 
 an efEort to turn them into new channels. Prohibition of inter- 
 course during menstruation is a fundamental element of savage 
 ritual, an element which is universal merely because the con- 
 ditions which caused it are universal, and because — as is now 
 beginning to be generally recognized — ^the causes of human 
 psychic evolution are everywhere the same. A strictly analo- 
 gous phenomenon, in the sexual sphere itself, is the opposed atti- 
 tude in barbarism and civilization toward the sexual organs. 
 Under barbaric conditions and among savages, when no magico- 
 religious ideas intervene, the sexual organs are beautiful 
 and pleasurable objects. Under modem conditions this is not so. 
 This difference of attitude is reflected in sculpture. In savage 
 and barbaric carvings of human beings, the sexual organs of both 
 sexes are often enormously exaggerated. This is true of the 
 archaic European figures on which Salomon Eeinach has thrown 
 so much light, but in modern sculpture, from the time when it 
 reached its perfection in Greece onward, the sexual regions in 
 both men and women are systematically minimized. ^ 
 
 With advancing culture — as again we shall see later — ^there 
 is a conflict of claims, and certain considerations are regarded 
 as "higher" and more potent than merely "natural" claims. 
 Nakedness is more natural than clothing, and on many grounds 
 more desirable under the average circumstances of life, yet, 
 everywhere, under the stress of what are regarded as higher 
 considerations, there is a tendency for all races to add more and 
 more to the burden of clothes. In the same way it happens that 
 the tendency of the female to sexual intercourse during men- 
 struation^ has everywhere been overlaid by the ideas of a cult- 
 
 1 As Moll points out, even the secondary sexual characters have 
 undergone a somewhat similar change. The beard was once an impor- 
 tant sexual attraction, but men can now afford to dispense with it with- 
 out fear of loss in attractiveness. (Libido Sexualis, Band I, p. 387.) 
 These points are discussed at greater length in the fourth volume of 
 these Studies, "Sexual Selection in Man." 
 
 2 It is not absolutely established that in menstruating animals the 
 period of menstruation is always a period of sexual congress; probably 
 not, the influence of menstruation being diminished by the more funda- 
 mental influence of breeding seasons, which affect the male also; 
 monkeys have a breeding season, though they menstruate regularly all 
 the year round. 
 
100 PSYCHOLOGY O]? SES. 
 
 lire which has insisted on regarding menstruation as a super- 
 natural phenomenon wliich, for the protection of everybody, 
 must be strictly tabooed.^ This tendency is reinforced, and in 
 high civilization replaced, by the claims of an Eesthetic regard 
 for concealment and reserve during this period. Such facts are 
 significant for the early history of culture, but they must not 
 blind us to the real analogy between heat and menstruation, an 
 analogy or even identity which may be said to be accepted now 
 by most careful investigator s.^ 
 
 If it is, perhaps, somewhat excessive to declare, with Jolm- 
 stone, that "woman is the only animal in which rut is omni- 
 present," we must admit that the two groups of phenomena 
 merge into or replace each other, that their object is identical, 
 that they involve similar psychic conditions. Here, also, we 
 see a striking example of the way in which women preserve a 
 primitive phenomenon which earlier in the zoological series was 
 common to both sexes, but which man has now lost. Heat and 
 menstruation, with whatever difference of detail, are practically 
 the same phenomenon. We cannot understand menstruation 
 unless we bear this in mind. 
 
 On the psychic side the chief normal and primitive charac- 
 teristic of the menstrual state is the more predominant presence 
 of the sexual impulse. There are other mental and emotional 
 signs of irritability and instability which tend to slightly im- 
 pair complete mental integrity, and to render, in some unbalanced 
 individuals explosions of anger or depression, in rarer cases crime, 
 more common ;^ but the heightening of the sexual impulse, lan- 
 guor, shyness, and caprice are the more human manifestations 
 of an emotional state which in some of the lower female animals 
 during heat may produce a state of fury. 
 
 The actual period of the menstrual flow, at all events the 
 first two or three days, does not, among European women, usually 
 appear to show any heightening of sexual emotion.'* This height- 
 
 1 See Appendix A. 
 
 2 Bland Sutton, loc. cif., p. 896. 
 
 3 See H. Ellis, Man and Woman, Chapter XI. 
 
 4 This is by no means true of European women only. Tlius, we read 
 in an Arabic book, The Perfumed Garden, that women have an aver- 
 
THE PHENOMENA OE SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 101 
 
 ening occurs usually a few days before, and especially during, the 
 latter part of the flow, and immediately after it ceases. ^ I have, 
 however, convinced myself by inquiry that this absence of sexual 
 feeling during the height of the flow is, in large part, apparent 
 only. No doubt, the onset of the flow, often producing a general 
 depression of vitality, may tend directly to depress the emotions, 
 which are heightened by the general emotional state and local 
 congestion of the days immediately preceding; but among some 
 women, at all events, who are normal and in good health, I find 
 that the period of menstruation itself is covered by the period of 
 the climax of sexual feeling. Thus, a married lady writes : "My 
 feelings are always very strong, not only just before and after, 
 but during the period; very unfortunately, as, of course, they 
 cannot then be gratified"; while a refined girl of 19, living a 
 chaste life, without either coitus or masturbation, which she has 
 never practiced, habitually feels very strong sexual excitement 
 about the iime of menstruation, and more especially during the 
 period ; this desire torments her life, prevents her from sleeping 
 at these times, and she looks upon it as a kind of illness.^ I 
 could quote many other similar and equally emphatic statements, 
 and the fact that so cardinal a relationship of the sexual life, of 
 women should be ignored or denied by most vn-iters on this mat- 
 ter, is a curious proof of the prevailing ignorance.^ 
 
 sion to coitus during menstruation. On the other hand, the old Hindoo 
 physician, Susruta, appears to have stated that a tendency to run after 
 men is one of the signs of menstruation. 
 
 1 The actual period of the menstrual flow corresponds, in Heape's 
 terminology, to the congestive stage, or pro-astrum, in female animals; 
 the oestrus, or period of sexual desire, immediately follows the pro- 
 cestrum, and is the direct result of it. See Heape, "The 'Sexual Season' 
 of Mammals," Quarterly/ Journal of Microscopical Science, 1900, vol. 
 xliv. Part I. 
 
 2It may be noted that (as Barnes, Oliver, and others have pointed 
 out) there is heightened blood-pressure during menstruation. Haig re- 
 marks that he has found a, tendency for high pressure to be accom- 
 panied by increased sexual appetite ( Uric Acid, 6th edition, p. 155 ) . 
 
 3 Sir W. F. Wade, however, remarked, some years ago, in his Ingleby 
 Lectures ( Lancet, June 5, 1886) : "It is far from exceptional to find that 
 there is an extreme enhancement of concupiscence in the immediate 
 preoatamenial period," and adds, "I am satisfied that evidence is obtain- 
 able that in some instances, ardor is at its maximum during the actual 
 period, and suspect that cases occur in which it is almost, if not entirely, 
 limited to that time." Long ago, however, the genius of Haller had noted 
 
102 PSYCHOLOGY OF SES. 
 
 This ignorance has been fostered by the fact that women 
 often disguise even to themselves the real state of their feelings. 
 One lady remarks that while she would be very ready for coitus 
 during menstruation, the thought that it is impossible duriag 
 that time makes her put the idea of it out of her mind. I have 
 reason to think that this statement may be taken to represent 
 the real feelings of very many women. The aversion to coitus 
 is real, but it is often due, not to failure of sexual desire, but 
 to the inhibitory action of powerful extraneous causes. The 
 absence of active sexual desire in women during the height of 
 the flow may thus be regarded as, in part, a physiological fact, 
 following from the correspondence of the actual menstrual flow 
 to the period of pro-ccsirum, and in part, a psychological fact 
 due to the aesthetic repugnance to union when in such a condition, 
 and to the unquestioned acceptance of the general belief that at 
 such a period intercourse is out of the question. Some of the 
 strongest factors of modesty, especially the fear of causing dis- 
 gust and the sense of the demands of ceremonial ritual, would 
 thus help to hold in check the sexual emotions during this period, 
 and when, under the influence of insanity, these motives are in 
 abeyance, the coincidence of sexual desire with the menstrual 
 flow often becomes more obvious. ^ 
 
 the same fact. More recently, Icard (La Fcmme, Chapter VI and else- 
 where, e.g., p. 125) has brought forward much evidence in eonflrma- 
 tion of this view. It may be added that there is considerable signifi- 
 cance in the fact that the erotic hallucinations, which are not infre- 
 quently experienced by women under the influence of nitrous oxide gas, 
 arr more likely to appear at the monthly period than at any other time. 
 (D. W. Buxton, Anesthetics, 1892, p. 61.) 
 
 1 Gehrung considers that in healthy young girls amorous sensa- 
 tions are normal during menstruation, and in some women persist, 
 during this period, throughout life. More usually, however, as men- 
 strual period after menstrual period recurs, without the natural in- 
 terruption of pregnancy, the feeling abates, and gives place to sensations 
 of discomfort or pain. He ascribes this to the vital tissues being 
 sapped of more blood than can be replaced in the intervals. "The vital 
 powers, being thus kept in abeyance, the nmative sensations are either 
 not developed, or destroyed. This, superadded by the usual moral and 
 religious teachings, is amply suiHcient, by degrees, to extinguish'or pre- 
 vent such feelings with the great majority. The sequestration as 'un- 
 clean,' of women during their catamenial period, as practiced in olden 
 times, had the same tendency." (E. C. Gehrung, "The Status of Men- 
 struation," Transactions American Giinecology Society, 1901, p. 48.) 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PEEIODICITY. 103 
 
 It must be added that, especially among the lower social 
 classes, the primitive belief of the savage that coitus during 
 menstruation is bad for the man still persists. Ploss and Bar- 
 tels mention that among the peasants in some parts of Germany, 
 where it is believed that impregnation is impossible during men- 
 struation, coitus at that time would be frequent were it not 
 thought dangerous for the man.i It has also been a common 
 belief both in ancient and modern times that coitus duriag 
 menstruation engenders monsters. ^ 
 
 iSTotwithstanding all the obstacles that are thus placed in the 
 way of coitus during menstruation, there is nevertheless good 
 reason to believe that the first coitus very frequently takes place 
 at this point of least psychic resistance. When still a student I 
 was struck by the occurrence of cases in which seduction took 
 place during the menstrual flow, though at that time they seemed 
 to me inexplicable, except as evidencing brutality on the part of 
 the seducer. ISregrier,^ in the lying-in wards of the Hotel-Dieu at 
 Angers, constantly found that the women from the country who 
 came there pregnant as the result of a single coitus had been 
 impregnated at or near the menstrual epoch, more especially when 
 the period coincided with a feast-day, as St. John's Day or 
 Christmas. 
 
 Whatever doubt may exist as to the most frequent state of 
 the sexual emotions during the period of menstruation, there 
 can be no doubt whatever that immediately before and im- 
 mediately after, very commonly at both times, — ^this varying 
 slightly in different women, — there is usually a marked height- 
 ening of actual desire. It is at this period (and sometimes 
 during the menstrual flow) that masturbation may take placoi 
 
 1 It is possible there may be an element of truth in this belief. 
 Diday, of Lyons, found that chronic urethorrhoea is an occasional result 
 of intercourse during menstruation. Raciborski ( Traite de la Menstrua- 
 tion, 1868, p. 12), who also paid attention to this point, while confirm- 
 ing biday, came to the conclusion that some special conditions must be 
 present on one or both sides. 
 
 2 See, e.g., Ballantyne, "Teratogenesis, Transactions of the Edin- 
 burgh Ohsietrical Society, 1896, vol. xxi, pp. 324-25. 
 
 3 As quoted by Icard, La Femme, etc., p. 194. I have not been 
 able to see Nfigrier's work. 
 
104 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 ia womerL wlio at other times have no strong auto-erotic impulse. 
 The only women who do not show this heightening of sexual 
 emotion seem to be those in whom sexual feelings have not yet 
 been definitely called into consciousness, or the small minority, 
 usually sufEering from some disorder of sexual or general health, 
 in whom there is a high degree of sexual anssthesia.i 
 
 The majority of authorities admit a heightening of sexual emotion 
 before or after the menstrual crisis. See e.g., Krafft-Ebing, who places 
 it at the post-menstrual period {Psychopatliia Sexualis, Eng. translation 
 of tenth edition, p. 27 ) . Adler states that sexual feeling is increased 
 before, during and after menstruation {Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsemp- 
 findung des Weiies, 1904, p. 88). Kossmann (Senator and Kaminer, 
 Health and Disease in Belation to Marriage, I, 249), advises inter- 
 course just after menstruation, or even during the latter days of the 
 flow, as the period when it is most needed. Guyot saya that the eight 
 days after menstruation are the period of sexual desire in women 
 (Driviaire de I'Amour Experimentale, p. 144). Harry Campbell in- 
 vestigated the periodicity of sexual desire in healthy women of the 
 working classes, in a series of cases, by inquiries made of their hus- 
 bands who were patients at a London hospital. People of this class 
 are not always skilful in observation, and the method adopted would 
 permit many facts to pass unrecorded; it is, therefore, noteworthy that 
 only in one-third of the cases had no connection between menstruation 
 and sexual feeling been observed; in the other two-thirds, sexual feeling 
 was increased, either before, after, or during the flow, or at all of these 
 times; the proportion of cases in which sexual feeling was increased 
 before the flow, to those in which it was increased after, was as three 
 to two. (H. Campbell, Nervous Organization of Men and Women, 
 p. 203.) 
 
 Even this elementary fact of the sexual life has, however, been 
 denied, and, strange to say, by two women doctors. Dr. Mary Putnam 
 Jacobi, of New York, who furnished valuable contributions to the physi- 
 ology of menstruation, wrote some years ago, in a paper on "The Theory 
 of Menstruation," in reference to the question of the connection be- 
 tween oestrus and menstruation: "Neither can any such rhythmical 
 alternation of sexual instinct be demonstrated in women as would lead 
 to the inference that the menstrual crisis was an expression of this," 
 i.e., of oestrus. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, again, in her book on The 
 Human Element in Sex, asserts that the menstrual flow itself affords 
 
 1 1 deal with the question of sexual ansesthesia in women in the 
 third volume of these Studies: "The Sexual Impulse in Women." 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PEEIODICITT. 105 
 
 complete relief for the sexual feelings in women (like sexual emissiona 
 during sleep in men), and thus practically denies the prevalence of 
 sexual desire in the immediately post-menstrual period, when, on such 
 a theory, sexual feeling should be at its minimum. It is fair to add that 
 Dr. Blackwell's opinion is merely the survival of a view which was 
 widely held a century ago, when various writers (Bordeu, Roussel, 
 Duffieux, J. Arnould, etc. ) , as Icard has pointed out, regarded menstrua- 
 tion as a device of Providence for safeguarding the virginity of women. 
 
II. 
 
 The Question of a Monthly Sexual Cycle in Men — The Earliest Sug- 
 gestions of a General Physiological Cycle in Men — Periodicity in Dis- 
 ease — -Insanity, Heart Disease, etc. — The Alleged Twenty-three Days' 
 Cycle — The Physiological Periodicity of Seminal Emissions during Sleep 
 — Original Observations — Fortnightly and Weekly Rhythms. 
 
 Foe some centuries, at least, inquisitive observers here and 
 there have thought they found reason to believe that men, as 
 well as women, present various signs of a menstrual physiological 
 cycle. It would be possible to collect a number of opinions in 
 favor of such a monthly physiological periodicity in men. Pre- 
 cise evidence, however, is, for the most part, lacking. Men have 
 expended infinite ingenuity in establishing the remote rhythms 
 of the solar system and the periodicity of comets. They have 
 disdained to trouble about the simpler task of proving or disprov- 
 ing the cycles of their own organisms. ^ It is over half a century 
 since Laycock wrote that "the scientific observation and treat- 
 ment of disease are impossible without a knowledge of the mys- 
 terious revolutions continually taking place in the system" ; yet 
 the task of summarizing the whole of our knowledge regarding 
 these "mysterious revolutions" is even to-day no heavy one. As 
 to the existence of a monthly cycle in the sexual instincts of men, 
 with a single exception, I am not aware that any attempt has 
 been made to bring fom^ard definite evidence.^ A certain 
 iilterest and novelty attaches, therefore, to the evidence I am able 
 to produce, although that evidence will not suffice to settle the 
 question finally. 
 
 The great Italian physician, Sanctorius, who was in so many 
 ways the precursor of our modern methods of physiological re- 
 
 1 Even counting the pulse is a comparatively recent method of 
 physiological examination. It was not until 1450 that Nicolas of Cusa 
 ad\'ocated counting the pulse-beats. (Binz, Deutsche medizinische Woch- 
 enschrift, October 6, 1898.) 
 
 2 1 leave this statement as it stands, though since the first publi- 
 cation ot this book it, has ceased to be strictly accurate. 
 
 (lOfa) 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 107 
 
 search by the means of instruments of precision, was the first, 
 SO far as I am aware, to suggest a monthly cycle of the organism 
 in men. He had carefully studied the weight of the body with 
 reference to the amount of excretions, and believed that a 
 monthly increase in weight to the amount of one or two pounds 
 occurred in men, followed by a critical discharge of urine, this 
 crisis being preceded by feelings of heaviness and lassitude.^ 
 Gall, another great initiator of modern views, likewise asserted a 
 monthly cycle in men. He insisted that there is a monthly crit- 
 ical period, more marked in nervous people than in others, and 
 that at this time the complexion becomes dull, the breath 
 stronger, digestion more laborious, while there is sometimes dis- 
 turbance of the urine, together with general malaise, in which 
 the temper takes part; ideas are formed with more difficulty, 
 and there is a tendency to melanchol}', with unusual irascibility 
 and mental inertia, lasting a few days. More recently Stephen- 
 son, who established the cyclical wave-theory of menstruation, 
 argued that it exists in men also, and is really "a general law 
 of vital energy ."2 
 
 Sanctorius does not appear to have published the data on which 
 his belief was founded. Keill, an English follower of Sanctorius, in 
 his Medicina Statica Britannica (1718), published a. series of daily 
 (morning and evening) body-weights for the year, without referring 
 to the question of a monthly cycle. A period of maximum weight is 
 shown usually, by Keill's figures, to occur about once a month, but it 
 is generally irregular, and cannot usually be shown to occur at definite 
 intervals. Monthly discharges of blood from the sexual organs and other 
 parts of the body in men have been recorded in ancient and modern 
 times, and were treated of by the older medical writers as an affliction 
 peculiar to men with a feminine system. (Laycock, Nervous Diseases 
 of Women, p. 79.) A summary of such eases will be found in Gould 
 and Pyle {Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, 1897, pp. 27-28). 
 Laycock (Lancet, 1842-43, vols, i and ii) brought forward cases of 
 monthly and fortnightly cycles in disease, and asserted "the general 
 principle that there are greater and less cycles of movements going on 
 in the system, involving each other, and closely connected with the 
 organization of the individual." He was inclined to accept lunar influ- 
 
 1 Sanctorius, Medicina Statica, Sect. I, aph. Ixv. 
 
 2 American Journal of Obstetrics, xiv, 1882. 
 
108 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 ence, and believed that the physiological cycle is made up of definite 
 fractions and multiples of a period of seven days, especially a unit of 
 three and a half days. Albrecht, a somevrhat erratic zoologist, put 
 forth the view a few years ago that there are menstrual periods in men, 
 giving the following reasons: (1) males are I'udimentary females, (2) 
 in all males of mammals, a rudimentary masculine uterus (Miiller's 
 ducts) still persists, (3) to! a II3' hypospadie male individuals menstruate; 
 and believed that he had shown that in man there is a rudimentary 
 menstruation consisting in an almost monthly periodic appearance, last- 
 ing for three or four days, of white corpuscles in the urine {Anomalo, 
 February. 1890). Br. Campbell Clark, some years since, made observa- 
 tions on asylum attendants in regard to the temperature, during five 
 weeks, which tended to show that the normal male temperature varies 
 considerably within certain limits, and that "so far as I have been able 
 to observe, there is one marked and prolonged rise every month or five 
 weeks, averaging three days, occasional lesser rises appearing irregularly 
 and of shorter duration. These observations are only made in three 
 eases, and I have no proof that they refer to the sexual appetite" (Camp- 
 bell Clark, "The Sexual Reproductive Fvuictions," Psychological Section, 
 British Medical Association, Glasgow, 1888; also, private letters). 
 Hammond {Treatise on Insanity, p. 114) says: "I have certainly noted 
 in some of my friends, the tendency to some monthly periodic abnormal 
 manifestations. This may be in the form of a headache, or a, nasal 
 hajmorrhage, or diarrhoea, or abundant discharge of uric acid, or some 
 otlier unusual occurrence. I think," he adds, "this is much more com- 
 mon than is ordinarily supposed, and a careful examination or inquiry 
 will generally, if not invariably, establish the existence of a periodicity 
 of the character referred to." 
 
 Dr. Harry Campbell, in his book on Differences in the Nervous 
 Organization of Men and Women, deals fully with the monthly rhythm 
 (pp. 270 et seg.), and devotes a, short chapter to the question, "Is the 
 Menstrual Rhythm peculiar to the Femak Sex?" He brings forward 
 a few pathological cases indicating such a rhythm, but although he had 
 written a letter to the Lancet, asking medical men to supply him with 
 evidence bearing on this question, it can scarcely be said that he has 
 brought forward much evidence of a convincing kind, and such as he 
 has brought forward is purely pathological. He believes, however, that 
 we may accept a monthly cycle in men. "We may," he concludes, 
 "regard the human being — ^both male and female — as the subject of a 
 monthly pulsation which begins with the beginning of life, and continues 
 till death,'' menstruation being regarded as a function accidentally in- 
 grafted upon this primordial rhythm. 
 
 It is not unreasonable to argue that the possibility of such a 
 menstrual cycle is increased, if we can believe that in women, also, the 
 
THE PHENOMENA OP SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 109 
 
 menstrual cycle persists even when its outward manifestations no longer 
 occur. Aetius said tliat menstrual changes take place during gestation; 
 in more modern times, Bufl'on was of the same opinion. Laycock also 
 maintained that menstrual changes take place during pregnancy (j\^er- 
 vous Diseases of Women, p. 47). Fliess considers that it is certainly in- 
 correct to assert that the menstrual process is arrested during pregnancy, 
 and he refers to the frequency of monthly epistaxis and other nasal 
 symptoms throughout this period (W. Fliess, Beziehungen zwischen 
 Nase und Oeschlechts-Organen, pp. 44 et seq.). Beard, who attaches 
 importance to the persistence of a cyclical period in gestation, calls it 
 tha mufBed striking of the clock. Harry Campbell {Causation of Dis- 
 ease, p. 54) has found post-climacteric menstrual rhythm in ix. fair 
 sprinkling of cases up to the age of sixty. 
 
 It is somewhat remarkable that, so far as I have observed, 
 none of these authors refer to the possibility of any heightening 
 of the sexnal appetite at the monthly crisis which they believe 
 to exist in men. This omission indicates that, as is suggested by 
 the absence of definite statements on the matter of increase of 
 sexual desire at menstruation, it was an ignored or unknown fact. 
 Of recent years, however, many writers, especially alienists, have 
 stated their conviction that sexual desire in men tends to be 
 heightened at approximately monthly intervals, though they have 
 not always been able to give definite evidence in support of their 
 statements. 
 
 Clouston, for instance, has frequently asserted this monthly periodic 
 sexual heightening in men. In the article, "Developmental Insanity," 
 in Tuke's Psychological Dictiona/ri/, he refers to the periodic physio- 
 logical heightening of the reproductive nisus; and, again, in an article 
 on "Alternation, Periodicity, and Relapse in Mental Diseases" (Edin- 
 burgh Medical Journal, July, 1882), he records the case of "an insane 
 gentleman, aged 49, who, for the past twenty-six years, has been sub- 
 ject to the most regularly occurring brain-exaltation every four weeks, 
 almost to a day. It sometimes passes off without becoming acutely 
 maniacal, or even showing itself in outward acts; at other times it 
 becomes so, and lasts for periods of from one to four weeks. It is always 
 preceded by an uncomfortable feeling in the head, and pain in the back, 
 mental hebetude, and slight depression. The nisus generativus is greatly 
 increased, and he says that, if in that condition, he has full and free 
 seminal emissions during sleep, the excitement passes off; if not, it goes 
 on. A full dose of bromide or iodide of potassium often, but not always, 
 has the effect of stopping the excitement, and a very long walk some- 
 
110 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 times does the same. When the excitement gets to a height, it is always 
 followed by about a week of stupid depression." In the same article 
 Clouston remarks : "I have for a long time been impressed with the re- 
 lationship of the mental and bodily alternations and periodicities in 
 iiisanitj' to the great physiological alternations and periodicities, and I 
 have generally been led to the conclusion that they are the same in all 
 essential respects, and only differ in degree of intensity or duration. By 
 far the majority of the cases in women follow the law of the menstrual 
 and sexual periodicity; the majority of the cases in men follow the law 
 of the more irregular periodicities of the nisus generativus in that sex. 
 jMany of the cases in both sexes follow the seasonal periodicity which 
 perhaps in man is merely a reversion to the seasonal generative activities 
 of the majority of the lower animals." He found that among 338 cases 
 of insanity, chiefly mania and melancholia, 46 per cent, of females and 
 'W per cent, of males showed periodicity, — diurnal, monthly, seasonal, or 
 annual, and more marked in women than in men, and in mania than in 
 melancholia, — and adds: "I found that the younger the patient, the 
 greater is the tendency to periodic remission and relapse. The phenome- 
 non finds its acme in the cases of pvibescent and adolescent insanity." 
 
 ConoUy Norman, in the article "Mania, Hysterical" (Tuke's Psy- 
 chological Dictionary) , states that "the activity of the sexual organs is 
 probably in both sexes fundamentally periodic." 
 
 Krafft-Ebing records the case of a neurasthenic Russian, aged 24, 
 who experienced sexual desires of urologinic character, with fair regu- 
 larity, every four weeks (Psychopathia Sextialis), and NScke mentions 
 the case of a man who had nocturnal emissions at intervals of four 
 v/eeks (Archiv fur Kriminalanthropologie, 1908, p. 363), while Moll 
 {Lihido Sexualis, Bd. I, pp. 621-623) recorded the case of a man, other- 
 wise normal, who had attacks of homosexual feeling every four weeks, 
 and Rohleder {Zeitsclirift fiir Sexualwissenscliaft, Nov., 1908) gives the 
 case of an unmarried slightly neuropathic physician who for several days 
 every three to five weeks has attacks of almost satyriacal sexual 
 excitement. 
 
 Fere, whose attention was called to this point, from time to time 
 noted the existence of sexual periodicity. Thus, in a case of general 
 paralysis, attacks of continuous sexual excitement, with sleeplessness, 
 occurred every twenty-eight days; at other times, the patient, a man of 
 42, in the stage of dementia, slept well, and showed no signs of sexual 
 excitation (Societe de Biologie, October 6, 1900). In another case, of 
 n man of sound heredity and good health till middle life, periodic sex- 
 ual manifestations began fiom puberty, with localized genital congestion, 
 erotic ideas, and copious urination, lasting for two or three days. These 
 manifestations became menstrual, with a period of intermenstrual ex- 
 citement appearing regularly, but never became intense. Between the 
 
THE PHENOJIEXA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY. Ill 
 
 age of 36 and 42. the intermenstrual crises gradually ceased; at about 
 45,. the menstrual crises ceased; the periodic crises continued, however, 
 with the sole manifestation of increased frequency of urination 
 {Sociite de Biologic, July 23, 1904). In a third case, of sexual neu- 
 rasthenia. Fere found that from puberty, onwards to middle life, there 
 appeared, every twenty-five to twenty-eight days, tenderness and swell- 
 ing below the nipple, accompanied by slight sexual excitation and erotic 
 dreams, lasting for one or two days {Revue de Medecinc, ilarch, 1905). 
 
 It is in the domain of disease that the most strenuous and, 
 on the whole, the most successful efforts have been made to dis- 
 cover a menstrual cycle in men. Such a field seems promising 
 at the outset, for many morbid exaggerations or defects of the 
 nervous system might be expected to emphasize, or to free from 
 inhibition, fundamental rhythmical processes of the organism 
 which in health, and under the varying conditions of social ex- 
 istence, are overlaid by the higher mental activities and the pres- 
 sure of external stimuli. In the eighteenth century Erasmus 
 Darwin wrote a remarkable and interesting chapter on "The 
 Periods of Disease," dealing with solar and lunar influence on 
 biological processes, i Since then, many writers have brought 
 forward evidence, especially in the domain of nervous and mental 
 disease, which seems to justify a belief that, under pathological 
 conditions, a tendency to a male menstrual rhythm may be 
 clearly laid bare. 
 
 We should expect an organ so primitive in character as the 
 heart, and with so powerful a rhythm already stamped upon its 
 nervous organization, to be peculiarly apt to display a menstrual 
 rhythm under the stress of abnormal conditions. This expecta- 
 tion might be strengthened by the menstrual rhythm which Jlr. 
 Perry-Coste has found reason to suspect in pulse-frequency 
 during health. I am able to present a case in which such a 
 periodicity seems to be indicated. It is that of a gentleman who 
 suffered severely for some years before his death from valvular 
 disease of the heart, with a tendency to pulmonary congestion, 
 and attacks of "cardiac asthma." His wife, a lady of great 
 
 1 Zoonomia, Section XXXVI. 
 
112 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 intelligence, kept notes of her husband's eondition,i and at last 
 observed that there was a certain periodicity in the occurrence of 
 the exacerbations. The periods were not quite regular, but show 
 a curious tendency to recur at about thirty days' interval, a few 
 days before the end of every month ; it was during one of these 
 attacks that he finally died. There was also a tendency to minor 
 attacks about ten days after the major attacks. It is note- 
 worthy that the subject showed a tendency to periodicity when in 
 health, and once remarked laughingly before his illness : "I am 
 just like a woman, always most excitable at a particular time of 
 the month." 
 
 Periodicity has been noted in various disorders of nervous character. 
 Periodic insanity has long been Ivnown and studied ( see, e.g., Pilcz, Die 
 periodischen Geistesstorungen, 1901) ; it is much commoner in women 
 than in men. Periodicity lias been observed in stammering (a six- 
 weekly period in one case), and notably in hemicrania or migraine, 
 by Harry Campbell, Osier, etc. (The periodicity of a case of hemicrania 
 has been studied in detail by D. Fraser Harris, Edinburgh Medical Journal, 
 July, 1902.) But the cycle in these cases is not always, or even usually, 
 of a menstrual type. 
 
 It is now possible to turn to an investigation which, although 
 of very limited extent, serves to place the question of a male men- 
 strual cycle for the first time on a sound basis. If there is such 
 a cycle analogous to menstruation in women, it must be a recur- 
 ring period of nervous erethism, and it must be demonstrably 
 accompanied by greater sexual activity. In the American Jour- 
 nal of Psychology for 1888, Mr. Julius Nelson, afterward Profes- 
 sor of Biology at the Eutgers College of Agriculture, ISTew Bruns- 
 wick, published a study of dreams in which he recorded the 
 results of detailed observations o| his dreams, and also of seminal 
 emissions during sleep (by him termed "gonekbole" or "ecbole"), 
 during a period of something over two years. ]\Ir. Nelson found 
 that both dreams and ecboles fell into a physiological cycle of 
 28 days. The climax of maximum dreaming (as determiaed by 
 the number of words in the dream record) and the climax of 
 
 1 1 reproduced these notes in full in earlier editions of this 
 volume. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OV SEXUAL PEEIODICITY. 113 
 
 maximum eebole fell at the same point of the cycle, the ecbolic 
 climax being more distinctly marked than the dream climax. 
 
 The question of cyclic physiological changes is considerably com- 
 plicated by our uncertainty regarding the precise length of the cycle we 
 may expect to find. Nelson linds a 28-day cycle satisfactory. Perry- 
 Coste, as we shall see, accepts a. strictly lunar cycle of 291,^ days. 
 Fliess has argued that in both women and men, many physiological facts 
 fall into a cycle of 23 days, which he calls male, the 28-day cycle being 
 female. (W. Fliess, Die Beziehungen ewischen Xase und weiblichen 
 Geschleehis-Organen, 1897, pp. 113 et seq.) Although Fliess brings for- 
 ward a number of minutely-observed cases, I cannot say that I am yet 
 convinced of the reality of this 23-day cycle. It is somewhat curious, 
 however, that at the same time as Fliess, though in apparent inde- 
 pendence, and from si different point of view, another worker also sug- 
 gested that there is a 23-day physiological cycle (John Beard, The 
 Span of Gestation and the Cause of Birth, Jena, 1897). Beard ap- 
 proaches the question from the embryologieal standpoint, and argues 
 that there is what he terms an "ovulation unit" of about 23% days, in 
 the interval from the end of one menstruation to the beginning of the 
 next. Two "ovulation units" make up one "critical unit," and the length 
 of pregnancy, according to Beard, is always a multiple of the "critical 
 unit;" in man, the gestation period amounts to six critical units. 
 These attempts to prove a new physiological cycle deserve careful study 
 and further investigation. The possibility of such a cycle should be 
 borne in mind, but at present we are scarcely entitled to accept it. 
 
 So far as I am aware, Professor Nelson's very interesting 
 series of observations, which, for the first time, placed the ques- 
 tion of a menstrual rhythm la men on a sound and workable 
 basis, have not directly led to any further observations. I am, 
 however, in possession of a much more extended series of ecbolic 
 observations completed before Nelson's paper was published, 
 although the results have only been calculated at a comparatively 
 recent date. I now propose to present a summary of these ob- 
 servations, and consider how far they confirm Nelson's con- 
 clusions. These observations cover no less a period than twelve 
 years, between the ages of 17 and 29, the subject, W. K., being a 
 student, and afterward schoolmaster, leading, on the whole, a 
 chaste life. The records were faithfully made throughout the 
 whole of this lomg period. Here, if anywhere, shoulc^ l}e Y^SftevieO: 
 
114 FSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 for the construction of a menstrual rhythm on an ecbolic basis. 
 While the results are in many respects instructive, it can scarcely, 
 perhaps, be said that they absolutely demonstrate a monthly cycle. 
 When summated in a somewhat similar manner to that adopted by 
 Nelson in his ecbolic observations, it is not difficult to regard the 
 maximum, which is reached on the 19th to 31st days of the 
 summated physiological month, as a real menstrual ecbolic climax, 
 for no other three consecutive days at all approach these in 
 number of ecboles, while there is a marked depression occurring 
 four days earlier, on the 16th day of the month. If, however, 
 we split up the curve by dividing the period of twelve years into 
 two nearly equal periods, the earlier of about seven years and the 
 latter of about four years, and summate these separately, the two 
 curves do not present any parallel as regards the menstrual cycle. 
 It scarcely seems to me, therefore, that these curves present any 
 convincing evidence in this case of a monthly ecbolic cycle (and, 
 therefore, I refrain from reproducing them) , although they seem 
 to suggest such a cycle. Nor is there any reason to suppose that 
 by adopting a different cycle of thirty days, or of twenty-three 
 days, any more conclusive results would be obtained. 
 
 It seems, however, when we look at these curves more 
 closely, that they are not wholly without significance. If I am 
 justified in concluding that they scarcely demonstrate a monthly 
 cycle, it may certainly be added that they show a rudimentary 
 tendency for the ecboles to fall into a fortnightly rhythm, and 
 a very marked and unmistakable tendency to a weekly rhythm. 
 The fortnightly rhythm is shown in the curve for the earlier 
 period, but is somewhat disguised in the curve for the total period, 
 because the first climax is spread over two days, the 7th and 
 8th of the month. If we readjust the curve for the total period 
 by presenting the days in pairs, the fortnightly tendency is more 
 clearly brought out (Chart 1). 
 
 A more pronounced tendency still is traceable to a weekly 
 rhythm. This is, indeed, the most unquestionable fact brought 
 out by these curves. All the maxima occur on Saturday or Sun- 
 day, with the minima on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or 
 Friday. This very pronounced weekly rhythm will serve to 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PEEIODICITY. 115 
 
 swamp more or less completely any monthly rhythm on a 28-day 
 basis. Although here probably seen in an exaggerated form, it is 
 almost certainly a characteristic of the ecbolic curve generally.^ 
 I have been told by several young men and women, especially 
 those who work hard during the week, that Saturday, and 
 especially Sunday afternoon, are periods when the thoughts spon- 
 taneously go in an erotic direction, and at this time there is a 
 special tendency to masturbation or to spontaneous sexual excite- 
 ment. It is on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, accord- 
 ing to Guerry's tables,^ that the fewest suicides are committed, 
 Tuesday, Wednesdajr, and Thursday, with, however, a partial fall 
 on Wednesday, those on which most suicides are committed, so 
 that -there would appear to be an antagonism between sexual 
 activity and the desire to throw off life. It also appears (in the 
 reports of the Bavarian factory inspectors) that accidents in 
 factories have a tendency to occur chiefly at the beginning of the 
 week, and toward the end rather than in the middle.^ Even 
 growth, as Fleischmann has shown in the case of children, tends 
 to fall into weekly cycles. It is evident that the nervous system 
 is profoundly affected by the social influences resulting from the 
 weekly cycle. 
 
 The analysis of this series of ecbolic curves may thus be said 
 to recall the suggestion of Laycock, that the menstrual cycle is 
 really made up of four weekly cycles, the periodic unit, accord- 
 ing to Laycock, being three and one-half days. I think it would, 
 however, be more correct to say that the menstrual cycle, per- 
 haps originally formed with reference to the influence of the 
 moon on the sexual and social habits of men and other animals, 
 tends to break up by a process of segmentation into fortnightly 
 and weekly cycles. If we are justified in assuming that there is 
 a male menstrual cycle, we must conclude that in such a case as 
 
 1 Moll refers to the case of a man whose erotic dreams occurred 
 every fortnight, and always on Friday night (Libido Sexualis, Band I, 
 p. 136) . One is inclined to suspect an element of autosuggestion in such 
 a case ; still, the coincidence is noteworthy. 
 
 2 See Durkheim, Le Suicide, p. 101. 
 
 3 We must, of course, see here the results of the disorganization pro- 
 duced by holidays, and the exhaustion produced by the week's labor; 
 but such influences are still the social effects of the cosmic wee!:. 
 
116 PSTOHOLOGT OF SEX. 
 
 that just analyzed, the weekly rhythm has become so marked as 
 almost entirely to obliterate the larger monthly rhythm. 
 
 However constituted, there seems little doubt that a phys- 
 iological weekly cycle really exists. This was, indeed, very clearly 
 indicated many years ago by the observations of Edward Smith, 
 who showed that there are weekly rhythms in pulse, respiration, 
 temperature, carbonic acid evolution, urea, and body-weight, 
 Sunday being the great day of repair and increase of weight.^ 
 
 In an appendix to this volume I am able to present the 
 results of another long series of observations of nocturnal ecbolic 
 manifestations carried out by Mr. Perry-Coste, who has elabo- 
 rately calculated the results, and has convinced himself that on 
 the basis of a strictly lunar month, thus abolishing the disturbing 
 influence of the weekly rhythm, which in his case also appears, 
 a real menstrual rhythm may be traced.^ 
 
 It does not appear to me, however, even yet, that a final 
 answer to the question whether a menstrual sexual rhythm occurs 
 in men can be decisively given in the affirmative. That such a 
 cycle will be proved in many cases seems to me highly probable, 
 but before this can be decisively affirmed it is necessary that a 
 much larger number of persons should be induced to carry out 
 on themselves the simple, but protracted, series of observations 
 that are required. 
 
 Since the first edition of this volume appeared, numerous series 
 of ecbolic records have reached me from different parts of the world. 
 The most notable of these series comes from a professional man, of 
 scientific training, who has for the past six years lived in difl'erent 
 parts of India, where the record was kept. Though the record extends 
 over nearly six years, there are two breaks in it, due to a visit to 
 England, and to loss of interest. Both involuntary and voluntary dis- 
 charges are included in the record. The involuntary discharges occurred 
 during sleep, usually with an erotic dream, in which the subject in- 
 variably awaked and frequently made an effort to check the emission. 
 The voluntary discharges in most eases commenced during sleep, or 
 
 1 K. Smith, Health and Disease, Chapter III. I may remark that, 
 according to Kemsoes (Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift, January 
 20, 1908, and British Medical Journal, January 29, 1898), school-children 
 work best on Monday and Tuesday. 
 
 2 See Appendix B. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PEEIODICITY. 117 
 
 in the half -waking state; deliberate masturbation, when fully awake, 
 was comparatively rare. The proportion of involuntary to more or 
 less voluntary ecboles was about 3 to 1. A third kind of sexual mani- 
 festation (of frequency intermediate between the other two forms) 
 is also included, in which a high degree of erethism is induced during 
 the half waking state, culminating in an orgasm in which the power 
 of preventing discharge has been artificially acquired. The subject, 
 E. M., was 32 years of age when the record began. He belongs to a 
 healthy family, and is himself physically sound, 5 feet 6 inches in 
 height, but weight low, due to rickets in infancy. In early life he 
 stammered badly; his temperament is emotional and self-conscious, 
 while his work is unusually exacting, and he lives for most of the year 
 in a very trying olimate. As a boy he was very religious, and has 
 always felt obliged to resist sexual vice to the utmost, though there 
 have been occasional lapses. 
 
 As regards lunar periodicity, E. M., has summated his results in 
 a curve, after the same manner as Mr. Perry-Coste, beginning with 
 the new moon. The periods covered include 54 lunar months, and the 
 total number of discharges is 176; the average frequency is about 
 3 per month of twenty-eight days. The curve, for the most part, zig- 
 zags between a frequency of 4 and 9, but on the twenty-fourth day it 
 falls to 1, and then rises uninterruptedly to a height of 11 on the 
 Itwenty-seventh day, falling to 2 on the next day. Whether a really 
 menstrual ryhthm is thus indicated I do not undertake to decide, but 
 I am inclined to agree with E. M. himself that there is no definite 
 evidence of it. "It looks to me," he writes, "as if the only real rhythm 
 (putting aside the annual cycle) will be found to be the average 
 period between the ecboles, varying in diff'erent persons, but in my 
 ease, about nine and one-eighth days. May not the ecbolie period in 
 men be compared to the menstrual period in women, and be an example 
 of the greater katabolic activity of men,? There is the period of 
 tumescence, and the ecbole constituting the detumescence. The week- 
 end holiday would hasten the detumescence, but about every third 
 week-end there would tend to be delay to enable the system to get back 
 into its regulation nine or ten days' stride. This might possibly be 
 the explanation of the curves. The recent emissions were nearly all 
 involuntary during sleep. Age may have something to do with the 
 change in character.'' 
 
 E. M.'s curves frequently show the influence of weekly periodicity, 
 in the tendency to ecbole on Sunday, or sometimes on Saturday or 
 Monday. In recent years there has been some tendency for this climax 
 to be thrown towards the middle of the week, but, on the whole, 
 Wednesday is the point of lowest frequency. 
 
 In another case, the subject, A. N., who has spent nearly all his 
 
118 PSYCHOLOGY OF SES. 
 
 life in the State of Indiana, has kept a record of sexual manifesta- 
 tions between the ages of 30 and 34. The data, which cover four 
 years, have not been sent to me in a form which enables the possi- 
 bility of a monthly curve to be estimated, but A. N., who has himself 
 arranged the data on a lunar monthly basis, considers that a monthly 
 curve is thus revealed. "My memoranda, he writes, "show that dis- 
 charges occur most frequently on the first, second, and third days after 
 new moon. There is also another period on the fourteenth and fifteenth, 
 which might indicate a semi-lunar rhythm. The days of minimum dis- 
 charge are the seventh, eighth, twenty-second, and twenty-third." It 
 may be added that the yearly average of ecbolic manifestations, varying 
 between 50 and 55, comes out as 52, or exactly one per week. 
 
 A weekly periodicity is very definitely shown by A. N.'s data. 
 Sunday once more stands at the head of the week as regards frequency, 
 in this case very decisively. The figures are as follows : — 
 Sun. Mon. Tues. Wed. Thurs. Fri. Sat. 
 48 21 24 35 28 26 27 
 
 In another case which has reached me from the United States, 
 the data are slighter, but deserve note, as the subject is a trained 
 psychologist, and I quote the case in his own words. Here, it will be 
 seen, there appears to be a tendency for the ecbolic cycle to cover a 
 period of about six weeks. In this case, also, there is a tendency for the 
 dlimax to occur about Saturday or Sunday. "X. is 38 years old, un- 
 married, fair health, pretty good heredity; university trained, and 
 engaged in academic pursuits. He thinks he may have completed 
 puberty at about 13, though he has no proof that he was in the 
 full possession of his sex-powers until he was 15 years 3 months old 
 (when he had his first emission). His sex life has been normal. He 
 masturbated somewhat when he slept with other boys (or men) during 
 early manhood, but not to excess. 
 
 "During the autumn of 1889 (when 28 years of age) he observed 
 that at certain times he had an itching feeling about the testicles; that 
 he felt slightly irritable; that the penis erected with the slightest provo- 
 cation, and that this peculiar feeling usually passed away with a 
 nightly emission. Indeed, so regular was the matter that he usually 
 wore a loin garment at these times, to prevent the semen getting on 
 the bedding. This peculiar feeling ordinarily continued for two or three 
 days. He recalls at these times that he felt that he would like to 
 wrestle with some one, for there seemed to be a muscular tension. 
 These states returned with apparent regularity, and the intervals seemed 
 to be about six weeks, though no effort was made to measure the 
 periods until 1893. The following notes are taken from the diaries 
 of X.:— 
 
THE PHENOMENA OP SEXUAL PERIODICITT. 119 
 
 Thursday, December 29, 1892. The peculiar feeling. 
 
 (This is the only entry.) 
 Thursday, February 9, 1893. The peculiar feeling. 
 
 (The diary notes that X. awoke nights to find erections, and 
 
 that the feeling continued until Sunday night following, when 
 
 there was an emission.) 
 
 Friday, March 27, 1893. The peculiar feeling. 
 
 (The diary notes that there was an emission the next night, 
 
 and that the feeling disappeared.) 
 Wednesday, May 3, 1893. The peculiar feeling. 
 
 ( The diary notes that it continued until Saturday night, when 
 
 X. had sexual relations, and that it then di^sappeared. ) 
 Wednesday, June 14, 1893. The peculiar feeling. 
 
 (The diary states that the next night X. had an emission, 
 
 and the disappearance of the feeling.) 
 Thursday, July 27, 1893. The peculiar feeling. 
 
 (The diary notes that it was apparent at about 3 o'clock 
 
 that afternoon. That night at 10 o'clock, X. had sexual 
 
 intercourse, and the feeling was not noted the next day.) 
 Friday, September 8, 1893. The peculiar feeling. 
 
 (Continued until Tuesday, the 11th, and then disappeared. 
 
 No sexual intercourse, and no nightly emission.) 
 Wednesday, October 25, 1893. The peculiar feeling. 
 
 (Continued until Saturday night, when there was a nightly 
 
 emission. ) 
 Saturday, December 9, 1893. The peculiar feeling. 
 
 (Continued until Monday night, when there was sexual 
 
 relations.) 
 
 It will be noted that the intervals observed were of about six weeks' 
 duration, excepting one, that from September to October, when it was 
 nearly seven weeks. 
 
 "These observations were not recorded after 1893. X. thinks that 
 in 1894 the intervals were longer, an opinion which is based on the 
 fact that for a period of six months he had no sexual intercourse and 
 no nightly emissions. The times during this six months when he had 
 the 'peculiar feeling,' the sensation was so slight as to he scarcely 
 noted. In 1895, the feeling seemed more pronounced than ever before, 
 and X. thinks that it may have recurred as often as once a month. In 
 1896, 1897, and 1898, the intervals, he thinks, lengthened — at times, 
 he thought, wholly disappeared. During 1899, while they did not recur 
 •often, when they did come the sensation was pronounced, although 
 
120 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 the emission was less common. There was a peculiar 'heavy' feeling 
 about the testicles, and a marked tendency towards erection of the 
 penis, especially at night-time (while sleeping). X. often awoke to 
 find a tense erection. Moreover, these feelings usually continued a. 
 week. 
 
 "1. In general, X. is of the opinion that as he grows older these 
 intervals lengthen, though this inference is not based on recorded data. 
 
 "2. He notes that a discharge (through sexual intercourse or in 
 sleep) invariably brings the peculiar feeling to a close for the time 
 being. 
 
 3. He notes that sexual intercourse at the time stops it; but, 
 when there has been sexual intercourse within a week or ten days of 
 the time (based upon the observations of 1893), that it had no tend- 
 ency to check the feeling." 
 
 In another case, that of F. C, an Irish farmer, born in Water- 
 ford, the data are still more meagre, though the periodicity is stated ' 
 to be very pronounced. He is chaste, steady, with occasional lapses 
 from strict sobriety, healthy and mentally normal, living a, regular 
 open-air life, far from the artificial stimuli of towns. The observa- 
 tions refer to a period when he was from 20 to 27 years of age. During 
 this period, nocturnal emissions occurred at regular intervals of ex- 
 actly a month. They were ushered in by fits of irritability and depres- 
 sion, and usually occurred in dreamless sleep. The discharges were 
 abundant and physically weakening, but they relieved the psychic 
 symptoms, though they occasioned mental distress, since F. C. is 
 scrupulous in a religious sense, and also apprehensive of bad consti- 
 tutional effects, the result of reading alarmist quack pamphlets. 
 
 In another case known to me, a young man leading a chaste life, 
 experienced crises of sexual excitement every ten to fourteen days, the 
 crisis lasting for several days. 
 
 Finally, an interesting contribution to this subject, suggested by 
 this Study, has been made and published (in the proceedings of the Am- 
 sterdam International Congress of Psychology, in 1907) by the well- 
 known Amsterdam neurologist and psychologist. Dr. L. S. A. M. Von 
 Romer under the title, "Ueber das Verhiiltniss zwischen Mondalter und 
 Sexualitat." Von Riimer's data are made up not of nocturnal involun- 
 tary emissions, but of the voluntary acts of sexual intercourse of an un- 
 married man, during a period of four years. Von Homer believes that 
 these, to a much greater extent than those of a married man, would be 
 liable to periodic influence, if such exist. On making a curve of exact 
 lunar length (similarly to Perry-Coste), he finds that there are, every 
 month, t-wo maxima and two minima, in a way that approximately re- 
 semble Perry-Coste's curve. The main point in Von Romer's results 
 is, however, the correspondence that he finds with the actual lunar 
 
THE PHENOMENA OP SEXUAL PEKIODICITY. 121 
 
 phases; the chief maximum occurs at the time of the full moon, and 
 the secondary maximum at the time of the new moon, the minima 
 being at the first and fourth quarters. He hazards no theory in 
 explanation of this coincidence, but insists on the need for further 
 observations. It will be seen that A. N.'s results (ante p. 117) seem in 
 the main to correspond to Von Romer's. 
 
III. 
 
 The Annual Sexual Rhythm — In Animals — In Man — Tendency of 
 the Sexual Impulse to become Heightened in Spring and Autumn — The 
 Prevalence of Seasonal Erotic Festivals — The Feast of Fools — The Easter 
 and Midsummer Bonfires — -The Seasonal Variations in Birthrate — The 
 Causes of those Variations — The Typical Conception-rate Curve for 
 Europe — The Seasonal Periodicity of Seminal Emissions During Sleep — 
 Original Observations — Spring and Autumn the Chief Periods of Involun- 
 tary Sexual Excitement — The Seasonal Periodicity of Rapes — Of Out- 
 breaks among Prisoners — The Seasonal Curves of Insanity and Suicide — 
 The Growth of Children According to Season — The Annual Curve of 
 Bread-consumption in Prisons — Seasonal Periodicity of Scarlet Fever — ■ 
 The Underlying Causes of these Seasonal Phenomena. 
 
 That there are annual seasonal changes in the human or- 
 ganism, especially connected with the sexual function, is a state- 
 ment that has been made by physiologists and others from time 
 to time, and the statement has even reached the poets, who have 
 frequently declared that spring is the season of love. 
 
 Thus, sixty years ago, Laycock, an acute pioneer in the investiga- 
 tion of the vi^orking of the human organism, brought together (in a 
 chapter on "The Periodic Movements in the Reproductive Organs of 
 Woman," in his Nervous Diseases of Women, 1840, pp. 61-70) much 
 interesting evidence to show that the system undergoes changes about 
 the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and that these changes are largely 
 sexual. 
 
 Edward Smith, also a notable pioneer in this field of human peri- 
 odicity, and, indeed, the first to make definite observations on a number 
 of points bearing on it, sums up, in his remarkable book. Health and 
 Disease as Influenced hy Daily, Seasonal, and Other Cyclical Changes in 
 the Human System (1861), to the effect that season is a more powerful 
 influence on the system than temperature or atmospheric pressure; "in 
 the early and middle parts of spring every function of the body is in 
 its highest degree of efficiency," while autumn is "essentially a period of 
 change from the minimum toward the maximum of vital conditions." 
 He found that in April and May most carbonic acid is evolved, there 
 being then a progressive diminution to September, and then a progressive 
 increase; the respiratory rate also fell from a maximum in April to a 
 minimum maintained at exactly the same level throughout August, Sep- 
 
 (122) 
 
THE PHENOMENA OP SEXUAL PEEIODICITT. 123 
 
 tember, October, and November; spring was found to be the season of 
 maximum, autumn of minimum, muscular power; sensibility to tactile 
 and temperature impressions was also greater in spring, 
 
 Kulischer, studying the sexual customs of various human races, 
 concluded that in primitive times, only at two special seasons — at spring 
 and in harvest- time — did pairing take place; and that, When pairing 
 ceased to be strictly confined to these periods, its symbolical representa- 
 tion was still so confined, even among the civilized nations of Europe. 
 He further argued that the physiological impulse was only felt at these 
 periods. (Kulischer, "Die geschlechtliche Zuchtwahl bei den Menschen 
 in der Urzeit," Zeitsohrift fur Ethnologie, 1876, pp. 152 and 157.) 
 Cohnstein ("Ueber Pradileetionszeiten bei Schwangerschaft," Arohiv 
 fiir Gyndkologie, 1879) also suggested that women sometimes only con- 
 ceive at certain periods of the year. 
 
 Wiltshire, who made various interesting observations regarding the 
 physiology of menstruation, wrote: "Many years ago, I concluded that 
 every women had a law peculiar to herself, which governed the times 
 of her bringing forth (and conceiving) ; that she was more prone to 
 bring forth at certain epochs than at others ; and subsequent researches 
 have established the accuracy of the forecast." He further stated his 
 belief in a, "primordial seasonal aptitude for procreation, the impress of 
 which still remains, and, to some extent, governs the breeding-times of 
 humanity." (A. Wiltshire, "Lectures on the Comparative Physiology of 
 Menstruation," British Medical Journal, March, 1883, pp. 502, etc.) 
 
 Westermarck, in a chapter of his History of Human Marriage, 
 dealing with the question of "A Human Pairing Season in Primitive 
 Times," brings forward evidence showing that spring, or, rather, early 
 summer, is the time for increase of the sexual instinct, and argues that 
 this is a survival of an ancient pairing season; spring, h% points out, 
 is a season of want, rather than abundance, for a frugivorous species, 
 but when men took to herbs, roots, and animal food, spring became a 
 time of abundance, and suitable for the birth of children. He thus con- 
 siders that in man, as in lower animals, the times of conception are 
 governed by the times most suitable for birth. 
 
 Eosenstadt, as we shall see later, also believes that men to-day 
 have inherited a physiological custom of procreating at a certain epoch, 
 and he thus accounts for the seasonal changes in the birthrate. 
 
 Heape, who also believes that "at one period of its existence the 
 human species had a special breeding season," follows Wiltshire in sug- 
 gesting that "there is some reason to believe that the human female is 
 not always in a condition to breed." (W. Heape, "Menstruation and 
 Ovulation of Maoacus rhesus," Philosophical Transactions, 1897; id. 
 "The Sexual Season of Mammals," Quarterly Journal Microscopical 
 Science, 1900.) 
 
124 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 Except, however, in one important respect, with which we 
 shall presently have to deal, few attempts have heen made to 
 demonstrate any annual organic sexual rhythm. The supposition 
 of such annual cycle is usually little more than a deduction from 
 the existence of the well-marked seasonal sexual rhythm ia ani- 
 mals. Most of the higher animals breed only once or twice a 
 year, and at such a period that the young are born when food 
 is most plentiful. At other periods the female is incapable of 
 breeding, and without sexual desires, while the male is either in 
 the same condition or in a condition of latent sexuality. Under 
 the influence of domestication, animals tend to lose the strict 
 periodicity of the wild condition, and become apt for breeding at 
 more frequent intervals. Thus among dogs in the wild state 
 the bitch only experiences heat once a year, in the spring. 
 Among domesticated dogs, there is not only the spring period 
 of heat, early in the year, but also an autumn period, about 
 six months later; the primitive period, however, remains the 
 most important one, and the best litters of pups are said to be 
 produced in the spring. The mare is in season in spring and 
 summer; sheep take the ram in autumn.^ Many of the men- 
 struating monkeys also, whether or not sexual desire is present 
 throughout the year, only conceive in spring and in autumn. 
 Almost any time of the year may be an animal's pairing season, 
 this season being apparently in part determined by the economic 
 conditions which will prevail at birth. While it is essential that 
 animals should be born during the season of greatest abundance, 
 it is equally essential that pairing, which involves great expendi- 
 ture of energy, should also take place at a season of maximum 
 physical vigor. 
 
 As an example of the sexual history of an animal through the 
 year, I may quote the following description, by Dr. A. W. Johnstone, 
 of the habits of the American deer: "Our common American deer, in 
 Avinter-time, is half-starved for lack of vegetation in the woods; the low 
 temperature, snow, and ice, make his conditions of life harder for lack 
 of the proper amount of food, whereby he becomes an easier prey to 
 carnivorous animals, pie has difficulty even in preserving life. In spring 
 he sheds his winter coat, and is provided with a suit of lighter hair, and 
 
 1 F. Smith, Veterinary Physiology ; Dalziel, The Collie. 
 
THE PHENOMEKTA OP SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 125 
 
 ■\vliile this is going on the male grows antlers for defence. The female 
 about this time is far along in pregnancy, and when the antlers are 
 fully grown she drops the fawn. When the fawns are dropped vegetation 
 is plentiful and lactation sets in. During this time the male is kept 
 fully employed in getting food and guarding his more or less helpless 
 family. As the season advances the vegetation increases and the fawn 
 begins to eat grass. When the summer heat commences the little streams 
 begin to dry up, and the animal once more has difSeulty in supporting 
 life because of the enervating heat, the effect of drought on the vegeta- 
 tion, and the distance which has to be traveled to get water ;» therefore, 
 fully ten months in each year the deer has all he can do to live without 
 extra exertion incident to rutting. Soon after the autumn rains com-i 
 mence vegetation becomes more luxurious, the antlers of the male and 
 new suits of hair for both are fully grown, heat of the summar is gone, 
 food and drink are plentiful everywhere, the fawns are weaned, and both 
 sexes are in the very finest condition. Then, and then only, in the whole 
 year, comes the rut, which, to them as to most other animals, means an 
 unwonted amount of physical exercise besides the everyday runs for 
 life from their natural enemies, and an unusual amount of energy is 
 used up. If a doe dislikes the attention of a special buck, miles of racing 
 result. If jealous males meet, furious battles take place. The strain on 
 both sexes could not possibly be endured at any other season of the 
 year. With approach of cold weather, climatic deprivations and winter 
 dangers commence and rut closes. In all wild animals, rut occurs only 
 when the climatic and other conditions favor the highest physical de- 
 velopment. This law holds good in all v;ild birds, for it is then only 
 that they can stand the strain incident to love-making. The common 
 American crow is a very good study. In the winter he travels around 
 the ricefields of the South, leading a tramp's existence in a country 
 foreign to him, and to which he goes only to escape the rigors of the 
 northern climate. For several weeks in the spring he goes about the 
 fields, gathering up the worms and grubs. After his long flight from the 
 South he experiences several weeks of an almost ideal existence, his food 
 is plentiful, he becomes strong and hearty, and then he turns to thoughts 
 of love. In the pairing season he does more work than at any other time 
 in the year: fantastic dances, racing and chasing after the females, and 
 savage fights with rivals. He endures more than would be possible in 
 his ordinary physical state. Then come the care of the young and the 
 long flights for water and food during the drought of the summer. After 
 the molt, autumn finds him once more in flock, and with the first frosts 
 he is off again to the South. In the wild state, rut is the capstone of 
 perfect physical condition." (A. W. Johnstone, "The Relation of Men- 
 struation to the other Reproductive Functions," American Journai of 
 Ohstetrios, vol. xxxii, 1895.) 
 
126 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 Wiltshire ("Lectures on the Comparative Physiology of Menstrua- 
 tion," British Medical Journal, March, 1888) and Westermarck {Bis- 
 tory of Human Marriage, Chapter II) enumerate the pairing season of 
 a number of different animals. 
 
 With regard to the breeding seasons of monkeys, little seems to be 
 positively known. Heape made special inquiries with reference to the 
 two species whose sexual life he investigated. He was informed tliat 
 Semnopithecus entellus breeds twice a year, in April and in October. 
 He accepts Aitcheson's statement that the Macaeus rhesus, in Simla, 
 copulates in October, and adds that in the very different climate of the 
 plains it appears to copulate in May. He concludes that the breeding 
 season varies greatly in dependence on climate, but believes that the 
 breeding season is always preserved, and that it affects the sexual apti- 
 tude of the male. He could not make his monkeys copulate during 
 February or March, but is unable to say whether or not sexual inter- 
 course is generally admitted outside the breeding season. He quotes the 
 observation of Breschet that monkeys copulate during pregnancy. 
 
 In primitive human races we very frequently trace pre- 
 cisely the same influence of the seasonal impulse as may be wit- 
 nessed in the higher animals, although among human races it 
 does not always result that the children are born at the time of 
 the greatest plenty, and on account of the development of human 
 skill such a result is not necessary. Thus Dr. Cook found among 
 the Eskimo that during the long winter nights the secretions 
 are diminished, muscular power is weak, and the passions are de- 
 pressed. Soon after the sun appears a kind of rut affects the 
 young population. They tremble with the intensity of sexual 
 passion, and for several weeks much of the time is taken up with 
 courtship and love. Hence, the majority of the children are born 
 nine months later, when the four months of perpetual night are 
 beginning. A marked seasonal periodicity of this kind is not 
 confined to the Arctic regions. We may also find it in the tropics. 
 In Cambodia, Mondiere has found that twice a year, in April 
 and September, men seem to experience a "veritable rut," and 
 will sometimes even kill women who resist them.^ 
 
 These two periods, spring and autumn — the season for greet- 
 ing the appearance of life and the season for reveling in its final 
 
 1 Mondiere, Art "Cambodgiens," Dictionnaire des Sciences Anthro- 
 pologiques. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 127 
 
 fruition — seem to be everywhere throughout the world the most 
 usual seasons for erotic festivals. In classical Greece and Borne, 
 in India, among the Indians of Korth and South Alnerica, spring 
 is the most usual season, while in Africa the yam harvest of 
 autumn is the season chiefly selected. There are, of course, 
 numerous exceptions to this rule, and it is common to find both 
 seasons observed. Taking, indeed, a broad view of festivals 
 throughout the world, we may say that there are four seasons 
 when they are held: the winter solstice, when the days begin to 
 lengthen and primitive man rejoices in the lengthening and 
 seeks to assist it ;^ the vernal equinox, the period of germination 
 and the return of life ; the summer solstice, when the sun reaches 
 its height; and autumn, the period of fruition, of thankfulness, 
 and of repose. But it is rarely that we find a people seriously 
 celebrating more than two of these festival seasons. 
 
 In Australia, according to Miiller as quoted by Ploss and 
 Bartels, marriage and conception take place during the warm 
 season, when there is greatest abundance of food, and to some 
 extent is even confined to that period. Oldfield and others state 
 that the Australian erotic festivals take place only in spring. 
 Among some tribes, Miiller adds, such as the Watschandis, con- 
 ception is inaugurated by a festival called haaro, which takes place 
 in the warm season at the first new moon after the yams are ripe. 
 The leading feature of this festival is a moonlight dance, repre- 
 senting the sexual act symbolically. With their spears, regarded 
 as the symbols of the male organ, the men attack bushes, which 
 
 1 This primitive aspect of the festival is well shown by the human 
 sacrifices which the ancient Mexicans offered at this time, in order to 
 enable the sun to recuperate his strength. The custom survives in a 
 symbolical form among the Mokis, who observe the festivals of the winter 
 solstice and the vernal equinox. ("Aspects of Sun-worship among the 
 Moki Indians," Nature, July 28, 1898.) The Walpi, a Tusayan people, 
 hold a similar great sun-festival at the winter solstice, and Deceniijer is 
 with them a sacred month, in which there is no work and little play. 
 This festival, in which there is a dance dramatizing the fructification of 
 the earth and the imparting of virility to the seeds of corn, is fully de- 
 scribed by J. Walter Fewkes (American Anthropologist, March, 1898). 
 That these solemn annual dances and festivals of North America fre- 
 quently merge into "a lecherous saturnalia" when "all is joy and hap- 
 piness," is stated by H. H. Bancroft (Native Races of Pacific States, 
 vol. i, p. 352). 
 
128 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 represent the female organs. They thus work themselves up to 
 a state of extreme sexual excitement. ^ Among the Papuans of 
 'New Guinea, also, according to Miklucho-Macleay, conceptions 
 chiefly occur at the end of harvest, and Guise describes the 
 great annual festival of the year which takes place at the time of 
 the yam and banana harvest, when the girls undergo a ceremony 
 of initiation and marriages are effected-^ In Central Africa, says 
 Sir H. H. Johnston, in his Central Africa, sexual orgies are 
 seriously entered into at certain seasons of the year, but he 
 neglects to mention what these seasons are. The people of New 
 Britain, according to Weisser (as quoted by Ploss and Bartels), 
 carefully guard their young girls from the young men. At cer- 
 tain times, however, a loud trumpet is blown in the evening, and 
 the girls are then allowed to go away into the bush to mix freely 
 with the young men. In ancient Peru (according to an account 
 derived from a pastoral letter of Archbishop Villagomez of 
 Lima), in December, when the fruit of the paltay is ripe, a 
 festival was held, preceded by a five days' fast. During the 
 festival, which lasted six days and six nights, men and women 
 met together in a state of complete nudity at a certain spot among 
 the gardens, and all raced toward a certain hill. Every man who 
 caught up with a woman in the race was bound at once to have 
 intercourse with her. 
 
 Very instructive, from our present point of view, is the 
 account given by Dalton, of the festivals of the various Bengal 
 races. Thus the Hos (a Kolarian tribe), of Bengal, are a purely 
 agricultural people, and the chief festival of the year with them 
 is the mdgh parah. It is held in the month of January, "when 
 the granaries are full of grain, and the people, to use their own 
 
 1 As regards the northern tribes of Central Australia, Spencer and 
 Gillen state that, during the performance of certain ceremonies which 
 bring together a large number of natives from different parts, the 
 ordinary marital rules are more or less set aside (Northern Tribes of 
 Central Australia, p. 136). Just in the same way, among the Siberian 
 Yakuts, according to Sieroshevski, during weddings and at the great 
 festivals of the year, the usual oversight of maidens is largely removed. 
 (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Jan.-June, 1901, p. 96.) 
 
 2 R. K. Guise, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1899, 
 pp. 214-216. 
 
THE PHE^lSrOMENA OF SEXUAL PEEIODIOITT. 129 
 
 expression, full of devilry." It is the festival of the harvest- 
 home, the termination of the year's toil, and is always held at 
 full moon. The festival is a saturnalia, when all rules of duty 
 and decorum are forgotten, and the utmost liberty is allowed to 
 women and girls, who become like bacchantes. The people be- 
 lieve that at this time both men aad women become overcharged 
 with vitality, and that a safety valve is absolutely necessary. 
 The festival begins with a religious sacrifice made by the village 
 priest or elders, and with prayers for the departed and for the 
 vouchsafing of seasonable rain and good crops. The religious 
 ceremonies over, the people give themselves up to feasting and 
 io drinking the home-made beer, the preparation of which from 
 fermented rice is one of a girl's chief accomplishments. "The 
 Ho population," wrote Dalton, "are at other seasons quiet and 
 reserved in manner, and in their demeanor toward women gentle 
 and decorous; even in their flirtations they never transcend the 
 hounds of decency. The girls, though fuU of spirits and some- 
 what saucy, have innate notions of propriety that make them 
 modest in demeanor, though devoid of all prudery, and of the 
 obscene abuse, so frequently heard from the lips of common 
 women in Bengal, they appear to have no knowledge. They are 
 delicately sensitive under harsh language of any kind, and never 
 use it to others; and since their adoption of clothing they are 
 careful to drape themselves decently, as well as gracefully; but 
 they throw all this aside during the mdgh feast. Their nature 
 appears to undergo a temporary change. Sons and daughters 
 revile their parents in gross language, and parents their children ; 
 men and women become almost like animals in the indulgence 
 of their amorous propensities. They enact all that was ever 
 portrayed by prurient artists in a bacchanalian festival or pandean 
 orgy ; and as the light of the sun they adore, and the presence of 
 numerous spectators, seems to be no restraint on their indulgence, 
 it cannot be expected that chastity is preserved when the shades 
 of night fall on such a scene of licentiousness and debauchery." 
 While, however, thus representing the festival as a mere debauch, 
 Dalton adds that relationships formed at this time generally end 
 in marriage. There is also a flower festival in April and May, 
 
130 PSTCIIOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 of religious nature, but the dances at this festival are quieter 
 in character.! 
 
 In Burmah the great festival of the year is the full moon 
 of October, following the Buddhist Lent season (vrhich is also 
 the "wet season), during which there is no sexual intercourse. 
 The other great festival is the New Year in March. ^ 
 
 In classical times the great festivals were held at the same 
 time as in northern and modern Europe. The brumalia took 
 place in midwinter, when the days were shortest, and the rosalia, 
 according to early custom in May or June, and at a later time 
 about Easter. After the establishment of Christianity the Church 
 made constant efforts to suppress this latter festival, and it was 
 referred to by an eighth century council as "a wicked and repre- 
 hensible holiday-making." These festivals appear to be inti- 
 mately associated with Dionysus worship, and the flower-festival 
 of Dionysus, as well as the Eoman Liberales in honor of Bacchus, 
 was celebrated in March with worship of Priapus. The festivals 
 of the Delian Apollo and of Artemis, both took place during the 
 first week in May and the Eoman Bacchanales in October.^ 
 
 The mediaeval Feast of Fools was to a large extent a seasonal 
 orgy licensed by the Church. It may be traced directly back 
 through the barbatories of the lower empire to the Eoman 
 saturnalia, and at Sens, the ancient ecclesiastical metropolis of 
 France, it was held at about the same time as the saturnalia, on 
 
 1 Daltoii, Ethnology of Bengal, pp. 196 et seq. W. Crooke [Jour- 
 nal of the Anthropological Institute, p. 243, 1899) also refers to the 
 annual harvest-tree dance and saturnalia, and its association with the 
 seasonal period for marriage. VVe find a similar phenomenon in the 
 Malay Peninsula: "In former days, at harvest-time, the Jakuns kept 
 an annual festival, at which, the entire settlement having been called 
 together, fermented liquor, brewed from jungle fruits, was drunk; and 
 to the accompaniments of strains of their rude and incondite music, both 
 sexes, crowning themselves with fragrant leaves and flowers, indulged 
 in bouts of singing and dancing, which grew gradually wilder through- 
 out the night, and terminated in a strange kind of sexual orgie." (W. 
 W. Skeat, "The Wild Tribes of the Malay Peninsula," Journal of the An- 
 thropological Institute, 1902, p. 133.) 
 
 2 Fielding Hall, The Soul of a People, 1898, Chapter XIII. 
 
 3 See e.g., L. Dyer, Studies of the Gods in Greece, 1891, pp. 86-89, 
 375, etc. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OP SEXUAL PEHIODIOITY. 131 
 
 the Feast of the Circumcision, i.e., 'New Year's Day. It was not, 
 however, always held at this time; thus at Bvreux it took place 
 on the 1st of May.^ 
 
 The Easter bonfires of northern-central Europe, the Mid- 
 summer (St. John's Eve) iires of southern-central Europe, still 
 bear witness to the ancient festivals.^. There is certainly a con- 
 nection between these bonfires and erotic festivals; it is note- 
 worthy that they occur chiefly at the period of spring and early 
 summer, which, on other grounds, is widely regarded as the time 
 for the increase of the sexual instinct, while the less frequent 
 period for the bonfires is that of the minor sexual climax. Mann- 
 hardt was perhaps the first to show how intimately these spring 
 and early summer festivals — ^held with bonfires and dances and 
 the music of violin — ^have been associated with love-making and 
 the choice of a mate.^ In spring, the first Monday in Lent 
 (Quadrigesima) and Easter Eve were frequent davs for such bon- 
 fires. In May, among the Franks of the Main, the unmarried 
 women, naked and adorned with flowers, danced on the Blocksberg 
 before the men, as described by Herbels in the tenth century.* 
 In the central highlands of Scotland the Beltane fires were 
 kindled on the 1st of May. Bonfires sometimes took place on 
 
 1 For a popular account of the Feast of Fools, see Lolige, "La Fete 
 des Fous," Revue des Bevues, May 15, 1898; also, J. G. Bourke, Scato- 
 logio Rites of all Nations, pp. 11-23. 
 
 2 J. Grimm (Teutonic Mythology, p. 615) points out that the 
 observance of the spring or Easter bonfires marks off the Saxon from 
 the Franconian peoples. The Easter bonfires are held in Lower Saxony, 
 Westphalia, Lower Hesse, Geldern, Holland, Friesland, Jutland, and 
 Zealand. The Midsummer bonfires are held on the Rhine, in Franconia, 
 Thuringia, Swabia, Bavaria, Austria, and Silesia. Schwartz {Zeitschrift 
 fur Ethnologie, 1896, p. 151) shows that at Lauterberg, in the Harz 
 Mountains, the line of demarcation between these two primitive districts 
 may still be clearly traced. 
 
 3 Wald und Feldkulte, 1875, vol. i, pp. 422 et seq. He also mem- 
 tlons (p. 458) that St. Valentine's Day (14th of February), — or Ember 
 Day, or the last day of February, — when the pairing of birds was sup- 
 posed to take place, was associated, especially in Eugland, with love- 
 making and the choice of a mate. In Lorraine, it may be added, on 
 the 1st of May, the young girls chose young men as their valentines, 
 a custom known by this name to Eabelais. 
 
 4 Eochholz, Drei gaugottinnen, p. 37. 
 
132 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 V 
 
 Halloween (October 31st) and Christmas. But the great season 
 all over Europe for these bonfires, then often held with erotic 
 ceremonial, is the summer solstice, the 23d of June, the eve of 
 Midsummer, or St. John's Day.^ 
 
 The Bohemians and other Slavonic races formerly had meet- 
 ings with sexual license. This was so up to the beginniag of 
 the sixteenth century on the banks of rivers near Novgorod. 
 The meetings took place, as a rule, the day before the Festival 
 of John the Baptist, which, in pagan times, was that of a divinity 
 known by the name of Jarilo (equivalent to Priapus). Half a 
 century later, a new ecclesiastical code sought to abolish every 
 vestige of the early festivals held on Christmas Day, on the Day 
 of the Baptism of Our Lord, and on John the Baptist's Day. A 
 general feature of all these festivals (says Kowalewsky) was the 
 prevalence of the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes. Among 
 the Ehstonians, at the end of the eighteenth century, thousands of 
 persons would gather around an old ruined church (in the Fellin- 
 schen) on the Eve of St. John, light a bonfire, and throw sacri- 
 ficial gifts into it. Sterile women danced naked among the ruins ; 
 much eating and drinking went on, while the young men and 
 maidens disappeared into the woods to do what they would. 
 Festivals of this character still take place at the end of June in 
 
 IMannhardt, ibid., pp. 466 et seq. Also J. G. Frazer, Golden 
 Bough, vol ii. Chapter IV. For further facts and references, see K. 
 Pearson {The Chances of Death, 1897, vol, ii, "Woman as Witch," 
 "Kindred Group-marriage," and Appendix on "The 'Mailehn' and 'Kilt- 
 gang,' " ) ■who incidentally brings together some of the evidence concern- 
 ing primitive sex-festivals in Europe. Also, E. Hahn, Demeter und 
 Bailho, 1806, pp. 3'8-40; and for some modern survivals, see Deniker, 
 Races of Man, 1900, Chapter III. On a lofty tumulus near the mega- 
 lilhie remains at Carnac, in Brittany, the custom still prevails of 
 lighting a large bonfire at the time of the summer solstice; it is 
 called Tan Heol, or Tan St. Jean. In Ireland, the bonfires also take 
 place on St. John's Eve, and a correspondent, who has often witnessed 
 them in County Waterford, writes that "women, with garments raised, 
 jump through these fires; and conduct which, on ordinary occasions 
 would be reprobated, is regarded as excusable and harmless." Outside 
 Europe, the Berbers of Morocco still maintain this midsummer festival, 
 and in the Rif they light bonfires; here the fires seem to be now re- 
 garded as mainly purificatory, but they are associated with eating 
 ceremonies which are still regarded as mvtltiplicative. ( Westermarck, 
 "Midsummer Customs in Morocco, Folk-Lore, March, 1905.) 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PEEIODICITT. 133 
 
 some districts. Young tmmarried couples jump barefoot oTer 
 large fires, usually near rivers or ponds. Licentiousness is rare.^ 
 But in many parts of Eussia the peasants still attach, little value 
 to virginitjf, and even prefer women who have been mothers. 
 The population of the Grisons in the sixteenth century held 
 regular meetings not less licentious than those of the Cossacks. 
 These were abolished by law. Kowalewsky regards all such cus- 
 toms as a survival of early forms of promiscuity. ^ 
 
 Frazer {Golden. Bough, 2d ed., 1900, vol. iii, pp. 236-350) fully de- 
 scribes and discusses the dances, bonfires and festivals of spring and sum- 
 mer, of Halloween (October 31), and Christmas. He also explains tho 
 sexual character of these festivals. "There are clear indications," lie 
 observes (p. 305), "that even human fecundity 'is supposed to be pro- 
 moted by the genial heat of the fires. It is an Irish belief that a girl 
 who jumps thrice over the midsummer bonfire will soon marry and 
 become the mother of many children; and in various parts of Franc© 
 they think that if a girl dances round nine fines she will be sure to 
 marry within a, year. On the other hand, in Leehrain, people say that 
 if a young man and woman, leaping over the midsummer fire together, 
 escape unsmirched, the young woman will not become a mother within 
 twelve months — the flames have not touched and fertilized her. The 
 rule observed in some parts of France and Belgium, that the bonfires on 
 the first Sunday in Lent should be kindled by the person who was 
 last married, seems to belong to the same class of ideas, whether it 
 be that such a person is supposed to receive from, or impart to, the 
 fire a generative and fertilizing influence. The common practice of 
 lovers leaping over the fires hand-in-hand may very well have origin- 
 ated in a notion that thereby their marriage would be more likely 
 to be blessed with offspring. And the scenes of profligacy which appear 
 to have marked the midsummer celebration among the Ehstonians, as 
 they once marked the celebration of May Day among ourselves, may 
 
 IMannhardt {op. cit., p. 469) quotes a description of an Ehsto- 
 nian festival in the Island of Moon, when the girls dance in a circle 
 round the fire, and one of them, — to the envy of the rest, and the pride 
 of her own family,^— is chosen by the young men, borne away so violently 
 that her clothes are often torn, and thrown down by a youth, who 
 places one leg over her body in a kind of symbolical coitus, and lies 
 quietly by her side till morning. The spring festivals of the young 
 people of Ukrainia, in which, also, there is singing, dancing, and sleep- 
 ing together, are described in "Folk-Lore de I'Ukrainie." KpyirrdSia, vol. 
 V, pp. 2-6, and vol. viii, pp. 303 et seq. 
 
 2M. Kowalewsky, "Marriage Among the Early Slavs," Folk-Lore, 
 December, 1890. 
 
134 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 have sprung, not from the mere license of holiday-makers, but from 
 a crude notion that such orgies were justified, if not required, by some 
 mysterious bond which linked the life of man to the courses of the 
 heavens at the turning-point of the year." 
 
 As regards these primitive festivals, although the evidence 
 is scattered and sometimes obscure, certain main conclusions 
 clearly emerge. In early Europe there were, according to Grimm, 
 only tviro seasons, sometimes regarded as spring and winter, 
 sometimes as spring and autumn, and for mythical purposes these 
 seasons were alone available.^ The appearance of each of these 
 two seasons was inaugurated by festivals which were religious and 
 often erotic in character. The Slavonic year began in March, at 
 which time there was formerly, it is believed, a great festival, 
 not only in Slavonic but also in Teutonic countries. In North- 
 ern Germany there were Easter bonfires always associated with 
 mountains or hills. The Celtic bonfires were held at the begin- 
 ning of May, while the Teutonic May-day, or Walpurgisnacht, 
 is a very ancient sacred festival, associated with erotic ceremonial, 
 and regarded by Grimm as having a common origin with the 
 Eoman floralia and the Greek dionysia. Thus, in Europe, Grimm 
 concludes : "there are four different ways of welcoming summer. 
 In Sweden and Gothland a battle of winter and summer, a 
 triumphal entry of the latter. In Schonen, Denmark, Lower 
 Saxonj', and England, simply May-riding, or fetching of the May- 
 wagon. On the Rhine merely a battle of winter and summer, 
 without immersion, without the pomp of an entry. In Eranconia, 
 Thuringia, Meissen, Silesia, and Bohemia only the carrying out 
 of wintry death; no battle, no formal introduction of summer. 
 Of these festivals the first and second fall in May, the third and 
 fourth in March. In the first two, the whole population take 
 part with unabated enthusiasm; in the last two only the lower 
 poorer class. . . . Everything goes to prove that the ap- 
 proach of summer was to our forefathers a holy tide, welcomed 
 
 1 A. Tille, however [Yule and Christmas, 1899), while admitting 
 that the general Aryan division of the year was dual, follows Tacitus 
 in asserting that the Germanic division of the year (like the Egyptian) 
 was tripartite: winter, spring, and summer. 
 
THE PHENOMElsrA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 135 
 
 by sacrifice, feast, and dance, and largely governing and bright- 
 ening the people's life."i The early spring festival of March, the 
 festival of Ostara, the goddess of spring, has become identified 
 with the Christian festival of Eesurrection (just as the summer 
 solstice festival has been placed beneath the patronage of St. 
 John the Baptist) ; but there has been only an amalgamation of 
 closely-allied rites, for the Christian festival also may be traced 
 back to a similar origin. Among the early Arabians the great 
 ragab feast, identified by Ewald and Kobertson Smith with the 
 Jewish paschal feast, fell in the spring or early summer, when 
 the camels and other domestic animals brought forth their young 
 and the shepherds offered their sacrifices.^ Babylonia, the 
 supreme early centre of religious and cosmological culture, pre- 
 sents a more decisive example of the sex festival. The festival 
 of Tammuz is precisely analogous to the European festival of St. 
 John's Day. Tammuz was the solar god of spring vegetation, 
 and closely associated with Ishtar, also an agricultural deity of 
 fertility. The Tammuz festival was, in the earliest times, held 
 toward the summer solstice, at the time of the first wheat and 
 barley harvest. In Babylonia, as in primitive Europe, there 
 were only two seasons; the festival of Tammuz, coming at the 
 end of winter and the beginning of summer, was a fast followed 
 by a feast, a time of mourning for winter, of rejoicing for sum- 
 mer. It is part of the primitive function of sacred ritual to be 
 symbolical of natural processes, a mysterious representation of 
 natural processes with the object of bringing them about.^ The 
 Tammuz festival was an appeal to the powers of Nature to ex- 
 hibit their generative functions; its erotic character is indicated 
 not only by the well-known fact that the priestesses of Ishtar 
 (the Kadishtu, or "holy ones") were prostitutes, but by the state- 
 ments in Babylonian legends concerning the state of the earth 
 during Ishtar's winter absence, when the bull, the ass, and man 
 
 1 Grimm, Teutonic Mythology (English translation by Stallv- 
 brass), pp. 612-630, 779, 788. 
 
 2 Wellhausen, Reste Arabischen Beidentums, 1897, p. 98. 
 
 3 See, e.g., the chapter on ritual in GSrard-Varet's interesting book. 
 L'Ignorance et I'Irreflexion, 1899, for a popular account of this and 
 allied primitive conceptions. 
 
136 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 ceased to reproduce. It is evident that the return of spring, 
 coincident with the Tammuz festival, was regarded as the period 
 for the return of the reproductive instinct even in man.i So 
 that along this line also we are led back to a great procreative 
 festival. 
 
 Thus the great spring festivals were held between March 
 and June, frequently culminating in a great orgy on Midsummer's 
 Eve. The next great season of festivals in Europe was in 
 autumn. The beginning of August was a great festival in Celtic 
 lands, and the echoes of it, Ehys remarks, have not yet died out 
 in Wales.2 The beginning of ISTovember, both in Celtic and Teu- 
 tonic countries, was a period of bonfires.^ In Germanic coun- 
 tries especially there was a great festival at the time. The Ger- 
 manic year began at Martinmas (November 11th), and the great 
 festival of the year was then held. It is the oldest Germanic 
 festival on record, and retained its importance even iiL the Mid- 
 dle Ages. There was feasting all night, and the cattle that were 
 to be killed were devoted to the gods; the goose was associated 
 with this festival.^ These autumn festivals culminated in the 
 great festival of the winter solstice which we have perpetuated 
 
 1 Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia, especially pp. 485, 571; regard- 
 ing the priestesses, Jastrow remarks : "Among many nations, the mys- 
 terious aspects of woman's fertility lead to rites that, by a perversion of 
 their original import, appear to be obscene. The prostitutes were priest- 
 esses attached to the Ishtar cult, and who took part in ceremonies in- 
 tended to symbolize fertility." Whether there is any significance in the 
 fact that the first two months of the Babylonian year (roughly corre- 
 sponding to our March and April), when we should expect births to be 
 at a maximum, were dedicated to Ea and Bel, who, according to varying 
 legends, were the creators of man, and that New Year's Day was the 
 festival of Bau, regarded as the mother of mankind, I cannot say, but the 
 suggestion may be put forward. 
 
 2 Celtic Heathendom, p. 421. 
 
 3 Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, p. 1465. In England, the Novem- 
 ber, bonfires have become merged into the Guy Fawkes celebrations. In 
 the East, the great primitive autumn festivals seem to have fallen some- 
 what earlier. In Babylonia, the seventh month (roughly corresponding 
 to September) was specially sacred, though nothing is known of its festi- 
 vals, and this also was the sacred festival month of the Hebrews, and 
 originally of the Arabs. In Europe, among the southern Slavs, the 
 Heigen, or Kolo — wild dances by girls, adorned with flowers, and with 
 skirts girt high, followed by sexual intercourse — take place in autumn, 
 during the nights following harvest time. 
 
 4 A. Tille, Yule and Christmas, p. 21, etc. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 137 
 
 in the celebrations of Cliristnias and New Year. Thus, while the 
 two great primitive culminating festivals of spring and autumn 
 correspond exactly (as we shall see) with the seasons of maximum 
 fecundation, even in the Europe of to-day, the earlier spring 
 (March) and — though less closely — autumn (November) fes- 
 tivals correspond with the periods of maximum spontaneous 
 sexual disturbance, as far as I have been able to obtain precise 
 evidence of such disturbance. That the maximum of physio- 
 logical sexual excitement should tend to appear earlier than the 
 maximum of fecundation is a result that might be expected. 
 
 The considerations so far brought forward clearly indicate 
 that among primitive races there are frequently one or two 
 seasons in the year — especially spring and autumn — during 
 which sexual intercourse is chiefly or even exclusively carried 
 on, and they further indicate that these primitive customs per- 
 sist to some extent even in Europe to-day. It would still remain 
 to determine whether any such influence affects the whole 
 mass of the civilized population and determines the times at 
 which intercourse, or fecundation, most frequently takes place. 
 
 This question can be most conveniently answered by study- 
 ing the seasonal variation in the birthrate, calculating back to 
 the time of conception. Wargentin, in Sweden, first called at- 
 tention to the periodicity of the birthrate in 1767.1 The matter 
 seems to have attracted little further attention until Quetelet, 
 who instinctively scented unreclaimed fields of statistical investi- 
 gation, showed that in Belgium and Holland there is a maximum 
 of births in February, and, consequently, of conceptions in May, 
 and a minimum of births about July, with consequent minimum 
 of conceptions in October. Quetelet considered that the spring 
 maximum of conceptions corresponded to an increase of vitality 
 after the winter cold. He pointed out that this sexual climax 
 was better marked in the country than in towns, and accounted 
 
 1 Long before Wargentin, however, Eabelais had shown some in- 
 terest in this question, and had found that there were most christenings in 
 October and November, this showing, he pointed out, that the early 
 warmth of spring influenced the number of conceptions {Pantagruel, liv. 
 V, Ch. XXIX). The spring maximum of conceptions is not now so early 
 in France. 
 
138 PSYCHOLOGY OP SEX. 
 
 for this by the consideration that in the country the winter cold 
 is more keenly felt. Later, Wappaus investigated the matter in 
 various parts of northern and southern Europe as well as in Chile, 
 and found that there was a maximum of conceptions in May and 
 June attributable to season, and in Catholic countries strength- 
 ened by customs connected with ecclesiastical seasons. This 
 maximum was, he found, followed by a mimimum in September, 
 October, and November, due to gradually increasing exhaustion, 
 and the influence of epidemic diseases, as well as the strain of 
 harvest-work. The minimum is reached in the south earlier 
 than in the north. About November conceptions again become 
 more frequent, and reach the second maximum at about Christ- 
 mas and New Year. This second maximum is very slightly 
 marked in southern countries, but strongly marked in northern 
 countries (in Sweden the absolute maximum of conceptions is 
 reached in December), and is due, in the opinion of Wappaus, 
 solely to social causes. Villerme reached somewhat similar re- 
 sults. Founding his study on 17,000,000 births, he showed that 
 in France it was in April, May, and June, or from the spring 
 equinox to the summer solstice, and nearer to the solstice than 
 the equinox, that the maximum of fecundations takes place; 
 while the minimum of births is normally in July, but is retarded 
 by a wet and cold summer in such a manner that in August there 
 are scarcely more births than in July, and, on the other hand, a 
 very hot summer, accelerating the minimum of births, causes it 
 to fall in June instead of in July.i He also showed that in 
 Buenos Ayres, where the seasons are reversed, the conception- 
 rate follows the reversed seasons, and is also raised by epochs of 
 repose, of plentiful food, and of increased social life. Sormani 
 studied the periodicity of conception in Italy, and found that 
 the spring maximum in the southern provinces occurs in May, 
 and gradually falls later as one proceeds northward, until, in the 
 extreme north of the peninsula, it occurs in July. In southern- 
 Italy there is only one maximum and one minimum ; in the north 
 there are two. The minimum which follows the spring or sum- 
 
 1 Villermg, "Ue !a Distribution par mois dea conceptions," Annates 
 d'BygUne Publique, tome v, 1831, pp. 55-155. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PEEIODICITY. 139 
 
 mer maximum increases as we approach the south, while the 
 minimum associated with the winter cold increases as we ap- 
 proach the north. 1 Beukemann, who studied the matter in vari- 
 ous parts of Germany, found that seasonal influence was specially- 
 marked in the case of illegitimate births. The maximum of con- 
 ceptions of illegitimate children takes place in the spring and 
 summer of Europe generally; in Eussia it takes place in the 
 autumn and winter, when the harvest-working months for the 
 population are over, and the period of rest, and also of minimum 
 deathrate (September, October, and ITovember), comes round. 
 In Eussia the general conception-rate has been studied by various 
 investigators. Here the maximum number of conceptions is in 
 winter, the minimum varying among different elements of the 
 population. Looked at more closely, there are maxima of con- 
 ceptions in Eussia in January and in April. (In Eussian towns, 
 however, the maximum number of conceptions occurs in the 
 autumn.) The special characteristics of the Eussian conception- 
 rate are held to be due to the prevalence of marriages in autumn 
 and winter,^ to the severely observed fasts of spring, and to the 
 exhausting harvest-work of summer. 
 
 It is instructive to compare the conception-rate of Europe 
 with that of a non-European country. Such a comparison has 
 been made by S. A. Hill for the ISTorthwest Provinces of India. 
 Here the Holi and other erotic festivals take place in spring ; but 
 spring is not the period when conceptions chiefly take place ; in- 
 deed, the prevalence of erotic festivals in spring appears to Hill 
 an argument in favor of those festivals having originated in a 
 colder climate. The conceptions show a rise through October 
 and ISTovember to a maximum in .December and January, followed 
 by a steady and prolonged fall to a minimum in September. This 
 curve can be accounted for by climatic and economic conditions. 
 September is near the end of the long and depressing hot season, 
 
 1 Sormani, Oiornale di Medicina Militare, 1870. 
 
 2 Throughout Europe, it may be said, marriages tend to take place 
 cither in spring or autumn (Oettinger Moralstatistik, p. 181, gives de- 
 tails). That is to say, that there is a tendency for marriages to take 
 place at the season of the great public festivals, during which sexual 
 intercourse was prevalent in more primitive times. 
 
140 PSYCHOLOGY 01' SEX. 
 
 when malarial influences are rapidly increasing to a maximum, 
 the food-supply is nearly exhausted, and there is the greatest 
 tendency to suicide. With October it forms the period of greatest 
 mortality. December, on the other hand, is the month when 
 food is most abundant, and it is also a very healthy month.i 
 
 For a summary of the chief researches into this question, see PIoss 
 and Bartels, Das Weih; also, Eosenstadt, "Zur Frage nach den Ursachen 
 welche die Zahl der Conceptionen, etc,'' Mittheilungen aus den embryo- 
 logischen Institute Universitdt TVien, second series, fase. 4, 1890. Rosen- 
 stadt concludes that man has inherited from animal ancestors a 
 "physiological custom" ^yhieh has probably been further favored by 
 climatic and social conditions. "Primitive man," he proceeds, "had 
 inherited from his ancestors the faculty of only reproducing himself 
 at determined epochs. On the arrival of this period of rut, fecunda- 
 tion took place on a large scale, this being very easy, "thanks to the 
 promiscuity in which primitive man lived. With the development of 
 civilization, men give themselves up to sexual relations all the year 
 around, but the 'physiological custom' of procreating at a certain epoch 
 has not completely disappeared; it remains as a survival of the animal 
 condition, and manifests itself in the recrudescence of the number of 
 conceptions during certain months of the year.'' 0. Rosenbach 
 ( "Bemerkungen iiber das Problem einer Brunstzeit beim Menschen," 
 Archiv fiir Rassen und Gesellschafts-Biologie, Bd. Ill, Heft 5) has also 
 argued in favor of a chief sexual period in the year in man, with 
 secondary and even tertiary climaxes, in March, August, and December. 
 He finds that in some families, for several generations, birthdays tend 
 to fall in the same months, but his paper is, on the whole, inconclusive. 
 
 Some years ago. Prof. J. B. Haycraft argued, on the basis of data 
 furnished by Scotland, that the conception-rate corresponds to the tem- 
 perature-curve (Haycraft, "Physiological Results of Temperature Vari- 
 ation, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxix, 
 1880). "Temperature," he concluded, "is the main factor regulating the 
 variations in the number of conceptions which occur during the year. 
 It increases their number with its elevation, and this on an average of 
 0.5 per cent, for an elevation of 1° F." Whether or not this theory may 
 fit the facts as regards Scotland, it is certainly altogether untenable 
 when we take a broader view of the phenomena. 
 
 Recently Dr. Paul Gaedeken of Copenhagen has argued in a de- 
 tailed statistical study ("La Reaction de I'Organisme sous I'Influence 
 Physico-Chimiques des Agents MgtSorologiques," Archives d'Anthropologie 
 
 1 Hill, Nature, July 12, 1888. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OP SEZUAL PERIODICITY. 141 
 
 Criminelle, Feb., 1909 ) that the conception-rate, as well as the periodicity 
 of suicide and allied phenomena, is due to the action of the chemical 
 rays on the unpigmented slcin in early spring, this action being physio- 
 logically similar to that of alcohol. He seeks thus to account for the 
 marked and early occurrence of such periodic phenomena in Greenland 
 and other northern countries where there is much chemical action 
 (owing to the clear air) in early spring, but little heat. This explana- 
 tion would not cover an autumnal climax, the existence of which 
 Gaedeken denies. 
 
 In order to obtain a fairly typical conception-curve for Eu- 
 rope, and to allow the variations of local habit and custom to 
 some extent to annihilate each other, I have summated the 
 figures given by Mayr for about a quarter of a million births 
 in Germany, France, and Italy,i obtaining a curve (Chart 2) 
 of the conception-rate which may be said roughly to be that 
 of Europe generally. If we begin at September as the lowest 
 point, we find an autumn rise culminating in the lesser maxi- 
 mum of Christmas, followed by a minor depression in January 
 and February. Then comes the great spring rise, culminating in 
 May, and followed after June by a rapid descent to the 
 minimum. 
 
 In Canada (see e.g., Report of the Registrar General of the 
 Province of Ontario for 1904), the maximum and minimum of con- 
 ceptions alike fall later than in Europe; the months of maximum con- 
 ception are June, July, and August; of minimum conception, January, 
 February, and March. June is the favorite month for marriage. 
 
 It would be of some interest to know the conception-curve for 
 the well-to-do classes, who are largely free from the industrial and 
 social influences which evidently, to a great extent, control the con- 
 ception-rate. It seems probable that the seasonal influence would here 
 be specially well shown. The only attempt I have made in this direc- 
 tion is to examine a well-filled birthday-book. The entries show a very 
 high and equally maintained maximum of conceptions throughout April, 
 May and June, followed by a marked minimum during the next three 
 months, and an autumn rise very strongly marked, in November. There 
 is no December rise. As will be seen, there is here a fairly exact re- 
 semblance to the yearly ecbolic curve of people of the same class. The 
 inquiry needs, however, to be extended to a very much larger number 
 of cases. 
 
 1 G. Mayr, Die Oesetzmdssigkeit im Oesellschafislehen, 1877, p. 240. 
 
142 PSYCHOLOGY OP SEX. 
 
 Mr. Jolm Douglass Brown, of Philadelphia, has kindly prepared 
 and sent me, since the above was written, a series of curves showing thb 
 annual periodicity of births among the educated classes in the State 
 of Pennsylvania, using the statistics as to 4,066 births contained in the 
 Biographical Catalogue of Matriculates of the College of the University 
 of Pennsylvania. Mr. Brown prepared four curves: the first, covering the 
 earliest period, 1757-1859; the second, the period 1860-1876;, the third, 
 1877-1893; while the fourth presented the summated results for the 
 whole period. (The dates named are those of the entry to classes, and 
 not of actual occurrence of birth.) A very definite and well-marked 
 curve is shown, and the average number of births (not conceptions) 
 per day, for the whole period, is as follows: — 
 
 Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. 
 10.5 11.4 11 8.3 10.2 10.5 11.5 12.6 12.3 11.6 12 11.7 
 
 There is thus a well-marked minimum of conceptions (a depression 
 appearing here in each of the three periods, separately) about the month 
 of July. (In the second period, however, which contains the smallest num- 
 ber of births, the minimum occurs in September.) From that low 
 minimum there is steady and unbroken rise up to the chief maximum 
 in November. (In the first period, however, the maximum is delayed 
 till January, and in' the second period it is somewhat diffused.) There 
 is a tendency to a minor maximum in February, specially well marked 
 in the third and most important period, and in the first period de- 
 layed until March. 
 
 A very curious and perhaps not accidental coincidence might 
 be briefly pointed out before we leave this part of the subject. 
 It is fOund^ by taking 3000 cases of children dying under one 
 year that, among the general population, children born in Feb- 
 ruary and September (and therefore conceived in May and De- 
 cember) appear to possess the greatest vitality, and those born in 
 June, and, therefore, conceived in September, the least vitality.^ 
 As we have seen. May and December are precisely the periods 
 
 1 Kdward Smith {EeaUh and Disease), who attributes this to the 
 lessened vitality of offspring at that season. Beukemann also states that 
 children born in September have most vitality. 
 
 2 Westermarck has even suggested that the December maximum 
 of conceptions may be due to better chance of survival for September 
 offspring (Eiiman Marriage, Chapter II). It may be noted that though 
 the maximum of conceptions is in May, relatively the smallest propor- 
 tion of boys is conceived at that time. (Rauber, Der Ueberschuss an 
 Knabengehiirterb, p. 39.) 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 143 
 
 when conceptions in Europe generally are at a maximum, and 
 September is precisely the period when they are at a minimum, 
 so that, if this coincidence is not accidental, the strongest children 
 are conceived when there is the strongest tendency to procreate, 
 and the feeblest children when that tendency is feeblest. 
 
 Nelson, in his study of dreams and their relation to seasonal 
 ecbolic manifestations, does not present any yearly ecbolic curve, 
 as the two years and a half over which his observations extend 
 scarcely supply a sufficient basis. On examining his figures, 
 however, I find there is a certain amount of evidence of a yearly 
 rhythm. There are spring and autumn climaxes throughout (in 
 February and in November) ; there is no December rise. 
 During one year there is a marked minimum from May to 
 September, though it is but slightly traceable in the succeed- 
 ing year. These figures are too uncertain to prove anything, Ijut, 
 as far as they go, they are in fair agreement with the much more 
 extensive record, that of W. K. (ante p. 113), whichi have already 
 made use of in discussing the question of a monthly rhythm. 
 This record, covering nearly twelve years, shows a general tend- 
 ency, when the year is divided into four periods (November- 
 January, Februarj'-April, May-July, August-October) and the 
 results summated, to rise steadily throughout, from the minimum 
 in the winter period to the maximum in the autumn period. 
 This steady upward progress is not seen in each year taken 
 separately. In three years there is a fall in passing from the 
 November- January to the February- April quarter (always fol- 
 lowed by a rise in the subsequent quarter) ; in three cases there 
 is a fall in passing from the second to the third quarter (again 
 always followed by a rise in the following quarter), and in two 
 successive years there is a fall in passing from the third to the 
 fourth quarter. If, however, beginning at the second year, we 
 summate the results for each year with those for all previous 
 years, a steady rise from season to season is seen throughout. If 
 we analyze the data according to the months of the year, still 
 more precise and interesting results (as shown in the curve. 
 Chart 3) are obtained; two maximum points are seen, one in 
 spring (March), one in autumn (October, or, rather, August- 
 
144 PSTCHOLOGT OF BEX. 
 
 October), and each of these maximum points is followed by a 
 steep and sudden, descent to the minimum points in April and in 
 December. If -we compare this result with Perry-Coste's, also 
 extending over a long series of years, we find a marked similar- 
 ity. In both alike there are spring and autumn maxima, in both 
 the autumn maximum is the highest, and in both also there is an 
 intervening fall. In both eases, again, the maxima are followed 
 by steep descents, but while in both the spring maximum occurs 
 in March, in Perry-Coste's case the second maximum, though of 
 precisely similar shape, occurs earlier, in June-September instead 
 of August-October. In Perry-Coste's case, also, there is an 
 apparently abnormal tendency, only shown in the more recent 
 years of the record, to an additional maximum in January. The 
 records certainly show far more points of agreement than of dis- 
 crepancy, and by tlieir harmony, as well with each other as with 
 themselves, when the years are taken separately, certainly go 
 far to prove that tliere is a very marked annual rhythm in the 
 phenomena of seminal emissions during sleep, or, as Nelson has 
 termed it, the ecbolic curve. We see, also, that the great yearly 
 organic climax of sexual effervescence corresponds with the period 
 following harvest, wliich, throughout the primitive world, has 
 been a season of sexual erethism and orgy ; though those customs 
 have died out of our waking lives, they are still imprinted on our 
 nervous texture, and become manifest during sleep. 
 
 The fresh records that have reached me since the first edition 
 of this book wag published show well-marlced annual curves, though 
 each curve always has some slight personal peculiarities of its otsti. 
 The most interesting and significant is that of E. M. (see ante p. 116), 
 covering four years. It is indicated by the following monthly frequen- 
 cies, summated for the four years: — 
 
 Jan. ¥eh. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. 
 16 13 14 22 19 19 12* 12 14 14 12 24 
 
 E. M. lives in India. April, May, and June, are hot months, but not 
 unhealthy, and during this season, moreover, he lives in the hills, under 
 favorable conditions, getting plenty of outdoor exercise. July, August, 
 and September, are nearly as hot, but much damper, and more trying; 
 during these months, E. M. is living in the city, and his work is then, 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 145 
 
 also, more exacting than at other times, September is the worst 
 month of all; he has a short holiday at the end of it. During De- 
 cember, January, and February, the climate is very fine, and E. M.'s 
 work is easier. It will be seen that his ecbolic curve corresponds to 
 his circumstances and environment, although until he analyzed the 
 record he had no idea that any such relationship existed. Unfavor- 
 able climatic conditions and hard work, favorable conditions and lighter 
 work, happen to coincide in his life, and the former depress the frequency 
 of seminal emissions; the latter increase their frequency. At the same 
 time, the curve is not out of harmony with the northern curves. There 
 is what corresponds to a late spring (April) climax, and another still 
 higher, late autumn (December) climax. A very interesting point 
 is the general resemblance of the ecbolic curves to the Indian conception- 
 curves as set forth by Hill (ante p. 140). The conception-curve is at 
 its lowest point in September, and at its highest point in December- 
 January, and this ecbolic curve follows it, except that both the minimum 
 and the maximum are reached a little earlier. When compared with the 
 English annual ecbolic curves (W. K. and Perry-Coste), both spring 
 and autumn maxima fall rather later, but all agree in representing 
 the autumn rise as the chief climax. 
 
 The annual curve of A. N. (ante p. 117), who lives in Indiana, 
 U. S. A., also covers four years. It presents the usual spring (May- 
 June, in this case) and autumn (September-October) climaxes. The 
 exact monthly results, summated for the four years, are given below; 
 in order to allow for the irregular lengths of the months, I have re- 
 duced them to daily averages, for convenience treating the four years 
 as one year: — 
 
 Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. 
 13 9 13 20 23 22 20 20 21 23 9 16 
 .42 .32 .42 .66 .74 .73 .64 .64 .70 .74 .30 .52 
 
 In his book on Adolescence, Stanley Hall refers to three ecbolic 
 records in his possession, all made by men who were doctors of philoso- 
 phy, and all considering themselves normal. Tlie best of these records 
 made by "a virtuous, active and able man," covered nearly eight years. 
 Stanley Hall thus summarizes the records, which are not presented in 
 detail : "The best of these records averages about three and a half such 
 experiences per month, the most frequent being 5.14 for July, and the 
 least frequent 2.28, for September, for all the years taken together. 
 There appears also a slight rise in April, and another in November, with 
 a fall in December." The frequency varies in the different individuals. 
 There was no tendency to a monthly cycle. In the best case, the 
 minimum number for the year was thirty-seven, and the maximum, 
 iifty. Fifty-nine per cent, of all were at an interval of a week or less; 
 
 10 
 
146 PSYCHOLOGY OF SE2. 
 
 forty per cent, at an interval of from one to four days; thirty-four 
 per cent, at an interval of from eight to seventeen days, the longest 
 being forty-two days. Poor condition, overvfork, and undersleep, led 
 to infrequency. Early morning was the most common time. Normally 
 there was a sense of distinct relief, but in low conditions, or with 
 over-frequency, depression. (G. S. Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 453.) I 
 may add that an anonymous article on "JSIocturnal Emissions" {Ameri. 
 can Journal of Psychology, Jan., 1904) is evidently a fuller presenta- 
 tion of the first of Stanley Hall's three cases. It is the history of a 
 healthy, unmarried, chaste man, who kept a record of his nocturnal 
 emissions (and their accompanying dreams) from the age of thirty 
 to thirty-eight. In what American State he lived is not mentioned. 
 He was ignorant of the existence of any previous records. The yearly 
 average was 37 to 50, remaining fairly constant; the monthly average 
 was 3.43. I reproduce the total results summated for the months, 
 separately, and I have worked out the daily average for each month, 
 for convenience counting the summated eight years as one year: — 
 
 Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dee. 
 27 27 27 31 29 28 36 25 18 27 30 24 
 .87 .94 .87 1.03 .93 .93 1.16 .81 .60 .87 1.00 .77 
 
 Here, as in all the other curves we have been able to consider, we 
 may see the usual two points of climax in spring and in autumn; 
 the major climax covers April, May, June, and July, the minor au- 
 tumnal climax is confined to November. In the light of the evidence 
 which has thus accumulated, we may conclude that the existence of an 
 annual eebolio curve, with its spring and autumn climaxes, as de- 
 scribed in the first edition of this book, is now definitely established. 
 
 If we are to believe, as these records tend to show, that the 
 nocturnal and involuntary voice of the sexual impulse usually 
 speaks at least as loudly in autumn as in spring, we are con- 
 fronted by a certain divergence of the sleeping sexual impulse 
 from the waking sexual instinct, as witnessed by the conception- 
 curve, and also, it may be added, by the general voice of tradition, 
 and, indeed, of individual feeling, which concur, on the whole, 
 in placing the chief epoch of sexual activity in spring and early 
 summer, more especially as regards women. ^ It is not impossible 
 to reconcile the contradiction, assuming it to be real, but I will 
 
 1 Krieger found that the great majority of German women inves- 
 tigated by him menstruated for the first time in September, October, 
 or November. In America, Bowditch states that the first menstruation 
 of country girls more often occurs in spring than at a,ny other season. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OE SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 147 
 
 refrain here from suggesting tlie various explanations wliich 
 arise. We need a broader basis of facts. 
 
 There are many facts to show that early spring and, to a 
 certain extent, autumn are periods of visible excitement, mainly 
 sexual in character. We have already seen that among the 
 Eskimo menstruation and sexual desire occur chiefly in spring, 
 but eases are known of healthy women in temperate climes who 
 only menstruate twice a year, and in such cases the menstrual 
 epochs appear to be usually in spring and autumn. Such, at all 
 events, was the case in a girl of 20, whose history has been re- 
 cdrded by Dr. Mary Wenck, of Philadelphia. ^ She menstruated 
 first when 15 years old. Six months later the flow again appeared 
 for the second time, and lasted three weeks, without cessation. 
 Since then, for five years, she menstruated during March and 
 September only, each time for three weeks, the fiow being pro- 
 fuse, but not exhaustingly so, without pain or systemic disturb- 
 ance. Examination revealed perfectly normal uterus and ovarian 
 organs. Treatment, accompanied by sitz-baths during the time 
 of month the flow should appear, accomplished nothing. The 
 semi-annual flow continued and the girl seemed in excellent 
 health. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact that, as noted by Dr. Hamilton Wey 
 at Elmira, sexual outbursts among prisoners appear to occur at 
 about March and October. "Beginning with the middle of Feb- 
 ruary," writes Dr. Wey in a private letter, "and continuing for 
 about two months, is a season of ascending sexual wave ; also the 
 latter half of September and the month of October. We are now 
 (March 30th) in the midst of a wave." 
 
 According to Chinese medicine, it is the spring which awakens 
 human passions. In early Greelc tradition, spring and summer were 
 noted as the time of greatest wantonness. "In the season of toilsome 
 summer," says Hesiod {Works and Days, xi, 569-90), "the goats are 
 fattest, wine is best, women most wanton, and men weakest." It was 
 so, also, in the experience of the Romans. Pliny {Natural History, 
 Bk. XII, Ch. XLIII) states that when the asparagus blooms and the 
 cicada sings loudest, is the season when women are most amorous, but 
 
 1 Women's Medical Journal, 1894. 
 
148 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 men least inclined to pleasure. Paulus jEgineta said that hysteria 
 specially abounds during spring and autumn in lascivious girla and 
 sterile women, while more recent observers have believed that hysteria 
 is particularly difficult to treat in autumn. Oribasius (Synopsis, lib. 
 i, cap. 6) quotes from Eufus to the effect that sexual feeling is most 
 strong in spring, and least so in summer. Rabelais said that it was in 
 March that the sexual impulse is strongest, referring this to the early 
 warmth of spring, and that August is the month least favorable to 
 sexual activity [Pantagruel, liv. v, Ch. XXIX). Nipho, in his book 
 on love dedicated to Joan of Aragon, discussed the reasons why "women 
 are more lustful and amorous in summer, and men in winter." Venette, 
 in his Generation de I'homme, harmonized somewhat conflicting state- 
 ments with the observation that spring is the season of love for both 
 men and women; in summer, women are more amorous than men; in 
 autumn, men revive to some extent, but are still oppressed by the heat, 
 which, sexually, has a less depressing effect on women. There is prob- 
 ably a real element of truth in this view, and both extremes of heat and 
 cold may be regarded as unfavorable to masculine virility. It is highly 
 probable that the well-recognized tendency of piles to become trouble- 
 some in spring and in autumn, is due to increased sexual activity. 
 Piles are favored by congestion, and sexual excitement is the most 
 powerful cause of sudden congestion in the genito-anal region. Erasmus 
 Darwin called attentioh to the tendency of piles to recur about the 
 equinoxes (Zoonomia, Section XXXVI), and since his days Gant, Bona via, 
 and Cullimore have correlated this periodicity with sexual activity. 
 
 Laycock, quoting the opinions of some earlier authorities as to the 
 prevalence of sexual feeling in spring, stated that that popular opinion 
 "appears to be founded on fact" {Nervous Diseases of Women, p. 69). 
 I find that many people, and perhaps especially women, confirm from 
 their own experience, the statement that se.tual feeling is strongest in 
 spring and summer. Wichmann states that pollutions are most common 
 in spring (being perhaps the first to make that statement), and also 
 nymphomania. (In the eighteenth century, Schurig recorded a case of 
 extreme and life-long sexual desire in a woman whose salacity was 
 always at its height towards the festival of St. John, Oynwcohgia, p. 16.) 
 A correspondent in the Argentine Repviblio writes to me that "on big 
 estancias, where we have a good many shepherds, nearly always mar- 
 ried, or, rather, I should say, living with some woman (for our stand- 
 ard of morality is not very high in these parts ) , we always look out 
 for trouble in springtime, as it is a very common thing at this season 
 for wives to leave their husbands and go and live with some other man." 
 A corresponding tendency has been noted even among children. Thus, 
 Sanford Bell ("The Emotion of Love Between the Sexes," American 
 Journal Psychology, July, 1902) remarks: "The season of the year 
 
THE PHEN'OMEIsrA OF SEXUAL PEEIODICITY. 149 
 
 seems to have its effect upon the intensity of the emotion of sex-love 
 among children. One teacher, from Texas, who furnished me with 
 seventy-six cases, said that he had noticed that in the matter of love 
 children seemed 'fairly to break out in the springtime.' Many of 
 the others who reported, incidentally mentioned the love affairs as 
 beginning in the spring. This also agrees with my own observations." 
 
 Crichton-Browne remarks that children in springtime ex- 
 hibit restlessness, excitability, perversity, and indisposition to 
 exertion that are not displayed at other times. This condition, 
 sometimes known as "spring fever," has been studied in over a 
 hundred cases, both children and adults, by Kline. The 
 majority of these report a feeling of tiredness, languor, lassitude, 
 sometimes restlessness, sometimes drowsiness. There is often a 
 feeling of suffocation, and a longing for Nature and fresh air and 
 day-dreams, while work seems distasteful and unsatisfactory. 
 Change is felt to be necessary at all costs, and sometimes there is 
 a desire to begin some new plan of life.^ In both sexes there is 
 frequently a wave of sexual emotion, a longing for love. Kline 
 also found by examination of a very large number of cases that 
 between the ages of four and seventeen it is in spring that run- 
 ning away from home most often occurs. He suggests that this 
 whole group of phenomena may be due to the shifting of the 
 metabolic processes from the ordinary grooves into reproductive 
 channels, and seeks to bring it into connection with the migra- 
 tions of animals for reproductive purposes.^ 
 
 It has long been known that the occurrence of insanity fol- 
 lows an annual curve,^ and though our knowledge of this curve, 
 being founded on the date of admissions to asylums, cannot be 
 said to be quite precise, it fairly corresponds to the outbreaks of 
 
 1 It is, perhaps, worth while noting that the wisdom of the me- 
 diaeval Church found an outlet for this "spring fever" in pilgrimages to 
 remote shrines. As Chaucer wrote, in the Canterbury Tales: — • 
 "Whane that Aprille with his showers sote 
 The droughts of March hath piercSd to the root, 
 Thaen longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, 
 And palmers for to seeken strangS stronds." 
 2L. W. Kline, "The Migratory Impulse," American Journal of 
 Psychology, 1898, vol. x, especially pp. 21-24. 
 
 3 Mania comes to a crisis in spring, said the old physician, Aretzeus 
 (Bk. I, Ch. V). 
 
150 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 acute insanity. The curve presented in Chart 4 shows the ad- 
 missions to the London County Council Lunatic Asylums dur- 
 ing the years 1893 to 1897 inclusive; I have arranged it in two- 
 month periods, to neutralize unimportant oscillations. In order 
 to show that this curve is not due to local or accidental circum- 
 stances, we may turn to France and take a special and chronic 
 form of mental disease : Garnier, in his Folie a Paris, presents 
 an almost exactly similar curve of the admissions of cases of gen- 
 eral paralysis to the Infirmerie Speciale at Paris during the years 
 1886-88 (Chart 5). Both curves alike show a major climax in 
 spring and a minor climax in autumn. 
 
 Crime in general in temperate climates tends to reach its maxi- 
 mum at the beginning of tlie hot season, usually in June. Thus, in 
 Belgium, the minimum is in February; the maximum in June, thence 
 gradually diminishing (Lentz, Bulletin Socicid Medecine Mentale 
 Belgique, March, 1901). In France, Lacassagne has summated the data 
 extending over more than 40 years, and finds that for all crimes June 
 is the maximum month, the minimum being reached in November. He 
 also gives the figures for each class of crime separately, and every 
 crime is found to have its own yearly curve. Poisonings show a chief 
 maximum in May, with slow fall and a, minor climax in December; 
 assassinations have a February and a November climax. Parricides cul- 
 minate in May- June, and in October ( Lacassagne's tables are given by 
 Laurent, Les Babituis des Prisons de Paris, Ch. I). 
 
 Notwithstanding the general tendency for crime to reach its maxi- 
 mum in the first hot month (a tendency not necessarily due to the 
 direct influence of heat), we also find, when we consider the statis- 
 tics of crime generally (including sexual crime), that there is another 
 tendency for minor climaxes in spring and autumn. Thus, in Italj% 
 Penta, taking the statistics of nearly four thousand crimes (murder, 
 highway robbery, and sexual offences), found the maximum in the 
 first summer months, but there were also minor climaxes in spring and 
 in August and September (Penta, Rivista Mensile di Psichiatria, 1899). 
 In nearly all Europe (as is shown by a diagram given by Lombroso and 
 Laschi, at the end of the first volume of Le Crime PoliiUque) , while the 
 chief climaxes occur about July, there is, in most countries, a distinct 
 tendency to spring (usually about March) and autumn (September 
 and November) climaxes, though they rarely rise as high as the July 
 climax. 
 
 If we consider the separate periodicity of sexual offences, we find 
 that they follow the rule for crimes generally, and usually show a 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 151 
 
 chief maximum in early summer. Asohaflfenburg finds that the annual 
 periodicity of the sexual impulse appears more strongly marked the 
 more abnormal its manifestations, which he plases in the following order 
 of increasing periodicity: conceptions in marriage, eonceptiona out 
 of marriage, offences against decency, rape, assaults on children 
 (CcntraVblatt fur Nervenheilkunde, January, 1903). In Prance, rapes 
 and offences against modesty are most numerous in May, June, and 
 July, as Villermg, Laeassagne, and others have shown. Villerme, in- 
 vestigating 1,000 such cases, found a. gradual ascent in frequency (only 
 slightly broken in March) to a maximum in June (oscillating between 
 IMay and July, when the years are considered separately), and then a 
 gradual descent to a minimum in December. Legludic gives, for the 
 159 cases he had investigated, a table showing a small February-March 
 climax, and a large June-August maximum, the minimum being 
 reached in November-January. (Legludic, Attentats auas Mceurs, 1896, 
 p. 16.) In Germany, Asehaffenburg finds that sexual offences begin to 
 increase in March and April, reach a maximum in June or July, and fall 
 to a minimum in winter (Monatsschrift filr Psychiatrie, 1903, Heft 2). 
 In Italy, Penta shows that sexual offences reach a minor climax in 
 May (corresponding, in his experience, with the maximum for crimes 
 generally, as well as with the maximum for conceptions ) , and a more 
 marked climax in August-September (Penta, I Pervertimenti Sessuali, 
 1893, p. 115; id. Rivista Mensile di Psiohiatria, 1899). 
 
 Corre, in his Crime en Pays Oriole, presents charts of the seasonal 
 distribution of crime in Guadeloupe, with relation to temperature, which 
 show that while, in a mild temperature like that of France and Eng- 
 land, crime attains its maximum in the hot season, it is not so in a more 
 tropical climate; in July, when in Guadeloupe the heat attains its 
 maximum degree, crime of all kinds falls suddenly to a very low mini- 
 mum. Even in the United States, where the summer heat is often 
 excessive, it tends to produce a diminution of crime. 
 
 Dexter, in an elaborate study of the relationship of conduct to 
 the weather, shows that in the United States assaults present the 
 maximum of frequency in April and October, with a decrease during 
 the summer and the winter. "The unusual and interesting fact demon- 
 strated here with a certainty that cannot be doubted is," he concludes, 
 "that the unseasonably hot days of spring and autumn are the pugna- 
 cious ones, even though the actual heat be much less than for summer. 
 We might infer from this that conditions of heat, up to a certain 
 extent, are vitalizing, while, at the same time, irritating, but above 
 that limit, heat is so devitalizing in its effects as to leave hardly energy 
 enouo-h to carry on a fight." (E. G. Dexter, Conduct and the Weather, 
 1899, pp. 63 et seq.) 
 
152 PSYCHOLOGY 03? SEX. 
 
 It is not impossible that the phenomena of seasonal periodicity in 
 crimes may possess a real significance in relation to sexual periodicity. 
 If, as is possible, the occurrence of spring and autumn climaxes of 
 criminal activity is due less to any special exciting causes at these 
 seasons than to the depressing influences of heat and cold in summer 
 and winter, it may appear reasonable to ask whether the spring and 
 autumn climaxes of sexual activity are not really also largely due to 
 a like depressing influence of extreme temperatures at the other two 
 seasons. 
 
 Kot only is there periodicity in criminal conduct, but even 
 within the normal range of good and bad conduct seasonal 
 periodicity may still be traced. In his Physical and Industrial 
 Training of Criminals, H. D. Wey gives charts of the conduct of 
 seven prisoners during several years, as shown by the marks 
 received. These charts show that there is a very decided 
 tendency to good behavior during summer and winter, while in 
 spring (February, March, and April) and in autumn (August, 
 September and October) there are very marked falls to bad 
 conduct, each individual tending to adhere to a conduct-curve of 
 his own. Wey does not himself appear to have noticed this 
 seasonal periodicity. Marro, however, has investigated this 
 question in Turin on a large scale and reaches results not very 
 dissimilar from those shown by Wey's figures in New York. He 
 noted the months in which over 4,000 punishments were inflicted 
 on prisoners for assaults, insults, threatening language, etc., and 
 shows the annual curve in Tavola VI of his Garatteri dei 
 Delinquenti. There is a marked and isolated climax in May; 
 a still more sudden rise leads to the chief maximum of punish- 
 ment in August; and from the minimum in October there is 
 rapid ascent during the two following months to a climax much 
 inferior to that of May. 
 
 The seasonal periodicity of bad conduct in prisons is of interest 
 as showing that we cannot account for psychic periodicity by invoking 
 exclusively social causes. This theory of psychic periodicity has been 
 seriously put forward, but has been investigated and dismissed, so far 
 as crime in Holland is concerned, by J. R. B. de Roos, in the Trans- 
 actions of the sixth Congress of Criminal Anthropology, at Turin, in 
 1906 {Archivio di Psiohiatria fasc. 3, 1906). 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 153 
 
 The general statistics of suicides in Continental Europe 
 show a very regular and unbroken curve, attaining a maximum 
 in June and a minimum in December, the curve rising steadily 
 through the first six months, sinking steadily through the last 
 six months, but always reaching a somewhat greater height in 
 May than in July.^ Morselli shows that in various European 
 countries there is always a rise in spring and in autumn (Ocober 
 or November) .2 Morselli attributes these spring and autumn 
 rises to the influence of the strain of the early heat and the early 
 cold.3 In England, also, if we take a very large number of 
 statistics, for instance, the figures for London during the twenty 
 years between 1865 and 1884, as given by Ogle (in a paper read 
 before the Statistical Society in 1886), we find that, although 
 the general curve has the same maximum and minimum points, 
 it is interrupted by a break on each side of the maximum, and 
 these two breaks occur precisely at about March and October. * 
 This is shown in the curve in Chart 6, which presents the daily 
 average for the different months. 
 
 The growth of children follows an annual rhythm. Wahl, 
 the director of an educational establishment for homeless girls 
 in Denmark, who investigated this question, found that the in- 
 crease of weight for all the ages investigated was constantly about 
 33 per cent, greater in the summer half-year than in the winter 
 half-year. It was noteworthy that even the children who had 
 
 1 This is, at all events, the case in France, Prussia, and Italy. See, 
 for instance, Durkheim's discussion of the cosmic factors of suicide, 
 Le Suicide, 1897, Chapter III. In Spain, as Bernaldo de Quir6s shows 
 (Criminologia, p. 69), there is a slight irregular rise in December, but 
 otherwise the curve is perfectly regular, with maximum in June, and 
 minimum in January. 
 
 2 This holds good of a south European country, taken separately. 
 A chart of the annual incidence of suicide by hanging, in Roumania, 
 presented by Minovici (Archives d' Anthropologic Criminelle, 1905, p. 
 587), shows climaxes of equal height in May and September. 
 
 3 Morselli, Suicide, pp. 55-72. 
 
 4 Ogle himself was inclined to think that these breaks were acci- 
 dental, being unaware of the allied phenomena with which they may be 
 brought into line. It is true that (as Gaedeken objects to me) the au- 
 tumnal break is very slight, but it is probably real when we are dealing 
 with so large a mass of data. 
 
164 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 not reached school-age, and therefore could not be influenced 
 by school-life, showed a similar, though slighter, difference in 
 the same direction. It is, however, Malling-Hansen, the director 
 of an institution for deaf-mutes in Copenhagen, who has most 
 thoroughly investigated this matter over a great many years. He 
 finds that there are three periods of growth throughout the year, 
 marked off in a fairly sharp manner, and that during each of these 
 periods the growth in weight and height shows constant charac- 
 teristics. Prom about the end of ISTovember up to about the end 
 of March is a period when growth, both in height and weight, 
 proceeds at a medium rate, reaching neither a maximum nor a 
 minimum; increase in weight is slight, the increase in height, 
 although trifling, preponderating. After tMs follows a period 
 during which the children show a marked increase in height, 
 while increase in weight is reduced to a minimum. The children 
 constantly lose in weight during this period of growth in height 
 almost as much as they gain in the preceding period. This period 
 lasts from March and April to July and August. Then follows 
 the third period, which continues until November and December. 
 During this period increase in height is very slight, being at its 
 early minimum; increase in weight, on the other hand, at the 
 beginning of the period (in September and October), is rapid and 
 to the middle of December very considerable, daily increase in 
 weight being three times as great as during the winter months. 
 Thus it may be said that the spriag sexual climax corresponds, 
 roughly, with growth in height and arrest of growth in weight, 
 while the autumn climax corresponds roughly with a period of 
 growth in weight and arrest of growth in height. Malling- 
 Hansen found that slight variations in the growth of the children 
 were often dependent on changes in temperature, in such a way 
 that a rise of temperature, even lasting for only a few days, caused 
 an increase of growth, and a fall of temperature a decrease in 
 growth. At Halle, Schmid-Monnard found that nearly all 
 growth in weight took place in the second half of the year, and 
 that the holidays made little difference. In America, Peckham 
 has shown that increase of growth is chiefly from the 1st of ]\Iay 
 
THE PHENOMENA OE SEXUAL PEHIODIOITY. 155 
 
 to the 1st of September.! Among young girls in St. Petersburg, 
 Jenjko found that increase in weight takes place in summer. 
 Goepel found that increase in height takes place mostly during 
 the first eight months of the year, reaching a maximum in Au- 
 gust, declining during the autumn and winter, in February being 
 nil, while in March there is sometimes loss in weight even in 
 healthy children. 
 
 In the course of a study as to the consumption of bread in 
 Xormal schools during each month of the year, as illustrating the 
 relationship between intellectual work and nutrition, Binet pre- 
 sents a number of curves which bring out results to which he 
 makes no allusion, as they are outside his own investigation. 
 Almost without exception, these curves show that there is an 
 increase in the consumption of bread in spring and in autumn, 
 the spring rise being in February, March, and April ; the autumn 
 rise in October or November. There are, however, certain falla- 
 cies in dealing with institutions like Normal schools, where the 
 conditions are not perfectly regular throughout the year, owing 
 to vacations, etc. It is, therefore, instructive to find that under 
 the monotonous conditions of prison-life precisely the same 
 spring and autumn rises are found. Binet takes the consumption 
 of bread in the women's prison at Clermont, where some four 
 hundred prisoners, chiefly between the ages of thirty and fortj^, 
 are confined, and he presents two curves for the years 1895 and 
 1896. The curves for these two years show certain marked dis- 
 agreements with each other, but both unite in presenting a dis- 
 tinct rise in April, preceded and followed by a fall, and both 
 present a still more marked autumn rise, in one case in Septem- 
 ber and November, in the other case in October.^ 
 
 Some years ago, Sir J. Crichton-Browne stated that a manifesta- 
 tion of the sexual stimulus of spring is to be found in the large number 
 of novels read during the month of March ("Address in Psychology" 
 at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association, Leeds, 1889; 
 
 1 Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891, p. 298. For a very full summary 
 and bibliography of investigations regarding growth, see F. Burk, 
 "Growth of Children in Height and Weight," Americam, Journal of Psy- 
 chology, April, 1898. 
 
 2 L' Annie Psychologique, 1898. 
 
156 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 Lancet, August 14, 1889). The statement was supported by figures fur- 
 nished by lending libraries, and has since been widely copied. It would 
 certainly be interesting if we could so simply show the connection be- 
 tween love and season, by proving that when the birds began to sing 
 their notes, the young person's fancy naturally turns to brood over the 
 pictures of mating in novels. I accordingly applied to Mr. Capel Shaw, 
 Chief Librarian of the Birmingham Free Libraries ( specially referred to 
 by Sir J. Crichton-Browne ) , who furnished me with the Reports for 
 1896 and 1897-98 (this latter report is carried on to the end of March, 
 1898). 
 
 The readers who use the Birmingham Kree Lending Libraries are 
 about 30,000 in number; they consist very largely of young people be- 
 tween the ages of 14 and 25 ; somewhat less than half are women. Cer- 
 tainly we seem to have here a good field for the determination of this 
 question. The monthly figures for each of the ten Birmingham libraries 
 are given separately, and it is clear at a glance that without exception 
 the maximum number of readers of prose-fiction at all the libraries during 
 1897-98 is found in the month of March. (I have chiefly taken into 
 consideration the figures for 1897-98; the figures for 1896 are somewhat 
 abnormal and irregular, probably owing to a decrease in readers, at- 
 tributed to increased activity in trade, and partly to a disturbing in- 
 fluence caused by the opening of a large new library in the course of the 
 year, suddenly increasing the number of readers, and drafting off bor- 
 rowers from some of the other libraries.) Not only so, but there is a 
 second, or autumnal climax, almost equaling the spring climax, and oc- 
 curing with equal certainty, appearing during 1897-98 either in October 
 or November, and during 1896, constantly in October. Thus, the perio- 
 dicity of the rate of consumption' of prose-fiction corresponds with the 
 periodicity which is found to occur in the conception-rate and in sexual 
 eebolie manifestations. 
 
 It is necessary, however, to examine somewhat more closely the 
 tables presented in these reports, and to compare the rate of the con- 
 sumption of novels with that of other classes of literature. In the first 
 place, if, instead of merely considering the consumption of novels per 
 month, we make allowance for the varying length of the months, and 
 consider the average daily consumption per month, the supremacy of 
 Jfarch at once vanishes. February is really the month during which 
 most noi-els were read during the first quarter of 1898, except at two 
 libraries, where February and March are equal. The result is similar 
 if we ascertain the daily averages for the first quarter in 1897, while, in 
 1896 (which, however, as I have already remarked, is a rather abnormal 
 year), the daily average for March in many of the libraries falls below 
 that for January, as well as for February. Again, when we turn to the 
 other classes of books, we find that this predominance which February 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PEEIODIOITT. 157 
 
 possesses, and to some extent shares with March and January, by no 
 means exclusively applies to novels. It is not only shared by both 
 music and poetry, — which would fit in well with the assumption of a 
 sexual nisus, — ^but the department of "history, biography, voyages, and 
 travels" shares it also with considerable regularity; so, also, does that 
 of "arts, sciences, and natural history," and it is quite well marked in 
 "theology, moral philosophy, etc.," and in "juvenile literature." We 
 even have to admit that the promptings of the sexual instinct bring an 
 increased body of visitors to the reference library (where there are no 
 novels ) , for here, also, both the spring and autumnal climaxes are quite 
 distinct. Certainly this theory carries us a little too far. 
 
 The main factor in producing this very marked annual periodicity 
 seems to me to be wholly unconnected with the sexual impulse. The 
 winter half of the year (from the beginning of October to the end of 
 March), when outdoor life has lost its attractions, and much time must 
 be spent in the house, is naturally the season for reading. But during 
 the two central months of winter, December and January, the attraction 
 of reading meets with a powerful counter-attraction in the excitement 
 produced by the approach of Christmas, and the increased activity of 
 social life which accompanies and for several weeks follows Christmas. 
 In this way the other four winter months — October and November at 
 the autumnal end, and February and March at the spring end — must 
 inevitably present the two chief reading climaxes of the year; and so 
 the reports of lending libraries present us with figures which show a 
 striking, but fallacious, resemblance to the curves which are probably 
 produced by more organic causes. 
 
 I am far from wishing to deny that the impulse which draws 
 young men and women to Imaginative literature is unconnected with 
 the obscure promptings of the sexual instinct. But, until the disturbing 
 influence I have just pointed out is eliminated, I see no evidence here 
 for any true seasonal periodicity. Possibly in prisons — the value of 
 which, as laboratories of experimental psychology we have scarcely yet 
 begun to realize — more reliable evidence might be obtained; and those 
 French and other prisons where novels are freely allowed to the prison- 
 ers might yield evidence as regards the consumption of fiction as in- 
 structive as that yielded at Clermont concerning the consumption of 
 bread. 
 
 Certain diseases show a very regular annual curve. This is 
 notably the ease with scarlet fever. Caiger found in a London 
 fever hospital a marked seasonal prevalence : there was a minor 
 climax in May (repeated in July), and a great autumnal climax 
 in October, falling to a minimum in December and January. 
 
158 PSTGHOLOGT OP SEX. 
 
 This curve corresponds closely to that usually observed in Lon- 
 don.i It is not peculiar to London, or to urban districts, for in 
 rural districts vi^e find nearly the same spring minor maximum 
 and major autumnal maximum. In Eussia it is precisely the 
 same. Many other epidemic diseases show very similar curves. 
 
 An annual curve may be found in the expulsive force of the 
 bladder as measured by the distance to vt^hieh the urinary stream 
 can be projected. This curve, as ascertained for one case, is inter- 
 esting on account of the close relationship between sexual and 
 vesical activity. After a minimum point in autumn there is a 
 rise through the early part of the year to a height maintained 
 through spring and summer, and reaching its maximum in 
 August.2 This may be said to correspond with the general 
 tendency found in some cases of nocturnal seminal emissions 
 from a winter minimum to an autumn maximum. 
 
 There is an annual curve in voluntary muscle strength. 
 Thus in Antwerp, where the scientific study of children is system- 
 atically carried out by a Pedological Bureau, Schuyten found 
 that, measured by the dynamometer, both at the ages of 8 and 9, 
 both boys and girls showed a gradual increase of strength from 
 October to January, a fall from January to March and a rise to 
 June or July. March was the weakest month, June and July the 
 strongest.^ 
 
 Schuyten also found an annual curve for mental ability, as 
 tested by power of attention, which for much of the year corres- 
 ponded to the curve of muscular strength, being high during the 
 cold winter months. Lobsien, at Kiel, seeking to test Schuyten's 
 results and adopting a diflierent method so as to gauge memory as 
 well as attention, came to conclusions which confirmed those of 
 Schuj'ten. He found a very marked increase of ability in 
 December and January, with a fall in April ; April and May were 
 
 ^Lancet, June 6, 1891. Edward Smith had pointed out many years 
 earlier tliat scarlet fever is most fatal in periods of increasing vitality. 
 
 2 Havelock Ellis, "The Bladder as a Dynamometer," American 
 Journal of Dermatology, May, 1902. 
 
 3 See, e.g., summary in Internationales Centratlatt fUr Anihro- 
 pologie, 1902, Heft 4, p. 207. 
 
THE PI-IENOilENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY. 159 
 
 the minimum months, while July and October also stood low.^ 
 The inquiries of Schuyten and Lobsien thus seem to indicate that 
 the voluntary aptitudes of muscular and mental force in children 
 reach their maximum at a time of the year when most of the more 
 or less involuntary activities we have been considering show a 
 minimum of energy. If this conclusion should be confirmed by 
 more extended investigations, it would scarcely be matter for sur- 
 prise and would involve no true contradiction. It would, indeed, 
 be natural to suppose that the voluntary and regulated activities 
 of the nervous system should work most efiSciently at those 
 periods when they are least exposed to organic and emotional 
 disturbance. 
 
 So persistent a disturbing element in spring and autumn 
 suggests that some physiological conditions underlie it, and that 
 there is a real metabolic disturbance at these times of the year. 
 So few continuous observations have yet been made on the 
 metabolic processes of the body that it is not easy to verify such 
 a surmise with absolute precision. Edward Smith's investiga- 
 tions, so far as they go, support it, and Perry-Coste's long-con- 
 tinued observations of pulse-frequency seem to show with fair 
 regularity a maximum in early spring and another maximum in 
 late autumn.2 I may also note that Haig, who has devoted many 
 years of observations to the phenomena of uric-acid excretion, 
 finds that uric acid tends to be highest in the spring months, 
 (March, April, May) and lowest at the first onset of cold in 
 October.^ 
 
 Thus, while the sexual climaxes of spring and autumn are 
 rooted in animal procreative cycles which in man have found ex- 
 pression in primitive festivals — these, again, perhaps, strength- 
 ening and developing the sexual rhythm — they yet have a wider 
 significance. They constitute one among many manifestations of 
 spring and autumn physiological disturbance corresponding with 
 
 1 Summarized in Zeitschrift filr Psychologie der Sinnesorgane, 1903, 
 p. 135. 
 
 2 Camerer found that from September to November is the period of 
 greatest metabolic activity. 
 
 3 Haig, Urio Acid, 6th edition, 1903, p. 33. 
 
160 PSTOHOLOGT OF SEX. 
 
 fair precision to tlie vernal and autumnal equinoxes. They re- 
 semble those periods of atmospheric tension, of storm and wind, 
 ■which accompany the spring and autumn phases in the earth's 
 rhythm, and they may fairly be regarded as ultimately a physio- 
 logical reaction to those cosmic influences. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM: A STUDY OF THE SPONTANEOUS 
 MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SEXUAL IMPULSE. 
 
 Definition of Auto-erotism — ^Masturbation only Covers a Small 
 Portion of the Auto-erotio Field — The Importance of this Study, espe- 
 cially To-day — ^Auto-erotio Phenomena in Animals — ^Among Savage and 
 Barbaric Races — The Japanese rin-no-tama and other Special Instru- 
 ments for Obtaining Auto-erotie Gratification — ^Abuse of the Ordinary 
 Implements and Objects of Daily Life — The Frequency of Hairpin in the 
 Bladder — The Influence of Horse-exercise and Railway Traveling — The 
 Sewing-machine and the Bicycle — Spontaneous Passive Sexual Excite- 
 ment — Delectatio Morosa — Day-dreaming — Pollutio — Sexual Excitement 
 During Sleep — ^Erotic Dreams — ^The Analogy of Nocturnal Enuresis — • 
 Differences in the Erotic Dreams of Men and Women — The Auto-erotio 
 Phenomena of Sleep in the Hysterical — Their Frequently Painful 
 Character. 
 
 By "auto-erotism." I mean the phenomena of spontaneous 
 sexual emotion generated in the absence of an external stimulus 
 proceeding, directly or indirectly, from another person. In a 
 wide sense, which cannot be wholly ignored here, auto-erotism 
 may be said to include those transformations of repressed sexual 
 activity which are a factor of some morbid conditions as well as 
 of the normal manifestation of art and poetry, and, indeed, more 
 or less color the whole of life. 
 
 Such a definition excludes the normal sexual excitement 
 aroused by the presence of a beloved person of the opposite sex ; 
 it also excludes the perverted sexuality associated with an attrac- 
 tion to a person of the same sex ; it further excludes the mani- 
 fold forms of erotic fetichism, in which the normal focus of 
 sexual attraction is displaced, and voluptuous emotions are only 
 aroused by some object — ^hair, shoes, garments, etc. — which, to 
 the ordinary lover, are of subordinate — though still, indeed, con- 
 
 11 (161) 
 
162 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 siderable — importance. ^ The auto-erotic field remains extensive ; 
 it ranges from occasional voluptuous day-dreams, in Vi^liich. the 
 subject is entirely passive, to the perpetual unashamed efforts at 
 sexual self-manipulation witnessed among the insane. It also 
 includes, though chiefly as curiosities, those cases in which indi- 
 viduals fall in love with themselves. Among auto-erotic phe- 
 nomena, or on the borderland, we must further include those 
 religious sexual manifestations for an ideal object, of which we 
 may find evidence in the lives of saints and ecstatics.^ The typ- 
 ical form of auto-erotism is the occurrence of the sexual orgasm 
 during sleep. 
 
 I do not know that any apology is needful for the invention 
 of the term "auto-erotism."^ There is no existing word in cur- 
 rent use to indicate the whole range of phenomena I am here 
 concerned with. We are familiar with "masturbation," but that, 
 strictly speaking, only covers a special and arbitrary subdivision 
 of the field, although, it is true, the subdivision with which phy- 
 sicians and alienists have chiefly occupied themselves. "Self- 
 abuse" is somewhat wider, but by no means covers the whole 
 ground, while for various reasons it is an unsatisfactory term. 
 "Onanism" is largely used, especially in France, and some writers 
 eren include all forms of homosexual connection under this name ; 
 it may be convenient to do so from a physiological point of view. 
 
 1 All the above groups of phenomena are dealt with in other vol- 
 umes of these Studies : the manifestations of normal sexual excitement, 
 in vols, iii, iv, and v; homosexuality, in vol. ii, and erotic fetichism, in 
 vol. V. 
 
 2 See Appendix C. 
 
 3 Letamendi, of Madrid, has suggested "auto-erastia" to cover what 
 is probably much the same field. In the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century, Hufeland, in his Makroiiotic, invented the term "geistige 
 Onanie," to express the filling and heating of the imagination with volup- 
 tuous images, without unchastity of body; and in 1844, Kaan, in his 
 Psychopathia Seacualis, used, but did not invent, the term "onania 
 psycliica." Gustav Jaeger, in his Entdeckung der Seele, proposed "mono- 
 sexual idiosyncrasy," to indicate the most animal forms of masturbation 
 taking place without any correlative imaginative element, a condition 
 illustrated by cases given in Moll's Untersnchungen iiher die lAhidiy 
 i^c.T.iinUf;, Ed. I, pp. 13 et seq. Dr. Laupts (a pseudonym for the accom- 
 plished psychologist, Dr. Saint-Paul) uses the term autophilie, for soli- 
 tary vice. {-Pert^ersion ct Prrversite Sexuelles, 1896, p. 337.) But all 
 these terms only cover a portion of the field. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 163 
 
 but it is a confusing and antiquated mode of procedure, and from 
 the psychological standpoint altogether illegitimate; "onanism" 
 ought never to be used in this connection, if only on the ground 
 that Onan's device was not auto-erotic, but was an early example 
 of withdrawal before emission, or coitus interruptus. 
 
 While the name that I have chosen may possibly not be the 
 best, there should be no question as to the importance of group- 
 ing all these phenomena together. It seems to me that this field 
 has rarely been viewed in a scientifically sound and morally sane 
 light, simply because it has not been viewed as a whole. We have 
 made it difficult so to view it by directing our attention on the 
 special group of auto-erotic facts — that group included amder 
 masturbation — which was most easy to observe and which in an 
 extreme form came plainly under medical observation in insanity 
 and allied conditions, and we have wilfully torn this group of 
 facts away from the larger groujp to which it naturally belongs. 
 The questions which have been so widely, so diversely, and — it 
 must unfortunately be added — often so mischievously discussed, 
 concerning the nature and evils of masturbation are not seen in 
 their true light and proportions until we realize that masturba- 
 tion is but a specialized form of a tendency which in some form 
 or in some degree normally affects not only man, but all the 
 higher animals. Prom a medical point of view it is often con- 
 venient to regard masturbation as an isolated fact ; but in order 
 to understand it we must bear in mind its relationships. In this 
 study of auto-erotism I shall frequently have occasion to refer to 
 the old entity of "masturbation," because it has been more care- 
 fully studied than any other part of the auto-erotic field ; but I 
 hope it will always be borne in miad that the psychological sig- 
 nificance and even the medical diagnostic value of masturbation 
 cannot be appreciated unless we realize that it is an artificial sub- 
 division of a great group of natural facts. 
 
 The study of auto-erotism is far from being an unimpor- 
 tant or merely curious study. Yet psychologists, medical and 
 non-medical, almost without exception, treat its manifestations — 
 when they refer to them at all — in a dogmatic and off-hand man- 
 ner which is far from scientific. It is not surprising, therefore. 
 
164 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 that the most widely divergent opinions are expressed. - Nor is 
 it surprising that ignorant and chaotic notions among the gen- 
 eral population should lead to results that would be ludicrous if 
 they were not pathetic. To mention one instance known to me : 
 a married lady who is a leader in social-purity movements and an 
 enthusiast for sexual chastity, discovered, through reading some 
 pamphlet against solitary vice, that she had herself been prac- 
 ticing masturbation for years without knowing it. The pro- 
 found anguish and hopeless despair of this woman in face of what 
 she believed to be the moral ruin of her whole life cannot well 
 be described. It would be easy to give further examples, though 
 scarcely a more striking one, to show the utter confusion into 
 which we are thrown by leaving this matter in the hands of blind 
 leaders of the blind. Moreover, the conditions of modern civil- 
 ization render auto-erotism a matter of increasing social sig- 
 nificance. As our marriage-rate declines, and as illicit sexual 
 relationships continue to be openly discouraged, it is absolutely 
 inevitable that auto-erotic phenomena of one kind or another, not 
 only among women but also among men, should increase among 
 us both in amount and intensity. It becomes, therefore, a 
 matter of some importance, both to the moralist and the physi- 
 cian, to investigate the psychological nature of these phenomena 
 and to decide precisely what their attitude should be toward them. 
 
 I do not purpose to enter into a thorough discussion of 
 all the aspects of auto-erotism. That would involve a very ex- 
 tensive study indeed. I wish to consider briefly certain salient 
 points concerning auto-erotic phenomena, especially their prev- 
 alence, their nature, and their moral, physical, and other effects. 
 I base my study partly on the facts and opinions which during 
 the last thirty years have been scattered through the periodical 
 and other medical literature of Europe and America, and partly 
 on the experience of individuals, especially of fairly normal in- 
 dividuals. 
 
 Among animals in isolation, and sometimes in freedom — 
 though this can less often be observed — it is well known that 
 Various forms of spontaneous solitary sexual excitement occur. 
 Horses when leading a lazy life may be observed flapping the 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 165 
 
 penis until some degree of emission takes place. Welsh ponies, 
 I learn from a man who has had much experience with these ani- 
 mals, habitually produce erections and emissions in their stalls; 
 they do not bring their hind quarters up during this process, and 
 they close their eyes, which does not take place when they have 
 congress with mares. The same informant observed that bulls 
 and goats produce emissions by using their forelegs as a stim- 
 ulus, bringing up their hind quarters, and mares rub themselves 
 against objects. I am informed by a gentleman who is a recog- 
 nized authority on goats, that they sometimes take the penis into 
 the mouth and produce actual orgasm, thus practicing auto- 
 fellatio. As regards ferrets, the Rev. H. Northcote states: 
 "I am informed by a gentleman who has had considerable ex- 
 perience of ferrets, that if the bitch, when in heat, cannot 
 obtain a dog she pines and becomes ill. If a smooth pebble is 
 introduced into the hutch, she will masturbate upon it, thus pre- 
 serving her normal health for one season. But if this artificial 
 substitute is given to her a second season, she will not, as for- 
 merly, be content with it.^ 
 
 Stags in the rutting season, when they have no partners, rub 
 themselves against trees to produce ejaculation. Sheep mastur- 
 bate; as also do camels, pressing themselves down against con- 
 venient objects; and elephants compress the penis between the 
 hind legs to obtain emissions. 2 Blumenbach observed a bear 
 act somewhat similarly on seeing other bears coupling, and 
 hyenas, according to Ploss and Bartels, have been seen practicing 
 mutual masturbation by licking each other's genitals. Mammary 
 masturbation, remarks Fere, is found in certain female and even 
 male animals, like the dog and the cat.^ Apes are much given 
 to masturbation, even in freedom, according to the evidence of 
 good observers ; for while no female apes are celibates, many of 
 
 1 H. Northcote, Ghrisiiamity and Sex Problems, p. 231. 
 
 2 Eosse observed two elephants procuring erection by entwining 
 their proboseides, the act being completed by one elephant opening his 
 mouth and allowing the other to tickle the roof of it. (I. Eosse, Virginia 
 Medical Monthly, October, 1892.) 
 
 3 F6r6, "Perversions sexuelles chez les animaux," Revue Philoso- 
 phique. May, 1897. 
 
166 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 the males are obliged to lead a life of celibacy. ^ Male monkeys 
 use the hand in masturbation, to rub and shake the penis.^ 
 
 In the human species these phenomena are by no means 
 found in civilization alone. To whatever extent masturbation 
 may have been developed by the conditions of European life, 
 which carry to the utmost extreme the concomitant stimulation 
 and repression of the sexual emotions, it is far from being, as 
 Mantegazza has declared it to be, one of the moral characteristics 
 of Europeans.^ It is found among the people of nearly every 
 race of which we have any intimate knowledge, however natural 
 the conditions under which men and women may live.* Thus, 
 
 ITillier, L'Instinct Sexuel, 1889, p. 270. 
 
 2 Moll, Libido Sexualis, Bd. I, p. 76. The same author mentions 
 {ibid., p. 373) that parrots living in solitary confinement masturbate 
 tiy rubbing the posterior part of the bo'lv against some object until 
 ejaculation occurs. Edmund Selous ("Habits of the Peewit," Zoologist, 
 April, 1902) suggests that the peewit, when rolling on the ground, and 
 exerting pressure on the anal region, is moved by a sexual impulse to 
 satisfy desire; he adds that actual orgasm appears eventually to take 
 place, a spasm of energy passing through the bird. 
 
 3 Dr. J. W. Howe ( Excessive Venery, Masturbation, and Conti- 
 nence, London and IS'ew York, 1883, p. 62) writes of masturbation: "In 
 savage lands It is of rare occurrence. Savages live in a state of Nature. 
 No moral obligations exist which compel them to abstain from a natural 
 gratification of their passions. There is no social law which prevents 
 them from following the dictates of their lower nature. Hence, they 
 have no reason for adopting onanism as an outlet for passions. The 
 moral trammels of civilized society, and ignorance of physiological laws, 
 give origin to the vice." Every one of these six sentences is incorrect or 
 misleading. They are worth quoting as a statement of the popular view 
 of savage life. 
 
 4 I can recall little evidence of its existence among the Australian 
 aborigines, though there is, in the Wiradyuri language, spoken over a 
 large part of New South Wales, a word (^^'liether ancient or not, I do 
 not know) meaning masturbation ( Journal of the Anthropological In- 
 sUiuie, July-Dec, 1904, p. 303). Dr. W. Roth (Ethnological Studies 
 Among the NorUiwest-Gentral Queensland Aborigines, p. 184), who has 
 carefully studied the blacks of his district, remarks that he has no evi- 
 dence as to the practice of either masturbation or sodomy among them. 
 More recently (1906) Roth has stated that married men in North 
 Queensland and elsewhere masturbate during their wives' absence. As 
 regards the Maori of New Zealand, Northcote adds, there is a rare 
 word for masturbation (as also at Rarotonga), but according to a 
 distinguished Maori scholar there are no alhisions to the practice in 
 Maori literature, and it was probably not practiced in primitive times. 
 The Maori and the Polynesians of the Cook Islands, Northcote remarks, 
 consider the act unmanly, applying to it a phrase meaning "to make 
 women of themselves." (Northcote, loc. cit., p. 232.) 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 167 
 
 among the ISTama Hottentots, among the young women at all 
 events, Gustav Pritsch found that masturbation is so common 
 that it is regarded as a custom of the country ; no secret is made 
 of it, and in the stories and legends of the race it is treated as 
 one of the most ordinary facts of life. It is so also among the 
 Basutos, and the Kaffirs are addicted to the same habit.i The 
 Fuegians have a word for masturbation, and a special word for 
 masturbation by women.^ When the Spaniards first arrived at 
 Vizeaya, in the Philippines, they found that masturbation was 
 universal, and that it was customary for the women to use an 
 artificial penis and other abnormal methods of sexual gratifica- 
 tion. Among the Balinese, according to Jacobs (as quoted by 
 Ploss and Bartels), masturbation is general; in the boudoir of 
 many a Bali beauty, he adds, and certainly in every harem, may 
 be found a wax penis to which many hours of solitude are 
 devoted. Throughout the East, as Eram, speaking from a long 
 medical experience, has declared, masturabtion is very prevalent, 
 especially among young girls. In Egypt, according to Son- 
 nini, it is prevalent in harems. In India, a medical corre- 
 spondent tells me, he once treated the widow of a wealthy Moham- 
 medan, who informed him that she began masturbation at an 
 early age, "just like all other women." The same informant tells 
 me that on the fagade of a large temple in Orissa are bas-reliefs, 
 representing both men and women, alone, masturbating, and also 
 women masturbating men. Among the Tamils of Ceylon mastur- 
 bation is said to be common. In Cochin China, Lorion remarks, 
 it is practiced by both sexes, but especially by the married 
 women.^ Japanese women have probably carried the mechanical 
 arts of auto-erotism to the highest degree of perfection. They 
 use two hollow balls about the size of a pigeon's egg (sometimes 
 
 1 Greenlees, Journal of Mental Science, July, 1895. A gentleman 
 long resident among the Kaffirs of South Jslatal, told Northoote, however, 
 that he had met with no word for masturbation, and did not believe the 
 practice prtvailed there. 
 
 SHyades and Deniker, Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn, vol. vii, 
 p. 295. 
 
 3Z/0 OriminalitS en Cochin-Chine, 1887, p. 116; also Mondifire, 
 "Monographie de la Femme Annamite," Mdmoires Soci4t6 d'Anthro- 
 pologie, tome ii, p. 465. 
 
168 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 one alone is used), which, as described by Joest, Christian, and 
 others,^ are made of very thin leaf of brass; one is empty, the 
 other (called the little man) contains a small heavy metal ball, or 
 else some quicksilver, and sometimes metal tongues which vibrate 
 when set in movement ; so that if the balls are held in the hand 
 side by side there is a continuous movement. The empty one is 
 first introduced into the vagina in contact with the uterus, then 
 the other; the slightest movement of the pelvis or thighs, or 
 even spontaneous movement of the organs, causes the metal ball 
 (or the quicksilver) to roll, and the resulting vibration produces 
 a prolonged voluptuous titillation, a gentle shock as from a weak 
 electric inductive apparatus; the balls are called rin-no-tama, 
 and are held in the vagina by a paper tampon. The women who 
 use these balls delight to swing themselves in a hammock or 
 rocking-chair, the delicate vibration of the balls slowly producing 
 the highest degree of sexual excitement. Joest mentions that this 
 apparatus, though well known by name to ordinary girls, is chiefly 
 used by the more fashionable geishas, as well as by prostitutes. 
 Its use has now spread to China, Annam, and India. Japanese 
 women also, it is said, frequently use an artificial penis of paper 
 or clay, called engi. Among the Atjeh, again, according to Jacobs 
 (as quoted by Ploss), the young of both sexes masturbate and the 
 elder girls use an artificial penis of wax. In China, also, the 
 artificial penis — ^made of rosin, supple and (like the classical 
 instrument described by Herondas) rose-colored — is publicly sold 
 and widely used by women. 2 
 
 1 Christian, article on "Onanisme," Dictionnaire encyclopidique des 
 sciences midicales; Ploss and Bartels, Das ^Veib; Moraglia, "Die 
 Onanie beim normalen Weibe," Zeitschrift fiir Criminal-Anthropologie, 
 1897; Dartigues, De la Procreation Volontaire des Sexes, p. 32. In the 
 eighteenth century, the rin-no-tama was known in France, sometimes 
 as "pommes d'amour." Thus Bachaumont, in his Journal (under date 
 July 31, 1773), refers to "a very extraordinary instrument of amorous 
 mystery," brought by a traveler from India; he describes this "boula 
 erctique" as the size of a pigeon's egg, covered with soft skin, and gilded. 
 Of. F. S. Krauss, Oeschlechtsleben in Branch und Sitte der Japaner, 
 Leipzig, 1907. 
 
 2 It may be worth mentioning that the Salish Indians of British 
 Columbia have a myth of an old woman having intercourse with young 
 women, by means of a horn worn as a penis {Journal of the Anthropo- 
 logical Institute, July-Dec, 1904, p. 342). 
 
2i.DT0-EE0TISM. 169 
 
 It may be noticed that among "non-European races it is 
 among women, and especially among those who are subjected to 
 the excitement of a life professionally devoted to some form of 
 pleasure, that the use of the artificial instruments of auto-erotism 
 is chiefly practiced. The same is marlcedly true in Europe. The 
 use of an artificial penis in solitary sexual gratification may be 
 traced down from classic times, and doubtless prevailed in the 
 very earliest human civilization, for such an instrument is said 
 to be represented in old Babylonian sculptures, and it is referred 
 to by Ezekiel (Ch. XVI. t. 17). ' The Lesbian women are said to 
 have used such instruments, made of ivory or gold with silken 
 stuffs and linen. Aristophanes {Lysistraia, v. 109) spealcs of the 
 manufacture by the Milesian women of a leather artificial penis, 
 or olisbos. In the British Museum is a vase representing a 
 lietaira holding such instruments, which, as found at Pompeii, 
 may be seen in the museum at Naples. One of the best of Heron- 
 das's mimes, "The Private Conversation," presents a dialogue 
 between two ladies concerning a certain olisbos (or v^w ), 
 which one of them vaunts as a dream of delight. Through the 
 Middle Ages (when from time to time the clergy reprobated the 
 use of such instruments 1) they continued to be known, and after 
 the fifteenth century the references to them became more precise. 
 Thus Fortini, the Siennese novelist of the sixteenth century, re- 
 fers in his Novelle dei Novizi (7th Day, IsTovella XXXIX) to "tlie 
 glass object filled with warm water which nuns use to calm 
 the sting of the flesh and to satisfy themselves as well as they 
 can"; he adds that widows and other women anxious to avoid 
 pregnancy availed themselves of it. In Elizabethan England, at 
 the same time, it appears to have been of similar character and 
 Marston in his satires tells how Lucea prefers "a glassy instru- 
 
 1 In Burchard's Penitential (cap. 142-3), penalties are assigned 
 to the woman who makes a phallus for use on herself or other 
 women. ( Wassersehleben, Bussordnungen der abendlandlichen Kirche, 
 p. 658.) The penis succedaneus, the Latin phallus or fascinum, is in 
 France called godemiche; in Italy, passatempo, and also diletto, whenes 
 dildo, by which it is most commonly known in England. For men, tho 
 corresponding cunnus succedaneus is, in England, called merlin, which 
 meant originally (as defined in old editions of Bailey's Dictionary) 
 "counterfeit hair for women's privy parts." 
 
170 PSYCPIOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 ment" to "her husband's lukewarm bed." In sixteenth century 
 Prance, also, such instruments were sometimes made of glass, 
 and Brantome refers to the godemiche; in eighteenth century- 
 Germany they were called Samtlianse, and their use, according 
 to Heinse, as quoted by Diihren, was common among aristocratic 
 woijien. In England by that time the dildo appears to have 
 become common. Archemholtz states that while in Paris they 
 are only sold secretly, in London a certain Mrs. Philips sold them 
 openly on a large scale in her shop in Leicester Square. John 
 Bee in 1835, stating that the name was originally dil-dol, remarks 
 that their use was formerly commoner than it was in his day. 
 In Prance, Madame Gourdan, the most notorious brothel-keeper 
 of the eighteenth century, carried on a wholesale traide in con- 
 solateurs, as they were called, and "at her death numberless 
 letters from abbesses and simple nuns were found among her 
 papers, asking for a 'consolateur' to be sent."^ The modem 
 Preneh instrument is described by Garnier as of hardened red 
 rubber, exactly imitating the penis and capable of holding warm 
 milk or other fluid for injection at the moment of orgasm; the 
 compressible scrotum is said to have been first added in the 
 eighteenth century.^ 
 
 In Islam the artificial penis has reached nearly as high a 
 development as in Christendom. Turkish women use it and it 
 is said to be openly sold in Smyrna. In the harems of Zanzibar, 
 according to Baumann, it is of considerable size, carved out of 
 ebony or ivory, and commonly bored through so that warm 
 water may be injected. It is here regarded as an Arab invention.^ 
 
 Somewhat similar appliances may be traced in all centres of 
 civilization. But throughout they appear to be frequently con- 
 fined to the world of prostitutes and to those women who live on 
 the fashionable or semi-artistic verge of that world. Ignorance 
 and delicacy combine with a less versatile and perverted concen- 
 tration on the sexual impulse to prevent any general recourse to 
 such highly specialized methods of solitary gratification. 
 
 1 Diihren, Der Marquis de Bade und Seine Zeit, 3d ed., pp. 130, 
 232; id. Geschlechtslehen in England, Bd. II, pp. 284 et seq. 
 
 2 Garnier, Onanismc, p. 378. 
 sZeifschrifi fUr Ethnologie, 1899, p. 669. 
 
ADTO-EROTISM. 171 
 
 On the. other hand, the nse, or rather abuse, of the ordinary 
 objects and implements of daily life in obtaining auto-erotic 
 gratification, among the ordinary population in civilized modern 
 lands, has reached an extraordinary degree of extent and variety 
 •we can only feebly estimate by the occasional resulting mis- 
 chances which come under the surgeon's hands, because only a 
 certain proportion of such instruments are dangerous. Thus the 
 banana seems to be widely used for masturbation by women, and 
 appears to be marked out for the purpose by its size and shape^ ; 
 it is, however, innocuous, and never comes under the surgeon's 
 notice; the same may probably be said of the cucumbers and 
 other vegetables more especially used by country and factory girls 
 in masturbation ; a lady living near Yichy told Pouillet that she 
 had often heard (and had herself been able to verify the fact) 
 that the young peasant women .commonly used turnips, carrots, 
 and beet-roots. In the eighteenth century Mirabeau, in his 
 Eroiika Biblion gave a list of the various objects used in convents 
 (which he describes as "vast theatres" of such practices) to 
 obtain solitary sexual excitement. In more recent years the fol- 
 lowing are a few of the objects found in the vagina or bladder 
 whence they could only be removed by surgical interf erence^ : 
 
 1 The mythology of Hawaii, one may note, tells of goddesses who 
 were impregnated by bananas they had placed beneath their garments. 
 B. Stern mentions (iledizin in der TiXrki, Bd. II, p. 24) that the 
 women of Turkey and Kgypt use the banana, as well as the eucumber, 
 etc., for masturbation. In a poem in the Arabian Nights, also ("History 
 of the Young Nour with the Frank" ) , we read : "0 bananas, of soft 
 and smooth skins, which dilate the eyes of young girls . . . you, 
 alone among fruits are endowed with a pitying heart, consolers of 
 widows and divorced women." In France and England they are not 
 uncommonly used for the same purpose. 
 
 2 See, e.g., Winckel, Die Krankheiten der weiilicJien Harnrohre und 
 Blase, 1885, p. 211; and "Lehrbuch der Frauenkrankheiten," 1886, p. 
 210; also, Hyrtl, Handhuch du Topographischen Anatomie, 7th ed., Bd. 
 II, pp. 212-214. Griinfeld {Wiener medininische Blatter, November Siti, 
 1896), collected 115 cases of foreign body in the bladder — 68 in men, 
 4i' in women; but while those found in men were usually the result of 
 a surgical accident, those found in women were mostly introduced by the 
 patients themselves. The patient usually professes profound ignorance 
 as to how the object came there; or she explains that she accidentally 
 sat down upon it, or that she used it to produce freer urination. The 
 eprliest surgical case of this kind I happen to have met with, was re- 
 corded by Plazzon, in Italy, in 1621 (De Paribus Oenerationi Inservien- 
 
172 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 Pencils, sticks of sealing-wax, cotton-reels, hair-pins (and in 
 Italy very commonly the bone-pins used in the hair), bodkins, 
 knitting-needles, crochet-needles, needle-cases, compasses, glass 
 stoppers, candles, corks, tumblers, forks, tooth-picks, tooth- 
 brushes, pomade-pots (in a case recorded by Schroeder with a 
 cockchafer inside, a makeshift substitute for the Japanese rin-no- 
 iama), while in one recent English case a full-sized hen's egg was 
 removed from the vagina of a middle-aged married woman. 
 More than nine-tenths of the foreign bodies found in the female 
 bladder or urethra are due to masturbation. The age of the 
 individuals in whom such objects have been found is usually from 
 17 to 30, but in a few cases they have been found in girls below 
 14, infrequently in women between 40 and 50 ; the large objects, 
 naturally, are found chiefly in the vagina, and in married women, i 
 Hair-pins have, above all, been found in the female bladder 
 with special frequency; this point is worth some consideration 
 as an illustration of the enormous frequency of this form of auto- 
 erotism. The female urethra is undoubtedly a normal centre 
 of sexual feeling, as Pouillet pointed out many years ago; a 
 woman medical correspondent, also, writes that in some women 
 the maximum of voluptuous sensation is at the vesical sphincter 
 or orifice, though not always so limited. E. H. Smith, indeed, 
 considers that "the urethya is the part in which the orgasm 
 occurs," and remarks that in sexual excitement mucus always 
 flows largely from the urethra. ^ It should be added that when 
 once introduced the physiological mechanism of the bladder 
 apparently causes the organ to tend to "swallow" the foreign 
 object. Yet for every case in which the hair-pin disappears and 
 
 tilms, lib. ii, Cli. XIII) ; it waa tliat of a certain honorable maiden 
 ^yith a large clitoris, who, seeking to lull sexual excitement with the aid 
 of a bone needle, inserted it in the bladder, whence It was removed by 
 Aquapendente. 
 
 1 A. Poulet, Traiti des Corps itrangers en Cliirui-gie, 1879. English 
 translation, 1881, vol. ii, pp. 209,230. Eohleder (Die Masturhation, 189U, 
 pp. 24-31) also gives examples of strange objects found in the sexuai 
 organs. 
 
 2E. H. Smith, "Signs of Masturbation in the Female," Pacific 
 Medical Journal," February, 1903, quoted by R. W. Taylor, Practical 
 Treatise on Sexual Disorders, 3d ed., p. 418. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. , 173 
 
 is lost in the bladder, from carelessness or the oblivion of the 
 sexual spasm, there must be a vast number bf cases in which the 
 instrument is used without any such unfortunate result. There 
 is thus great significance ia the frequency with which cases of 
 hair-pin in the bladder are strewn through the medical literature 
 of all countries. 
 
 In 1862, a German surgeon found the accident so common 
 that he invented a special instrument for extracting hair-pins 
 from the female bladder, as, indeed, Italian and French surgeons 
 have also done. In Prance, Denuce, of Bordeaux, came to the 
 conclusion that hair-pin in the bladder is the commonest result 
 of masturbation as known to the surgeon. In England cases are 
 constantly being recorded. Lawson Tait, stating that most cases 
 of stone in the bladder in women are due to the introduction of 
 a foreign body, very often a hair-pin, adds : "I have removed 
 hair-pins encrusted with phosphates from ten different female 
 bladders, and not one of the owners of these bladders would give 
 any account of the incident."^ Stokes, again, records that during 
 four years he had four cases of hair-pin in the female urethra.^ 
 In New York one physician met with four cases in a short 
 experience.^ In Switzerland Professor Eeverdin had a precisely 
 similar experience.^ 
 
 There is, however, another class of material objects, widely 
 employed for producing physical auto-erotism, which in the 
 
 1 L. Tait, Diseases of Women, 1889, vol. i, p. 100. 
 
 2 Ohstetric Journal, vol. i, 1873, p. 558. Gf. G. J. Arnold, lintisn 
 Medical Journal, January 6, 1906, p. 21. 
 
 3 Dudley, American Journal of Obstetrics, July, 1889, p. 758. 
 
 4 A. Reverdin, "Kpingles a Cheveux dans la Vessie, Revue Mtdicale 
 de la Suisse Romande, January 20, 1888. His cases are fully recorded, 
 and his paper is an able and interesting contribution to this by-way of 
 sexual psychology. The first case was a school-master's wife, aged 22, 
 who confessed in her husband's presence, without embarrassment or 
 hesitation, that the manoeuvre was habitual, learned from u, school- 
 companion, and continued after marriage. The second was a single 
 woman of 42, a cure's servant, who attempted to elude confession, but 
 on leaving the doctor's house remarked to the house-maid, "Never go 
 to bed without taking out your hairpins; accidents happen so easily." 
 The third was an English girl of 17 who finally acknowledged that 
 she had lost two hairpins in this way. The fourth was a child of 12, 
 driven by the pain to confess that the practice had become a habit 
 with her. 
 
174 , PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 nature of things never reaches the surgeon. I refer to the effects 
 that, naturally or unnaturally, may be produced by many of the 
 objects and implements of daily life that do not normally come 
 in direct contact with the sexual organs. Children sometimes, 
 even when scarcely more than infants, produce sexual excitement 
 by friction against the corner of a chair or other piece of furni- 
 ture, and women sometimes do the same.^ Guttceit, in Eussia, 
 knew women who made a large knot in their chemises to rub 
 against, and mentions a woman who would sit on her naked heel 
 and rub it against her. Girls in Prance, I am informed, are 
 fond of riding on the clievaux-de-iois, or hobby-horses, because of 
 the sexual excitement thus aroused ; and that the sexual emotions 
 play a part in the fascination exerted by this form of amusement 
 everywhere is indicated by the ecstatic faces of its devotees.^ At 
 the temples in some parts of Central India, I am told, swings are 
 hung up in pairs, men and women swinging in these until sexually 
 excited ; during the months when the men in these districts have 
 to be away from home the girls put up swings to console them- 
 selves for the loss of their husbands. 
 
 It is interesting to observe the very wide prevalence of swinging, 
 often of a religious or magic character, and the evident sexual signifi- 
 cance underlying it, although this is not always clearly brought out. 
 Groos, discussing the frequency of swinging (Die Spiele der Menschen, 
 p. 114) refers, for instance, to the custom of the Gilbert Islanders for 
 a, young man to swing a girl from a coco palm, and then to cling on 
 and swing with her. In ancient Greece, women and grown-up girls were 
 fond of see-saws and swings. The Athenians had, indeed, a swinging 
 festival (Athenseus, Bk. XIV, Ch. X). Songs of a voluptuous character, 
 we gather from Athenseus, were sung by the women at this festival. 
 
 1 "One of my patients," remarks Dr. R. T. Morris, of New York, 
 {Transactions of the American Association of Obstetricians, for 1892, 
 Philadelphia, vol. v), "who is a devout church-member, had never allowed 
 herself to entertain sexual thoughts referring to men, but she mastur- 
 b.ited every morning, when standing before the mirror, by rubbing 
 against a key in the bureau-drawer. A man never excited her passions, 
 but the sight of a key in any bureau-drawer aroused erotic desires." 
 
 2 Freud [Drei Ahhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, p. 118) refers to the 
 sexual pleasure of swinging. Swinging another person may be a source of 
 voluptuous excitement, and one of the 600 forms of sexual pleasure 
 enumerated in De Sade's Les 120 Journies de Sodome is (according to 
 Diihren) to propel a girl vigorously in a swing. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 175 
 
 J. Gr. Frazer {The Golden Bough, vol. ii, note A, "Swinging as a 
 Magical Kite") discusses the question, and brings forward instances in 
 which men, or, especially, women swing. "The notion seems to be," 
 he states, "that the ceremony promotes fertility, whether in the vege- 
 table or in the animal kingdom; though why it should be supposed 
 to do so, I confess myself unable to explain" {loc. cit., p. 450). The 
 explanation seems, however, not far to seek, in view of the facts quoted 
 above, and Frazer himself refers to the voluptuous character of the 
 songs sometimes sung. 
 
 Even apart from actual swinging of the whole body, a swing- 
 ing movement may suffice to arouse sexual excitement, and may, — at all 
 events, in women, — constitute an essential part of methods of attaining 
 solitary sexual gratification. Kiernan thus describes the habitual auto- 
 erotic procedure of a, young American woman: "The patient knelt 
 before a chair, let her elbows drop on its seat, gi-asping the arms with 
 a firm grip, then commenced a swinging, writhing motion, seeming 
 to fi.K her pelvis, and moving her trunk and limbs. The muscles were 
 rigid, the face took on a passionate expression; the features were con- 
 torted, the eyes rolled, the teeth were set, and the lips compressed, 
 while the cheeks were purple. The condition bore a striking resemblance 
 to the passional stage of grand hysteria. The reveling took only a 
 moment to commence, but lasted a long time. Swaying induced a 
 pleasurable sensation, accompanied with a feeling of suction upon the 
 clitoris. Almost immediately after, a sensation of bursting, caused by 
 discharge from the vulvo-vaginal glands, occurs, followed by a rapture 
 prolonged for an indefinite time." The accompanying sexual imagery 
 is so vivid as almost to become hallucinatory. (J. G. Kiernan, "Sex 
 Transformation and Psychic Impotence," American Journal of Derma- 
 tology, vol. ix. No. 2.) 
 
 Somewhat similarly sensations of sexual character are some- 
 times experienced by boys when climbing vp a pole. It is not 
 even necessary that there should be direct external contact with 
 the sexual organs, and Howe states that gymnastic swinging poles 
 around which boys swing while supporting the whole weight on 
 the hands, may suffice to produce sexual excitement. 
 
 Several writers have pointed out that riding, especially in 
 women, may produce sexual excitement and orgasm. ^ It is well- 
 
 1 The fact that horse exercise may proluce pollutions was well 
 recognized by Catholic theologians, and Sanchez states that this fact 
 need not be made a reason for traveling on foot. Rolfincius, in 1667, 
 pointed out that horse-riding, in those unaccustomed to it, may lead 
 
176 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 known, also, that both in men and women the yibratory motion 
 of a railway-train frequently produces a certain degree of sexual 
 excitement, especially when sitting forward. Such excitement 
 may remain latent and not become specifically sexual.^ I am not 
 aware that this quality of railway traveling has ever been fostered 
 as a sexual perversion, but the sewing-machine has attracted con- 
 siderable attention on account of its influence in exciting 
 auto-erotic manifestations. The early type of sewing-machine, 
 especially, was of very heavy character and involved much up 
 and down movement of the legs; Langdon Down pointed out 
 many years ago that this frequently produced great sexual 
 erethism which led to masturbation.^ According to one French 
 authority, it is a well-recognized fact that to work a sewing- 
 machine with the body in a certain position produces sexual 
 excitement leading to the orgasm. The occurrence of the 
 orgasm is indicated to the observer by the machine being worked 
 for a few seconds with uncontrollable rapidity. This sound is 
 said to be frequently heard in large French workrooms, and it 
 is part of the duty of the superintendents of the rooms to make 
 the girls sit properly.^ 
 
 "During a visit which I once paid to a manufactory of military 
 clothing," Pouillet writes, "I witnessed the following scene. In the 
 midst of the uniform sound produced by some thirty sewing-machines, 
 I suddenly heard one of the machines working with much more velocity 
 than the others. I looked at the person who was working it, a brunette 
 of 18 or 20. ^Vliile she was automatically occupied with the trousers 
 she was making on the machine, her face became animated, her mouth 
 opened slightly, her nostrils dilated, her feet moved the pedals with 
 constantly increasing rapidity. Soon I saw a convulsive look in her 
 
 to nocturnal pollutions. Rohleder {Die Masturbation, pp. 133-134) 
 brings together evidence regarding the influence of horse exercise in 
 producing sexual excitement. 
 
 1 A correspondent, to whom the idea was presented for the first 
 time, wrote : "Henceforward I shall know to what I must attribute the 
 bliss — almost the beatitude — I so often have experienced after traveling 
 for four or five hours in a train." Penta mentions the case of a young 
 girl who first experienced sexual desire at the age of twelve, after a rail- 
 way journey. 
 
 2 Langdon Down, British Medical Journal. January 12, 1867. 
 
 3 Pouillet, L'Onanisme che^ la Femme, Paris, 1880; Fournier, De 
 I'Onanisme, 1885; Rohleder, Die Masturbation, p. 132. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 177 
 
 eyes, her eyelids were lowered, her face turned pale and was thrown' 
 backward; hands and legs stopped and became extended; a suffocated 
 cry, followed by a long sigh, was lost in the noise of the workroom. 
 The girl remained motionless a few seconds, drew out her handkerchief 
 to wipe away the pearls of sweat from her forehead, and, after casting 
 a timid and ashamed glance at her companions, resumed her work. 
 The forewoman, who acted as my guide, having observed the direction 
 of my gaze, took me up to the girl, who blushed, lowered her face, and 
 murmured some incoherent words before the forewoman had opened her 
 mouth, to advise her to sit fully on the chair, and not on its edge. 
 
 "As I was leaving, I heard another machine at another part of the 
 room in accelerated movement. The forewoman smiled at me, and re- 
 marked that that was so frequent that it attracted no notice. It was 
 specially observed, she told me, in the case of young work-girls, ap- 
 prentices, and those who sat on the edge of their seats, thus much facili- 
 tating friction of the labia." 
 
 In cases where the sewing-machine does not lead to direct 
 self-excitement it has been held, as by Fothergill,^ to predispose 
 to frequency of involuntary sexual orgasni during sleep, from the 
 irritation set up by the movement of the feet in the sitting 
 posture during the day. The essential movement in working the 
 sewing-machine is the flexion and extension of the ankle, but 
 the muscles of the thighs are used to maintain the feet firmly 
 on the treadle, the thighs are held together, and there is a con- 
 siderable degree of flexion or extension of the thighs on the 
 trunk; by a special adjustment of the body, and sometimes per- 
 haps merely in the presence of sexual hyperjesthesia, it is thus 
 possible to act upon the sexual organs; but this is by no means 
 a necessary result of using the sewing-machine, and inquiry of 
 various women, with well-developed sexual feelings, who are ac- 
 customed to work the treadle, has not shown the presence of any 
 tendency ia this direction. 
 
 Sexual irritation may also be produced by the bicycle ia 
 women. Thus, Moll- remarks that he knows many married 
 women, and some unmarried, who experience sexual excitement 
 when cycling ; in several cases he has ascertained that the excite- 
 ment is carried as far as complete orgasm. This result cannot. 
 
 1 West-Riding Asylum Reports, 1876, vol. vi. 
 
 2 Das Nervose Weil, 1898, p. 193. 
 
 12 
 
178 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 however, easily happen unless the seat is too high, the peak in 
 contact with the organs, and a rolling movement is adopted ; in 
 the absence of marked hyperesthesia these results are only ef- 
 fected by a bad seat or an improper attitude, the body during 
 cycling resting under proper conditions on the buttocks, and 
 the work being mainly done by the muscles of the thighs and 
 legs which control' the ankles, flexion of the thigh on the pelvis 
 being very small. Most medical authorities on cycling are of 
 opinion that when cycling leads to sexual excitement the fault 
 lies more with the woman than with the machine. This con- 
 clusion does not appear to me to be absolutely correct. I find 
 on inquiry that with the old-fashioned saddle, with an elevated 
 peak rising toward the pubes, a certain degree of sexual excite- 
 ment, not usually producing the orgasm (but, as, one lady ex- 
 pressed it, making one feel quite ready for it), is fairly common 
 among women. Lydston finds that irritation of the genital 
 organs may unquestionably be produced in both males and 
 females by cycling. The aggravation of haemorrhoids sometimes 
 produced by cycling indicates also the tendency to local conges- 
 tion. With the improved flat saddles, however, constructed with 
 more definite adjustment to the anatomical formation of the 
 parts, this general tendency is reduced to a negligible minimum. 
 Eeference may be made at this point to the influence of 
 tight-lacing. This has been recognized by gynaecologists as a 
 factor of sexual excitement and a method of masturbation. i 
 Women who have never worn corsets sometimes find that, 
 on first putting them on, sexual feeling is so intensified that it 
 is necessary to abandon their use.^ The reason of this (as Sie- 
 bert points out in his Buch fiir Eltern) seems to be that the cor- 
 set both favors pelvic congestion and at the same time exerts a 
 pressure on the abdominal muscles which brings them into the 
 state produced during coitus. It is doubtless for the same 
 
 1 In the Appendix to volume iii of these Studies, I have recorded 
 the experience of a lady -v^ho found sexual gratification in this manner. 
 
 2 Dr. J. G. Kiernan, to T\'hom I am indebted for a note on this 
 point, riills my attention also to the case of a homosexual and maso- 
 chistic man {Medical Record, vol. xix) whose feelings were intensified 
 by tight-lacing. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 179 
 
 reason that, as some women have found, more distension of 
 the bladder is possible without corsets than with them. 
 
 In a further class of cases no external object whatever is 
 used to procure the sexual orgasm, but the more or less voluntary 
 pressure of the thighs alone is brought to bear upon the sexual 
 regions. It is done either when sitting or standing, the thighs 
 being placed together and firmly crossed, and the pelvis rocked 
 so that the sexual organs are pressed against the inner and poste- 
 rior parts of the thighs. ^ This is sometimes done by men, and is 
 fairly common among women, especially, according to Marti- 
 neau,- among those who sit much, such as dressmakers and 
 milliners, those who use the sewing-machine, and those who ride. 
 Vedeler remarks that in his experience in Scandinavia, thigh- 
 friction is the commonest form of masturbation in women. The 
 practice is widespread, and a medical correspondent in India 
 tells me of a Brahmin widow who confessed to this form of 
 masturbation. I am told that in London Board Schools, at the 
 present time, thigh-rubbing is not infrequent among the girl 
 scholars; the proportion mentioned in one school was about ten 
 per cent, of the girls over eleven ; the thigh-rubbing is done more 
 or less openly and is interpreted by the uninitiated as due merely 
 to a desire to relieve the bladder. It is found in female infants. 
 Thus, Townsend records the case of an infant, 8 months old, who 
 would cross her right thigh over the left, close her eyes and 
 clench her fists ; after a minute or two there would be complete 
 relaxation, with sweating and redness of face; this would occur 
 about once a'week or oftener; the child was quite healthy, with 
 no abnormal condition of the genital organs.^ The frequency of 
 
 1 Some •women are also able to produce the orgasm, when in a state 
 of sexual excitement, by placing a cushion between the knees and press- 
 ing the thighs firmly together. 
 
 2 Legons sur les Deformations Vulvaires, p. 64. Martineau was 
 informed by a dressmaker that it is very frequent in workrooms and 
 can usually be done without attracting attention. An ironer informed 
 him that while standing at her work, she crossed her legs, slightly bend- 
 ing the trunk forward and supporting herself on the table by the hands ; 
 then a few movements of contraction of the adductor muscles of the 
 thigh would suffice to produce the orgasm. 
 
 3 C. W. Townsend, "Thigh-friction in Children under one Year," 
 Annual Meeting of the American Pediatric Society, Montreal, 1896. Five 
 eases are recorded by this writer, all in female infants. 
 
18C PSYCHOLOGY OF SEZ. 
 
 thigh-friction among women as a form of masturbation is due to 
 the fact that it is usually acquired innocently and it involves no 
 indecorum. Thus Soutzo reports the case of a girl of 13 who at 
 school, vi^hen having to wait her turn at the water-closet, for fear 
 of wetting herself would put her clothes between her legs and 
 press her thighs together, moving them backwards and forwards 
 in the effort to control the bladder ; she discovered that a pleasur- 
 able sensation was thus produced and acquired the habit of prac- 
 ticing the manoeuvre for its own sake; at the age of 17 she 
 began to vary it in different ways ; thus she would hang from a 
 tree with her legs swinging and her chemise pressed between her 
 thighs which she would rub together. ^ Thigh-friction in some 
 of its forms is so comparatively decorous a form of masturbation 
 that it may even be performed in public places; thus, a few 
 years ago, while waiting for a train at a station on the outskirts 
 of a provincial town, I became aware of the presence of a young 
 woman, sitting alone on a seat at a little distance, whom I could 
 observe unnoticed. She was leaning back with legs crossed, 
 swinging the crossed foot vigorously and continuously ; this con- 
 tinued without interruption for some ten minutes after I first 
 observed her; then the swinging movement reached a climax; 
 she leant still further back, thus bringing the sexual region still 
 more closely in contact with the edge of the bench and straight- 
 ened and stiffened her body and legs in what appeared to be a 
 momentary spasm; there could be little doubt as to what had 
 taken place. A few moments later she slowly walked from her 
 solitary seat into the waiting-room and sat down among the 
 other waiting passengers, quite still now and with uncrossed legs, 
 8 pale quiet young woman, possibly a farmer's daughter, serenely 
 unconscious that her manoeuvre had been detected, and very 
 possibly herself ignorant of its true nature. 
 
 There are many other forms in which the impulse of auto- 
 erotism presents itself. Dancing is often a powerful method of 
 sexual excitement, not only among civilized but among savage 
 peoples, and Zaehe describes the erotic dances of Swaheli women 
 
 1 Soutzo, Archives de Newologie, February, 1903, p. 167. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 181 
 
 as having a masturbatory object. ^ Stimulation of the nates is a 
 potent adjuvant to the production of self-excitement, and self- 
 flagellation with rods, etc., is practiced by some individuals, 
 especially young women.^ Urtication is another form of this 
 stimulation ; Eeverdin knevf a young vroman virho obtained sexual 
 gratification by flogging herself with chestnut burrs, and it is 
 stated that in some parts of France (departments of the Ain and 
 Cote d'Or) it is not uncommon for young girls to masturbate by 
 rubbing the leaves of the Linaria cymbalaria (here called "pin- 
 ton" or "timbarde") on to the sexual parts, thus producing a 
 burning sensation.^ Stimulation of the mamma, normally an 
 erogenous centre in women, may occasionally serve as a method 
 for obtaining auto-erotic satisfaction, including the orgasm, in 
 both sexes. I have been told of a case in a man, and a medical 
 correspondent in India informs me that he knows a Eurasian 
 woman, addicted to masturbation, who can only obtain the 
 orgasm by rubbing the genitals with one hand while with the 
 other she rubs and finally squeezes her breasts. The tactile 
 stimulation even of regions of the body which are not normally 
 erogenous zones in either sex may sometimes lead on to sexual 
 excitement ; Hirschsprung, as well as Freud, believes that this is 
 often the ease as regards flnger-sucking and toe-sucking in 
 infancy. Even stroking the chin, remarks Debreyne, may pro- 
 duce a pollution.^ Taylor refers to the case of a young woman 
 of 32, who was liable to attacks of choreic movements of the 
 hands which would terminate in alternately pressing the middle 
 finger on the tip of the nose and the tragus of the ear, when a 
 "far-away, pleased expression" would appear on her face; she 
 thus produced sexual excitement and satisfaction. She had no 
 
 1 Zaehe, Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, 1899, p. 72. I have discussed 
 what may be regarded as the normally sexual influence of dancing, in the 
 third volume of these Studies, "The Analysis of the Sexual Impulse." 
 
 2 The case has been recorded of a Kussian who had the spon- 
 taneous impulse to self-flagellation on the nates with a rod, for the sake 
 of sexual excitement, from the age of 6. {Bivista, Mensile di Psich.iaf'-ia _ 
 April, 1900, p. 102.) 
 
 3 KpvvTadia, vol. V, p. 358. As regards the use of nettles, see 
 Duhren, GeschlecTitsleben in England, Bd. II, p. 392. 
 
 4 Debreyne, McechialOgie, p. 177. 
 
182 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 idea of wrong-doing and was surprised and ashamed when she 
 realized the nature of her act.^ 
 
 Most of the foregoing examples of auto-erotism are com- 
 monly included, by no means correctly, under the heading of 
 "masturbation." There are, however, a vast number of people, 
 possessing strong sexual emotions and living a solitary life, who 
 experience, sometimes by instinct and sometimes on moral 
 grounds, a strong repugnance for these manifestations of auto- 
 erotism. As one highly intelligent lady writes: "I have some- 
 times wondered whether I could produce it (complete sexual 
 excitement) mechanically, but I have a curious unreasonable 
 repugnance to trying the experiment. It would materialize it too 
 much." The same repugnance may be traced in the tendency 
 to avoid, so far as possible, the use of the hands. It is quite 
 common to find this instinctive unreasoning repugnance among 
 women, a healthy repugnance, not founded on any moral ground. 
 In men the same repugnance exists, more often combined with, 
 or replaced by, a very strong moral and aesthetic objection to such 
 practices. But the presence of such a repugnance, however in- 
 vincible, is very far from carrying us outside the auto-erotic 
 field. The production of the sexual orgasm is not necessarily 
 dependent on any external contact or voluntary mechanical cause. 
 
 As an example, though not of specifically auto-erotic mani- 
 festations, I may mention the case of a man of 57, a somewhat 
 eccentric preacher, etc., who writes: "My whole nature goes out 
 so to some persons, and they thrill and stir me so that I ha'^e an 
 emission while sitting by them with no thought of sex, only the 
 gladness of soul found its way out thus, and a glow of health 
 sufEused the whole body. There was no spasmodic conclusion, 
 but a pleasing gentle sensation as the few drops of semen passed." 
 (In reality, no doubt, not semen, but urethral fluid.) This man's 
 condition may certainly be considered somewhat morbid; he is 
 attracted to both men and women, and the sexual impulse seems 
 to be irritable and weak; but a similar state of things exists so 
 often in women, no doubt due to sexual repression, and in individ- 
 
 1 R. W. Taylor, A Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorders, 3rd ed., 
 Ch. XXX. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 183 
 
 •uals who are in a general state of normal and good health, that in 
 these it can scarcely be called morbid. Brooding on sexual 
 images, which the theologians termed delectatio morosa, may lead 
 to spontaneous orgasm in either sex, even in perfectly normal 
 persons. Hammond described as a not uncommon form of 
 "psychic coitus," a condition in which the simple act of imagina- 
 tion alone, in the presence of the desired object, suffices to pro- 
 duce orgasm. In some public conveyance, theatre, or elsewhere, 
 the man sees a desirable woman and by concentrating his atten- 
 tion on her person and imagining all the stages of intimacy he 
 quickly succeeds in producing orgasm. ^ Niceforo refers to an 
 Italian work-girl of 14 who could obtain ejaculation of mucus 
 four times a day, in the workroom in the presence of the other 
 girls, without touching herself or moving her body, by simply 
 thinking of sexual things.^ 
 
 If the orgasm occurs spontaneously, without the aid of 
 mental impressions, or any manipulations ad hoc, though under 
 such conditions it ceases to be sinful from the theological stand- 
 point, it certainly ceases also to be normal. Serieux records the 
 case of a somewhat neurotic woman of 50, who had been separa- 
 ted from her husband for ten years, and since lived a chaste 
 life; at this age, however, she became subject to violent crises 
 of sexual orgasm, which would come on without any accompani- 
 ment of voluptuous thoughts. MacGillicuddy records three cases 
 of spontaneous orgasm in women coming under his notice.^ 
 Such crises are frequently foimd in both men and women, who, 
 from moral reasons, ignorance, or on other grounds are restrained 
 from attaining the complete sexual orgasm, but whose sex- 
 ual emotions are, literally, continually dribbling from them. 
 Schrenck-Notzing knows a lady who is spontaneously sexually 
 excited on hearing music or seeing pictures without anything 
 lascivious in them; she knows nothing of sexual relationships. 
 Another lady is sexually excited on seeing beautiful and natural 
 scenes, like jhe sea ; sexual ideas are mixed up in her mind with 
 
 1 Hammond, Sexual Impotence, pp. 70 et seq. 
 
 2 Niceforo, II Gergo, p. 98. 
 
 S Functional Disorders of the Nervous System in Women, p. 114. 
 
184 PSYCHOLOGY OP SEX. 
 
 these things, and the contemplation of a specially strong and 
 sympathetic man brings the orgasm on in about a minute. Both 
 these ladies "masturbate" in the streets, restaurants, railways, 
 theatres, without anyone perceiving it.^ A Brahmin woman 
 informed a medical correspondent in India that she had distinct 
 though feeble orgasm, with copious outflow of mucus, if she 
 stayed long near a man whose face she liked, and this is not 
 uncommon among European women. Evidently under such 
 conditions there is a state of hypersesthetic weakness. Here, 
 however, we are passing the frontiers of strictly auto-erotic 
 phenomena. 
 
 Delectatio morosa, as understood by the theologians, is distinct 
 (■from deaire, and also distinct from the definite intention of effecting 
 the sexual act, although it may lead to those things. It is the volun- 
 tary and complacent dallying in imagination with voluptuous thoughts, 
 when no effort is made to repel them. It is, as Aquinas and others 
 point out, constituted hy this act of complacent dallying, and has 
 no reference to the duration of the imaginative process. Debreyne, in 
 his Mcechialogie (pp. 149-163), deals fully with this question, and 
 quotes the opinions of theologians. I may add that in the early Peni- 
 tentials, before the elaboration of Catholic theology, the voluntary emis- 
 sion of semen through the influence of evil thoughts, was recognized 
 as a sin, though usually only if it occurred in church. In Egbert's 
 Penitential of the eighth or ninth century (cap. IX, 12), the penance 
 assigned for this offence in the case of a deacon, is 25 days; in the 
 case of a monk, 30 days ; a priest, 40 days ; a bishop, 50. ( Haddon 
 and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, vol. iii, p. 426.) 
 
 The frequency of spontaneous orgasm in women seems to have 
 been recognized in the seventeenth century. Thus, Schurig (Syllepsilogia, 
 p. 4), apparently quoting Riolan, states that some women are so wanton 
 that the sight of a handsome man, or of their lover, or speech with 
 such a one, will cause them to ejaculate their semen. 
 
 There is, however, a closely allied, and, indeed, overlapping 
 form of auto-erotism which may be considered here: I mean 
 that associated with revery, or day-dreaming. Although this is a 
 
 1 Schrenok-Notzing, Suggestions-fherapie, p. 13. A. Kind (Jahr- 
 huoh filr Sexuelle ZwiscJienstufen, Jahrgang ix, 1908, p. 58) gives the 
 case of a young homosexual woman, a trick cyclist at the music halls, 
 who often, when excited by the sight of her colleague in tights, would 
 experience the orgasm while cycling before the public. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. ISO 
 
 very common and important form of auto-erotism, besides being 
 in a large proportion of cases the early stage of masturbation, 
 it appears to have attracted little attention. ^ The day-dream 
 has, indeed, been studied in its chief form, in the "continued 
 story," by Mabel Learoyd, of Wellesley College. The continued 
 story is an imagined narrative, more or less peculiar to the indi- 
 vidual, by whom it is cherished with fondness, and regarded as 
 an especially sacred mental possession, to be shared only, if at 
 all, with very sympathizing friends. It is commoner among 
 girls and young women than among boys and young men ; among 
 353 persons of both sexes, 47 per cent, among the women and 
 only 14 per cent, among the men, have any continued story. 
 The starting-point is an incident from a book, or, more usually, 
 some actual experience, which the subject develops; the subject 
 is nearly always the hero or the heroine of the story. The growth 
 of the story is favored by solitude, and lying in bed before going 
 to sleep is the time specially sacred to its cultivation.^ No dis- 
 tinct reference, perhaps naturally enough, is made by Miss 
 Learoyd to the element of sexual emotion with which these 
 stories are often strongly tinged, and which is frequently their 
 real motive. Though by no means easy to detect, these elaborate 
 
 1 Janet has, however, used day-dreaming — ^which he calls "reveries 
 suhconscients" — to explain a remarkable case of demon-possession, which 
 he investigated and cured. {Nevroses et Idees fixes, vol. i, pp. 390 et seq.) 
 
 2 "Minor Studies from the Psychological Laboratory of Wellesley 
 College," American Journal of Psychology, vol. vii, No. 1. G. E. Part- 
 ridge ("Reverie," Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1898) well describes the 
 physical accompaniments of day-dreaming, especially in Normal School 
 girls between sixteen and twenty-two. Pick ("Clinical Studies in Patho- 
 logical Dreaming," Journal of Mental Sciences, July, 1901 ) records three 
 more or less morbid cases of day-dreaming, usually with an erotic basis, 
 all in apparently hysterical men. An important study of day-dreaming, 
 based on the experiences of nearly 1,500 young people (more than two- 
 thirds girls and women ) , has been published by Theodate L. Smith 
 ("The Psychology of Day Dreams," American Journal Psychology, 
 October, 1904). Continued stories were found to be rare — only one 
 per cent. Healthy boys, before fifteen, had day-dreams in which sports, 
 athletics, and adventure had a large part; girls put themselves in the 
 place of their favorite heroines in novels. After seventeen, and earlier 
 in the case of girls, day-dreams of love and marriage were found to 
 be frequent. A typical confession is that of a girl of nineteen: "I 
 seldom have time to build castles in Spain, but when I do, I am not dif- 
 ferent from most Southern girls; i.e., my dreams are usually about a 
 pretty fair specimen of a six-foot three-inch biped." 
 
186 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 and more or less erotic day-dreams are not uncommon in young 
 men and especially in young women. Each individual has his 
 own particular dream, which is always varying or developing, but, 
 except in very imaginative persons, to no great extent. Such a 
 day-dream is often founded on a basis of pleasurable personal 
 experience, and develops on that basis. It may involve an ele- 
 ment of perversity, even though that element finds no expression 
 in real life. It is, of course, fostered by sexual abstinence; 
 hence its frequency in young women. Most usually there is 
 little attempt to realize it. It does not necessarily lead to 
 masturbation, though it often causes some sexual congestion or 
 even spontaneous sexual orgasm. The day-dream is a strictly 
 private and intimate experience, not only from its very nature, 
 but also because it occurs in images which the subject finds great 
 difficulty in translating into language, even when willing to do 
 so. In other eases it is elaborately dramatic or romantic in 
 character, the hero or heroine passing through many experiences 
 before attaining the erotic climax of the story. This climax 
 tends to develop in harmony with the subject's growing knowl- 
 edge or experience ; at first, merely a kiss, it may develop into any 
 refinement of voluptuous gratification. The day-dream may 
 occur either in normal or abnormal persons. Eousseau, in his 
 Confessions, describes such dreams, in his case combined with 
 masochism and masturbation. A distinguished American nov- 
 elist, Hamlin Garland, has admirably described in Bose of 
 Dutcher's Coolly the part played in the erotic day-dreams of a 
 healthy normal girl at adolescence by a circus-rider, seen on the 
 first visit to a circus, and becoming a majestic ideal to dominate 
 the girl's thoughts for many years. ^ Eafi'alovich^ describes the 
 process by which in sexual inverts the vision of a person of the 
 same sex, perhaps seen in the streets or the theatre, is evoked in 
 
 1 The case has been recorded of a married woman, in love with her 
 doctor, who kept a day-dream diary, at last filling three bulky volumes, 
 when it was discovered by her husband, and led to an action for divorce; 
 it was shown 'that the doctor knew nothing of the romance in which he 
 played the part of hero. Kiernan, in referring to this case (as recorded 
 in John Paget's Judicial Puzzles), mentions a similar case in Chicago. 
 
 2 Uranisme, p. 125. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 187 
 
 solitary reveries, producing a kind of "psychic onanism," whether 
 or not it leads on to physical manifestations. 
 
 Although day-dreaming of this kind has at present been 
 very little studied, since it loves solitude and secrecy, and has 
 never been counted of sufficient interest for scientific inquisition, 
 it is really a process of considerable importance, and occupies a 
 large part of the auto-erotic field. It is frequently cultivated by 
 refined and imaginative young men and women who lead a chaste 
 life and would often be repelled by masturbation. In such per- 
 sons, under such circumstances, it must be considered as strictly 
 normal, the inevitable outcome of the play of the sexual im- 
 pulse. No doubt it may often become morbid, and is never a 
 healthy process when indulged in to excess, as it is liable to be 
 by refined young people with artistic impulses, to whom it is in 
 the highest degree seductive and insidious. ^ As we have seen, 
 however, day-dreaming is far from always colored by sexual emo- 
 tion; yet it is a significant indication of its really sexual origin 
 that, as I have been informed by persons of both sexes, even in 
 these apparently non-sexual cases it frequently ceases altogether 
 on marriage. 
 
 Even when we have eliminated all these forms of auto-erotic 
 activity, however refined, in which the subject takes a voluntary 
 part, we have still left unexplored an important portion of the 
 auto-erotic field, a portion which many people are alone inclined 
 to consider normal: sexual orgasm during sleep. That under 
 conditions of sexual abstinence in healthy individuals there must 
 inevitably be spme auto-erotic manifestations during waking life, 
 a careful study of the facts compels us to believe. There can 
 be no doubt, also, that, under the same conditions, the occurrence 
 
 1 The acute Anstie remarked, more than thirty years ago, in his 
 work on Neuralgia: "It is a comparatively frequent thing to see an un- 
 social, solitary life (leading to the habit of masturbation) joined with 
 th? bad influence of an unhealthy ambition, prompting to premature and 
 false work in literature and art." From the literary side, M. Lgon Bazal- 
 gette has dealt with the tendency of much modern literature to devote 
 itself to what he calls "mental onanism," of which the probable counter- 
 part, he seems to hint, is a physical process of auto-erotism. (Lgon 
 Bazalgette, "L'onanisme considfirg comme principe createur en art," 
 L'Esprit Nouveau, 1898.) 
 
188 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 of the comple.te orgasm during sleep with, in men, seminal 
 emissions, is altogether normal. Even Zeus himself, as Pansanias 
 has recorded, was liable to such accidents : a statement which, at 
 all events, shows that to the Greek mind there was nothing 
 derogatory in such an occurrence. ^ The Jews, however, regarded 
 it as an impurity,^ and the same idea was transmitted to the 
 Christian church and embodied in the word poUutio, by which the 
 phenomenon was designated in ecclesiastical phraseology.^ Ac- 
 cording to Billuart and other theologians, pollution in sleep is 
 not sin, unless voluntarily caused; if, however, it begins in 
 sleep, and is completed in the half -waking state, with a sense of 
 pleasure, it is a venial sin. But it seems allowable to permit a 
 nocturnal pollution to complete itself on awaking, if it occurs 
 without intention; and St. Thomas even says "Si pollutio placeat 
 ut naturce exoneratio vel alleviaiio, peccatum non creditwr." 
 
 1 Pausanias, Achaia, Chapter XVII. The ancient Babylonians be- 
 lieved in a certain "maid of the night," who appeared to men in sleep 
 and roused without satisfying their passions. (Jastrow, Religion of 
 Bahylonia, p. 262.) This sueoubus was the Assyrian Liler, connected 
 with the Hebrew Lilith. There was a corresponding incubus, "the little 
 night man," who had nocturnal intercourse with women. {Of. Ploss, 
 Das Weil, 7th ed., pp. 521 et seq.) The succubus and the incubus (the 
 latter being more common) were adopted by Christendom; St. Augustine 
 
 {De Civitate Dei, Bk. XV, Ch. XXIII) said that the wicked assaults of 
 sylvans and fauns, otherwise called incubi, on women, are so generally 
 allirmed that it woiild be impudent to deny them. Incubi flourished in 
 mediaeval belief, and can scarcely, indeed, be said to be extinct even to- 
 day. They have been studied by many authors; see, e.g., Dufour, Hin- 
 toire de la Prostitution, vol. v, Ch. XXV. Saint-Andrg, |)hysician-in- 
 ordinary to the French King, pointed out in 1725 that the incubus 
 was a dream. It may be added that the belief in the succubus and in- 
 cubus appears to be widespread. Thus, the West African Yorubas 
 
 (according to A. B. Ellis) believe that erotic dreams are due to the 
 god Klegbra, who, either as a male or a female, consorts with men and 
 women in sleep. 
 
 2 "If any man's seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall 
 bathe all his flesh in water and be unclean until the even. And every, 
 garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be 
 washed with water and be unclean until the even." Leviticus, XV, 
 V. 16-17. 
 
 3 It should be added that the term pollutio also covers voluntary 
 effusion of semen outside copulation. (Debreyne, Mnechialogie, p. 8; 
 for a full discussion of the opinions of theologians concerning nocturnal 
 and diurnal pollutions, see the same author's Essai sur la TMologic 
 Morale, pp. 100-149.) 
 
AUTO-EKOTISM. 189 
 
 Notwithstanding the fair and logical position of the more distin- 
 guished Latin theologians, there has certainly been a, widely prevalent 
 belief in Catholic countries that pollution during sleep is a sin. In the 
 "Parson's Tale," Chaucer maizes the parson say: "Another sin apper- 
 taineth to lechery that cometh in sleeping; and the sin cometh oft to 
 them that be maidens, and eke to them that be corrupt; and this sin 
 men clepe pollution, that cometh in four manners;" these foxtr manners 
 being (1) languishing of body from rank and abundant humors, (2) 
 infirmity, (3) surfeit of meat and drink, and (4) villainous thoughts. 
 Four hundred years later, Madame Roland, in her Mimoires Particu- 
 lieres, presented a vivid picture of the anguish produced in an innocent 
 girl's mind by the notion of the sinfulness of erotic dreams. She men- 
 struated first at the age of 14. "Before this," she writes, "I had some- 
 times been awakened from the deepest sleep in a surprising manner. 
 Imagination played no part; I exercised it on too many serious subjects, 
 and my timorous conscience preserved it from amusement with other 
 subjects, so that it could not represent what I would not allow it to 
 seek to understand. But an extraordinary effervescence aroused my 
 senses in the heat of repose, and, by virtue of my excellent constitution, 
 operated by itself a purification which was as strange to me as its cause. 
 The first feeling which resulted was, I know not why, a sort of fear. I 
 had observed in my PMlotee, that we are not allowed to obtain any 
 pleasure from our bodies except in lawful marriage. What I had ex- 
 perienced could be called a pleasure. I was then guilty, and in a class 
 of offences which caused me the most shame and sorrow, since it was that 
 which was most displeasing to the Spotless Lamb. There was great 
 agitation in my poor heart, prayers and mortifications. How could I 
 avoid it? For, indeed, I had not foreseen it, but at the instant when I 
 experienced it, I had not taken the trouble to prevent it. My watchful- 
 ness became extreme. I scrupulously avoided positions which I found 
 specially exposed me to the accident. My restlessness became so great 
 that at last I was able to awake before the catastrophe. When I was 
 not in time to prevent it, I would jump out of bed, with naked feet on 
 to the polished floor, and with crossed arms pray to the Saviour to pre- 
 serve me from the wiles of the devil. I would then impose some penance 
 on myself, and I have carried out to the letter what the prophet King 
 probably only transmitted to us as a figure of Oriental speech, mixing 
 ashes with my bread and watering it with my tears." 
 
 To the early Protestant mind, as illustrated by Luther, there 
 wag something diseased, though not impure, in sexual excitement 
 during sleep ; thus, in his Table Talh Luther remarks that girls 
 who haye such dreams should be married at once, "taking the 
 
190 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 medicine which God has given." It is only of comparatively 
 recent years that medical science has obtained currency for the 
 belief that this auto-erotic process is entirely normal. Blumen- 
 bacli stated that nocturnal emissions are normal.^ Sir James 
 Paget declared that he had never known celibate men who had 
 not such emissions from once or twice a week to twice every three 
 months, both extremes being within the limits of good health, 
 while Sir Lauder Brunton considers once a fortnight or once a 
 month about the usual frequency, at these periods the emissions 
 often following two nights in succession. Eohleder believes that 
 they may normally follow for several nights in succession. 
 Hammond considers that they occur about once a fortnight.^ 
 Eibbing regards ten to fourteen days as the normal interval.^ 
 Lowenfeld puts the normal frequency at about once a week;* 
 this seems to be nearer the truth as regards most fairly healthy 
 young men. In proof of this it is only necessary to refer to the 
 exact records of healthy young adults summarized in the study of 
 periodicity in the present volume. It occasionally happens, 
 however, that nocturnal emissions are entirely absent. I am 
 acquainted with some cases. In other fairly healthy young men 
 they seldom occur except at times of intellectual activity or of 
 anxiety and worry. 
 
 Lately there has been some tendency for medical opinion to revert 
 to the view of Luther, and to regard sexual excitement during sleep as 
 a, somewhat unhealthy phenomenon. Moll is ti distinguished advocate 
 of this view. Sexual excitement during sleep is the normal result of 
 celibacy, but it is another thing to say that it is, on that account, 
 satisfactory. We might, then, Moll remarks, maintain that nocturnal 
 incontinence of urine is satisfactory, since the bladder is thus emptied. 
 Yet, we take every precaution against this by insisting that the bladder 
 shall be emptied before going to sleep. {Lihido Sexualis, Bd. I, p. 552.) 
 This remark is supported by the fact, to which I find that both men 
 and women can bear witness, that sexual excitement during sleep is more 
 fatiguing than in the waking state, though this is not an invariable 
 
 1 Memoirs,, translated by Bendyshe, p. 182. 
 
 ^Sexual Impotence, p. 137. 
 
 S L'Eygidne Sexuelle, p. 169. 
 
 i Sexualleien und 'Nervenleiden, p. 164. 
 
ADTO-EEOTISM. 191 
 
 rule, and it is sometimes found to be refreshing. In a similar way, 
 Eulenburg {Sexuale Neuropathie, p. 55) states that nocturnal emissions 
 are no more normal than coughing or vomiting. 
 
 Nocturnal emissions are usTially, though not invariably, ac- 
 companied by dreams of a voluptuous character in which the 
 dreamer becomes conscious in a more or less fantastic manner of 
 the more or less intimate presence or contact of a person of the 
 opposite sex. It would seem, as a general rule, that the more 
 vivid and voluptuous the dream, the greater is the physical 
 excitement and the greater also the relief experienced on awaken- 
 ing. Sometimes the erotic dream occurs without any emission, 
 and not infrequently the emission takes place after the dreamer 
 has awakened. 
 
 The widest and most comprehensive investigation of erotic dreams 
 is that carried out by Gualino, in northern Italy, and based on inquiries 
 among 100 normal men — doctors, teachers, lawyers, etc. — ^who had all 
 had experience of the phenomenon. (L. Gualino, "II Sogno Erotieo nell' 
 Uomo Normale,'' Rivista di Psicologia, Jan.-Feb., 1907.) Gualino 
 shows that erotic dreams, with emissions (whether or not seminal), be- 
 gan somewhat earlier than the period of physical development as 
 ascertained by Marro for youths of the same part of northern Italj'. 
 Gualino found that all his eases had had erotic dreams at the age of 
 seventeen; Marro found 8 per cent, of youths still sexually undeveloped 
 at that age, and while sexual development began at thirteen years, 
 erotic dreams began at twelve. Their appearance was preceded, in 
 most cases for some months, by erections. In 37 per cent, of the 
 eases there had been no actual sexual experiences (either masturbation 
 or intercourse) ; in 23 per cent, there had been masturbation; in the 
 rest, some form of sexual contact. The dreams are mainly visual, 
 tactual elements coming second, and the dramatis persona is either an 
 unknown woman (27 per cent, cases), or only known by sight (56 per 
 cent.), and in the majority is, at all events in the beginning, an ugly 
 or fantastic figure, becoming more attractive later in life, but never 
 identical with the woman loved during waking life. This, as Gualino 
 points out, accords with the general tendency for the emotions of the 
 day to be latent in sleep. Masturbation only formed the subject of the 
 dream in four cases. The emotional state in the pubertal stage, apart 
 from pleasure, was anxiety (37 per cent.), desire (17 per cent.), fear 
 (14 per cent.). In the adult stage, anxiety and fear receded to 7 per 
 cent, and 6 per cent., respectively. Thirty-three of the subjects, as a 
 result of sexual or general disturbances, had had nocturnal emissions 
 
192 PSTOHOLOGT OF SES. 
 
 without dreams; these were always found exhausting. Normally (in 
 more than 90 per cent.) erotic dreams are the most vivid of all dreams. 
 In no case was there knowledge of any monthly or other cyclic perio- 
 dicity in the occurrence of the manifestations. In 34 per cent, of cases, 
 tliey tended to occur very soon after sexual intercourse. In numerous 
 cases they were peculiarly frequent (even three in one night) during 
 courtship, when the young man was in the habit of kissing and caressing 
 his betrothed, but ceased after marriage. It was not noted that position 
 in bed or a full bladder exerted any marked influence in the occurrence 
 of erotic dreams; repletion of the seminal vesicles is regarded as the 
 main factor. 
 
 In Germany erotic dreams have been discussed by Volkelt {Die 
 Traum-PJiantasie, 1875, pp. 78-82), and especially by Lowenfeld 
 (Sewual-Probleme, Oct., 1908), while in America, Stanley Hall tlus 
 summarizes the general characteristics of erotic dreams in men: "In 
 by far the most cases, consciousness, even when the act causes full 
 awakening from sleep, finds only scattered images, single words, gestures, 
 and acts, many of which would perhaps normally constitute no pro- 
 Vocation. Many times the mental activity seems to be remote and 
 incidental, and the mind retains in the morning nothing except, perhaps, 
 a peculiar dress pattern, the shape of a finger-nail, the back of a, neck, 
 the toss of a head, the movement of a foot, or the dressing of the hair. 
 In such oases, these images stand out for a time with the distinctness 
 of a. cameo, and suggest that the origin of erotic fetichisms is largely 
 to be found in sexual dreams. Very rarely is there any imagery of the 
 organs themselves, but the tendency to irradiation is so strong as to 
 re-enforce the suggestion of so many other phenomena in this field, that 
 nature designs this experience to be long circuited, and that it may give 
 a peculiar ictus to almost any experience. When waking occurs just 
 afterward, it seems at least possible that there may be much imagery 
 that existed, but failed to be recalled to memory, possibly because the 
 flow of psychic impressions was over very familiar fields, and this, 
 therefore, was forgotten, while any eruption into new or unwonted 
 channels, stood out with distinctness. All these psychic phenomena, al- 
 though very characteristic of man in his prime, are not so of the dreams 
 of dawning puberty, which are far more vivid." (6. Stanley Hall, 
 Adolescence, vol. i, p. 455.) 
 
 I may, further, quote the experience of an anonymous contributor — 
 a healthy and chaste man between 30 and 38 years of age — to the 
 American Journal of Psychology ("Nocturnal Emissions," Jan., 1904) : 
 "Legs and breasts often figured prominently in these dreams, the other 
 sexual parts, however, very seldom, and then they turned out to be 
 male organs in most cases. There were but two instances of copula- 
 tion dreamt. Girls and young women were the usual dramatis personw, 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 193 
 
 and, curiously enougli, often the aggressors. Sometimes the face or 
 faces were well known; sometimes, only once seen; sometimes, entirely 
 unknown. The orgasm occurs at the most erotic part of the dream, the 
 physical and psychical running parallel. This most erotic or sug- 
 gestive part of the dream was very often quite an innocent looking 
 incident enough. As, for example: while passing a strange young 
 woman, overtaken on the street, she calls after me some question. At 
 first, I pay no heed, but when she calls again, I hesitate whether to 
 turn back and answer or not — emission. Again, walking beside a 
 young woman, she said, 'Shall I take your arm?' I offered it, and 
 she took it, entwining her arm around it, and raising it high — 
 eniission. I could feel stronger erection as she asked the question. 
 Sometimes, a. word was enough; sometimes, a, gesture. Once emission 
 took place on my noticing the young woman's diminished finger-nails. 
 Another example of fetichism was my being curiously attracted in a 
 dream by the pretty embroidered figure on a little girl's dress. As an 
 illustration of the strange metamorphoses that occur in dreams, I one 
 night, in my dream (I had been observing partridges in the summer) 
 fell in love with a partridge, which changed under my caresses to a beau- 
 tiful girl, who yet retained an indescribable wild-bird innocence, grace, 
 and charm — a sort of Undina!" 
 
 These experiences may be regarded as fairly typical of the erotic 
 dreams of healthy and chaste young men. The bird, for instance, that 
 changes into a, woman while retaining some elements of the bird, has 
 been encountered in erotic dreams by other young men. It is indeed 
 remarkable that, as De Gubernatis observes, "the bird is a wellrknown 
 phallic symbol," while Maeder finds ("Interpretations de Quelques 
 E&ves," Archives de PsycTiologie, April, 1907) that birds have a sexual 
 significance both in life and in dreams. The appearance of male organs 
 in the dream-woman is doubtless due to the dreamer's greater familiarity 
 with those organs; but, though it occurs occasionally, it can scarcely 
 be said to be the rule in erotic dreams. Even men who have never had 
 connection with a woman, are quite commonly aware of the presence 
 of a woman's sexual organs in their erotic dreams. 
 
 Moll's comparison of nocturnal emissions of semen with nocturnal 
 incontinence of urine suggests an interesting resemblance, and at the 
 same time seeming contrast. In both cases we are concerned with 
 viscera which, when overfilled or unduly irritable, spasmodically eject 
 their contents during sleep. There is a further resemblance which 
 usually becomes clear when, as occasionally happens, nocturnal in- 
 continence of urine persists on to late childhood or adolescence: both 
 phenomena are frequently accompanied by vivid dreams of appropriate 
 character. (See e.g. Kies, "Ueber Enuresis Nocturna," Monatsschrift 
 fur Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Bygiene, 1904; A. P. Buchan, nearly 
 
 13 
 
194 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 a century ago, pointed out the psychic element in the experiences of 
 young persons who wetted the bed, Venus sine Ooncubitu, 1816, p. 47.) 
 Thus, in one case known to me, a child of seven, who occasionally 
 wetted the bed, usually dreamed at the same time that she wanted to 
 make water, and was out of doors, running to find a suitable spot, which 
 she at last found, and, on awaking, discovered that she had wetted 
 the bed; fifteen years later she still sometimes had similar dreams, 
 which caused her much alarm until, when thoroughly awake, she re- 
 alized that no accident had happened; these later dreams were not the 
 result of any actual strong desire to urinate. In another case with 
 which I am acquainted, h little girl of eight, after mental excitement 
 or indigestible meals, occasionally wetted the bed, dreaming that she 
 was frightened by some one running after her, and wetted herself in 
 consequence, after the manner of the Ganymede in the eagle's clutch, 
 as depicted by Rembrandt. These two cases, it may be noted, belong 
 to two quite different types. In the first case, the full bladder suggests 
 to imagination the appropriate actions for relief, and the bladder ac- 
 tually accepts the imaginative solution offered; it is, according to 
 Fiorani's phrase, "somnambulism of the bladder." In the other case, 
 there is no such somnambulism, but a psychic and nervous disturbance, 
 not arising in the bladder at all, irradiates convulsively, and whether 
 or not the bladder is overfull, attacks a vesical nervous system which 
 is not yet sufficiently well-balanced to withstand the inflow of excite- 
 ment. In children of somewhat nervous temperament, manifestations 
 of this kind may occur as an occasional accident, up to about the age 
 of seven or eight; and thereafter, the nervous control of the bladder 
 having become firmly established, they cease to happen, the nervous 
 energy required to affect the bladder sufficing to awake the dreamer. 
 In very rare cases, however, the phenomenon may still occasionally 
 happen, even in adolesence or later, in individuals who are otherwise 
 quite free from it. This is most apt to occur in young women even in 
 waking life. In men it is probably extremely rare. 
 
 The erotic dream seems to differ flagrantly from the vesical 
 dream, in that it occurs in adult life, and is with difficulty brought 
 under control. The contrast is, however, very superficial. When we 
 remember that sexual activity only begins normally at puberty, we realize 
 that the youth of twenty is, in the matter of sexual control, scarcely 
 much older than in the matter of vesical control he was at the age of six. 
 Moreover, if we were habitually, from our earliest years, to go to bed 
 with a full bladder, as the chaste man goes to bed with unrelieved 
 sexual system, it would be fully as difficult to gain vesical control dur- 
 ing sleep as it now is to gain sexual control. Ultimately, such sexual 
 control is attained; after the age of forty, it seems that erotic dreams 
 with emission become more and more rare; either the dream occurs with- 
 
^.UTO-EROTISM. 195 
 
 out actual emission, exactly as dreams of urination occur in adults with 
 full bladder, or else the organic stress, with or without dreams, serves 
 to awaken the sleeper before any emission has occurred. But this stage 
 is not easily or completely' attained. St. Augustine, even at the period 
 when he wrote his Confessions, mentions, as a matter of course, that 
 sexual dreams "not merely arouse pleasure, but gain the consent of the 
 will." (X. 41.) Not infrequently there is a. struggle in sleep, just as 
 the hypnotic subject may resist suggestions; thus, a lady of thirty-iive 
 dreamed a sexual dream, and awol^e without excitement; again she 
 fell asleep, and had another dream of sexual character, but resisted the 
 tendency to excitement, and again awoke; finally, she fell asleep and 
 had a third sexual dream, which was this time accompanied by the 
 orgasm. (This has recently been described also by Nilcke, who terms 
 it pollutio interrupta, Tfeurologisches Oentralhlatt, Oct. 16, 1909; the 
 corresponding voluntary process in the waking state is described by 
 Rohleder and termed masturhatio interrupta, Zeitschrift fiir Sexual- 
 wissenschaft, Aug., 1908.) The factors involved in the acquirement of 
 vesical and sexual control during sleep are the same, but the condi- 
 tions are somewhat diflferent. 
 
 There is a very intimate, connection between the vesical and the 
 sexual spheres, as I have elsewhere pointed out (see e.g. in the third 
 volume of these Studies, "Analysis of the Sexual Impulse" ) . This 
 connection is psychic as well as organic. Both in men and women, 
 a full bladder tends to develop erotic dreams. (See e.g. K. A. Schemer, 
 Das Lehen des Traums, 1861, pp. 187 et seq.j Spitta also points out 
 the connection between vesical and erotic dreams. Die Schlaf und Traum- 
 zustdnde, 2d ed., 1882, pp. 250 et seq.) Raymond and Janet state (Les 
 Obscessions, vol. ii, p. 135) that nocturnal incontinence of urine, ac- 
 companied by dreams of urination, may be replaced at puberty by mas- 
 turbation. In the reverse direction, Freud believes {Monatsschrift fUr 
 Psychiatries, Bd. XVIII, p. 433) that masturbation plays a large part 
 in causing the bed-wetting of children who have passed the age when 
 that usually ceases, and he even finds that children are themselves 
 aware of the connection. 
 
 The diagnostic value of sexual dreams, as an indication of the 
 sexual nature of the subject when awake, has been emphasized by 
 various writers. {E.g., Moll, Die Kontrare Sexualempfindung, Ch. IX; 
 Naeke, "Der Traum als feinstes Reagens fiir die Art des sexuellen Emp- 
 findens,'' Monatsschrift fiir Kriminalpsychologie, 1905, p. 500.) Sexual 
 dreams tend to reproduce, and even to accentuate, those characteristics 
 which make the strongest sexual appeal to the subject when awake. 
 
 At the same time, this general statement has to be qualified, more 
 especially as regards inverted dreams. In the first place, a young man, 
 however normal, who is not familiar with the feminine body when 
 
196 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 awake, is not likely to see it when asleep, even in dreams of women; 
 in the second place, the confusions and combinations of dream imagery 
 often tend to obliterate sexual distinctions, however free from perver- 
 sions the subjects may be. Thus, a correspondent tells me of a healthy 
 man, of very pure character, totally inexperienced in sexual matters, and 
 never having seen a woman naked, who, in his sexual dreams, always 
 sees the woman with male organs, though he has never had any sexual 
 inclinations for men, and is much in love with a lady. The eon- 
 fusions and associations of dream imagery, leading to abnormal combina- 
 tions, may be illustrated by a dream which once occurred to me after 
 reading Joest's account of how a young negress, whose tattoo-marks 
 he was sketching, having become bored, suddenly pressed her hands to 
 her breasts, spirting two streams of lukewarm milk into his face, and 
 ran away laughing; I dreamed of a woman performing a similar 
 action, not from her breasts, however, but from a penis with which 
 she was furnished. Again, by another kind of confusion, a, man dreams 
 sexually that he is with a man, although the figure of the partner 
 revealed in the dream is a woman. The following dream, in a normal 
 man who had never been, or wished to be,, in the position shown by 
 the dream, may be quoted: "I dreamed that I was a big boy, and that 
 a younger boy lay close beside me, and that we (or, certainly, he) had 
 seminal emissions; I was complacently passive, and had a feeling of 
 shame when the boy was discovered. On awaking I found I had had 
 no emission, but was lying very close to my wife. The day before, I 
 had seen boys in a swimming-match." This was, it seems to me, an ex- 
 ample of dream confusion, and not an erotic inverted dream. {Nacke 
 also brings forward inverted dreams by normal persons; see e.g. his 
 "Beitrage zu den sexuellen Trilumen," Archiv fur Kriminalanthro- 
 pologie, Bd. XX, 1908, p. 366.) 
 
 So far as I have been, able to ascertain, there seem to be, 
 generally speaking, certain differences in the manifestations of 
 auto-erotism during sleep in men and women which I believe to 
 be not without psychological significance. In men the phe- 
 nomenon is fairly simple ; it usually appears about puberty, con- 
 tinues at intervals of varying duration during sexual life pro- 
 vided the individual is living chastely, and is generally, though 
 not always, accompanied by erotic dreams which lead up to the 
 climax, its occurrence being, to some extent, influenced by a 
 variety of circumstances: physical, mental, or emotional excite- 
 ment, alcohol taken before retiring, position in bed (as lying on 
 the back), the state of the bladder, sometimes the mere fact of 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 197 
 
 being in a strange bed, and to some extent apparently by the ex- 
 istence of monthly and yearly rhythms. On the whole, it is a 
 fairly definite and regular phenomenon which usually leaves little 
 conscious trace on awaking, beyond probably some sense of 
 fatigue and, occasionally, a headache. In women, however, the 
 phenomena of auto-erotism during sleep seem to be much more 
 irregular, varied, and difEused. So far as I have been able to 
 make inquiries, it is the exception rather than the rule for girls to 
 experience definitely erotic dreams about the period of puberty 
 Or adolescence.^ Auto-erotic phenomena during sleep in women 
 who have never experienced the orgasm when awake are usually 
 of a very vague kind; while it is the rule in a chaste youth for 
 the orgasm thus to manifest itself, it is the exception in a chaste 
 girl. It is not, as a rule, until the orgasm has been definitely 
 produced in the wakiug state — ^under whatever conditions it may 
 have been produced — ^that it begins to occur during sleep, and 
 even in a strongly sexual woman living a repressed life it is often 
 comparatively infrequent. ^ Thus, a young medical woman who 
 endeavors to deal strenuously with her physical sexual emotions 
 writes : "I sleep soundly, and do not dream at all. Occasionally, 
 but very rarely, I have had sensations which awakened me sud- 
 denly. They can scarcely be called dreams, for they are mere 
 impulses, nothing connected or coherent, yet prompted, I know, 
 by sexual feeling. This is probably an experience common to 
 all." Another lady (with a restrained psycho-sexual tendency 
 to be attracted to both sexes), states that her first sexual sensa- 
 tions with orgasm were felt in dreams at the age of 16, but these 
 dreams, which she has now forgotten, were not agreeable and not 
 erotic; two or three years later spontaneous orgasm began to 
 
 1 1 may here refer to the curious opinion expressed by Dr. Elizabeth 
 Blackwell, that, while the sexual impulse in man is usually relieved by 
 seminal emissions during sleep, in women it is relieved by the occurrence 
 of menstruation. This latter statement is flagrantly at variance with 
 the facts ; but it may perhaps be quoted in support of the view expressed 
 above as to the comparative rarity of sexual excitement during sleep in 
 young girls. 
 
 2 Lowenfeld has recently expressed the same opinion. Rohleder 
 believes that pollutions are physically impossible in a real virgin, but 
 that opinion is too extreme. 
 
198 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 occur occasionally when awake, and after this, orgasm took 
 place regularly once or twice a week in sleep, but still without 
 erotic dreams ; she merely dreamt that the orgasm was occurring 
 and awoJie as it took place. 
 
 It is possible that to the comparative rarity in chaste women 
 of complete orgasm during sleep, we may in part attribute the 
 violence with which repressed sexual emotion in women often 
 manifests itself. ^ There is thus a difference here between men 
 and women which is of some significance when we are considering 
 the natural satisfaction of the sexual impulse in chaste women. 
 
 In women, who have become accustomed to sexual inter- 
 course, erotic dreams of fully developed character occur, with 
 complete orgasm and accompanying relief — as may occasionally 
 be the case m women who are not acquainted with actual inter- 
 course ;2 some women, however, even when familiar with actual 
 coitus, find that sexual dreams, though accompanied by emissions, 
 are only the symptoms of desire and do not produce actual relief. 
 
 Some interest attaches to cases in which young women, even 
 girls at puberty, experience dreams of erotic character, or at all 
 events dream concerning coitus or men in erection, although they 
 
 1 It may be added that in more or less neurotic women and girls, 
 erotic dreams may be very frequent and depressing. Thus, J. M. Fother- 
 gill {West-Riding Asylum Report, 1876, \ol. yi) remarks: "These dreams 
 are much more frequent than is ordinarily thought, and are the cause of 
 a great deal of nervous depression among ^vomen. Women of a highly- 
 nervous diathesis suffer much more from these drains than robust women. 
 Not only are these involuntary orgasms more frequent among such 
 women, but they cause more disturbance of the general health in them 
 than in other women." 
 
 2 I may remark here that a Russian correspondent considers that 
 I have greatly underestimated the frequency of erotic manifestations 
 during sleep in young girls. "All the women I have interrogated on 
 this point," he informs me, "say that they have had such pollutions 
 from the time of puberty, or even earlier, accompanied by erotic dreams. 
 I have put the question to some twenty or thirty women. It is true 
 that they were of southern race (Italian, Spanish, and French), and 
 I believe that Southerners are, in this matter, franker than northern 
 women, who consider the activity of the flesh as shameful, and seek to 
 conceal it." My correspondent makes no reference to the chief point of 
 sexual difference, so far as my observation goes, which is that erotic 
 dreams are comparatively rare in those women who have yet had no sort 
 of sexual experience in waking life." Whether or not this is correct, I 
 do not question the frequency of erotic dreams in girls who have had 
 such experience. 
 
ADTO-EKOTISM. 199 
 
 profess, and almost certainly with truth, to be quite ignorant of 
 sexual phenomena. Several such dreams of remarkable character 
 have been communicated to me. One can imagine that the 
 psychologists of some schools would see in these dreams the 
 spontaneous eruption of the experiences of the race. I am 
 inclined to regard them as forgotten memories, such as we know 
 to occur sometimes in sleep. The child has somehow seen or 
 heard of sexual phenomena and felt no interest, and the memory 
 may subsequently be aroused in sleep, under the stimulation of 
 new-born sexual sensations. 
 
 It is a curious proof of the ignorance which has prevailed in re- 
 cent times concerning the psychic sexual nature of women that, al- 
 though in earlier ages the fact that women are normally liable to 
 erotic dreams was fully recognized, in recent times it has been denied, 
 even by writers who have made a special study of the sexual impulse 
 in women. Eulenburg (Sexuale Neuropathie, 1895, pp. 31, 79) appears 
 to regard the appearances of sexual phenomena during sleep, in women, 
 as the result of masturbation. Adler, in what is in many respects an 
 extremely careful study of sexual phenomena in women ( Die Mangelhafte 
 Geschleohtsempfindung des Weibes, 1904, p. 130), boldly states that they 
 do not have erotic dreams. In 1847, E. Guibout ("Des Pollutions In- 
 volontaires chez la Femme," Union Midicale, p. 260) presented the case 
 of a married lady who masturbated from the age of ten, and continued 
 the practice, even after her marriage at twenty-four, and at twenty- 
 nine began to have erotic dreams with emissions every few nights, and 
 later sometimes even several times a night, though they ceased to be 
 voluptuous; he believed the case to be the first ever reported of such 
 a condition in a, woman. Yet, thousands of years ago, the Indian of 
 Vedic days recognized erotic dreams in women as an ordinary and normal 
 occurrence. (Lowenfeld quotes a passage to this effect from the 
 Oupnek'hat, SexvMlehen und Nervenleiden, 2d ed., p. 114.) Even sav- 
 ages recognize the occurrence of erotic dreams in women as normal, 
 for the Papuans, for instance, believe that a young girl's first menstrua- 
 tion is due to intercourse with the moon in the shape of a man, the 
 girl dreaming that a man is embracing her. {Reports Cambridge Ex- 
 pedition to Torres Strait Si, vol. v, p. 206.) In the seventeenth century, 
 Holfincius, in a well-informed study (De PoUutione Nocturna, a Jena 
 Inaugural Dissertation, 1667), concluded that women experience such 
 manifestations, and quotes Aristotle, Galen, and Fernelius, in the same 
 sense. Sir Thomas Overbury, in his Characters, written in the early 
 part of the same century, describing the ideal milkmaid, says that "her 
 
200 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 dreams are so chaste that she dare tell them," clearly implying that 
 it was not so with most women. The notion that women are not sub- 
 ject to erotic dreams thus appears to be of comparatively recent origin. 
 
 One of the most interesting and important characters by 
 which the erotic dreams of women — and, indeed, their dreams 
 generally — differ from those of men is in the tendency to evoke 
 a repercussion on the waking life, a tendency more rarely noted 
 in men's erotic dreams, and then only to a minor extent. This 
 is very common, even in healthy and normal women, and is ex- 
 aggerated to a high degree in neurotic subjects, by whom the 
 dream may even be interpreted as a reality, and so declared on 
 oath, a fact of practical importance. 
 
 Hersman — ^having met with a case in which a school-girl 
 with chorea, after having dreamed of an assault, accused the 
 principal of a school of assault, securing his conviction — obtained 
 the opinions of various American alienists as to the frequency 
 with which such dreams in unstable mental subjects lead to 
 delusions and criminal accusations. Dercum, H. C. Wood, and 
 Eohe had not personally met with such eases ; Burr believed that 
 there was strong evidence "that a sexual dream may be so vivid 
 as to make the subject believe she has had sexual congress"; 
 Kiernan knew of such eases ; C. H. Hughes, in persons with every 
 appearance of sanity, had known the erotic dreams of the night 
 to become the erotic delusions of the day, the patient protesting 
 violently the truth of her story; while Hersman reports the case^ 
 of a young lady in an asylum who had nightly delusions that a 
 medical officer visited her every night, and had to do with her, 
 
 1 C. C. Hersman, "Medico-legal Aspects of Eroto-Choreic Insanifies," 
 Alienist and Neurologist, July, 1897. I may mention that Pitres (Legons 
 cliniques sur I'Hysterie, vol. ii, p. 34) records the almost identical case 
 of a hysterical girl in one of his wards, who was at first grateful 
 to the clinical clerk to whom her case was intrusted, but afterward 
 changed her behavior, accused him of coming nightly through the window, 
 lying beside her, caressing her, and then exerting violent coitus 
 three or four times in succession, until she was utterly exhausted. I 
 may here refer to the tendency to erotic excitement in women under 
 the influence of chloroform and nitrous oxide, a tendency rarely or never 
 noted in men, and of the frequency with which the phenomenon is at- 
 tributed by the subject to actual assault. See H. Ellis, Man and 
 Woman, pp. 269-274. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 201 
 
 coming up the hot-air flue. I am acquaiated with a similar case 
 in a clever, but highly neurotic, young woman, who writes: 
 "For years I have been trying to stamp out my passional nature, 
 and was beginning to succeed when a strange thing happened 
 to me last autumn. One night, as I lay in bed, I felt an influence 
 so powerful that a man seemed present with me. I crimsoned 
 with shame and wonder. I remember that I lay upon my back, 
 and marveled when the spell had passed. The influence, I was 
 assured, came from a priest whom I believed in and admired 
 above everyone in the world. I had never dreamed of love in 
 connection with him, because I always thought him so far above 
 me. The influence has been upon me ever since — sometimes by 
 day and nearly always by night; from it I generally go into a 
 deep sleep, which lasts until morning. I am always much re- 
 freshed when I awake. This influence has the best effect upon, 
 my life that anything has ever had as regards health and mind. 
 It is the knowledge that I am loved fittingly that makes me so 
 indifferent to my future. What worries me is that I sometimes 
 wonder if I suffer from a nervous disorder merely." The sub- 
 ject thus seemed to regard these occurrences as objectively 
 caused, but was sufiiciently sane to wonder whether her experi- 
 ences were not due to mental disorder. ^ 
 
 The tendency of the auto-erotic phenomena of sleep to be 
 manifested with such energy as to flow over into the waking life 
 and influence conscious emotion and action, while very well 
 marked in normal and healthy women, is seen to an exaggerated 
 extent in hysterical women, in whom it has, therefore, chiefly 
 been studied. Sante de Sanctis, who has investigated the- dreams 
 of many classes of people, remarks on the frequently sexual char- 
 acter of the dreams of hysterical women, and the repercussion of 
 
 1 In Australia, some years ago, a man was charged with rape, 
 found guilty of "attempt," and sentenced to eighteen months' imprison- 
 ment, on the accusation of a girl of 13, who subsequently confessed that 
 the charge was imaginary; in this case, the jury found it impossible 
 to believe that so young a girl could have been lying, or hallucinated, 
 because she narrated the details of the alleged offence with such circum- 
 stantial detail. Such cases are not uncommon, and in some measure, 
 no doubt, they may be accounted for by auto-erotic nocturnal hallu- 
 cinations. 
 
202 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 such dreams on the waking life of the following day ; he gives 
 a typical case of hysterical erotic dreaming in an uneducated 
 servant-girl of 23, in whom such dreams occur usually a few days 
 before tlie menstrual period; her dreams, especially if erotic, 
 make an enormous impression on her; in the morning she is 
 bad-tempered if they were unpleasant, while she feels lascivious 
 and gives herself up to masturbation if she has had erotic dreams 
 of men; she then has a feeling of pleasure throughout the day, 
 and her sexual organs are bathed with moisture. ^ Pitres and 
 Gilles de la Tourette, two of Charcot's most distinguished pupils, 
 in their elaborate works on hysteria, both consider that dreams 
 generally have a great influence on the waking life of the hys- 
 terical, and they deal with the special influence of erotic di earns, 
 to which, doubtless, we must refer those conceptions of incuhi 
 and succubi which played so vast and so important a part in 
 the demonology of the Middle Ages, and while not unknown 
 in men were most frequent in women. Such erotic dreams — ■ 
 as these observers, confirming the experience of old writers, have 
 found among the hysterical to-day — are by no means always, or 
 even usually, of a pleasurable character. "It is very rare," Pitres 
 remarks, when insisting on the sexual character of the hallucina- 
 tions of the hysterical, "for these erotic hallucinations to be ac- 
 companied by agreeable voluptuous sensations. In most cases 
 the illusion of sexual intercourse even provokes acute pain. The 
 witches of old times nearly all affirmed that in their relations with 
 the devil they suffered greatly. ^ They said that his organ was 
 long and rough and pointed, with scales which lifted on with- 
 
 1 Sante de Sanctis, / sogni e il sonno neU'isterismo e nella epilessia, 
 Rome, 1S96, p. 101. 
 
 2 Pitres, Legons clhiiques sur VBystirie, vol. ii, pp. 37 et seq. The 
 Lorraine inquisitor, Nicolas Kemy, very carefully investigated the ques- 
 tion of the feelings of witches when having intercourse with the Devil, 
 questioning them minutely, and ascertained that such intercourse was 
 usually extremely painlul, filling them with icy horror (See, e.g., Dufour, 
 Hisioire de la Prostitution, vol. v, p. 127; the same author presents an 
 interesting summary of the phenomena of the Witches' Sabbath). But 
 intercourse with the Devil was by no means always painful. Isabel 
 Gowdie, a Scotch witch, bore clear testimony to this point: "The 
 youngest and lustiest women," she stated, "will have very great pleasure 
 in their carnal copulation with him, yea, much more than with their 
 own husbands. ... He is abler for us than any man can be. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 
 
 203 
 
 drawal and tore the vagina." (It seems probable, I may remark, 
 that the witches' representations, both of the devil and oi' sexual 
 intercourse, were largely influenced by familiarity with the coup- 
 ling of animals) . As Gilles de la Tourette is careful to warn his 
 readers, we must not too hastily assume, from the prevalence of 
 nocturnal auto-erotic phenomena in hysterical women, that such 
 women are necessarily sexual and libidinous in excess; the dis- 
 order is in them psychic, he points out, and not physical, and 
 they usually receive sexual approaches with indifference and re- 
 pugnance, because their sexual centres are anaesthetic or hyper- 
 sesthetic. "During the period of sexual activity they seek much 
 more the care and delicate attention of men than the genital act, 
 which they often only tolerate. Many households, begun under 
 the happiest auspices — the bride all the more apt to believe that 
 she loves her betrothed in virtue of her suggestibility, easily ex- 
 alted, perhaps at the expense of the senses — ^become hells on 
 earth. The sexual act has for the hysterical woman more than 
 one disillusion; she cannot understand it; it inspires her with 
 insurmountable repugnance." ^ I refer to these hysterical phe- 
 nomena because they present to us, in an extreme form, facts 
 which are common among women whom, under the artiiicial con- 
 ditions of civilized life, we are compelled to regard as ordinarily 
 healthy and normal. The frequent painfulness of auto-erotic 
 phenomena is by no means an exclusively hysterical phenomenon, 
 although often seen in a heightened form in hysterical condi- 
 tions. It is probably to some extent simply the result of a con- 
 flict in consciousness with a merely physical impulse which is 
 strong enough to assert itself in spite of the emotional and intel- 
 lectual abhorrence of the subject. It is thus but an extreme 
 
 (Alack! that I should compare him to a man!)" Yet her description 
 scarcely sounds attractive; he was «, "large, black, hairy man, very 
 cold, and I found his nature as cold within me as spring well-water." 
 His foot was forked and cloven; he was sometimes like a deer, or a, roe; 
 and he would hold up his tail while the witches kissed that region 
 (Pitcairn, Criminal Trials in Scotland, vol. iii. Appendix VII; see, also, 
 the illustrations at the end of Dr. A. Marie's FoUe et Mysticisme, 1907 ) . 
 1 Gilles de la Tourette, loc. cit., p. 518. Erotic hallucinations have 
 also been studied by Bellamy, in a Bordeaux thesis, Hallucinations 
 Eroiiques, 1900-1901. 
 
204 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 form of the disgust which all sexual physical manifestations tend 
 to inspire in a person who is not inclined to respond to them. 
 Somewhat similar psychic disgust and physical pain are pro- 
 duced in the attempts to stimulate the sexual emotions and organs 
 when these are exhausted by exercise. In the detailed histdry 
 which Moll presents, of the sexual experiences of a sister in an 
 American nursing guild, — a most instructive history of a woman 
 fairly normal except for the results of repressed sexual emotion, 
 and with strong moral tendencies, — various episodes are narrated 
 well illustrating the way in which sexual excitement becomes 
 unpleasant or even painful when it takes place as a physical re- 
 flex which the emotions and intellect are all the time struggling 
 against.^ It is quite probable, however, that there is a physio- 
 logical, as well as a psychic, factor in this phenomenon, and 
 Sollier, in his elaborate study of the nature and genesis of 
 hysteria, by insisting on the capital importance of the disturb- 
 ance of sensibility in hysteria, and the definite character of the 
 phenomena produced in the passage between anassthesia and nor- 
 mal sensation, has greatly helped to reveal the mechanism of'this 
 feature of auto-erotic excitement in the hysterical. 
 
 JSTo doubt there has been a tendency to exaggerate the un- 
 pleasant character of the auto-erotic phenomena of hysteria. 
 That tendency was an inevitable reaction against an earlier view, 
 according to which hysteria was little more than an unconscious 
 expression of the sexual emotions and as such was unscientifically 
 dismissed without any careful investigation. I agree with Breuer 
 and Freud that the sexual needs of the hysterical are just as in- 
 dividual and various as those of normal women, but that they 
 suffer from them more, largely through a moral struggle with 
 
 1 On one occasion, when still a, girl, whenever an artist whom she 
 admired touched her hand she felt erection and moisture of the sexual 
 parts, but without any sensation of pleasure; a little later, when an 
 uncle's knee casually came in contact with her thigh, ejaculation of 
 mucus took place, though she disliked the uncle; again, when a nurse, 
 on casually seeing a man's sexual organs, an electric shock went through 
 her, though the sight was disgusting to her; and when she had once to 
 assist a man to urinate, she became in the highest degree excited, though 
 without pleasure, and lay down on a couch in the next room, while a 
 conclusive ejaculation took place. (Moll, Libido Sexualis, Bd. I, p. 354.) 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 205 
 
 I 
 
 their own instincts, and the attempt to put them into the back- 
 ground of consciousness. 1 In many hysterical and psychically 
 abnormal women, auto-erotic phenomena, and sexual phenomena 
 generally, are highly pleasurable, though such persons may be 
 quite innocent of any knowledge of the erotic character of the 
 experience. I have come across interesting and extreme exam- 
 ples of this in the published experiences of the women followers 
 of the American religious leader, T. L. Harris, founder of the 
 "Brotherhood of the New Life." Thus, in a pamphlet entitled 
 "Internal Eespiration," by Eespiro, a letter is quoted from a lady 
 physician, who writes : "One morning I awoke with a strange new 
 feeling in the womb, which lasted for a day or two ; I was so very 
 happy, but the joy was in my womb, not in my heart."^ "At 
 last," writes a lady quoted in the same pamphlet, "I fell into 
 a slumber, lying on my back with arms and feet folded, a position 
 I almost always find myself in when I awake, no matter in which 
 position I may go to sleep. Very soon I awoke from this slumber 
 with a most delightful sensation, every fibre tingling with an 
 exquisite glow of warmth. I was lying on my left side (some- 
 thing I am never able to do), and was folded in the arms of my 
 counterpart. Unless you have seen it, I cannot give you an idea 
 of the beauty of his flesh, and with what joy I beheld and felt it. 
 Think of it, luminous flesh ; and Oh ! such tints, you never could 
 imagine without seeing. He folded me so closely in his arms," 
 etc. In such cases there is no conflict between the physical and 
 the psychic, and therefore the resulting excitement is pleasurable 
 and not painful. 
 
 At this point our study of auto-erotism brings us into the 
 sphere of mysticism. Leuba, in a penetrating and suggestive 
 essay on Christian mysticism, after quoting the present Study, 
 refers to the famous passages in which St. Theresa describes how 
 a beautiful little angel inserted a flame-tipped dart into her 
 
 1 Breuer and Freud, Studien uber Eysterie, 1895, p. 217. 
 
 sCalmeil (De la Folie, vol. i, p. 252) called attention to the large 
 part played by uterine sensations in the hallucinations of some famous 
 women ascetics, and added : "It is well recognized that the narrative of 
 such sensations nearly always occupies the first place in the divagations 
 of hysterical virgins." 
 
206 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 heart until it descended into her bowels and left her inflamed 
 ■with divine love. "What physiological difference," he asks, "is 
 there between this voluptuous sensation and that enjoyed by the 
 disciple of the Brotherhood of New Life? St. Theresa says 
 'bowels,' the woman doctor says 'womb,' that is all."^ 
 
 The extreme form of auto-erotism is the tendency for the sexual 
 emotion to be absorbed and often entirely lest in self-admiration. This 
 Narcissus-like tendency, of which the normal germ in women is symbol- 
 ized by the mirror, is found in a minor degree in some men, and is some- 
 times well marked in women, usually in association with an attraction 
 for other persons, to which attraction it is, of course, normally 
 subservient. "The mirror," remarks Bloch {Beitrage I, p. 201), "plays 
 an important part in the genesis of sexual aberration. ... It can- 
 not be doubted that many a boy and girl Lave first experienced, sexual 
 excitement at the sight of their own bodies in a mirror." 
 
 Valera, the Spanish novelist, very well described this impulse in 
 his Genio y Figura. Rafaela, the heroine of this novel, says that, after 
 her bath: "I fall into a, puerility which may be innocent or vicious, 
 I cannot decide. I only know that it is a purely contemplative act, a 
 disinterested admiration of beauty. It is not coarse sensuality, but 
 sesthetic platonism. I imitate Narcissus; and I apply my lips to the 
 cold surface of the mirror and kiss my image. It is the love of beauty, 
 the expression of tenderness and affection for what God has made mani- 
 fest, in an ingenuous kiss imprinted on the empty and incorporeal 
 Teflection." In the same spirit the real heroine of the Tageiuch einer 
 Verlorenen (p. 114), at the point when she was about to become a pros- 
 titute. Wrote: "I am pretty. It gives me pleasure to throw off my 
 clothes, one by one, before the mirror, and to look at myself, just as 
 I am, white as snow and straight as a, fir, with my long, fine, 
 hair, like a cloak of black silk. When I spread abroad the black 
 stream of it, with both hands, I am like a white swan with black 
 wings." 
 
 A typical case known to me is that of a lady of 28, brought up 
 on a farm. She is a handsome woman, of very large and fine propor- 
 tions, active and healthy and intelligent, with, however, no marked 
 sexual attraction to the opposite sex; at the same time she is not in- 
 verted, though she would like to be a man, and has a, considerable degree 
 of (Contempt for women. She has an intense admiration for her o\¥n 
 
 1 H. Leuba, "Les Tendances Religieuses chez les Mystiques 
 Chretiens," Revue PhilosopMqne, November. 1902, p. 465. St. Theresa 
 herself states that physical sensations played a considerable part in this 
 experience. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 207 
 
 person, especially her limbs; she is never so happy as when alone and 
 naked in her own bedroom, and, so far as possible, she cultivates naked- 
 ness. She knows by heart the various measurements of her body, is 
 proud of the fact that they are strictly in accordance with the canons 
 of proportion, and she laughs proudly at the thought that her thigh is 
 larger than many a woman's waist. She is frank and assured in her 
 manners, without sexual shyness, and, while willing to receive the at- 
 tention and admiration of others, she makes no attempt to gain it, and 
 seems never to have experienced any emotions stronger than her own 
 pleasure in herself. I should add that I have had no opportunity of 
 detailed examination, and cannot speak positively as to the absence of 
 masturbation. 
 
 In the extreme form in which alone the name of Narcissus may 
 properly be invoked, there is comparative indifference to sexual inter- 
 course or even the admiration of the opposite sex. Such a condition 
 seems to be rare, except, perhaps, in insanity. Since I called attention 
 to this form of auto-erotism {Alienist and Weurologist, April, 1898), sev- 
 eral writers have discussed the condition, especially Nacke, who, follow- 
 ing out the suggestion, terms the condition Narcissism. Among 1,500 in- 
 sane persons, Nacke has found it in four men and one woman {Psychi- 
 atrisehe en Neurologische Bladen, No. 2, 1899). Dr. C. H. Hughes writes 
 ( in a private letter ) that he is acquainted with such cases, in which men 
 have been absorbed in admiration of their own manly forms, and of their 
 sexual organs, and women, likewise, absorbed in admiration of their own 
 mammse and physical proportions, especially of limbs. "The whole sub- 
 ject," he adds, "is a singular phase of psychology, and it is not all 
 morbid psychology, either. It is closely allied to that aesthetic sense 
 which admires the nude in art." 
 
 Fere (L'Instinct Sexuel, 2d ed., p. 271) mentions a woman who 
 experienced sexual excitement in kissing her own hand. Nacke knew a 
 woman in an asylum who, during periodical fits of excitement, would 
 kiss her own arms and hands, at the same time looking like a person 
 in love. He also knew a, young man with dementia pfsecox, who would 
 kiss his own image ("Der Kuss bei Geisteskranken," Allgemeine 
 Zeitschrift filr Psyohiatrie, Bd. LXIII, p. 127). Moll refers to a young 
 homosexual lavi^er, who experienced great pleasure in gazing at him- 
 self in a mirror (Kontrare Seaiualempfindung, 3d ed., p. 228), and men- 
 tions another inverted man, an admirer of the nates of men, who, 
 chancing to observe his own nates in a mirror, when changing his shirt, 
 was struck by their beauty, and subsequently found pleasure in admir- 
 ing them (lAbido Sexualis, Bd. I, Theil I, p. 60). KraiTt-Ebing knew 
 a, man who masturbated before a mirror, imagining, at the same time, 
 how much better a real lover would be. 
 
208 PSYCHOLOGY OT SEX. 
 
 The best-observed eases of Narcissism have, however, been recorded 
 by Eohleder, who confers upon this condition the ponderous name of 
 automonosexualism, and believes that it has not been previously observed 
 (H. Kohleder, Dcr Automonosexualismus, being Heft 225 of Berliner 
 Klinik, March, 1907). In the two eases investigated by Eohleder, both 
 men, there was sexual excitement in the contemplation of the individual's 
 own body, actually or in a mirror, with little or no sexual attraction to 
 other persons. Rohleder is inclined to regard the condition as due to a 
 congenital defect in the "sexual centre" of the brain. 
 
II. 
 
 Hysteria and the Question of Its Relation to the Sexual Emotions 
 — The Early Greek Theories of its Nature and Causation — The Gradual 
 Rise of Modern Views — Charcot — The Revolt Against Charcot's Too 
 Absolute Conclusions — Fallacies Involved — Charcot's Attitude the Out- 
 come of his Personal Temperament — Breuer and Freud — Their Views 
 Supplement and Complete Charcot's — ^At the Same Time they Furnish 
 a Justification for the Earlier Doctrine of Hysteria — But They Must 
 Not be Regarded as Final — -The Diffused Hysteroid Condition in Nor- 
 mal Persons — ^The Physiological Basis of Hysteria — True Pathological 
 Hysteria is Linked on to almost Normal States, especially to Sex- 
 hunger. 
 
 The nocturnal hallucinations of hysteria, as all careful 
 students of this condition now seem to agree, are closely allied 
 to the hysterical attack proper. Sollier, indeed, one of the ablest 
 of the more recent investigators of hysteria, has argued with 
 much force that the subjects of hysteria really live in a state of 
 pathological sleep, of vigilambulism.i He regards all the various 
 accidents of hysteria as having a common basis in disturbances 
 of sensibility, in the widest sense of the word "sensibility," — as 
 the very foundation of personality, — while anaesthesia is "the 
 real sigillum hysterice." Whatever the form of hysteria, we are 
 thus only concerned with a more or less profound state of 
 vigilambulism : a state in which the subject seems, often even 
 to himself, to be more or less always asleep, whether the sleep 
 may be regarded as local or general. Sollier agrees with Fere 
 that the disorder of sensibility may be regarded as due to an 
 exhaustion of the sensory centres of the brain, whether as the 
 
 1 Genise et Nature de I'Hysterie, 1898 ; and, for Sollier's latest 
 statement, see "Hystfirie et Sommeil," Archives de Neurologie, May and 
 June, 1907. Lombroso {L'Uomo Delinquente, 1889, vol. ii, p. 329), re- 
 ferring to the diminished metabolism of the hysterical, had already com- 
 pared them to hibernating animals, while Babinsky states that the 
 hysterical are in a state of subconsciousness, a state, as Metchnikoff re- 
 marks {Essais optimistes, p. 270), reminiscent of our prehistoric past. 
 
 14 (209) 
 
210 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 result of constitutional cerebral weakness, of the shock of a vio- 
 lent emotion, or of some toxic influence on the cerebral cells. 
 
 We may, therefore, fitly turn from the auto-erotic phe- 
 nomena of sleep which in women generally, and especially in 
 hysterical women, seem to possess so much importance and sig- 
 nificance, to the question- — ^which has been so divergently an- 
 swered at difEerentj periods and by different investigators — 
 concerning the causation of hysteria, and especially concerning 
 its alleged connection with conscious or unconscious sexual 
 emotion. 1 
 
 It was the belief of the ancient Greeks that hysteria came 
 from the womb ; hence its name. We first find that^ statement 
 in Plato's Timwus: "In men the organ of generation — becom- 
 ing rebellious and masterful, like an animal disobedient to 
 reason, and maddened with the sting of lust — seeks to gain ab- 
 solute sway; and the same is the case with the so-called womb, 
 or uterus, of women ; the animal within them is desirous of pro- 
 creating children, and, when remaining unfruitful long beyond 
 its proper time, gets discontented and angry, and, wandering in 
 every direction through the body, closes up the passages of the 
 breath, and, by obstructing respiration,^ drives them to extremity, 
 causing all varieties of disease." 
 
 Plato, it is true, cannot be said to reveal anywhere a very 
 scientific attitude toward Nature. Yet he was here probably 
 only giving expression to the current medical doctrine of his day. 
 AVe find precisely the same doctrine attributed to Hippocrates, 
 
 1 Professor Freud, while welcoming the introduction of the term 
 "anto-erotism," remarks that it should not, be made to include the whole 
 of hysteria. This I fully admit, and have never questioned. Hysteria 
 is far too large and complex a phenomenon to be classed as entirely a. 
 manifestation of avito-erotism, but certain aspects of it are admirable 
 illustrations of auto-erotic transformation. 
 
 2 The hysterical phenomenon of glohus hystericus was long after- 
 ward attributed to obstriiction of respiration by the womb. The in- 
 teresting case has been recorded by E. Bloch (Wiener KUnische Wochen- 
 schrift, 1907, p. 1649) of a lady who had the feeling of a ball rising 
 from her stomach to her throat, and then sinking. This feeling was as- 
 sociated with thoughts of her husband's rising and falling penis, and 
 was always most liable to occur when she wished for coitus. 
 
AUTO-EKOTISM. 211 
 
 though -without a clear distinction between hysteria and epilepsy. ^ 
 If we turn to the best Eoman physicians we find again that 
 Aretseus, "the Esquirol of antiquity," has set forth the same view, 
 adding to his description of the movements of the womb in 
 hysteria: "It delights, also, in fragrant smells, and advances 
 toward them; and it has an aversion to fcetid smells, and flies 
 from them ; and, on the whole, the womb is like an animal within 
 an animal."2 Consequently, the treatment was by applying foetid 
 smells to the nose and rubbiag fragrant ointments around the 
 sexual parts. 3 
 
 The Arab physicians, who carried'on the traditions of Greek 
 medicine, appear to have said nothing new about hysteria, and 
 possibly had little knowledge of it. In Christian mediasval Eu- 
 rope, also, nothing new was added to the theory of hysteria; it 
 was, indeed, less Imown medically than it had ever been, and, 
 in part it may be as a result of this ignorance, in part as a result 
 of general wretchedness (the hysterical phenomena of witchcraft 
 reaching their height, Michelet points out, in the fourteenth 
 century, which was a period of special misery for the poor), it 
 flourished more vigorously. ISTot alone have we the records of 
 nervous epidemics, but illuminated manuscripts, ivories, minia- 
 tures, bas-reliefs, frescoes, and engravings furnish the most vivid 
 iconographic evidence of the prevalence of hysteria in its most 
 violent forms during the Middle Ages. Much of this evidence is 
 
 1 As Gilles de la Tourette points out, it is not difficult to show that 
 epilepsy, the morbus sacer of the ancients, owed much of its sacred 
 character to this confusion with hysteria. Those priestesses who, struck 
 by the morbus sacer,- gave forth their oracles amid convulsions, were 
 certainly not the victims of epilepsy, but of hysteria (Traite de 
 I'EysUrie, vol. i, p. 3). 
 
 2 Aretaeus, On the Ccmses and Symptoms of Acute Diseases, Book 
 ii. Chapter II. 
 
 3 It may be noted that this treatment furnishes another instance 
 of the continuity of therapeutic methods, through all changes of theory, 
 from -the earliest to the latest times. Drugs of unpleasant odor, like 
 asafiEtida, have always been used in hysteria, and scientific medicine 
 to-day still finds that asafoatida is a powerful sedative to the uterus, con- 
 trolling nervous conditions during pregnancy and arresting uterine irri- 
 tation when abortion is threatened (see, e.g., Warman, Der Frauenarzt, 
 August, 1895 ) . Again, the rubbing of fragrant ointments into the sexual 
 regions is but a form of that massage which Is one of the modern methods 
 of treating the sexual disorders of women. 
 
212 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 brought to the service of science in the fascinating works of Dr. 
 P. Eicher, one of Charcot's pupils, i 
 
 In the seventeenth century Ambroise Pare was still talking, 
 like Hippocrates, about "suffocation of the womb" ; Forestus was 
 still, like Aretseus, applying friction to the vulva; Pernel was 
 still reproaching Galen, who had denied that the movements of 
 the womb produced hysteria. 
 
 It was in the seventeenth century (1618) that a French phy- 
 sician, Charles Lepois (Carolus Piso), physician to Henry II, 
 trusting, as he said, to experience and reason, overthrew at one 
 stroke the doctrine of hysteria that had ruled almost unques- 
 tioned for two thousand years, and showed that the malady oc- 
 curred at all ages and in both sexes, that its seat was not in the 
 womb, but in the brain, and that it must be considered a nervous 
 disease.2 So revolutionary a doctrine could not fail to meet with 
 violent opposition, but it was confirmed by Willis, and in 1681, 
 we owe to the genius of Sydenham a picture of hysteria which for 
 lucidity, precision, and comprehensiveness has only been excelled 
 in our own times. 
 
 It was not possible any longer to maintain the womb theory 
 of Hippocrates in its crude .form, but in modified forms, and 
 especially with the object of preserving the connection which 
 many observers continued to find between hysteria and the sexual 
 emotions, it still found supporters in the eighteenth and even the 
 nineteenth centuries. James, in the middle of the eighteenth 
 century, returned to the classical view, and in his Dictionary 
 of Medicine maintained that the womb is the seat of hysteria. 
 Louyer Villermay in 1816 asserted that the most frequent causes 
 of hysteria are deprivation of the pleasures of love, griefs con- 
 nected with this passion, and disorders of menstruation. Foville 
 in 1833 and Landouzy in 1846 advocated somewhat similar views. 
 The acute Laycock in 1840 quoted as "almost a medical proverb" 
 
 1 Les Dimoniaques dans I'Art, 1887 ; Les Malades et les Difformes 
 dans VArt, 1889. 
 
 2 Glafira Abricosoff, of Moscow, in her Paris thesis, L'Hystirie auat 
 sovii et awiii sUcles, 1897, presents a summary of the various views held 
 at this time; as also Gilles de la Tourette, TraitS de VHysUrie, vol. i, 
 Chapter I. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 213 
 
 the saying, "Salacitas major, major ad hysteriam proclivitas," 
 fully indorsing it. More recently still Clouston has defined hys- 
 teria as "the loss of the inhibitory influence exercised on the re- 
 productive and sexual instincts of women by the higher mental 
 and moral functions" (a position evidently requiring some modi- 
 fication in view of the fact that hysteria is by no means confined 
 to women), while the same authority remarks that more or less 
 concealed sexual phenomena are the chief symptoms of "hys- 
 terical insanity." 1 Two gynaecologists of high position in dif- 
 ferent parts of the world, Hegar in Germany and Balls-Headley 
 in Australia, attribute hysteria, as well as anaemia, largely to 
 unsatisfied sexual desire, including the non-satisfaction of the 
 "ideal f eelings."^ Lombroso and Ferrero, again, while admitting 
 that the sexual feelings might be either heightened or depressed 
 in hysteria, referred to the frequency of what they termed "a 
 paradoxical sexual instinct" in the hysterical, by which, for in- 
 stance, sexual frigidity is combined with intense sexual pre- 
 occupations; and they also pointed out the significant fact that 
 the crimes of the hysterical nearly always revolve around the 
 sexual sphere. 3 Thus, even up to the time when the conception 
 of hysteria which absolutely ignored and excluded any sexual 
 relationship whatever had reached its height, independent views 
 favoring such a relationship still found expression. 
 
 Of recent years, however, such views usually aroused violent 
 antagonism. The main current of opinion was with Briquet 
 (1859), who, treating the matter with considerable ability and a 
 wide induction of facts, indignantly repelled the idea that 'there 
 is any connection between hysteria and the sexual facts of life, 
 physical or psychic. As he himself admitted. Briquet was moved 
 to deny a sexual causation of hysteria by the thought that such 
 
 1 Edinburgh Medical Journal, June, 1883, p. 1123, and Mental Dis- 
 eases, 1887, p. 488. 
 
 2 Hegar, Zusammenhang der Geschlechtskrankheiten unit nervosen 
 Leiden, Stuttgart, 1885. (Hegar, however, went much further than this, 
 and was largely responsible for the surgical treatment of hysteria now 
 generally recognized as worse than futile.) Balls-Headley, "Etiology of 
 Nervous Diseases of the Female Genital Organs," AUbutt and Playfair, 
 System of Gynecology, 1896, p. 141. 
 
 3 Lombroso and Ferrero, La Donna Delinquente, 1893, pp. 613-14. 
 
214 PSYCHOLOGY 01? SEX. 
 
 an origin would be degrading for women {"a quelque chose de 
 degradant pour les femmes") . 
 
 It was, however, the genius of Charcot, and the influence 
 of his able pupils, which finally secured the overthrow of the 
 sexual theory of hysteria. Charcot emphatically anathematized 
 the visceral origin of hysteria; he declared that it is a psychic 
 disorder, and to leave no loop-hole of escape for those who main- 
 tained a sexual causation he asserted that there are no varieties 
 of hysteria, that the disease is one and indivisible. Charcot rec- 
 ognized no primordial cause of hysteria beyond heredity, which 
 here plays a more important part than in any other neuropathic 
 condition. Such heredity is either direct or more occasionally 
 by transformation, any deviation of nutrition found in the an- 
 cestors (gout, diabetes, arthritis) being a possible cause of hys- 
 teria in the descendants. "We do not know anything about the 
 nature of hysteria," Charcot wrote in 1892; "we must make it 
 objective in order to recognize it. The dominant idea for us in 
 the etiology of hysteria is, in the widest sense, its hereditary 
 predisposition. The greater number of those suffering from this 
 affection are simply born hysUrisables, and on them the occasional 
 causes act directly, either through autosuggestion or by causing 
 derangement of general nutrition, and more particularly of the 
 nutrition of the nervous system."^ These views were ably and 
 decisively stated in Gilles de la Tourette's Traite de VHysUrie, 
 written under the inspiration of Charcot. 
 
 While Charcot's doctrine was thus being affirmed and gen- 
 erally accepted, there were at the same time workers in these 
 fields who, though they by no means ignored this doctrine of 
 hysteria or even rejected it, were inclined to think that it was 
 too absolutely stated. Writing in the Dictionary of Psycho- 
 logical Medicine at the same time as Charcot, Donkin, while 
 deprecating any exclusive emphasis on the sexual causation, 
 pointed out the enormous part played by the emotions in the 
 production of hysteria, and the great influence of puberty in 
 women due to the greater extent of the sexual organs, and the 
 
 1 Charcot and Mario, article on "Hysteria," Tuke's Dictionary of 
 Psychological Medicine. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 215 
 
 consequently large area of central innervation involved, and thus 
 rendered liable to fall into a state of unstable equilibrium. En- 
 forced abstinence from the gratification of any of the inherent 
 and primitive desires, he pointed out, may be an adequate excit- 
 ing cause. Such a view as this indicated that to set aside the 
 ancient doctrine of a physical sexual cause of hysteria was by 
 no means to exclude a psychic sexual cause. Ten years earlier 
 Axenfeld and Huchard had pointed out that the reaction against 
 the sexual origin of hysteria was becoming excessive, and they 
 referred to the evidence brought forward by veterinary surgeons 
 showing that unsatisfied sexual desire in animals may produce 
 nervous symptoms very similar to hysteria. ^ The present writer, 
 when in 1894 briefly discussing hysteria as an element in sec- 
 ondary sexual characterization, ventured to reflect the view, con- 
 firmed by his own observation, that there was a tendency to 
 unduly minimize the sexual factor in hysteria, and further 
 pointed out that the old error of a special connection between 
 hysteria and the female sexual organs, probably arose from the 
 fact that in woman the organic sexual sphere is larger than in 
 man.2 
 
 When, indeed, we analyze the foundation of the once pre- 
 dominant opinions of Charcot and his school regarding the sexual 
 relationships of hysteria, it becomes clear that many fallacies and 
 misunderstandings were involved. Briquet, Charcot's chief prede- 
 cessor, acknowledged that his own view was that a sexual origin 
 of hysteria would be "degrading to women"; that is to say, he 
 admitted that he was influenced by a foolish and improper prej- 
 udice, for the belief that the unconscious and involntary mor- 
 bid reaction of the nervous system to any disturbance of a great 
 
 1 Axenfeld and Huchard, TraitS des Nevroses, 1883, pp. 1092-94. 
 Icard {La Femme pendant la Piriode Menstruelle, pp. 120-21) has also 
 
 referred to recorded cases of hysteria in animals (Coste's and Peter's 
 eases), as has Gilles de la Tourette {op. cit., vol. i, p. 123). See also, for 
 references, F6r§, L' Instinct Sexuel, p. 59. 
 
 2 Man and Woman, 4th ed., p. 326. A distinguished gynecologist, 
 Matthews Duncan, had remarked some years earlier {Lancet, May 18, 
 1889) that hysteria, though not a womb disease, "especially attaches 
 itself to the generative system, because the genital system, more than 
 any other, exerts emotional power over the individual, power also in 
 morals, power in social questions." 
 
216 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 primary instinct can have "quelque chose de degradant" is itself 
 an immoral belief; such disturbance of the nervous system 
 might or might not be caused, but in any case the alleged 
 "degradation" could only be the fiction of a distorted imagina- 
 tion. Again, confusion had been caused by the ancient error of 
 making the physical sexual organs responsible for hysteria, first 
 the womb, more recently the ovaries ; the outcome of this belief 
 was the extirpation of the sexual organs for the cure of hysteria. 
 Charcot condemned absolutely all such operations as unscientific 
 and dangerous, declaring that there is no such thing as hysteria 
 of menstrual origin, i Subsequently, Angelucci and Pierracini 
 carried out an international inquiry into the results of the 
 surgical treatment of hysteria, and condemned it in the most 
 unqualified manner.2 It is clearly demonstrated that the phys- 
 ical sexual organs are not the seat of hysteria. It does not, how- 
 ever, follow that even physical sexual desire, when repressed, is 
 not a cause of hysteria. The opinion that it was so formed an 
 essential part of the early doctrine of hysteria, and was embodied 
 in the ancient maxim: "Nubat ilia et morbus effugiet." The 
 womb, it seemed to the ancients, was crying out for satisfaction, 
 and when that was received the disease vanished. ^ But when it 
 became clear that sexual desire, though ultimately founded on 
 the sexual apparatus, is a nervous and psychic fact, to put the 
 sexual organs out of count was not sufBcient; for the sexual 
 emotions may exist before puberty, and persist after complete 
 removal of the sexual organs. Thus it has been the object of 
 many writers to repel the idea that unsatisfied sexual desire can 
 be a cause of hysteria. Briquet pointed out that hysteria is rare 
 among nuns and frequent among prostitutes. Krafit-Ebing 
 
 1 Gilles de la Tourette, Archives de Tocologie et de Qyntcologie, 
 June, 1895. 
 
 ^Bivista Sperimentale di Freniatria, 1897, p. 290; summarized in 
 the Journal of Mental Science, January, 1898. 
 
 3 From the earliest times it was held that menstruation favors ' 
 hysteria; more recently, Landouzy recorded » number of observations 
 showing that hysterical attacks coincide with perfectly healthy menstru- 
 ation; while Ball has maintained that it is only during menstruation 
 that hysteria appears in its true color. See the opinions collected by 
 Icard, La Femme pendant la Piriode Menstruelle, pp. 75-81. , 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 217 
 
 believed that most hysterical women are not anxious for sexual 
 satisfaction, and declared that "hysteria caused through the non- 
 satisfaction of the coarse sensual sexual impulse I have never 
 seen,"i while Pitres and others refer to the frequently painful 
 nature of sexual hallucinations in the hysterical. But it soon 
 becomes obvious that the psychic sexual sphere is not confined to 
 the gratification of conscious physical sexual desire. It is not 
 true that hysteria is rare among nuns, some of the most tremen- 
 dous epidemics of hysteria, and the most carefully studied, having 
 occurred in convents,^ while the hysterical phenomena sometimes 
 associated with revivals are well known. The supposed preva- 
 lence among prostitutes would not be evidence against the sexual 
 relationships of hysteria; it has, however, been denied, even by 
 so great an authority as Parent-Duchatelet who found it very 
 rare, even in prostitutes in hospitals, when it was often associated 
 with masturbation; in prostitutes, however, who returned to a 
 respectable life, giving up their old habits, he found hysteria 
 common and severe.^ The frequent absence of physical sexual 
 feeling, again, may quite reasonably be taken as evidence of a 
 disorder of the sexual emotions, while the undoubted fact that 
 sexual intercourse usually has little beneficial effect on pro- 
 nounced hysteria, and that sexual excitement during sleep and 
 
 1 Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber Neurosen und Psyehosen durch sexuelle 
 Abstinenz," Jahrbiicher fur Psychiatrie, vol. iii, 1888. It must, how- 
 ever, be added that the relief of hysteria by sexual satisfaction is not 
 rare, and that Rosenthal finds that the convulsions are thus diminished. 
 (Allgemevne Wiener Medizinal-Zeitung, Nos. 46 and 47, 1887.) So they 
 are also, in simple and uncomplicated cases, according to Mongeri, by 
 pregnancy. 
 
 2 "All doctors who have patients in convents," remarks Marro 
 (La Puberta, p. 338), "know how hysteria dominates among them;" he 
 adds that his own experience confirms that of Raciborski, who found 
 that nuns devoted to the contemplative life are more liable to hysteria 
 than those who are occupied in teaching or in nursing. It must be 
 added, however, that there is not unanimity as to the prevalence of 
 hysteria in convents. Braehet was of the same opinion as Briquet, and 
 so considered it rare. Imbert-Goubeyre, also (La Stigmatisation, p. 
 436) states that during more than forty years of medical life, though he 
 has been connected with a, number of religious communities, he has not 
 found in them a single hysterical subject, the reason being, he remark's, 
 that the unbalanced and extravagant are refused admission to the 
 cloister. 
 
 3 Parent-Duchatelet, De la Prostitution, vol. i, p. 242. 
 
218 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF SES. 
 
 sexual hallucinations are often painful in the same condition, is 
 far from showing that injury or repression of the sexual emotions 
 had nothing to do with the production of the hysteria. It would 
 be as reasonable to argue that the evil effect of a heavy meal on 
 a starving man must be taken as evidence that he was not suffer- 
 ing from starvation. The fact, indeed, on which Gilles de la 
 Tourette and others have remarked, that the hysterical often 
 desire not so much sexual intercourse as simple affection, would 
 tend to show that there is here a real analogy, and that starvation 
 or lesion of the sexual emotions may produce, like bodily starva- 
 tion, a rejection of those satisfactions which are demanded in 
 health. Thus, even a mainly a priori examination of the matter 
 may lead us to see that many arguments brought forward in 
 favor of Charcot's position on this point fall to the ground when 
 we realize that the sexual emotions may constitute a highly com- 
 plex sphere, often hidden from observation, sometimes not con- 
 scious at all, and liable to many lesions besides that due to the 
 non-satisfaction of sexual desire. At the same time we are not 
 thus enabled to overthrow any of the positive results attained by 
 Charcot and his school. 
 
 It may, however, be pointed out that Charcot's attitude 
 toward hysteria was the outcome of his own temperament. He 
 was primarily a neurologist, the bent of his genius was toward 
 the investigation of facts that could be objectively demonstrated. 
 His first interest in hysteria, dating from as far back as 1862, 
 was in hystero-epileptie convulsive attacks, and to the last he re- 
 mained indifferent to all facts which could not be objectively 
 demonstrated. That was the secret of the advances he was 
 enabled to make in neurology. For purely psychological investi- 
 gation he had no liking, and probably no aptitude. Anyone who 
 was privileged to observe his methods of work at the Salpetriere 
 will easily recall the great master's towering figure; the dis- 
 dainful expression, sometimes, even, it seemed, a little sour; the 
 lofty bearing which enthusiastic admirers called Napoleonic. The 
 questions addressed to the patient were cold, distant, sometimes 
 impatient. Charcot clearly had little faith in the value of any 
 results so attained. One may well believe, also, that a man whose 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 
 
 219 
 
 superficial personality was so haughty and awe-inspiring to 
 strangers would, in any case, have had the greatest difficulty in 
 penetrating tlie mysteries of a psychic world so obscure and 
 elusive as that presented by the hysterical. ^ 
 
 The way was thus opened for further investigations on the 
 psychic side. Charcot had affirmed the power, not only of phys- 
 ical traumatism, but even of psychic lesions — of moral shocks — 
 to provoke its manifestations, but his sole contribution to the 
 psychology of this psychic malady, — and this was borrowed from 
 the Nancy school, — lay in the one word "suggestibility"; the 
 nature and mechanism of this psychic process he left wholly 
 unexplained. This step has been taken by others, in part by 
 Janet, who, from 1889 onward, has not only insisted that the 
 emotions stand in the first line among the causes of hysteria, but 
 has also pointed out some portion of the mechanism of this 
 process ; thus, he saw the significance of the fact, already recog- 
 nized, that strong emotions tend to produce anaesthesia and to lead 
 to a condition of mental disaggregation, favorable to abulia, or 
 abolition of will-power. It remained to show in detail the 
 mechanism by which the most potent of all the emotions effects 
 its influence, and, by attempting to do this, the Viennese inves- 
 tigators, Breuer and especially Freud, have greatly aided the 
 study of hysteria.2 They have not, it is important to remark, 
 overturned the positive elements in their great forerunner's work. 
 Freud began as a disciple of Charcot, and he himself remarks 
 that, in his earlier investigations of hysteria, he had no thought 
 
 1 It may not be unnecessary to point out that here and throughout, 
 in speaking of the psychic mechanism of hysteria, I do not admit that 
 any process can be purely psychic. As Fgrg puts it in an admirable 
 study of hysteria (Tweniieih Getitury Practice of Medicine, 1897, vol. 
 X, p. 556) : "In the genesis of hysterical troubles everything takes place 
 as if the psychical and the somatic phenomena were two aspects of the 
 same biological fact." 
 
 2 Pierre Janet, L'Automatisme Psychologique, 1889; L'Etat mental 
 des Hystiriques, 1894; flivroses et Mies fixes, 1898; Breuer und Freud, 
 Studien ilier Hysterie, Vienna, 1895; the best introduction to Freud's 
 work is, however, to be found in the two series of his Sammlung Kleiner 
 Sekriften zur Neurosenlehre, published in a collected form in 1906 and 
 1909. It may be added that a useful selection of Freud's papers has 
 lately (1909) been published in English. 
 
220 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 of finding any sexual etiology for that malady; he would have 
 regarded any such suggestion as an insult to his patient. The 
 results reached by these workers were the outcome of long and 
 detailed investigation. Freud has investigated many cases of 
 hysteria in minute detail, often devoting to a single case over a 
 hundred hours of work. The patients, unlike those on whom the 
 results of the French school have been mainly founded, all 
 belonged to the educated classes, and it was thus possible to carry 
 out an elaborate psychic investigation which would be impossible 
 among the uneducated. Breuer and Freud insist on the fine 
 qualities of mind and character frequently found among the 
 hysterical. They cannot accept suggestibility as an invariable 
 characteristic of hysteria, only abnormal excitability; they are 
 far from agreeing with Janet (although on many points at one 
 with him), that psychic weakness marks hysteria; there is 
 merely an appearance of mental weakness, they say, because the 
 mental activity of the hysterical is split up, and only a part of 
 it is conscious. 1 The superiority of character of the hysterical is 
 indicated by the fact that -the confiict between their ideas of 
 right and the bent of their inclinations is often an element in 
 the constitution of the hysterical state. Breuer and Freud are 
 prepared to assert that the hysterical are among "the flower of 
 humanity," and they refer to those qualities of combined imagina- 
 tive genius and practical energy which characterized St. Theresa, 
 "the patron saint of the hysterical." 
 
 To understand the position of Breuer and Freud we may 
 start from the phenomenon of "nervous shock" produced by 
 physical traumatism, often of a very slight character. Charcot 
 had shown that such "nervous shock," with the chain of resulting 
 symptoms, is nothing more or less than hysteria. Breuer and 
 Freud may be linked on to Charcot at this point. They began by 
 regarding the most typical hysteria as really a psychic trau- 
 matism; that is to say, that it starts in a lesion, or rather in 
 
 1 We might, perhaps, even say that in hysteria the so-called higher 
 centres have an abnormally strong inhibitory influence over the lower 
 centres. Gioffredi {On^~r1.ta degli Ospedali. October 1, 1895) has shown 
 that some hysterical symptoms, such as mutism, can be cured by etheriza- 
 tion, thus loosening the control of the higher centres. 
 
AUTO-EKOTISM. 221 
 
 repeated lesions, of the emotional organism. It is true that the 
 school of Charcot admitted the influence of moral shock, especially 
 of the emotion of fear, but that merely as an "agent provocateur" 
 and with a curious perversity Gilles de la Tourette, certainly 
 reflecting the attitude of Charcot, in his elaborate treatise on 
 hysteria fails to refer to the sphere of the sexual emotions even 
 when enumerating the "agents provocateurs."^ 
 
 The influence of fear is not denied by Breuer and Freud, 
 but they have found that careful psychic analysis frequently 
 shows that the shock of a commonplace "fear" is really rooted 
 in a lesion of the sexual emotions. A typical and very simple 
 illustration is furnished in a case, recorded by Breuer, in which 
 a young girl of seventeen had her first hysterical attack after a 
 cat sprang on her shoulders as she was going downstairs. Care- 
 ful investigation showed that this girl had been the object of 
 somewhat ardent attentions from a young man whose advances 
 she had resisted, although her own sexual emotions had been 
 aroused. A few days before, she had been surprised by this young 
 man on these same dark stairs, and had forcibly escaped from his 
 hands. Here was the real psychic traumatism, the operation of 
 which merely became manifest in the eat. "But in how many 
 cases," asks Breuer, "is a cat thus reckoned as a completely sufii- 
 cient causa efficiens ?" 
 
 In every case that they have investigated Breuer and Freud 
 have found some similar secret lesion of the psychic sexual 
 sphere. In one case a governess, whose training has been se- 
 verely upright, is, in spite of herself and without any encourage- 
 ment, led to experience for the father of the children under her 
 care an affection which she refuses to acknowledge even to her- 
 self ; in another, a young woman finds herself falling in love with 
 her brother-in-law; again, an innocent girl suddenly discovers 
 
 1 Charcot's school could not fail to recognize the erotic tone -which 
 often dominates hysterical hallucinations. Gilles de la Tourette seeks to 
 minimize it by the remark that "it is more mental than real." He means 
 to say that it is more psychic than physical, but he implies that the 
 physical element in sex is alone "real," a strange assumption in any 
 case, as well as destructive of Gilles de ia Tourette's own fundamental 
 assertion that hysteria is a real disease and yet purely psychic. 
 
222 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 her uncle in the act of sexual intercourse with her playmate, and 
 a boy on his way home from school is subjected to the coarse ad- 
 vances of a sexual invert. In nearly every case, as Freud event- 
 ually found reason to believe, a primary lesion of the sexual emo- 
 tions dates from the period of puberty and frequently of child- 
 hood, and in nearly every case the intimately private nature of 
 the lesion causes it to be carefully hidden from everyone, and 
 even to be unacknowledged by the subject of it. In the earlier 
 cases Breuer and Freud found that a slight degree of hypnosis is 
 necessary to bring the lesion into consciousness, and the accuracy 
 of the revelations thus obtained has been tested by independent 
 witness. Freud has, however, long abandoned the induction of 
 any degree of hypnosis; he simply tries to arrange that the 
 patient shall feel absolutely free to tell her own story, and so 
 proceeds from the surface downwards, slowly finding and piecing 
 together such essential fragments of the history as may oe 
 recovered, in the same way he remarks, as the archaeologist ex- 
 cavates below the surface and recovers and puts together the frag- 
 ments of an antique statue. Much of the material found, how- 
 ever, has only a symbolic value requiring interpretation and is 
 sometimes pure fantasy. Freud now attaches great importance 
 to dreams as symbolically representing much in the subject's 
 mental history which is otherwise difficult to reach. ^ The subtle 
 and slender clues which Freud frequently follows in interpreting 
 dreams cannot fail sometimes to arouse doubt in his readers' 
 minds, but he certainly seems to have been often successful in 
 thus reaching latent facts in consciousness. The primary lesion 
 may thus act as "a foreign body in consciousness." Something is 
 introduced into psychic life which refuses to merge in the gen- 
 eral flow of consciousness. It cannot be accepted simply as 
 other facts of life are accepted ; it cannot even be talked about, 
 and so submitted to the slow usure by which our experiences are 
 worn down and gradually transformed. Breuer illustrates what 
 happens by reference to the sneezing reflex. "When an irritatioQ 
 to the nasal mucous membrane for some reason fails to liberate 
 
 1 See, e.g., his substantial volume, Die Traumdeutung, 1900, 2d 
 ed. 1909. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 223 
 
 this reflex, a feeling of excitement and tension arises. This ex- 
 citement, being unable to stream out along motor channels, now 
 spreads itself over the brain, inhibiting other activities. 
 In the highest spheres of human activity we may watch the same 
 process." It is a result of this process that, as Breuer and Freud 
 found, the mere act of confession may greatly relieve the 
 hysterical symptoms produced by this psychic mechanism, and in 
 some cases may wholly and permanently remove them. It is on 
 this fact that they founded their method of treatment, devised by 
 Breuer and by him termed the cathartic method, though Freud 
 prefers to call it the "analytic" method. It is, as Freud points 
 out, the reverse of the hypnotic method of suggestive treatment ; 
 there is the same difference, Freud remarks, between the two 
 methods as Leonardo da Vinci found for the two technical 
 methods of art, per via di porre and per via di levare; the hyp- 
 notifc method, like painting, works by putting in, the cathartic or 
 analytic method, like sculpture, works by taking out.^ 
 
 It is part of the mechanism of this process, as understood 
 by these authors, that the physical symptoms of hysteria are con- 
 stituted, by a process of conversion, out of the injured emotions, 
 which then sink into the background or altogether out of con- 
 sciousness. Thus, they found the prolonged tension of nursing 
 a near and dear relative to be a very frequent factor in the pro- 
 duction of hysteria. For instance, an originally rheumatic pain 
 experienced by a daughter when nursing her father becomes the 
 symbol in memory of her painful psychic excitement, and this 
 perhaps for several reasons, but chiefly because its presence in 
 consciousness almost exactly coincided with that excitement. In 
 another way, again, nausea and vomiting may become a symbol 
 through the profound sense of disgust with which some emo- 
 tional shock was associated. Then the symbol begins to have a 
 life of its own, and draws hidden strength from the emotion with 
 which it is correlated. Breuer and Freud have found by careful- 
 investigation that the pains and physical troubles of hysteria are 
 far from being capricious, but may be traced in a varying manner 
 
 1 Sammlung, first series, p. 208. 
 
224 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 to an origin in some incident, some pain, some action, which was 
 associated with a moment of acute psychic agony. The process 
 of conversion was an involuntary escape from an intolerable emo- 
 tion, comparable to the physical pain sometimes sought in intense 
 mental grief, and the patient wins some relief from the tortured 
 emotions, though at the cost of psychic abnormality, of a more 
 or less divided state of consciousness and of physical pain, or else 
 antesthesia. In Charcot's third stage of the hysterical convulsion, 
 that of "attitudes passionnelles" Breuer and Freud see the hallu- 
 cinatory reproduction of a recollection which is full of signifi- 
 cance for the origin of the hysterical manifestations. 
 
 The final result reached by these workers is clearly stated by 
 each writer. "The main observation of our predecessors," states 
 Breuer,! "still preserved in the word Tiysteria,' is nearer to the 
 truth than the more recent view which puts sexuality almost in 
 the last line, with the object of protecting the patient from mioral 
 reproaches. Certainly the sexual needs of the hysterical are Just 
 as individual and as various in force as those of the healthy. But 
 they suffer from them, and in large measure, indeed, they sufEer 
 precisely through the struggle with them, through the effort to 
 thrust sexuality aside." "The weightiest fact," concludes Freud,^ 
 "on which we strike in a thorough pursuit of the analysis is this : 
 From whatever side and from whatever symptoms we start, we 
 always unfailingly reach the region of the sexual life. Here, first 
 of all, an etiological condition of hysterical states is revealed. 
 At the bottom of every case of hysteria — and repro- 
 ducible by an analytical effort after even an interval of long 
 years — may be found one or more facts of precocious sexual 
 experience belonging to earliest youth-. I regard this as an 
 important result, as the discovery of a caput Nili of neuropath- 
 ology." Ten years later, enlarging rather than restricting his 
 conception, Freud remarks: "Sexuality is not a mere deus ex 
 machina which intervenes but once in the hysterical process; it 
 is the motive force of every separate symptom and every expres- 
 sion of a symptom. The morbid phenomena constitute, to speak 
 
 i Studien iXber Eysterie, p. 217. 
 i Sammlung, first series, p. 162. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 225 
 
 plainly, the patient's sexual activity.''^ The actual hysterical 
 fit, Freud now states, may be regarded as "the substitute for a 
 once practiced and then abandoned auto-erotic satisfaction," and 
 similarly it may be regarded as an equivalent of coitus.^ 
 
 It is natural to ask how this conception affects that elab- 
 orate picture of hysteria laboriously achieved by Charcot and 
 his school. It cannot be said that it abolishes any of the posi- 
 tive results reached by Charcot, but it certainly alters their sig- 
 nificance and value ; it presents them in a new light and changes 
 the whole perspective. With his passion for getting at tangibl9 
 definite physical facts, Charcot was on very safe ground. But ho 
 was content to neglect the psychic analysis of hysteria, while yet 
 proclaiming that hysteria is a purely psychic disorder. He had 
 no cause of hysteria to present save only heredity. Freud cer- 
 tainly admits heredity, but, as he points out, the part it plays 
 lias been overrated. It is too vague and general to carry us far, 
 and when a specific and definite cause can be found, the part 
 played by heredity recedes to become merely a condition, the 
 soil on which the "specific etiology" works. Here probably 
 Freud's enthusiasm at first carried him too far and the most 
 important modification he has made in his views occurs at this 
 point: he now attaches a preponderant influence to heredity. 
 He has realized that sexual activity in one form or another is far 
 too common in childhood to make it possible to lay very great 
 emphasis on "traumatic lesions" of this character, and he has 
 also realized that an outcrop of fantasies may somewhat later 
 develop on these childish activities, intervening between them 
 and the subsequent morbid symptoms. He is thus led to empha- 
 size anew the significance of heredity, not, however, in Charcot's 
 sense, as general neuropathic disposition but as "sexual constitu- 
 tion." The significance of "infantile sexual lesions" has also 
 tended to give place to that of "infantilism of sexuality ."^ 
 
 The real merit of Freud's subtle investigations is that 
 
 1 Sammlung, second series, p. 102. 
 
 2 lb. p. 146. 
 
 S Sammlung, first series, p. 229. Freud has developed his concep- 
 tion of sexual constitution in Drei Ahhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 
 1905. 
 
 15 
 
226 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 ■ — while possibly furnishing a justification of the imperfectly' 
 understood idea that had floated in the mind of observers evei 
 since the name "hysteria" was first invented — ^he has cer- 
 tainly supplied a definite psychic explanation of a psychic malady. 
 He has succeeded in presenting clearly, at the expense of 
 much labor, insight, and sympathy, a dynamic view of the psy- 
 chic processes involved in the constitution of the hysterical state, 
 and such a view seems to show that the physical symptoms 
 laboriously brought to light by Charcot are largely but epiphe- 
 nomena and by-products of an emotional process, often of tragic 
 significance to the subject, which is taking place in the most 
 sensitive recess of the psychic organism. That the picture of 
 the mechanism involved, presented to us by Professor Freud, 
 cannot be regarded as a final and complete account of the matter, 
 may readily be admitted. It has developed in Freud's own 
 hands, and some of the developments will require very consider- 
 able confirmation before they can be accepted as generally true.i 
 But these investigations have at least served to open the door, 
 which Charcot had inconsistently held closed, into the deeper 
 mysteries of hysteria, and have shown that here, if anywhere, 
 further research will be profitable. They have also served to 
 show that hysteria may be definitely regarded as, in very many 
 cases at least, a manifestation of the sexual emotions and their 
 lesions; in other words, a transformation of auto-erotism. 
 
 The conception of hysteria so vigorously enforced by Char- 
 cot and his school is thus now beginning to appear incomplete. 
 But we have to recognize that that incompleteness was right and 
 necessary. A strong reaction was needed against a widespread 
 view of hysteria that was in large measure scientifically false, it 
 was necessary to show clearly that hysteria is a definite disorder, 
 even when the sexual organs and emotions are swept wholly out 
 of consideration; and it was also necessary to show that the 
 lying and dissimulation so widely attributed to the hysterical 
 
 1 As Moll remarks, Freud's conceptions are still somewhat sub- 
 jective, and in need of objective demonstration; but whatever may be 
 thought of their theories, he adds, there can be no doubt that Breuer 
 and Freud have done a great service by calling attention to the impor- 
 tant action of the sexual life on the nervous system. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM, 227 
 
 were merely the result of an ignorant and unscientific misinter- 
 pretation of psychic elements of the disease. This was finally and 
 triumphantly achieved by Charcot's school. 
 
 There is only one other point in the explanation of hysteria 
 which I will here refer to, and that because it is usually ignored, 
 and because it has relationship to the general psychology of the 
 sexual emotions. I refer to that physiological hysteria which is the 
 normal counterpart of the pathological hysteria which has been 
 described in its physical details by Charcot, and to which alone 
 the term should strictly be applied. Even though hysteria as a 
 disease may be described as one and indivisible, there are yet to 
 be found, among the ordinary and fairly healthy population, 
 vague and diffused hysteroid symptoms which are dissipated in 
 a healthy environment, or pass nearly unnoted, only to develop 
 in a small proportion of cases, under the influence of a more pro- 
 nounced heredity, or a severe physical or psychic lesion, into 
 that definite morbid state which is properly called hysteria. 
 
 This diffused hysteroid condition may be illustrated by the 
 results of a psychological investigation carried on in America by 
 Miss Gertrude Stein among the ordinary male and female stu- 
 dents of Harvard University and Eadcliffe College. The object 
 of the investigation was to study, with the aid of a planchette, 
 the varying liability to automatic movements among normal in- 
 dividuals. Nearly one hundred students were submitted to ex- 
 periment. It was found that automatic responses could be ob- 
 tained in two sittings from all but a small proportion of the 
 students of both sexes, but that there were two types of indi- 
 vidual who showed a special aptitude. One type (probably show- 
 ing the embryonic form of neurasthenia) was a nervous, high- 
 strung, imaginative type, not easily influenced from without, and 
 not so much suggestible as autosuggestible. The other type, 
 which is significant from our present point of view, is thus de- 
 scribed by Miss Stein : "In general the individuals, often blonde; 
 and pale, are distinctly phlegmatic. If emotional, decidedly of 
 the weakest, sentimental order. They may be either large, 
 healthy, rather heavy, and lacking in vigor or they may be 
 what we call ansemic and phlegmatic. Their power of concen- 
 
228 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 trated attention is Yery small. They describe themselves as 
 never being held by their work; they say that their minds 
 wander easily ; that they work on after they are tired, and just 
 keep pegging away. They are very apt to have premonitory con- 
 versations, they anticipate the words of their friends, they im- 
 agine whole conversations that afterward come true. The feel- 
 ing of having been there is very common With them; that is, 
 they feel under given circumstances that they have had that 
 identical experience before in all its details. They are often 
 fatalistic in their ideas. They indulge in day-dreams. As a 
 rule, they are highly suggestible." ^ 
 
 There we have a picture of the physical constitution and 
 psychic temperament on which the classical symptoms of hys- 
 teria might easily be built up.^ But these persons were ordinary 
 students, and while a few of their characteristics are what is com- 
 monly and vaguely called "morbid," on the whole they must be 
 regarded as ordinarily healthy individuals. They have the con- 
 genital constitution and predisposition on which some severe 
 psychic lesion at the "psychological moment" might develop the 
 most definite and obstinate symptoms of hysteria, but under 
 favorable circumstances they will be ordinary men and women, 
 of no more than ordinary abnormality or ordinary power. They 
 are among the many who have been called to hysteria at birth; 
 they may never be among the few who are chosen. 
 
 We may have to recognize that on the side of the sexual 
 emotions, as well as in general constitution, a condition may be 
 traced among normal persons that is hysteroid in character, and 
 serves as the healthy counterpart of a condition, which ia hys- 
 
 1 Gertrude Stein, "Cultivated Motor Automatism," Psychological 
 Review, May, 1898. 
 
 2 Charcot's most faithful followers refuse to recognize a "hysteric 
 temperament," and are quite right, if such a conception is used to de- 
 stroy the conception of hysteria as a definite disease. We cannot, how- 
 e-\'er, fail to recognize a diathesis which, while still apparently healthy, 
 is predisposed to hysteria. So distinguished a disciple of Charcot as 
 Janet thoroughly recognizes this, and argues (L'Etat mental, etc., p. 
 298) that "we may find in the habits, the passions, the psychic 
 automatism of the normal man, the germ of all hysterical phenomena." 
 F6r6 held a somewhat similar view. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 229 
 
 teria is morbid. In women such a conditioa has 'been traced 
 (though misnamed) by Dr. King.^ 
 
 Dr. King describes what he calls "sexual hysteria in women," which 
 he considers a chief variety of hysteria. He adds, however, that it is 
 not strictly a disease, but simply an automatic reaction of the repro- 
 ductive system, which tends to become abnormal under conditions of 
 civilization, and to be perpetuated in a, morbid form. In this condition 
 he finds twelve characters: 1. Time of life, usually between puberty 
 and climacteric. 2. Attacks rarely occur when subject is alone. 3. Sub- 
 ject appears unconscious, but is not really so. 4. She is instinctively 
 ashamed afterward. 5. It occurs usually in single women, or in those, 
 single or married, whose sexual needs are unsatisfied. 6. No external 
 evidence of disease, and (as Aitken pointed out) the nates are not flat- 
 tened; the woman's physical condition is not impaired, and she may be 
 specially attractive to men. 7. Warmth of climate and the season of 
 spring and summer are conducive to the condition. 8. The paroxysm is 
 short and temporary. 9. While light touches are painful, firm pressure 
 and rough handling give relief. 10. It may occur in the occupied, but an 
 idle, purposeless life is conducive. 11. The subject delights in exciting 
 sympathy and in being fondled and caressed. 12. There is defect of will 
 and a strong stimulus is required to lead to action. 
 
 Among civilized women, the author proceeds, this condition does 
 not appear to subserve any useful purpose. "Let us, however, go back 
 to aboriginal woman — to woman of the woods and the fields. Let us 
 picture ourselves a young aboriginal Venus in one of her earliest hyster- 
 ical paroxysms. In doing so, let us not forget some of the twelve char- 
 acteristics previously mentioned. She will not be 'acting her part' alone, 
 or, if alone, it will be in a place where someone else is likely soon to 
 discover her. Let this Venus be now discovered by a, youthful Apollo 
 of the woods, a man with fully developed animal instincts. He and she, 
 like any other animals, are in the free field of Nature. He cannot but 
 observe to himself: 'This woman is not dead; she breathes and is warm; 
 she does not look ill; she is plump and rosy.' He speaks to her; she 
 neither hears (apparently) nor responds. Her eyes are closed. He 
 touches, moves, and handles her at his pleasure. She makes no resist- 
 ance. What will this primitive Apollo do next? He will cure the fit, 
 and bring the woman back to consciousness, satisfy her emotions, 
 and restore her volition — not by delicate touches that might be 'agoniz- 
 ing' to her hyperesthetic skin, but by vigorous massage, passive motions, 
 and succussion that would be painless. The emotional process on the 
 
 1 A. I". A. King, "Hysteria," American Journal of Obstetrics, May 
 18, 1891. 
 
230 PSYCH01.00Y OJ? SEX. 
 
 part of the woman would end, perhaps, with mingled laughter, tears, 
 and shame; and when accused afterward of the part which the ances- 
 trally acquired prjjperties of her nervous system had compelled her to 
 act, as a preliminary to the event, what woman would not deny it and 
 be angi-y? But the course of Nature having been followed, the natural 
 purpose of the hysterical paroxysm accomplished, there would remain as 
 a result of the treatment — instead of one discontented woman — two 
 happy people, and the possible beginning of a third." 
 
 "Natural, primary sexual hysteria in woman," King concludes, 
 "is a temporary modification of the nervous government of the body 
 and the distribution of nerve- force (occurring for the most part, as we 
 see it to-day, in prudish women of strong moral principle, whose voli- 
 tion has disposed them to resist every sort of liberty or approach from 
 the other sex),, consisting in a transient abdication of the general, voli- 
 tional, and self-preservational ego, while the reins of government are 
 temporarily assigned to the usurping powel' of the reproductive ego, so 
 that the reproductive government overrules the government by volition, 
 and thus, as it were, forcibly compels the woman's organism to so dispose 
 itself, at a suitable time and place, as to allow, invite, and secure the 
 approach of the other sex, whether she will or not, to the end that 
 Nature's imperious demand for reproduction shall be obeyed." 
 
 This perhaps rather fantastic description is not a presenta- 
 tion of hysteria in the technical sense, but we may admit that it 
 presents a state which, if not the real physiological counterpart 
 of the hysterical convulsion, is yet distinctly analogous to the 
 latter. The sexual orgasm has this correspondence with the 
 hysterical fit, that they both serve to discharge the nervous centres 
 and relieve emotional tension. It may even happen, especially 
 in the less severe forms of hysteria, that the sexual orgasm takes 
 place during the hysterical fit; this was found by Eosenthal, of 
 Vienna, to be always the case in the semiconscious paroxysms of 
 a young girl whose condition was easily cured ;i no doubt such 
 cases would be more frequently found if they were sought for. 
 In severe forms of hysteria, however, it frequently happens, as so 
 many observers have noted, that normal sexual excitement has 
 
 1 M. Rosenthal, Diseases of the Nervous System, vol. ii, p. 44. 
 FfirS notes similar cases {Twentieth Century Practice of Medicine, vol. 
 X, p. 551). Long previously, Gall had recorded the case of a young 
 widow of ardent temperament who had convulsive attacks, apparently of 
 hysterical nature, which always terminated in sexual orgasm (Fonctions 
 du Cerveau, 1825, vol. iii, p. 245). 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 
 
 231 
 
 ceased to give satisfaction, has become painful, perverted, para- 
 doxical. Freud has enabled us to see how a shock to the 
 sexual emotions, injuring the emotional life at its source, can 
 scarcely fail sometimes to produce such a result. But the neces- 
 sity for nervous explosion still persists. ^ It may, indeed, persist, 
 even in an abnormally strong degree, in consequence of the 
 inhibition of normal activities generally. The convulsive fit is 
 the only form of relief open to the tension. "A lady whom I 
 long attended," remarks Ashwell, "always rejoiced when the fit 
 was over, since it relieved her system generally, and especially 
 her brain, from painful irritation which had existed for several 
 previous days." That the fit mostly fails to give real satisfaction, 
 and that it fails to cure the disease, is due to the fact that it is 
 a morbid form of relief. The same character of hysteria is seen, 
 with more satisfactory results for the most part, in the influence 
 of external nervous shock. It was the misunderstood influence 
 of such shocks in removing hysteria which in former times led to 
 the refusal to regard hysteria as a serious disease. During the 
 Eebellion of 1745-46 in Scotland, Cullen remarks that there was 
 little hysteria. The same was true of the French Eevolution and 
 of the Irish Eebellion, while Eush (in a study On the Influence 
 of the American Revolution on the Human Body) observed that 
 many hysterical women were "restored to perfect health by the 
 events of the time." In such eases the emotional tension is 
 given an opportunity of explosion in new and impersonal chan- 
 nels, and the chain of morbid personal emotions is broken. 
 
 It has been urged by some that the fact that the sexual orgasm 
 usually fails to remove the disorder in true hysteria excludes a 
 sexual factor of hysteria. It is really, one may point out, an 
 argument in favor of such an element as one of the factors of 
 hysteria. If there were no initial lesion of the sexual emotions, 
 if the natural healthy sexual channel still remained free for the 
 passage of the emotional overflow, then we should expect that it 
 
 1 There seems to be a greater necessity for such explosive manifesta- 
 tions in women than in men, whatever the reason may be. I have 
 brought together some of the evidence pointing in this direction in Man 
 and Woman, 4th ed., revised and enlarged, Chapters xii and xiii. 
 
232 PSYCHOLOGY OB SEX. 
 
 would much oftener come into play in the removal of hysteria. 
 In the more healthy, merely hysteroid condition, the psychic 
 sexual organism is not injured, and still responds normallj', re- 
 moving the abnormal symptoms when allowed to do so. It is the 
 confusion between this almost natural condition and the truly 
 morbid condition, alone properly called hysteria, which led to 
 the ancient opinion, inaugurated by Plato and Hippocrates, that 
 hysteria may be cured by marriage. ^ The difference may be illus- 
 trated by the difference between a distended bladder which is 
 still able to contract normally on its contents when at last an. 
 opportunity of doing so is afforded and the bladder in which dis- 
 tension has been so prolonged that nervous control had been lost 
 and spontaneous expulsion has become impossible. The first con- 
 dition corresponds to the constitution, which, while simulating 
 the hysterical condition, is healthy enough to react normally in 
 spite of psychic lesions; the second corresponds to a state in 
 which, owing to the prolonged stress of psychic traumatism, — 
 sexual or not, — a definite condition of hysteria has arisen. The 
 one state is healthy, though abnormal; the other is one of pro- 
 nounced morbidity. 
 
 The condition of true hysteria is thus linked on to almost 
 healthy states, and especially to a condition which may be 
 described as one of sex-hunger. Such a suggestion may help us 
 
 1 There is no doubt an element of real truth in this ancient belief, 
 though it mainly holds good of minor cases of hysteria. Many excel- 
 lent authorities accept it. "Hysteria is certainly common in the single," 
 Jitrman remarks {Diseases of Women, 1898, p. 33), "and is generally 
 cured by a happy marriage." Lowenfeld {Sexiialle'ben und Nervenleiden, 
 p. 153) says that "it cannot be denied that marriage produces a bene- 
 licial change in the general condition of many hysterical patients." 
 though, he adds, it will not remove the hysterical temperament. The 
 advantage of marriage for the hysterical is not neeessaril3' due, solely 
 or at all, to the exercise of sexual functions. This is pointed out by 
 Mongeri, who observes (AUgemeine Zeitschrift filr Psychiatrie, 1901, 
 Heft 5, p. 917) : "I have known and treated several hysterical girls 
 who are now married, and do not show the least neuropathic indications. 
 Some of these no longer have any wish for sexual gratification, and even ful- 
 fil their marital duties unwillingly, though loving their husbands and liv- 
 ing with them in an extremely happy way. In my opinion, marriage 
 is a sovereign remedy for neuropathic women, who need to And a support 
 in another personality, able to share with them the battle of life." 
 
ADTO-EROTISM. 
 
 233 
 
 to see these puzzling phenomena in their true nature and per- 
 spective. 
 
 At this point I may refer to the interesting parallel, and probable 
 real relationship, between hysteria and chlorosis. As Luzet has said, 
 hysteria and chlorosis are sisters. We have seen that there is some 
 ground for regarding hysteria as an exaggerated form of a normal 
 process which is really an auto-erotic phenomenon. There is some 
 ground, also, for regarding chlorosis as the exaggeration of a physio- 
 logical state connected with sexual conditions, more specifically with 
 the preparation for maternity. Hysteria is so frequently associated 
 with anaemic conditions that Biernaoki has argued that such conditions 
 really constitute the primary and fundamental cause of hysteria {Neu- 
 rologisches Centralllatt, March, 1898). And, centuries before Biernacki, 
 Sydenham had stated his belief that poverty of the blood is the chief 
 cause of hysteria. 
 
 It would be some confirmation of this position if we could believe 
 that chlorosis, like hysteria, is in some degree a congenital condition. 
 This was the view of Virchow, who regarded chlorosis as essentially de- 
 pendent on a congenital hyoplasia of the arterial system. Stieda, on 
 the basis of an elaborate study of twenty-three cases, has endeavored 
 to prove that chlorosis is due to a congenital defect of development 
 Zeitschrift iiir Oehurtshiilfe und Gynakologi% vol. xxxii, Part I, 1895). 
 His facts tend to prove that in chlorosis there are signs of general ill- 
 development, and that, in particular, there is imperfect development of 
 the breasts and sexual organs, with a, tendency to contracted pelvis. 
 Charrin, again, regards utero-ovarian inadequacy as at least one of the 
 factors of chlorosis. Chlorosis, in its extreme form, may thus be re- 
 garded as a disorder of development, a sign of physical degeneracy. Even 
 if not strictly a cause, a congenital condition may, as Stockman be- 
 lieves (British Medical Journal, December 14, 1895), be a predisposing 
 influence. 
 
 However it may be in extreme cases, there is very considerable 
 evidence to indicate that the ordinary anaemia of young women may be 
 due to a storing up of iron in the system, and is so far normal, being a 
 preparation for the function of reproduction. Some observations of 
 Bunge's seem to throw much light on the real cause of what may be 
 termed physiological chlorosis. He found by a series of experiments on 
 animals of different ages that young animals contain a much greater 
 amount of iron in their tissues than adult animals; that, for instance, 
 the body of a rabbit an hour after birth contains more than four times 
 as much iron as that of a rabbit two and a half months old. It thus 
 appears probable that at the period of puberty, and later, there is a 
 storage of iron in the system preparatory to the exercise of the maternal 
 
234 PSYCHOLOGY 01' SEX. 
 
 vunctions. It is precisely between the ages of fifteen and twenty-three, 
 as Stockman found by an analysis of his own cases {British Medical 
 Journal, December 14, 1895) , that the majority of cases occur; there was, 
 indeed, he found, no ease in which the first onset was later than the age 
 of twenty-three. A similar result is revealed by the charts of Lloyd 
 Jones, which cover a vastly greater number of cases. 
 
 We owe to Lloyd Jones an Important contribution to the knowl- 
 edge of chlorosis in its physiological or normal relationships. He 
 has shown that chlorosis is but the exaggeration of a condition that 
 is normal at puberty (and, in many women, at each menstrual period), 
 and which, there is good reason to believe, even has a favorable influ- 
 ence on fertility. He found that light-complexioned persons are more 
 fertile than the dark-complexioned, and that at the same time the blood 
 of the latter is of less specific gravity, containing less haemoglobin. 
 Lloyd Jones also reached the generalization that girls who have had 
 chlorosis are often remarkably pretty, so that the tendency to chlorosis 
 is associated with all the sexual and reproductive aptitudes that make 
 a woman attractive to a man. His conclusion is that the normal condi- 
 tion of which chlorosis is the extreme and pathological condition, is a 
 preparation for motherhood (E. Lloyd Jones, "Chlorosis: The Special 
 Anaemia of Young Women," 1897; also numerous reports to the British 
 Medical Association, published in the British Medical Journal. There 
 was an interesting discussion of the theories of chlorosis at the Moscow 
 International Medical Congress, in 1898; see proceedings of the congress, 
 volume iii, section v, pp. 224 et seq.). 
 
 We may thus, perhaps, understand why it is that hysteria and 
 anaemia are often combined, and why they are both most frequently 
 found in adolescent young women who have yet had no sexual experi- 
 ences. Chlorosis is a physical phenomenon; hysteria, largely a psychic 
 phenomenon; yet, both alike may, to some extent at least, be regarded 
 as sexual aptitude showing itself in extreme and pathological forms. 
 
III. 
 
 The Prevalence of Masturbation — Its Occurrence in Infancy and 
 Childhood — Is it More Frequent in Males or Females ? — ^Af ter Adolescence 
 Apparently more Frequent in Women — Reasons for the Sexual Distribu- 
 tion of Masturbation — The Alleged Evils of Masturbation — Historical 
 Sketch of the Views Held on This Point — The Symptoms and Results of 
 Masturbation — Its Alleged Influence in Causing Eye Disorders — Its Rela- 
 tion to Insanity and Nervous Disorders — The Evil Effects of Masturba- 
 tion Usually Occur on the Basis of a Congenitally Morbid Nervous Sys- 
 tem — ^Neurasthenia Probably the Commonest Accompaniment of Exces- 
 sive Masturbation— -Precocious Masturbation Tends to Produce Aversion 
 to Coitus — Psychic Results of Habitual Masturbation — ^Masturbation 
 in Men of Genius — ^Masturbation as a Nervous Sedative — ^Typical Cases 
 — The Greek Attitude toward Masturbation — Attitude of the Catholic 
 Theologians — The Mohammedan Attitude — ^The Modern Scientific Atti- 
 tude — In What Sense is Masturbation Normal? — The Immense Part in 
 Life Played by Transmuted Auto-erotic Phenomena. 
 
 The foregoing sketch wfll serve to show how vast is the field 
 of life — of normal and not merely abnormal life — ^more or less 
 infused by auto-erotic phenomena. If, however, we proceed to 
 investigate precisely the exact extent, degree, and significance of 
 such phenomena, we are met by many difficulties. We find, in- 
 deed, that no attempts have been made to study auto-erotic 
 phenomena, except as regards the group — a somewhat artificial 
 group, as I have already tried to show — collected under the term 
 "masturbation," while even here such attempts have only been 
 made among abnormal classes of people, or have been conducted 
 in a manner scarcely likely to yield reliable results. ^ Still there 
 is a certain significance in the more careful investigations which 
 have been made to ascertain the precise frequency of masturba- 
 tion. 
 
 Berger, an experienced specialist in nervous diseases, con- 
 cluded, in his Vorlesungen, that 99 per cent, of young men and 
 
 1 For a bibliography of masturbation, see Rohleder, Die Mastur- 
 bation, pp. 11-18; also, Arthur MacDonald, Le Griminel Type, pp. 227 
 et seq.; cf. G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, pp. 432 et seq. 
 
 (235) 
 
236 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 women masturbate oceasionally, while the hundredth conceals 
 the truth ;i and Hermann Colin appears to accept this statement 
 as generally true in Germany. So high an estimate has, of 
 course, been called in question, and, since it appears to rest on no 
 basis of careful investigation, we need not seriously consider it. 
 It is useless to argue on suppositions; we must cling to our 
 definite evidence, even though it yields figures which are probably 
 below the mark. Eohleder considers that during adolescence at 
 least 95 per cent, of both sexes masturbate, but his figures are 
 not founded on precise investigation.^ Julian Marcuse, on the 
 basis of his own statistics, concludes that 93 per cent, male 
 individuals have to some extent masturbated in youth. Perhaps, 
 also, weight attaches to the opinion of Dukes, physician to Eugby 
 School, who states that from 90 to 95 per cent, of all boys at 
 boarding school masturbate.^ Seerley, of Springfield, Mass., 
 found that of 125 academic students only 8 assured him they had 
 never masturbated ; while of 347, who answered his questions, 71 
 denied that they practiced masturbation, which seems to imply 
 that 79 per cent, admitted that they practiced it.^ Brockman, 
 also in America, among 232 theological students, of the average 
 age of 33% years and coming from various parts of the United 
 States, found that 132 spontaneously admitted that masturbation 
 was their most serious temptation and all but one of these 
 admitted that he yielded, 69 of them to a considerable extent. 
 This is a proportion of at least 56 per cent., the real proportion 
 being doubtless larger, since no question had been asked as to 
 sexual offenses ; 75 practiced masturbation after conversion, and 
 2-1 after they had decided to become ministers; only 66 men- 
 tioned sexual intercourse as their chief temptation ; but altogether 
 sexual temptations outnumbered all others together.^ Moraglia, 
 who made inquiry of 200 women of the lower class in Italy, 
 
 1 Oskar Berger, Archiv fiir PsycMatrie, Bd. 6, 1876. 
 
 2 Die Masturhation, p. 41. 
 
 3 Dukes, Preservation of Health, 1884, p. 150. 
 ^ Gr. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 434. 
 
 5 F. S. Brockman, "A Study of the Moral and Religious Life of 
 Students in the United States," Pedagogical Seminary, September, 1902. 
 Many pitiful narratives are reproduced. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 237 
 
 found that 120 acknowledged either that they still masturbate or 
 that they had done so during a long period, i Gualino found that 
 23 per cent, men of the professional classes in North Italy mas- 
 turbate about puberty ; no account was taken of those who began 
 later. "Here in Switzerland," a correspondent writes, "I have had 
 occasion to learn from adult men, whom I can trust, that they 
 have reached the age of twenty-five, or over, without sexual 
 congress. 'Wir haben nicht dieses Bedurfniss/ is what they say. 
 But I believe that, in the case of the Swiss mountaineers, mod- 
 erate onanism is practiced, as a rule." In hot countries the same 
 habits are found at a more precocious age. In Venezuela, for 
 instance, among the Spanish Creoles, Ernst found that in 
 all classes boys and girls are infested with the vice of onanism. 
 They learn it early, in the very beginning of life, from their wet- 
 nurses, generally low Mulatto women, and many reasons help to 
 foster the habit; the young men are often dissipated and the 
 young women often remain single.^ Niceforo, who shows a spe- 
 cial knowledge of the working-girl class at Eome, states that in 
 many milliners' and dressmakers' workrooms, where young 
 girls are employed, it frequently happens that during the 
 hottest hours of the day, between twelve and two, when the 
 mistress or forewoman is asleep, all the girls without excep- 
 tion give themselves up to masturbation. ^ In France a country 
 cure assured Debreyne that among the little girls who come up 
 for their first communion, 11 out of 12 were given to masturba-, 
 tion.^ The medical officer of a Prussian reformatory told Eohle- 
 der that nearly all the inmates over the age of puberty mastur- 
 bated. Stanley Hall knew a reform school in America where 
 masturbation was practiced without exception, and he who could 
 
 1 Moraglia, "Die Onanie beim normalen Weibe und bei den Prosti- 
 tuten," Zeitschrift fur Griminal-Anthropologie, 1897, p. 489. It should 
 be added that Moraglia is not a very critical investigator. It is probable, 
 however, that on this point his results are an approximation to the truth. 
 
 2 Ernst, "Anthropological Researches on the Population of Vene- 
 zuela, Memoirs of the Anthropological Society, vol. iii, 1870, p. 277. 
 
 - 3 Niceforo, II Gergo nei Normali, etc., 1897, cap. V. 
 4 Debreyne, Machialogie, p. 64. Yet theologians and casuists, 
 Debreyne remarks, frequently never refer to masturbation in vcomen. 
 
238 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 practice it oftenest was regarded with hero-worship. i Ferriani, 
 who has made an elaborate study of youthful criminality in Italy, 
 states that even if all boys and girls among the general popula- 
 tion do not masturbate, it is certainly so among those who have 
 a tendency to crime. Among 458 adult male criminals, Marro 
 (as he states in his Caratten dei Delinquenti) found that only 
 72 denied masturbation, while 386 had practiced it from an early 
 age, 140 of them before the age of thirteen. Among 30 criminal 
 women Moraglia found that 24 acknowledged the practice, at all 
 events in early youth (8 of them before the age of 10, a precocity 
 accompanied by average precocity in menstruation), while he sus- 
 pected that most of the remainder were not unfamiliar with the 
 practice. Among prostitutes of whatever class or position Mora- 
 glia found masturbation (though it must be pointed out that he 
 does not appear to distinguish masturbation very clearly from 
 homosexual practices) to be universal; in one group of 50 pros- 
 titutes everyone had practiced masturbation at some period; 28 
 began between the ages of 6 and 11; 19, between 12 and 14, the 
 most usual period — a precocious one — of commencing puberty; 
 the remaining 3 at 15 and 16 ; the average age of commencing 
 masturbation, it may be added, was 11, while that of the first 
 sexual intercourse was 15. ^ In a larger group of 180 prostitutes, 
 belonging to Genoa, Turin, Venice, etc., and among 23 "elegant 
 cocottes," of Italian and foreign origin, Moraglia obtained the 
 same results ; everyone admitted masturbation, and not less than 
 113 preferred masturbation, either solitary or mutual, to normal 
 coitus. Among the insane, as among idiots, masturbation is 
 somewhat more common among males, according to Blandford, 
 in England, as also it is in Germany, according to Nacke,^ while 
 Venturi, in Italy, has found it more common among females.* 
 There appears to be no limit to the age at which spontaneous 
 masturbation may begin to appear. I have already referred to 
 
 1 Stanley Hall, op. cit., vol. i, p. 34. Fall mentions, also, that 
 masturbation is specially common among tlie blind. 
 
 2 Moraglia, Archivio di PsicJiialria, vol. xvi, fasc. 4 and 5, p. 313. 
 
 3 See his careful studv, "Die Poxii"llpn Perveraitaten in der Irren- 
 anstalt," Psychiatrische Bladen, No. 2. 1S99. 
 
 4 Venturi, Degeneradoni Psico-seasiiali, pp. 105, 133, 148, 152. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 239 
 
 tlie practice of tliigh-rubbing in infants under one year of age. 
 J. P. West has reported in detail 3 cases of masturbation in very 
 early childhood — 2 in girls, 1 in a boy — in which the practice 
 had been acquired spontaneously, and could only be traced to 
 some source of irritation in pressure from clothing, etc.^ Prob- 
 ably there is often in such cases some hereditary lack of nervous 
 stability. Block has recorded the case of a girl — very bright for 
 her age, though excessively shy and taciturn — who began mas- 
 turbating spontaneously at the age of two ; in this case the mother 
 had masturbated all her life, even continuing the practice after 
 marriage, and, though she succeeded in refraining during preg- 
 nancy, her thoughts still dwelt upon it, while the maternal grand- 
 mother had died in an asylum from "masturbatory insanity." 
 
 Preud considers that auto-erotic manifestations are common 
 in infancy, and that the rhythmic function of any sensitive spot, 
 primarily the lips, may easily pass into masturbation. He 
 regards the infantile manifestations of which thumb-sucking is 
 the. most familiar example (Liideln or Lutschen in German) as 
 auto-erotic, the germ arising in sucking the breasts since the lips 
 are an erogenous zone which may easily be excited by the warm 
 stream of milk. But this only occurs, he points out, in subjects 
 in whom the sensitivity of the lip zone is heightened and especially 
 in those who at a later age are liable to become hysterical. ^ 
 Shuttleworth also points out that the mere fidgetiness of a neu- 
 rotic infant, even when only a few months old, sometimes leads bo 
 the spontaneous and accidental discovery of pleasurable sexual 
 sensations, which for a time appease the restlessness of nervous 
 instability, though a vicious circle is thus established. He has 
 found that, especially among quite young girls of neurotic 
 heredity, self-induced excitement, often in the form of thigh- 
 friction, is more common than is usually supposed. ^ 
 
 Normally there appears to be a varying aptitude to experi- 
 
 1 J. P. West, Transactions of the Ohio Pediatric Society, 1895, Ab- 
 stract in Medical Standard, November, 1895; cases are also recorded by 
 J. T. Winter, "Self-abuse in Infancy and Cbildhood," American Journal 
 Olstetrics, June, 1902. 
 
 2 Freud, Ahhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, pp. 36 et seq. 
 
 3 Gr. E. Shuttleworth, British Medical Journal, October 3, 1903. 
 
240 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 ence the sexual organism, or any voluptuous sensations befora 
 puberty. I find, on eliciting the recollections of normal persons, 
 that in some cases there have been voluptuous sensations from 
 casual contact with the sexual organs at a very early age; ia 
 other cases there has been occasional slight excitement from early 
 years ; in yet other cases complete sexual anjesthesia until the age 
 of puberty. That the latter condition is not due to mere absence 
 of peripheral irritation is shown by a case I am acquainted with, 
 in which a boy of 7, incited by a companion, innocently 
 attempted, at intervals during several weeks, to produce erection 
 by friction of the penis ; no result of any kind followed, although 
 erections occurred spontaneously at puberty, with normal sexual 
 feelings. 1 
 
 I am indebted to a correspondent for the following notes: — 
 "From my observation during five years at a boarding-school, it 
 seems that eight out of ten boys were more or less addicted to the prac- 
 tice. But I would not state positively that such was the proportion of 
 masturbators among an average of thirty pupils, though the habit was 
 very common. I know that in one bedroom, sleeping seven boys, the 
 whole number masturbated frequently. The act was performed in bed, 
 in the closets, and sometimes in the classrooms during lessons. Inquiry 
 among my friends as to onanism in the boarding-schools to which they 
 were sent, elicited somewhat contradictory answers concerning the fre- 
 quency of the habit. Dr. , who went to a French school, told me 
 
 that all the older boys had younger accomplices in mutual masturbation. 
 He also spoke with experience of the prevalence of the practice in ». 
 well-known public school in the west of England. B. said all the boys 
 at his school masturbated; G. stated that most of his schoolmates were 
 onanists; L. said 'more than half was the proportion. 
 
 "At my school, manual masturbation was both solitarj' and mutual; 
 and sometimes younger boys, who had not acquired the habit, were in- 
 duced to manipulate bigger boys. One very precocious boy of fifteen 
 always chose a. companion of ten 'because his hand was like a woman's.' 
 Sometimes boys entered their friend's bed for mutual excitement. In 
 after-life they showed no signs of inversion. Another boy, aged about 
 fourteen, who had been seduced by a servant-girl, embraced the bolster; 
 the pleasurable sensations, according to his statement, were heightened 
 by imagining that the bolster was a woman. He said that the enjoyment 
 
 1 See for a detailed study of sexuality in childhood, Moll's valuable 
 book. Das Sexuallehen des Ki'ndes; cf. vol. vi of these Studies, Ch. II. 
 
ACTO-EEOTISM. 241 
 
 of the act was greatly increased during the holidays, when he was 
 able to spread a pair of his sister's drawers upon the pillow, and so in- 
 tensify the illusion. 
 
 "Before puberty the boys appeared to be more continent than after- 
 ward. A few of the older and more intelligent masturbators regulated 
 the habit, as some married men regulate intercourse. The big boy re- 
 ferred to, who chose always the same manipulator, professed to indulge 
 only once in twenty days, his reason being that more frequent repetition 
 of the act would injure his health. About twice a week for boys who had 
 reached puberty, and once a week for younger boys, was, I think, about 
 the average indulgence. I have never met with a parallel of one of 
 those eases of excessive masturbation recorded by many doctors. There 
 may have been such cases at this school; but, if so, the boys concealed 
 the frequency of their gratifications. 
 
 "My experience proved that many of the lads regarded masturba- 
 tion as reprehensible ; but their plea was 'everyone does it.' Some, often 
 those who indulged inordinately and more secretly than their com- 
 panions, gravely condemned the practice as sinful. A few seemed to 
 think there was 'no harm in it,' but that the habit might stunt the 
 growth and weaken the body if practiced very frequently. The greater 
 number made no attempt to conceal the habit, they enlarged upon the 
 pleasure of it: it was 'ever so much nicer than eating tarts,' etc. 
 
 "The chief cause I believe to be initiation by an older schoolmate. 
 But I have known accidental causes, such as the discovery that swarm- 
 ing up a pole pleasurably excited the organ, rubbing to allay irritation, 
 and simple, curious handling of the erect penis in the early morning 
 before rising from bed." 
 
 I quote the foregoing communication as perhaps a fairly typical 
 experience in a British school, though I am myself inclined to think 
 that the prevalence of masturbation in schools is often much overrated, 
 for, while in some schools the practice is doubtless rampant, in others it 
 is practically unknown, or, at all events, only practiced by a few indi- 
 viduals in secret. My own early recollections of (private) school-life 
 fail to yield any reminiscences of any kind connected with either mastur- 
 bation or homosexuality; and, while such happy ignorance may be the 
 exception rather than the rule, I am certainly inclined to believe that — - 
 owing to race and climate, and healthier conditions of life — the sexual im- 
 pulse is less precocious and less prominently developed during the school- 
 age in England than in some Continental countries. It is probably to 
 this delayed development that we should attribute the contrast that 
 Ferrero finds {D'Europa Oiovane, pp. 151-56), and certainly states too 
 absolutely, between the sexual reserve of young Englishmen and the 
 sexual immodesty of his avra countrymen. 
 
 In Germany, Nacke has also stated ("Kritisches zum Kapitel der 
 
 16 
 
242 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 Sexualitat," Archiv fur Psychiatrie, pp. 354-56, 1899) that he heard 
 nothing at school either of masturbation or homosexuality, and he 
 records the experience of medical friends who stated that such phe- 
 nomena were only rare exceptions, and regarded by the majority of the 
 boys as exhibitions of "Schweinerei." At other German schools, as 
 Hoche has shown, sexual practices are very prevalent. It is evident that 
 at different schools, and even at the same school at different times, these 
 manifestations vary in frequency within wide limits. 
 
 Such variations, it seems to me, are due to two causes. In the 
 first place, they largely depend upon the character of the more influ- 
 ential elder boys. In the second place, they depend upon the attitude 
 of the head-master. With reference to this point I may quote from a 
 letter written by an experienced master in one of the most famous 
 
 English public schools: "When I first came to , a quarter of a 
 
 century ago. Dr. was making a crusade against this failing; boys 
 
 were sent away wholesale; the school was summoned and lectured 
 solemnly; and the more the severities, the more rampant the disease. 
 I thought to myself that the remedy was creating the malady, and I 
 heard afterward, from an old boy, that in those days they used to talk 
 things over by the fireside, and think there must be something very 
 
 choice in a sin that braved so much. Dr. went, and, under , 
 
 we never spoke of such things. Curiosity died down, and the thing itself, 
 I believe, was lessened. We were told to warn new boys of the dangers 
 to health and morals of such offences, lest the innocent should be caught 
 in ignorance. I have only spoken to a few; I think the great thing 
 is not to put it in boys' heads. I have noticed solitary faults most 
 commonly, and then I tell the boy how he is physically weakening him- 
 self. If you notice, it is puppies that seem to go against Nature, but 
 grown dogs, never. So, if two small boys acted thus, I should think it 
 merely an instinctive feeling after Nature, which would amend itself. 
 Many here would consider it a heinous sin, but those who think such 
 things sins make them sins. I have seen, in the old days, most delight- 
 ful little children sent away, branded with infamy, and scarce knowing 
 why — you might as wall expel a boy for scratching his head when it 
 itched. I am sure the soundest way is to treat it as a doctor would, and 
 explain to the boy the physical effects of over-indulgence of any sort. 
 When it is combated from the monkish standpoint, the evil becomes an 
 epidemic." I am, however, far from anxious to indorse the policy of 
 ignoring the sexual phenomena of youth. It is not the speaking about 
 such things that should be called in question, but the wisdom and good 
 sense of the speaker. We ought to expect a head-master to possess both 
 an adequate acquaintance with the nature of the phenomena of auto- 
 erotism and homosexuality, and a reasonable amount of tact in dealing 
 with boys; he may then fairly be trusted to exercise his own judgment. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 243 
 
 It may be doubted whether boys should be made too alive to the existence 
 of sexual phenomena; there can be no doubt about their teachers. The 
 same is, of course, true as regards girls, among whom the same phe- 
 nomena, though less obtriisive, are not less liable to occur. 
 
 As to whether masturbation is more common in one sex than 
 the other, there have been considerable difEerences of opinion. 
 Tissot considered it more prevalent among women; Christian be- 
 lieved it commoner among men; Deslandes and Iwan Bloch 
 hold that there are no sexual differences, and Gamier was doubt- 
 ful. Lawson Tait, in his Diseases of Women, stated his opinion 
 that in England, while very common among boys, it is relatively 
 rare among women, and then usually taught. Spitzka, in 
 America, also found it relatively rare among women, and Dana 
 considers it commoner in boys than in girls or adults. ^ Moll is 
 inclined to think that masturbation is less common ia women 
 and girls than in the male sex. Eohleder believes that after 
 puberty, when it is equally common in both sexes, it is more 
 frequently found in men, but that women masturbate with more 
 passion and imaginative fervor.^ Kellogg, in America, says it is 
 equally prevalent in both isexes, but that women are more 
 secretive. Morris, also in America, considers, on the other hand, 
 that persistent masturbation is commoner in women, and accounts 
 for this by the healthier life and traditions of boys. Pouillet, 
 who studied the matter with considerable thoroughness in France, 
 came to the conclusion that masturbation is commoner amonp- 
 
 1 This is, no doubt, the most common opinion, and it is frequently 
 repeated in text-books. It ia scarcely necessary, however, to point out 
 that only the opinions of those who have given special attention to the 
 matter can carry any weight. R. W. Shufeldt ("On a Case of Female 
 Impotency," pp. 5-7) quotes the opinions of various cautious observers 
 as to the difficulty of detecting masturbation in women. 
 
 2 This latter opinion is confirmed by Niicke so far as the insane are 
 concerned. In a careful study of sexual perversity in a large asylum, 
 Nacke found that, while moderate masturbation could be more easily 
 traced among men than among women, excessive masturbation was 
 more common among women. And, while among the men masturbation 
 was most frequent in the lowest erades of mental development (idiocy 
 and imbecility), and least frequent in the highest grades (general pa- 
 ralysis), in the women it was the reverse. (P. NScke, "Die Sexuellen 
 Perversitaten in der Irrenanstalt," PsyeMatrisohe en Neurologische 
 Bladen, No. 2, 1899.) 
 
244 PSYCHOLOGY 0¥ SEX. 
 
 women, among whom he found it to be equally prevalent in 
 rich and poor, and especially so in the great centres of civilization. 
 In Eussia, Guttceit states in his Dreissig Jahre Praxis, that 
 from the ages of 10 to 16 boys masturbate more than girls, who 
 know less about the practice which has not for them the charm 
 of the forbidden, but after 16 he finds the practice more frequent 
 in girl? and women than in youths and men. Nacke, in Ger- 
 many, believes that there is much evidence pointing in the same 
 direction, and Adler considers masturbation, very common m 
 women. Moraglia is decidedly of the opinion, on the ground of 
 his own observations already alluded to, that masturbation is 
 more frequent among women; he refers to the fact — a very 
 significant fact, as I shall elsewhere have to point out — ^that, 
 while in man there is only one sexual centre, the penis, in woman 
 there are several centres, — the clitoris, the vagina, the uterus, the 
 breasts,! — and he mentions that he knew a prostitute, a well- 
 developed brunette of somewhat nervous temperament, who 
 boasted that she knew fourteen ways of masturbating herself. 
 
 My own opinion is that the question of the sexual distribu- 
 tion of masturbation has been somewhat obscured by that harm- 
 ful tendency, to which I have already alluded, to concentrate 
 attention on a particular set of auto-erotic phenomena. We must 
 group and divide our facts rationally if we wish to command 
 them. If we confine our attention to very young children, the 
 available evidence shows that the practice is much more common 
 in females,^ and such a result is in harmony with the fact that 
 precocious puberty is most often found in female children.^ At 
 
 1 Mammary masturbation sometimes occurs ; see, e.g., Eohleder, 
 Die Masturiation (pp. 32-33) ; it is, however, rare. 
 
 2 Hirschsprung pointed out this, indeed, many years ago, on the 
 ground of his own experience. And see Rohleder, op. cit., pp. 44-47. 
 
 3 In many cases, of course, the physical precocity is associated with ' 
 precocity in sexual habits. An instructive case is reported {Alienist and 
 Neurologist, October, 1895) of a girl of 7, a beautiful child, of healthy 
 family, and very intelligent, who, from the age of three, was perpetually 
 masturbating, when not watched. The clitoris and mons veneris were 
 those of a fully-grown woman, and the child was as well informed upon 
 most subjects as an average woman. She was cured by care and hygienic 
 attention, and when seen last was in excellent condition. A medical 
 friend tells me of a little girl of two, whose external genital organs are 
 greatly developed, and who is always rubbing herself. 
 
AUTO-EKOTISM. 245 
 
 puberty and adolescence occasional or frequent masturbation is 
 common in both boys and girls, though, I believe, less com- 
 mon than is sometimes supposed ; it is difficult to say whether it 
 is more prevalent among boys or girls; one is inclined to con- 
 clude that it prevails more widely among boys. The sexual 
 impulse, and consequently the tendency to masturbation, tend to 
 be aroused later, and less easily in girls than in youths, though it 
 must also be remembered that boys' traditions and their more 
 active life keep the tendency in abeyance, while in girls there is 
 much less frequently any restraining influence of corresponding 
 character.! In my study of inversion I have found that 
 ignorance and the same absence of tradition are probably factors 
 in the prevalence of homosexual tendencies among women. 2 
 After adolescence I think there can be no doubt that masturba- 
 tion is more common in women than in men. Men have, by this 
 time, mostly adopted some method of sexual gratification with the 
 opposite sex ; women are to a much larger extent shut out from 
 such gratification; moreover, while in rare cases women are 
 sexually precocious, it more often happens that their sexual 
 impulses only gain strength and self-consciousness after adoles- 
 cence has passed. I have been much impressed by the frequency 
 with which masturbation is occasionally (especially about the 
 period of menstruation) practiced by active, intelligent, and 
 
 1 E. T. Morris, of New York, has also pointed, out the influence of 
 traditions in this respect. "Among boys," he remarks, "there are tradi- 
 tions to the effect that self-abuse is harmful. Among girls, however, 
 there are no such saving traditions." Dr. Kiernan writes in a private 
 letter: "It has been by experience, that from ignorance or otherwise, 
 there are young women who do not look upon sexual manipulation with 
 the same fear that men do." Guttceit, similarly, remarks that men 
 have been warned of masturbation, and fear its evil results, while girls, 
 even if warned, attach little importance to the warning; he adds that 
 in healthy women, masturbation, even in excess, has little bad results. 
 The attitude of many women in this matter mav be illustrated bv the 
 following passage from a letter written by a medical friend in Ind'a: 
 "The other dav one of my English women patients gave me the following 
 reason for having taught the 17-year-old daughter of a retired Colonel 
 to masturbate: 'Poor girl, she was troubled with dreams of men, and 
 in case she should be tempted with one. and become pregnant, I taught 
 her to bring the feeling on herself — as it is safer, and, after all, nearly 
 as nice as with a man.' " 
 
 2 H. Ellis, Stu(lies in the Psychology of Sex, volume ii, "Sexual 
 Inversion," Chapter IV. 
 
246 PSTCHOLOGT OF SEX. 
 
 healthy women who otherwise l6ad a chaste life. This experi- 
 ence is confirmed by others who are in a position to ascertain the 
 facts among normal people; thus a lady, who has received the 
 confidence of many women, told me that she believes that all 
 women who remain unmarried masturbate, as she found so much 
 evidence pointing in this direction. ^ This statement certainly 
 needs some qualification, though I believe it is not far from the 
 truth as regards young and healthy women who, after having 
 normal sexual relationships, have been compelled for some 
 reason or other to break them off and lead a lonely life.^ But 
 we have to remember that there are some women, evidently with 
 a considerable degree of congenital sexual anaesthesia (no doubt, 
 in some respect or another below the standard of normal health), 
 in whom the sexual instinct has never been aroused, and who not 
 only do not masturbate, but do not show any desire for normal 
 gratification; while in a large proportion of other cases the 
 impulse is gratified passively in ways I have already referred to. 
 The auto-erotic phenomena which take place in this way, spon- 
 taneously, by yielding to revery, with little or no active inter- 
 ference, certainly occur much more frequently in women than in 
 men. On the other hand, contrary to what one might be led to 
 expect, the closely-related auto-erotic phenomena during sleep 
 seem to take place more frequently in men, although in women, 
 as we have found ground for concluding, they reverberate much 
 more widely and impressively on the waking psychical life. 
 
 We owe to Restif de la Bretonne what is perhaps the earliest 
 precise description of a woman masturhating. In 1755 he knew a 
 dark young woman, plain but well-made, and of warm temperament, 
 educated in a convent. She was observed one day, when gazing from 
 her window at a young man in whom she was tenderly interested, to 
 become much excited. "Her movements became agitated; I approached 
 her, and really believe that she was uttering affectionate expressions; 
 she had become red. Then she sighed deeply, and became motionless, 
 
 1 See, also, the Appendix to the third volume of these Studies, in 
 which I have brought forward sexual histories of normal persons. 
 
 2 E. H. Smith, also, states that from 25 to 35 is the age when most 
 women come under the physician's eye with manifest and pronounced 
 habits of masturbation. 
 
AUTO-BROTISM. 247 
 
 stretching out her legs, which she stiffened, as if she felt pain." It 
 is further hinted that her hands took part in this manoeuvre (Monsieur 
 Nicolas, vol. vi, p. 143). 
 
 Pictorial representations of a woman masturbating also occur in 
 eighteenth century engravings. Thus, in France, Baudouin's "Le Midi" 
 (reproduced in Fuchs's Das Erotische Element in der Karikatur, Fig. 92) , 
 represents an elegant young lady in a rococo garden-bower; she has 
 been reading a book she has now just dropped, together with her sun- 
 shade; she leans languorously back, and her hand begins to find its 
 way through her placket-hole. 
 
 Adler, who has studied masturbation in women with more care 
 than any previous writer, has recorded in detail the auto-erotic mani- 
 festations involved in the case of an intelligent and unprejudiced 
 woman, aged 30, who had begun masturbating when twenty, and practiced 
 it at intervals of a few weeks. She experienced the desire for sexual 
 gratification under the following circumstances: (1) spontaneously, 
 directly before or after menstruation; (2) as a method to cure sleep- 
 lessness ; ( 3 ) after washing the parts with warm { but not cold ) water ; 
 (4) after erotic dreams; (5) quite suddenly, without definite cause. 
 The phenomena of the masturbatory process fell into two stages: 
 (1) incomplete excitement, (2) the highest pleasurable gratification. 
 It only took place in the evening, or at night, and a special position was 
 necessary, with the right knee bent, and the right foot against the 
 knee of the extended left leg. The bent index and middle fingers of the 
 right hand were then applied firmly to the lower third of the left 
 labium minus, which was rubbed against the underlying parts. At this 
 stage, the manifestations sometimes stopped, either from an effort of 
 self-control or from fatigue of the arm. There was no emission of 
 mucus, or general perspiration, but some degree of satisfaction and of 
 fatigue, followed by sleep. If, however, the manipulation was con- 
 tinued, the second stage was reached, and the middle finger sank into 
 the vagina, while the index finger remained on the labium, the rest of 
 the hand holding and compressing the whole of the vulva, from pubes 
 to anus, against the symphysis, with a backwards and forwards move- 
 ment, the left hand also being frequently used to support and assist 
 the right. The parts now gave a mushroom-like feeling to the touch, and 
 in a few seconds, or after a longer interval, the complete feeling of 
 pleasurable satisfaction was attained. At the same moment there was 
 (but only after she had had experience of coitus) an involuntary ele- 
 vation of the pelvis, together with emission of mucus, making the hand 
 wet, this mucus having an odor, and being quite distinct from the 
 ordinary odorless mucus of the vagina; at the same time, the finger 
 in the vagina felt slight contractions of the whole vaginal wall. The 
 «limax of sexual pleasure lasted a few seconds, with its concomitant 
 
248 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 vaginal contractions, then slowly subsided with a feeling of general well- 
 being, the finger at the same time slipping out of the vagina, and she 
 was left in a state of general perspiration, and sleep would immediately 
 follow; when this was not the case, she was frequently conscious of 
 some degree of sensibility in the sacrum, lasting for several hours, and 
 especially felt when sitting. When masturbation was the result of an 
 erotic dream (which occurred but seldom), the first stage was already 
 reached in sleep, and the second was more quickly obtained. During 
 the act it was only occasionally that any thoughts of men or of coitus 
 were present, the attention being fixed on the coming climax. The 
 psychic state afterwards was usually one of self-reproach. (0. Adier, 
 Die Mangelhafte Oeschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, 1904, pp. 26-29.) 
 The phenomena in this ease may be regarded as fairly typical, but there 
 are many individual variations; mucus emissions and vaginal contrac- 
 tions frequently occur before actual orgasm, and there is not usually any 
 insertion of the finger into the vagina in women who have never ex- 
 perienced coitus, or, indeed, even in those who have. 
 
 We must now turn to that aspect of our subject which in 
 the past has always seemed the only aspect of auto-erotic phe- 
 nomena meriting attention : the symptoms and results of chronic 
 masturbation. It appears to have been an Englishman who, at 
 the beginning of the eighteenth century, first called popular 
 attention to the supposed evils of masturbation. His book was 
 published in London, and entitled: Onania, or the Heinous Sin 
 of Self-pollution, and all its Frightful Consequences in both 
 Sexes, Considered, with Spiritual and Physical Advice, etc. It 
 is not a serious medical treatise, but an early and certainly 
 superior example of a kind of literature which we have since 
 become familiar with through the daily newspapers. A large part 
 of the book, which is cleverly written, is devoted in the later edi- 
 tions to the letters of nervous and hypochondriacal young men and 
 women, who are too shy to visit the author, but request him to 
 send a bottle of his "Strengthening Tincture," and mention that 
 they are inclosing half a guinea, a guinea, or still larger sum. 
 Concerning the composition of the "Strengthening Tincture" we 
 are not informed. ^ This work, which was subsequently attrib- 
 
 I It may, however, be instructive to observe that at the end of the 
 volume we find an advertisement of "Dr. Robinson's Treatise on the 
 Virtues and Efficacy of a Crust, of Bread, Eat Early in the Morning 
 Fasting." 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 249 
 
 uted to a writer named Bekkers, is said to have passed through 
 no less than eighty editions, and it was translated into German. 
 Tissot, a physician of Lausanne, followed with his Traite de 
 I'Onanisme: Dissertation sur les Maladies produHes par la Mas- 
 turbation, first published in Latin (1760), then in French 
 (1764), and afterward in nearly- all European languages. He 
 regarded masturbation as a crime, and as "an act of suicide." 
 His book is a production of amusing exaggeration and rhetoric, 
 zealously setting forth the prodigious evils of masturbation in a 
 style which combines, as Christian remarks, the strains of Eous- 
 seau with a vein of religious piety. Tissot included only manual 
 self -abuse under the term "onanism;" shortly afterward, Vol- 
 taire, in his Dictionnaire Philosophique, took up the subject, 
 giving it a wider meaning and still further popularizing it. 
 Finally Lallemand, at a somewhat later period (1836), wrote a 
 book which was, indeed, more scientiiic in character, but which 
 still sought to represent masturbation as the source of all evils. 
 These four writers — the author of Onania,- Tissot, Voltaire, 
 Lallemand — are certainly responsible for much. The mistaken 
 notions of many medical authorities, carried on by tradition, even 
 down to our own time; the powerful lever which has been put 
 into the hand of unscrupulous quacks ; the suffering, dread, and 
 remorse experienced in silence by many thousands of ignorant 
 and often innocent young people may all be traced in large 
 measure back to these four well-meaning, but (on this question) 
 misguided, authors. 
 
 There is really no end to the list of real or supposed symp- 
 toms and results of masturbation, as given by various medical 
 writers during the last century. Insanity, epilepsy, numer- 
 ous forms of eye disease, supra-orbital headache, occipital head- 
 ache (Spitzka), strange sensations at the top of the head (Sav- 
 age), various forms of neuralgia (Anstie, J. Chapman), tender- 
 ness of the skin in the lower dorsal region (Chapman), mammary 
 tenderness in young girls (Lacassagne), mammary hypertrophy 
 (Ossendovsky), asthma (Peyer), cardiac murmurs (Seerley), the 
 appearance of vesicles on wounds (Baraduc), acne and other 
 forms of cutaneous eruptions (the author of Onania, Clipson), 
 
250 PSYCHOLOGY OF SE5. 
 
 dilated pupils (Skene, Lewis, Moraglia), eyes directed upward 
 and sideways (Ponillet), dark rings around the eyes, intermittent 
 functional deafness (Bonnier), painful menstruation (J. Chap- 
 man), catarrh of uterus and vagina (Winekel, Pouillet), ovarian 
 disease (Jessett), pale and discolored skin (Lewis, Moraglia), 
 redness of nose (Gruner), epistaxis (Joal, J. N. Mackenzie), 
 morbid changes in nose (Fliess), convulsive cough of puberty 
 (Gowers), acidity of vagina (E. W. Shufeldt), incontinence of 
 urine in young women (Girandeau), warts on the hands in women 
 (Durr, Kriechmar, von Oye), hallucinations of smell and hearing, 
 (Griesinger, Lewis), intermittent functional deafness (Bonnier), 
 indican in the urine (Herter), an indescribable odor of the skin 
 in women (Skene), these are but a few of the signs and conse- 
 quences of masturbation given by various prominent authorities. i 
 
 That many of these manifestations do occur in connection 
 with masturbation is unquestionable; there is also good reason 
 to believe that some of them may be the results of masturba- 
 tion acting on an imperfectly healthy organism. But in all 
 such cases we must speak with great caution, for there appears 
 to be little reliable evidence to show that simple masturbation, 
 in a well-born and healthy individual, can produce any evil re- 
 sults beyond slight functional disturbances, and these only when 
 it is practiced in excess. To illustrate the real pathological re- 
 lationships of masturbation, a few typical and important disorders 
 may be briefly considered. 
 
 The delicate mechanism of the eye is one of the first portions 
 of the nervous apparatus to be disturbed by any undue strain 
 on the system ; it is not surprising that masturbation should be 
 widely incriminated as a cause of eye troubles. If, however, we 
 inquire into the results obtained by the most cautious and ex- 
 perienced ophthalmological observers, it grows evident that mas- 
 turbation, as a cause of disease of the eye, becomes merged into 
 wider causes. In Germany, Hermann Cohn, the distinguished 
 ophthalmic surgeon of Breslau, has dealt fully with the ques- 
 
 1 Pouillet alone enumerates and apparently accepts considerably 
 over one hundred diiTerent morbid conditions as signs and results of 
 masturbation. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 251 
 
 tion.i Cohn, who believes that all young men and women mas- 
 turbate to some extent, finds that masturbation must be excessive 
 for eye trouble to become apparent. In most of his cases there 
 was masturbation several times daily during from five to seven 
 years, in many during ten years, and in one during twenty-three 
 years. In such cases we are obviously dealing with abnormal per- 
 sons, and no one will dispute the possibility of harmful results; 
 in some of the cases, when masturbation was stopped, the eye 
 trouble improved. Even in these cases, however, the troubles 
 were but slight, the chief being, apparently, photopsia (a sub- 
 jective sensation of light) with otherwise normal conditions of 
 pupil, vision, color-sense, and retina. In some cases there was 
 photophobia, and he has also found paralysis of accommodation 
 and conjunctivitis. At a later date Salmo Cohn, in his compre- 
 hensive monograph on the relationship between the eye and the 
 sexual organs in women, brought together numerous cases of eye 
 troubles in young women associated with masturbation, but in 
 most of these cases masturbation had been practiced with great 
 frequency for a long period and the ocular affections were usu- 
 ally not serious.2 In England, Power has investigated the rela- 
 tions of the sexual system to eye disease. He is inclined to think 
 that the effects of masturbation have been exaggerated, but he 
 believes that it may produce such for the most part trivial com- 
 plaints as photopsise, muscse, muscular asthenopia, possibly bleph- 
 arospasm, and perhaps conjunctivitis. He goes on, however, 
 to point out that more serious complaints of the eye are caused 
 by excess in normal coitus, by sexual abstinence, and especially 
 by disordered menstruation. Thus we see that even when we 
 are considering a mechanism so delicately poised and one so 
 easily disturbed by any jar of the system as vision, masturbation 
 produces no effect except when carried to an extent which argues 
 a hereditarily imperfect organism, while even in these cases the 
 effects are usually but slight, moreover, in no respect specific, but 
 
 1 "Augenkrankheiten bei Masturbanten,"Knapp-Schweigger'g Archw 
 fur Augenheilkunde, Bd. II, 1882, p. 198. 
 
 2 Salmo Cohn, Uterus und Auge, 1890, pp. 63-66. 
 
252 PSYCHOLOGY OF SES. 
 
 are paralleled and even exceeded by the results of other disturb- 
 ances of the sexual system. 
 
 Let us turn to the supposed influence of masturbation in 
 causing insanity and nervous diseases. Here we may chiefly 
 realize the immense influence exerted on medical science by 
 Tissot and his followers during a hundred years. Mental weak- 
 ness is tlie cause and not the result of excessive masturbation, 
 Gall declared,^ but he was a man of genius, in isolation. Sir 
 William Ellis, an alienist of considerable reputation at the 
 beginning of the last century, could write with scientific equa- 
 nimity: "I have no hesitation in saying that, in a very large 
 number of patients in all public asylums, the disease may be 
 attributed to that cause." He does, indeed, admit that it may be 
 only a symptom sometimes, but goes on to assert that masturba- 
 tion "has not hitherto been exhibited in the awful light in which 
 it deserves to be shown," and that "in by far the greater number 
 of cases" it is the true cause of dementia.^ Esquirol lent his 
 name and influence to a similar view of the pernicious influence 
 of masturbation. Throughout the century, even down to the 
 present day, this point of view has been traditionally preserved in 
 a modified form. In apparent ignorance of the enormous preva- 
 lence of masturbation, and without, so far as can be seen, any 
 attempt to distinguish between cause and effect or to eliminate 
 the hereditary neuropathic element, many alienists have set down 
 a large proportion of cases of insanity, idiocy, epilepsy, and dis- 
 ease of the spinal cord to uncomplicated masturbation. Thus, at 
 the Matteawan State Hospital (New York) for criminal lunatics 
 and insane prisoners, from 1875 to 1907, masturbation was Lhe 
 sole assigned cause of insanity in 160 men (out of 3,595) ; while, 
 according to Dr. Clara Barrus, among 121 cases of insanity in 
 young women, masturbation is the cause in ten cases.^ It is 
 unnecessary to multiply examples, for this traditional tendency 
 is familiar to all. 
 
 1 Fonctions du Cerveau, 1825, vol. iii, p. 337. 
 2W. Ellis, Treatise on Insanity, 1838, pp. 335, 340. 
 3 Clara Barrus, "Insanity in Young Women," Journal of Nervous 
 and Mental Disease, June, 1896. 
 
ADTO-EROTISM. 253 
 
 It appears to have been largely due to Griesinger, in the 
 middle of the last century, that we owe the first authoritative 
 appearance of a saner, more discriminating view regarding the 
 results of masturbation. Although still to some extent fettered 
 by the traditions prevalent in his day, Griesinger saw that it was 
 not so much masturbation itself as the feelings aroused in sensi- 
 tive minds by the social attitude toward masturbation which 
 produced evil effects. "That constant struggle," he wrote, 
 ''against a desire which is even overpowering, and to which the 
 individual always in the end succumbs, that hidden strife be- 
 tween shame, repentance, good intentions, and the irritation 
 which impels to the act, this, after not a little acquaintance with 
 onanists, we consider to be far more important than the pri- 
 mary direct physical effect." He added that there are no specific 
 signs of masturbation, and concluded that it is oftener a symp- 
 tom than a cause. The general progress of educated opinions 
 since that date has, in the main, confirmed and carried forward 
 the results cautiously stated by Griesinger. This distinguished 
 alienist thought that, when practiced in childhood, masturbation 
 might lead to insanity. Berkhan, in his investigation of the 
 psychoses of childhood, found that in no single case was mas- 
 turbation a cause. Vogel, Uffelmann, and Emminghaus, in the 
 course of similar studies, have all come to almost similar con- 
 clusions. ^ It is only on a congenitally morbid nervous system, 
 Emminghaus insists, that masturbation can produce any serious 
 results. "Most of the cases charged to masturbation," writes 
 Kiernan (in a private letter), basing his opinion on wide clinical 
 experience, "are either hebephrenia or hysteria in which an effect 
 is taken for the cause." Christian, during twenty years' experi- 
 ence in hospitals, asylums, and private practice in town and 
 country, has not found any seriously evil effects from masturba- 
 tion.2 He thinks, indeed, that it may be a more serious evil in 
 women than in men. But Yellowlees considers that in women 
 
 1 See, for instance, H. Emminghaus, "Die Psychosen des Kindesal- 
 ters," Geriandt's Handbuch der Kinder-Krankheiten, Nachtrag II, pp. 
 61-63. 
 
 2 Christian, article "Onanisme," Dictionnaire enoyclopedique des 
 sciences mMicales." 
 
254 PSYCHOLOGY of sex. 
 
 "it is possibly less exhausting and injurious than in the other 
 sex," which was also the opinion of Hammond, as well as of 
 Guttceit, though he found that women pushed the practice much 
 further than men, and Naeke, who has given special attention to 
 this point, could not find that masturbation is a definite cause 
 of insanity in women in a single case.^ Koch also reaches a 
 similar conclusion, as regards both sexes, though he admits that 
 masturbation may cause some degree of psychopathic deteriora- 
 tion. Even in this respect, however, he points out that "when 
 practiced in moderation it is not injurious in the certain and 
 exceptionless way in which it is believed to be in many circles. 
 It is the people whose nervous systems are already injured who 
 masturbate most easily and practice it more immoderately than 
 others"; the chief source of its evil is self-reproach and the 
 struggle with the impulse.^ Kahlbaum, it is true, under the 
 influence of the older tradition, when he erected katatonia into 
 a separate disorder (not always accepted in later times), regarded 
 prolonged and excessive masturbation as a chief cause, but I am 
 not aware that he ever asserted that it was a sole and sufficient 
 cause in a healthy organism. Kieman, one of the earliest writers 
 on katatonia, was careful to point out that masturbation was 
 probably as much effect as cause of the morbid nervous condition.^ 
 Maudsley (in Body and Mind) recognized masturbation as a 
 special exciting cause of a characteristic form of insanity; but 
 he cautiously added : "Nevertheless, I think that self-abuse sel- 
 dom, if ever, produces it without the co-operation of the insane 
 neurosis."^ Schiile also recognized a specific masturbatory in- 
 sanity, but the general tendency to reject any such nosological 
 form is becoming marked; KraSt-Ebing long since rejected it 
 and Nacke decidedly opposes it. Kraepelin states that excessive 
 masturbation can only occur in a dangerous degree in predis- 
 
 1 Niicke, Verhrechen und Wahnsinn heim Weihe, 1894, p. 57. 
 
 2 J. L. A. Koch, Die Psychopathischen Minderwertigkeiten, 1892, 
 p. 273 et seq. 
 
 3 J. G. Kiernan, American Journal of Insanity, July, 1877. 
 
 4 Maudsley dealt, in his vigorous, picturesque manner, with the 
 more extreme morbid mental conditions sometimes found associated with 
 masturbation, in "Illustrations of a Variety of Insanity," Journal of 
 Mental Science, Jul}', 1868. 
 
ADTO-EEOTISM. 255 
 
 posed subjects; so, also, Forel and Lowenfeld, as at an earlier 
 period, Trousseau.^ It is true that Marro, in his admirable and 
 detailed study of the normal and abnormal aspects of puberty, 
 accepts a form of masturbatory insanity; but the only illus- 
 trative case he brings forward is a young man possessing various 
 stigmata of degeneracy and the son of an alcoholic father; such 
 a case tells us nothing regarding the results of simple masturba- 
 tion. 2 Even Spitzka, who maintained several" years ago the 
 traditional views as to the terrible results of masturbation, and 
 recognized a special "insanity of masturbation," stated his con- 
 elusions with a caution that undermined his position : "Self- 
 abuse," he concluded, "to become a sole cause of insanity, must be 
 begun early and carried very far. In persons of sound ante- 
 cedents it rarely, under these circumstances, suffices to produce 
 an actual vesania."^ When we remember that there is no con- 
 vincing evidence to show that masturbation is "begun early and 
 carried very far" by "persons of sound antecedents," the signifi- 
 cance of Spitzka's "typical psychosis of masturbation" is some- 
 what annulled. It is evident that these distinguished investiga- 
 tors, Marro and Spitzka, have been induced by tradition to take 
 up a position which their own scientific consciences have com- 
 pelled them practically to evacuate. 
 
 Recent authorities are almost unanimous in rejecting masturbation 
 as a cause of insanity. Thus, Eohleder, in his comprehensive mono- 
 graph {Die Masturbation, 1899, pp. 185-92), although taking a very 
 serious view of the evil results of masturbation, points out the unanim- 
 ity which is now tending to prevail on this point, and lays it down 
 that "masturbation is never the direct cause of insanity." Sexual ex- 
 cesses of any kind, he adds ( following Curschmann ) , can, at the most, 
 merely give an impetus to a, latent form of insanity. On the whole, he 
 concludes, the best authorities are unanimous in agreeing that mastur- 
 bation may certainly injure mental capacity, by weakening memory and 
 depressing intellectual energy; that, further, in hereditarily neurotic 
 subjects, it may produce slight psychoses like folie du doute, hypo- 
 
 1 See, e.g., Lowenfeld, Sexuallelen und Nervenleiden, 2d. ed., Ch. 
 VIII. 
 
 2 Marro, La Puberta, Turin, 1898, p. 174. 
 
 3E. C. Spitzka, "Cases of Masturbation," Journal of Mental 
 Science, July, 1888. 
 
256 PSYCHOLOGY 01" SEX. 
 
 chondria, hysteria; that, finally, under no circumstances can it produce 
 severe psychoses like paranoia or general paralysis. "If it caused in- 
 sanity, as often as some claim," as Kellogg remarks, "the whole race 
 would long since have passed into masturbatic degeneracy of mind. 
 . . . It is especially injurious in the very young, and in all who 
 have weak nervous systems," but "the physical traits attributed to the 
 habit are common to thousands of neurasthenic and neurotic individuals." 
 (Kellogg, A Text-look of Mental Diseases, 1897, pp. 94-95.) Again, at 
 the outset of the article on "Masturbation," in Tuke's Dictionary of 
 Psychological Medicine, Yellowlees states that, on account of the mis- 
 chief formerly done by reckless statements, it is necessary to state 
 plainly that "unless the practice has been long and greatly indulged, 
 no permanent evil effects may he observed to follow." Nacke, again, has 
 declared ("Kritisches zum Kapitel der Sexualitat," Archiv fiXr Psy- 
 cJiiatrie, 1899) : "There are neither somatic nor psychic symptoms pecul- 
 iar on onanism. Nor is there any specific onanistic psychosis. I am 
 prepared to deny that onanism ever produces any psychoses in those 
 who are not already predisposed." That such a view is now becoming 
 widely prevalent is illustrated by the cautious and temperate discussion 
 of masturbation in a recent work by a, non-medical writer, Geoffrey 
 Mortimer (Chapters on Human Love, pp. 199-205). 
 
 The testimony of expert witnesses witti regard to the influ- 
 ence of masturbation in producing other forms of psychoses and 
 neuroses is becoming equally decisive ; and here, also, the tradi- 
 tions of Tissot are being slowly effaced. "I have not, in the 
 whole of my practice," wrote West, forty years ago, "out of a 
 large experience among children and women, seen convulsions, 
 epilepsy, or idiocy induced by masturbation in any child of either 
 sex. Neither have I seen any instance in which hysteria, epi- 
 lepsy, or insanity in women after puberty was due to masturba- 
 tion, as its efficient eause."i Gowers speaks somewhat less posi- 
 tively, but regards masturbation as not so much a cause of true 
 epilepsy as of atypical attacks, sometimes of a character inter- 
 mediate between the hysteroid and the epileptoid form ; this re- 
 lationship he has frequently seen in boys.2 Leyden, among the 
 caiises of diseases of the spinal cord, does not include any form 
 
 1 Charles West, Lancet, November 17, 1866. 
 
 2 Gowers, Epilepsy, 1881, p. 31. Lowenfeld believes that epileptic 
 attacks are certainly caused by masturbation. F6r6 thought that both 
 epilepsy and hysteria may be caused by masturbation. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 257 
 
 of sexual excess. "In moderation/' Erb remarks, "masturbation 
 is not more dangerous to the spinal cord than natural coitus, and 
 has no bad effects" j^ it makes no difference, Erb considers, 
 •whether the orgasm is effected normally or in solitude. This is 
 also the opinion of Toulouse, of Fiirbringer, and of Curschmann, 
 as at an earlier period it was of Eoubaud. 
 
 While these authorities are doubtless justified in refusing to 
 ascribe to masturbation any part in the production of psychic or 
 nervous diseases, it seems to me that they are going somewhat 
 beyond their province when they assert that masturbation has 
 no more injurious effect than coitus. If sexual coitus were 
 a purely physiological phenomenon, this position would be sound. 
 But the sexual orgasm is normally bound up with a mass of 
 powerful emotions aroused by a person of the opposite sex. It 
 is in the joy caused by the play of these emotions, as well as in 
 the discharge of the sexual orgasm, that the satisfaction of coitus 
 resides. In the absence of the desired partner the orgasm, what- 
 ever relief it may give, must be followed by a sense of dissatis- 
 faction, perhaps of depression, even of exhaustion, often of shame 
 and remorse. The same remark has since been made by Stanley 
 Hall.2 Practically, also, as John Hunter pointed out, there is , 
 more probability of excess in masturbation than in coitus. T 
 Whether, as some have asserted, masturbation involves a greater 
 nervous effort than coitus is more doubtful.^ It thus seems 
 somewhat misleading to assert that masturbation has no more 
 injurious effect than coitus.* 
 
 Eeviewing the general question of the supposed grave symp- 
 
 1 Ziemssen'a Bandiuch, Bd. XI. 
 
 2 Adolescence, vol. i, p. 441. 
 
 3 See a discussion of these points by Eohleder, Die Masturtation, 
 pp. 168-175. 
 
 4 The surgeons, it may be remarked, have especially stated the 
 harmlessness of masturbation in too absolute a manner. Thus, John 
 Hunter (Treatise on the Venereal Disease, 1786, p. 200), after pointing 
 out that "the books on this subject have done more harm than good," 
 adds, "I think I may affirm that this act does less harm to the constitu- 
 tion in general than the natural." And Sir James Paget, in his lecture 
 on "Sexual Hypochondriasis," said: "Masturbation does neither more 
 nor less harm than sexual intercourse practiced with the same frequency, 
 in the same conditions of general health and age and circumstances." 
 
 17 
 
258 PSTCHOLOGX OF SEX. 
 
 toms and signs of masturbation, and its pernicious results, we 
 may reach the conclusion that in the case of moderate masturba- 
 tion in healthy, -well-born individuals, no seriously pernicious 
 results necessarily follow.^ With regard to the general signs, we 
 may accept, as concerns both sexes, what the Obstetrical and 
 Gynecological Society of Berlin decided in 1861, in a -discussion 
 of it in Avomen, that there are none which can be regarded as 
 reliable.^ 
 
 We may conclude finally, with Clouston, that the opposing 
 views on the subject may be simply explained by the fact that the 
 writers on both sides have ignored or insufficiently recognized the 
 influence of heredity and temperament. They have done pre- 
 cisely what so many unscientific writers on inebriety have con- 
 tinued to do unto the present day, when describing the terrible 
 results of alcohol without pointing out that the chief factor in 
 such cases has not been the alcohol, but the organization on 
 which the alcohol acted. Excess may act, according to the 
 familiar old-fashioned adage, like the lighted match. But we 
 must always remember the obvious truth, that it makes a con- 
 
 1 It is interesting to note that an analogous result seems to hold 
 with animals. Among highly-bred horses excessive masturbation is liable 
 to occur with injurious results. It is scarcely necessary to point out 
 that highly-bred horses are apt to be abnormal. 
 
 2 With regard to the physical signs, the same conclusion is reached 
 by Legludic (in opposition to Martineau) on the basis of a large experi- 
 ence. He has repeatedly found, in young girls who acknowledged fre- 
 quent masturbation, that the organs were perfectly healthy and normal, 
 and his convictions are the more noteworthy, since h? speaks as a pupil 
 of Tardieu, who attached very grave significance to the local signs of 
 sexual perversity and excess. (Legludic, Notes et Observations de M6de- 
 cine Legale, 1896, p. 95.) Matthews Duncan (Goulstonian Lectures on- 
 Sterility in Women, 1884, p. 97) was often struck by the smallness, and 
 even imperfect development, of the external genitals of women who mas- 
 turbate. Clara Barrus considers that there is no necessary connection 
 between hypertrophy of the external female genital organs and masturba- 
 tion, though in six cases of prolonged masturbation she found such a 
 condition in three (American Journal of Insanity, April, 1895, p. 479). 
 Bechterew denies that masturbation produces enlargement of the penis, 
 and Hammond considers there is no evidence to show that it enlarges 
 tlie clitoris, while Guttceit states that it does not enlarge the nymphas; 
 this, however, is (^oubtful. It would not suflice in many cases to show 
 that large sexual organs are correlated with masturbation; it would 
 still be necessary to show whether the size of the organs stood to mas- 
 turbation in the relation of effect or of cause. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 259 
 
 siderable difference whether you threw your lighted match into a 
 powder magazine or into the sea. 
 
 While we may thus dismiss the extravagant views widely 
 held during the past century, concerning the awful results of 
 masturbation, as due to ignorance and false tradition, it must be 
 pointed out that, even in healthy or moderately healthy indi- 
 viduals, any excess in solitary self-excitement may still produce 
 results which, though slight, are yet harmful. The skin, diges- 
 tion, and circulation may all be disordered; headache and neu- 
 ralgia may occur; and, as in normal sexual excess or in undue 
 frequency of sexual excitement during sleep, there is a certain 
 general lowering of nervous tone. Probably the most important 
 of the comparatively frequent results— though this also arises 
 usually on a somewhat morbid soil — ^is neurasthenia with its 
 manifold symptoms. There can be little doubt that the ancient 
 belief, dating from the time of Hippocrates, that sexual excesses 
 produce spinal disease, as well as the belief that masturbation 
 causes insanity, are largely due to the failure to diagnose 
 neurasthenia. 
 
 The following case of neurasthenia, recorded by Eulenburg, may 
 be given as a classical picture of the nervous disturbances which may 
 be associated with masturbation, and are frequently regarded as solely 
 caused by habits of masturbation : Miss H. H., 28 years of age, a robust 
 brunette, with fully developed figure, without any trace of ansemia 
 or chlorosis, but with an apathetic expression, bluish rings around 
 the eyes, with hypochondriacal and melancholy feelings. She complains 
 of pressure on the head ("as if head would burst"), giddiness, ringing 
 in the ears, photopsia, hemicrania, pains in the back and at sacrum, 
 and symptoms of spinal adynamia, with a. sense of fatigue on the 
 least exertion in walking or standing; she sways when standing with 
 closed eyes, tendon-reflexes exaggerated; there is a sense of oppression, 
 intercostal neuralgia, and all the signs of neurasthenic dyspepsia; and 
 cardialgia, nausea, flatulence, meteorism, and alternate constipation and 
 diarrhcea. She chiefly complains of a feeling of weight and pain in the 
 abdomen, caused by the slightest movement, and of a form of pollution 
 (with clitoridian spasms), especially near menstruation, with copious 
 flow of mucus, characteristic pains, and hyperexcitability. Menstruation 
 was irregular and profuse. Examination showed tumid and elongated 
 nympha, with brown pigmentation; rather large vagina, with rudi- 
 
260 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 mentary hymen; and retroflexion of uterus. After much persuasion the 
 patient confessed that, when a girl of 12, and as the result of repeated 
 attempts at coitus by a boy of 16, she had been impelled to frequent mas- 
 turbation. This had caused great shame and remorse, which, however, 
 had not sufficed to restrain the habit. Her mother having died, she 
 lived alone with her invalid father, and had no one in whom to confide. 
 Regarding herself as no longer a virgin, she had refused several offers 
 of marriage, and thus still further aggravated her mental condition. 
 { Eiilerburg, Sexnale NenropatMe, p. 31.) 
 
 Since Beard first described neurasthenia, many diverse opinions 
 have been expressed concerning the relationships of sexual irregularities 
 to neurasthenia. Gilles de la Tourette, in his little monograph on neu- 
 rasthenia, following the traditions of Charcot's school, dismisses the 
 question of any sexual causation without discussion. Binswanger {Die 
 Pathologie und Therapie der Neurasthenie) , while admitting that nearly 
 all neurasthenic persons acknowledge masturbation at some period, con- 
 siders it is not an important cause of neurasthenia, only differing 
 from coitus by the fact that the opportunities for it are more frequent, 
 and that the sexual disturbances of neurasthenia are, in the majority 
 of cases, secondary. Eohleder, on the other hand, who takes a, very 
 grave view of the importance of masturbation, considers that its most 
 serious results are a question of neurasthenia. Krafft-Ebing has declared 
 his opinion that masturbation is a cause of neurasthenia. Christian, 
 Leyden, Erb, Rosenthal, Beard, Hummel, Hammond, Hermann Cohn, 
 Curschmann, Savill, Herman, Fiirbringer, all attach chief importance to 
 neurasthenia as a result of masturbation. Collins and Phillip [Medical 
 Record, March 25, 1899), in an analysis of 333 eases of neurasthenia, 
 found that 123 cases were apparently due to overwork or masturbation. 
 Freud concludes that neurasthenia proper can nearly always be traced to 
 excessive masturbation, or to spontaneous pollutions. [E.g., Sammlung 
 Kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, first series, p. 187.) This vievi' is 
 confirmed by Gattel's careful study (Ueler die Sexuellen Ursachen der 
 Neurasthenie und Angstneurose, 1898). Gattel investigated 100 consecu- 
 tive cases of severe functional nervous disorder in Krafft-Ebing's clinic 
 at Vienna, and found that in every ease of neurasthenia in a, male 
 (28 in all) there was masturbation, while of the 15 women with neu- 
 rasthenia, only one is recorded as not masturbating, and she practiced 
 coitus reservatus. Irrespective of the particular form of the nervous 
 disorder, Gattel found that 18 women out of 42, and 36 men out of 58, 
 acknowledged masturbation. (This shows a slightly larger proportion 
 among the men, but the men were mostly young, while the women were 
 mostly of more mature age.) It must, however, always be remembered 
 that we have no equally careful statistics of masturbation in perfectly 
 healthy persons. We must also remember that we have to distinguish 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 261 
 
 between the post and the propter, and tliat it is quite possible that 
 neurasthenic persons are specially predisposed to masturbation. Blooh 
 is of this opinion, and remarks that a vicious circle may thus be 
 formed. 
 
 On the whole, there can be little doubt that neurasthenia is liable 
 to be associated with masturbation carried to an excessive extent. But, 
 while neurasthenia is probably the severest affection that is liable to 
 result from, or accompany, masturbation, we are scarcely yet entitled to 
 accept the conclusion of Gattel that in such cases there is no hereditary 
 neurotic predisposition. We must steer clearly between the opposite 
 errors of those, on the one hand, who assert that heredity is the sole 
 cause of functional nervous disorders, and those, on the other hand, who 
 consider that the incident that may call out the disorder is itself a sole 
 BuflScient cause. 
 
 In many eases it has seemed to me that masturbation, when 
 practiced in excess, especially if begun before the age of puberty, 
 leads to inaptitude for coitus, as well as to indifference to it, and 
 sometimes to undue sexual irritability, involving premature 
 emission and practical impotence. This is, however, the excep- 
 tion, especially if the practice has not been begun until after 
 puberty. In women I attach considerable importance, as a result 
 of masturbation, to an aversion for normal coitus in later life. 
 In such cases some peripheral irritation or abnormal mental 
 stimulus trains the physical sexual orgasm to respond to an ap- 
 peal which has nothing whatever to do with the fascination nor- 
 mally exerted by the opposite sex. At puberty, however, the 
 claim of passion and the real charm of sex begin to make them- 
 selves felt, but, owing to the physical sexual feelings having been 
 trained into a foreign channel, these new and more normal sex 
 associations remain of a purely ideal and emotional character, 
 without the strong sensual impulses with which under healthy 
 conditions they tend to be more and more associated as puberty 
 passes on into adolescence or mature adult life. I am fairly cer- 
 tain that in many women, often highly intellectual women, the 
 precocious excess in masturbation has been a main cause, not 
 necessarily the sole efficient cause, in producing a divorce in later 
 life between the physical sensuous impulses and the ideal emo- 
 tions. The sensuous impulse having been evolved and perverted 
 
262 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 before the manifestation of the higher emotion, the two groups 
 of feelings have become divorced for the whole of life. This is 
 a common source of much personal misery and family unhappi- 
 ness, though at the same time the clash of contending impulses 
 may lead to a high development of moral character. When early 
 masturbation is a factor in producing sexual inversion it usually 
 operates in the manner I have here indicated, the repulsion for 
 normal coitus helping to furnish a soil on which the inverted im- 
 pulse may develop unimpeded. 
 
 This point has not wholly escaped previous observers, though they 
 do not seem to have noted its psychological mechanism. Tissot stated 
 that masturbation causes an aversion to marriage. More recently, 
 Loimau ("Ueber Onanismus beim Weibe," Therapeutische Monatshefte, 
 April, 1890) considered that masturbation in women, leading to a per- 
 version of sexual feeling, including inability to find satisfaction in coitus, 
 affects the associated centres. Smith Baker, again ( "The Neuropsychical 
 Element in Conjugal Aversion," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 
 September, 1892), finds that a "source of marital aversion seems to lie 
 in the fact that substitution of mechanical and iniquitous excitations 
 affords more thorough satisfaction than the mutual legitimate ones do," 
 and gives cases in point. Savill, also, who believes that masturbation 
 is more common in women than is usually supposed, regards dyspareunia, 
 or pain in coition, as one of the signs of the habit. 
 
 Masturbation in women thus becomes, as Raymond and Janet 
 point out {Les Obsessions, vol. ii, p. 307) a, frequent cause of sexual 
 frigidity in marriage. These authors illustrate the train of evils which 
 may thus be set up, by the case of a lady, 26 years of age, a normal 
 woman, of healthy family, who, at the age of 15, was taught by a ser- 
 vant to masturbate. At the age of 18 she married. She loved her hus- 
 band, but she had no sexual feelings in coitus, and she continued to 
 masturbate, sometimes several times a day, without evil consequences. 
 At 24 she had to go into a hospital for floating kidney, and was so 
 obliged to stop masturbating. She here accidentally learnt of the evil 
 results attributed to the habit. She resolved not to do it again, and 
 she kept her resolution. But while still in hospital she fell wildly 
 in love with a man. To escape from the constant thought of this man, 
 she sought relations with her husband, and at times masturbated, but 
 now it no longer gave her pleasure. She wished to give up sexual things 
 altogether. But that was easier said than done. She became subject 
 to nervous crises, often brought on by the sight of a man, and accom- 
 panied by sexual excitement. They disappeared under treatment, and 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 263 
 
 she thereupon became entirely frigid sexually. But, far from being 
 happy, she has lost all energy and interest in life, and it is her sole 
 desire to attain the sexual feelings she has lost. Adler considers that 
 even when masturbation in women becomes an overmastering passion, 
 so far as organic effects are concerned it is usually harmless, its eflfeots 
 being primarily psychic, and he attaches especial significance to it as a 
 cause of sexual ansesthesia in normal coitus, being, perhaps, the most 
 frequent cause of such anaesthesia. He devotes an Important chapter to 
 this matter, and brings forward numerous cases in illustration (Adler, 
 Die Mangelhafte Oeschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, pp. 93-119, also 
 21-23). Adler considers that the frequency of masturbation in women 
 is largely due to the fact that women experience greater diificulties than 
 men in obtaining sexual satisfaction, and so are impelled by unsatisfying 
 coitus to continue masturbation after marriage. He adds that partly 
 from natural shyness, partly from shame of acknowledging what is 
 commonly accounted a sin, and partly from the fear of seeming disgust- 
 ing or unworthy of sympathy in the doctor's eyes, women are usually 
 silent on this matter, and very great tact and patience may be necessary 
 before a confession is obtained. 
 
 On the psychic side, no doubt, the most frequent and the 
 most characteristic result of persistent and excessive masturba- 
 tion is a morbid heightening of self-consciousness without any 
 co-ordinated heightening of self-esteem. ^ The man or woman 
 who is kissed by a desirable and desired person of the opposite 
 sex feels a satisfying sense of pride and elation, which must al- 
 ways be absent from the manifestations of auto-erotic activity.- 
 This must be so, even apart from the masturbator's consciousness 
 of the general social attitude toward his practices and his dread 
 
 1 Thus, Bechterew ("La Phobic du Regard," Archives de Neurologie, 
 July, 1905) considers that masturbation plays a large part in producing 
 the morbid fear of the eyes of others. 
 
 2 It is especially an undesirable tendency of masturbation, that it 
 deadens the need for affection, and merely eludes, instead of satisfying, 
 the sexual impulse. "Masturbation," as Godfrey well says {The Science 
 of Sex, p. 178), "though a manifestation of sexual activity, is not a 
 sexual act in the higher, or even in the real fundamental sense. For 
 sex implies duality, a characteristic to which masturbation can plainly 
 lay no claim. The physical, moral, and mental reciprocity which gives 
 stability and beauty to a normal sexual intimacy, are as foreign to the 
 masturbator as to the celibate. In a sense, therefore, masturbation is 
 as complete a negative of the sexual life as chastity itself. It is, there- 
 fore, an evasion of, not an answer to, the sexual problem; and it will 
 ever remain so, no matter how surely we may be convinced of its physical 
 harmlessness." 
 
264 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 of detection, for that may also exist as regards norraal coitus 
 without any corresponding psychic effects. The masturbator, 
 if his practice is habitual, is thus compelled to cultivate an arti- 
 ficial consciousness of self-esteem, and may show a tendency to 
 mental arrogance. Self-righteousness and religiosity constitute, 
 as it were, a protection against the tendency to remorse. A mor- 
 bid mental soil is, of course, required for the full development 
 of these characteristics. The habitual male masturbator, it must 
 be remembered, is often a shy and solitary person; individuals 
 of this temperament are especially predisposed to excesses in all 
 the manifestations of auto-erotism, while the yielding to such 
 tendencies increases the reserve and the horror of society, at the 
 same time producing a certain suspicion of others. In some ex- 
 treme cases there is, no doubt, as Kraepelin believes, some 
 decrease of psychic capacity, an inability to grasp and co-ordinate 
 external impressions, weakness of memory, deadening of emo- 
 tions, or else the general phenomena of increased irritability, 
 leading on to neurasthenia. 
 
 I find good reason to believe that in many cases the psychic 
 influence of masturbation on women is different from its effect 
 on men. As Spitzka observed, although it may sometimes ren- 
 der women self-reproachful and hesitant, it often seems to make 
 them bold. Boys, as we have seen, early assimilate the tradition 
 that self-abuse is "unmanly" and injurious, but girls have seldom 
 any corresponding tradition that it is "unwomanly," and thus, 
 whether or not they are reticent on the matter, before the forum 
 of their own conscience they are often less ashamed of it than 
 men are and less troubled by remorse. 
 
 Eulenburg considers that the comparative absence of bad effects 
 from masturbation in girls is largely due to the fact that, unlike boys, 
 they are not terrorized by exaggerated warnings and quack literature 
 concerning the awful results of the practice. Forel, who has also re- 
 marked that women are often comparatively little troubled by qualms 
 of conscience after masturbation, denies that this is due to a lower 
 moral tone than men possess (Forel, Die Sexuelle Frage, p. 247). In 
 this connectSon, 1 may refer to History IV, recorded in the Appendix 
 to the fifth volume of these Studies, in which it is stated that of 55 pros- 
 titutes of various nationalities, with whom the subject had had relations, 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 265 
 
 18 spontaneously told him that they were .habitual masturbators, while 
 of 26 normal women, 13 made the same confession, unasked. Guttceit, 
 in Russia, after stating that women of good constitution had told him 
 that they masturbated as much as six or ten times a day or night 
 (until they fell asleep, tired), without bad results, adds that, accord- 
 ing to his observations, "masturbation, when not excessive, is, on the 
 whole, a quite innocent matter, which exerts little or no permanent 
 effect," and adds that it never, in any case, leads to hypochondria 
 onanica in women, because they have not been taught to expect bad 
 results {Dreissig Jahre Praxis, p. 306). There is, I think, some truth 
 — though the exceptions are doubtless many — in the distinction drawn 
 by.W. C. Krauss ( "Masturbational Neuroses," Medical News, July 13, 
 1901) : "From my experience it [masturbation] seems to have an oppo- 
 site effect upon the two sexes, dulling the mental and making clumsy 
 the physical exertions of the male, while in the female it quickens and 
 excites the physical and psychical movements. The man is rendered 
 hypoesthetic, the woman hyperesthetic." 
 
 In either sex auto-erotic excesses during adolescence in young 
 men and women of intelligence — -whatever absence of gross injury- 
 there may be — still often produce a certain degree of psychic 
 perversion, and tend to foster false and high-strung ideals of 
 life. Kraepelin refers to the frequency of exalted enthusiasms in 
 masturbators, and I have already quoted Anstie's remarks on the 
 connection between masturbation and premature false 'work in 
 literature and art. It may be added that excess in masturbation 
 has often occurred in men and women whose work in literature 
 and art cannot be described as premature and false. K. P. 
 Moritz, in early adult life, gave himself up to excess in masturba- 
 tion, and up to the age of thirty had no relations with women. 
 Lenau is said — though the statement is sometimes denied — ^to 
 have been a masturbator from early life, the habit profoundly 
 effecting his life and work. Eousseau, in his Confessions, ad- 
 mirably describes how his own solitary, timid, and imaginative 
 life found its chief sexual satisfaction in masturbation.i Gogol, 
 
 1 "I learnt that dangerous supplement," Rousseau tells us (Part I. 
 Bk. Ill), "which deeeives Nature. This vice, which bashfulness and 
 timidity find so convenient, has, moreover, a great attraction for lively 
 Imaginations, for it enables them to do what they will, so to speak, with 
 the whole fair sex, and to enjoy at pleasure the beauty who attracts 
 them, without having obtained her consent." 
 
266 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 the great Eussian novelist, masturbated to excess, and it has been 
 suggested that the dreamy melancholy thus induced was a factor 
 in his success as a novelist. Goethe, it has been asserted, at one 
 time masturbated to excess ; I am not certain on vehat authority 
 the statement is made, probably on a passage in the seventh book 
 of DicMung und Wahrheit, in which, describing his student-life 
 at Leipzig, and his loss of Aennchen owing to his neglect of 
 her, he tells how he revenged that neglect on his own physical 
 nature by foolish practices from which he thinks he suffered for 
 a considerable period.^ The great Scandinavian philosopher, 
 Soren Kierkegaard, suffered severely, according to Easmussen, 
 from excessive masturbation. That, at the present day, eminence 
 in art, literature, and other fields may be combined with the 
 excessive practice of masturbation is a fact of which I have un- 
 questionable evidence. 
 
 I have the detailed history of a man of 30, of high ability in 
 a scientific direction, who, except during periods of mental strain, has 
 practiced masturbation nightly (though seldom more than once a night) 
 from early childhood, without any traceable evil results, so far as his 
 general health and energy are concerned. In another case, a school- 
 teacher, age 30, a hard worker and accomplished musician, has mastur- 
 bated every night, sometimes more than once a night, ever since he 
 was at school, without, so far as he knows, any bad results; he has 
 never had connection with a woman, and seldom touches wine or 
 tobacco. Curschmann knew a young and able author who, from the 
 age of 11 had masturbated excessively, but who retained physical and 
 mental freshness. It would be very easy to refer to other examples, and 
 I may remark that, as regards the histories recorded in various vol- 
 umes of these Studies, a, notable proportion of those in which exces- 
 sive masturbation is admitted, are of persons of eminent and recognized 
 ability. 
 
 1 "Ich hatte sie wirklieh verloren, und die Tollheit, mit der ich 
 mcinen Fehler an mir selbst riichte, indem ich auf mancherlei unsinnige 
 Weise in meine physische Natur sturmte, um der sittlichen etwas zu 
 Leide zu thim, hat sehr viel zu den korperlichen Uebeln beigetragen, 
 unter denen ich einige der besten Jahre nieines Lebens verlor; ja ich 
 ware vielleicht an diesem Verlust vollig zu Grunde gegangen, hiitte sich 
 hier nicht das poetische Talent mit seinen Heilkraften besonders hiilf- 
 reich erwiesen." This is scarcely conclusive, and it may be added that 
 there were many reasons why Goethe should have suffered physically at 
 this time, quite apart from masturbation. See, e.g., Bielschowsky, Life 
 of Ooeihe, vol. i, p. 88. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 267 
 
 It is often possible to trace the precise mechanism of the 
 relationship between auto-erotic excitement and intellectual 
 activity. Brown-Sequard, in old age, considered that to induce 
 a certain amount of sexual excitement, not proceeding to emis- 
 sion, was an aid to mental work. Eaymond and Janet knew a 
 man considering himself a poet, who, in order to attain the ex- 
 citation necessary to compose his ideal verses, would write with 
 one hand while with the other he caressed his penis, though not 
 to the extent of producing ejaculation. ^ We must not believe, 
 however, that this is by any means the method of workers who 
 deserve to be accepted seriously; it would be felt, to say the 
 least, as unworthy. It is indeed a method that would only appeal 
 to a person of feeble or failing mental power. What more 
 usually happens is that the auto-erotic excitement develops, pari 
 passu and spontaneously, with the mental activity and at the 
 climax of the latter the auto-erotic excitement also culminates, 
 almost or even quite spontaneously, in an explosion of detumes- 
 cence which relieves the mental tension. I am acquainted with 
 such cases in both young men and women of intellectual ability, 
 and they probably occur much more frequently than we usually 
 suspect. 
 
 In illustration of the foregoing observationa, I may quote the 
 following narrative, written by a man of letters: "From puberty to the 
 age of 30 (when I married), I lived in virgin continence, in accord with 
 my principle. During these years I worked exceedingly hard— chiefly at 
 art (music and poetry). My days being spent earning my livelihood, 
 these art studies fell into my evening time. I noticed that productive 
 power came in periods — periods of irregular length, and which certainly, 
 to a partial extent, could be controlled by the will. Such a period 
 of vital power began usually with a sensation of melancholy, and it 
 quickened my normal revolt against the narrowness of conventional 
 life into a red-hot detestation of the paltriness and pettiness with 
 which so many mortals seem to content themselves. As the mood grew 
 in intensity, this scorn of the lower things mixed with and gave place 
 to a vivid insight into higher truths. The oppression began to give 
 place to a realization of the eternity of the heroic things; the fatuities 
 were seen as mere fashions; love was seen as the true lord of life; the 
 eternal romance was evident in its glory; the naked strength and beauty 
 
 1 Les Obsessions, vol. ii, p. 136. 
 
268 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 of men were known despite their clothes. In such mood my work was 
 produced; bitter protest and keen-sighted passion mingled in its build- 
 ing. The arising vitality had certainly deep relation to the periodicity 
 of the sex-force of manhood. At the height of the power of the art- 
 creative mood would come those natural emissions with which Nature 
 calmly disposes of the unused force of the male. Such emissions 
 were natural and healthy, and not exhaustive or hysterical. The process 
 is undoubtedly sane and protective, unless the subject be unhealthy. 
 The period of creative art power extended a little beyond the end of the 
 period of natural seed emission — the art work of this last stage being 
 less vibrant, and of a, gentler force. Then followed a time of calm 
 natural rest, which gradually led up to the next sequence of melancholy 
 and power. The periods certainly varied in length of time, controlled 
 somewhat by the force of the mind and the mental will to create ; that is 
 to say, I could somewhat delay the natural emission, by which I gained 
 an extension of the period of power." 
 
 How far masturbation in moderately healthy persons living 
 without normal sexual relationships may be considered normal 
 is a difficult question only to be decided with reference to 
 individual cases. As a general rule, when only practiced at rare 
 intervals, and faute de mieux, in order to obtain relief for 
 physical oppression and mental obsession, it may be regarded as 
 the often inevitable result of the unnatural circumstances of our 
 civilized social life. When, as often happens in mental degen- 
 eracy, — and as in shy and imaginative persons, perhaps of 
 neurotic temperament, may also sometimes become the case, — it is 
 practiced in preference to sexual relationships, it at once be- 
 comes abnormal and may possibly lead to a variety of harmful 
 results, mental and physical.^ 
 
 It must always be remembered, however, that, while the 
 practice of masturbation may be harmful in its consequences, it 
 is also, in the absence of normal sexual relationships, frequently 
 not without good results. In the medical literature of the last 
 hundred years a number of cases have been incidentally recorded 
 
 1 A somewhat similar classification has already been made by Max 
 Dessoir, who points out that we must distinguish between onanists aus 
 Voth, and onanists aus Leidenschaft, the latter group alone being of 
 really serious importance. The classification of Dallemagne is also some- 
 what similar; he distinguishes onanie par impulsion, occurring in mental 
 degeneration and in persons of inferior intelligence, from onanie par 
 evocation ou ohsession. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 269 
 
 in which the patients found masturbation beneficial, and such 
 cases might certainly have been enormously increased if there had 
 been any open-eyed desire to discover them. My own observa- 
 tions agree with those of Sudduth, who asserts that "masturbation 
 is, in the main, practiced for its sedative effect on the nervous 
 system. The relaxation that follows the act constitutes its real 
 attraction. . . . Both masturbation and sexual intercourse 
 should be classed as typical sedatives."^ 
 
 Gall (Fonotions du Oerveau, 1825, vol. iii, p. 233) mentioned a 
 woman who was tormented by strong sexual desire, which she satisfied by 
 masturbation ten or twelve times a day; this caused no bad results, 
 and led to the immediate disappearance of a severe pain in the back 
 of the neck, from which she often suffered. Clouston {Mental Diseases, 
 1887, p. 496) quotes as follows from a letter written by a youth of 22: "I 
 am sure I cannot explain myself, nor give account of such conduct. 
 Sometimes I felt so uneasy at my work that I would go to the water- 
 closet to do it, and it seemed to give me ease, and then I would work 
 like a hatter for a whole week, till the sensation overpovrered me again. 
 I have been the most filthy scoundrel in existence," etc. Gamier pre- 
 sents the case of a monk, aged 33, living a chaste life, who wrote the 
 following account of his experiences: "For the past three years, at 
 least, I have felt, every two or three weeks, a kind of fatigue in the 
 penis, or, rather, slight shooting pains, increasing during several days, 
 and then I feel a strong desire to expel the semen. When no nocturnal 
 pollution follows, the retention of the semen causes general disturbance, 
 headache, and sleeplessness. I must confess that, occasionally, to free 
 myself from the general and local oppression, I lie on my stomach and 
 obtain ejaculation. I pm at once relieved; a weight seems to be lifted 
 from my chest, and sleep returns." This patient consulted Gamier as to 
 whether this artificial relief was not more dangerous than the s^ifferings 
 it relieved. Gamier advised that if the ordinary regime of a well- 
 ordered monastry, together with anaphrodisiao sedatives, proved inefiSca- 
 
 1 W. Xavier Sudduth, "A Study in the Psycho-physics of Masturba- 
 tion," Chicago Medical Recorder, March, 1898. Haig, who reaches a 
 similar conclusion, has sought to find its precise mechanism in the blood- 
 pressure. "As the sexual act produces lower and falling blood-pressure," 
 he remarks, "it will of necessity relieve conditions which are due to 
 high and rising blood-pressure, such, for instance, as mental depression 
 and bad temper; and, unless my observation deceives me, we have here 
 a connection between conditions of high blood-pressure with mental and 
 bodily depression and acts of masturbation, for this act will relieve these 
 conditions and tend to be practiced for this purpose." {Urio Acid, 
 6th edition, p. 154.) 
 
270 PSYCHOLOGY 01" SEX. 
 
 cious, the manceuvre might be continued when necessary (P. Gamier, 
 Celibut et Celibataires, 1S87, p. 320). H. C. Coe (American Journal of 
 Obstetrics, p. 766, July, 1889) gives the case of a married lady who was 
 deeply sensitive of the wrong nature of masturbation, but found in it 
 the only means of relieving the severe ovarian pain, associated with 
 intense sexual excitement, which attended menstruation. During the 
 intermenstrual period the temptation was absent. Turnbull knew a 
 youth who found that masturbation gave great relief to feelings of 
 heaviness and confusion which came on him periodically; and Wiggles- 
 worth has frequently seen masturbation after epileptic fits in patients 
 who never masturbated at other times. Moll (Libido Sexualis, Bd. I, 
 p. 13) refers to a woman of 28, an artist of nervous and excitable 
 temperament, who could not find sexual satisfaction with her lover, 
 but only when masturbating, which she did once or twice a day, or 
 oftener; without masturbation, she said, she would be in a much more 
 nervous state. A friend tells me of a married lady of 40, separated 
 from her husband on account of incompatibility, who suffered from ir- 
 regular menstruation; she tried masturbation, and, in her owa words, 
 "became normal again;'' she had never masturbated previously. I have 
 also been informed of the ease of a young unmarried woman, intellectual, 
 athletic, and well developed, who, from the age of seven or eight, has 
 masturbated nearly every night before going to sleep, and would be rest- 
 less and unable to sleep if she did not. 
 
 Judging from my own observations among both sexes, I 
 should say that in normal persons, well past the age of puberty, 
 and otherwise leading a chaste life, masturbation would be little 
 practiced except for the physical and mental relief it brings. 
 Many vigorous and healthy unmarried women or married women 
 apart from their husbands, living a life of sexual abstinence, have 
 asserted emphatically that only by sexually exciting themselves, 
 at intervals, could they escape from a condition of nervous 
 oppression and sexual obsession which they felt to be a state of 
 hysteria. In most cases this happens about the menstrual period, 
 and, whether accomplished as a purely physical act — ^in the same 
 way as they would soothe a baby to sleep by rocking it or patting 
 it — or by the co-operation of voluptuous mental imager^', 
 the practice is not cultivated for its own sake during the rest of 
 the month. 
 
 In illustration of the foregoing statements I will here record a 
 few typical observations of experiences with regard to masturbation. The 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 271 
 
 cases selected are all women, and are all in a fairly normal, and, for 
 the most part, excellent, state of health ; some of them, however, belong 
 to somewhat neurotic families, and these are persons of unusual mental 
 ability and intelligence. 
 
 Obseevation I. — Unmarried, aged 38. She is very vigorous and 
 healthy, of a strongly passionate nature, but never masturbated until a 
 few years ago, when she was made love to by a man who used to kiss 
 her, etc. Although she did not respond to these advances, she was 
 thrown into a state of restless sexual excitement; on one occasion, 
 when in bed in this restless state, she accidentally found, on passing her 
 hand over her body, that, by playing with "a round thing" [clitoris] 
 a pleasurable feeling was produced. She found herself greatly relieved 
 and quieted by these manipulations, though there remained u. feeling 
 of tiredness afterward. She has sometimes masturbated six times in 
 a night, especially before and after the menstrual period, until she 
 was unable to produce the orgasm or any feeling of pleasure. 
 
 Obsebvation II. — Unmarried, aged 45, of rather nervous tempera- 
 ment. She has for many years been accustomed, usually about a week 
 before the appearance of the menses, to obtain sexual relief by kicking 
 out her legs when lying down. In this way, she says, she obtains com- 
 plete satisfaction. She never touches herself. On the following day 
 she frequently has pains over the lower part of the abdomen, such pains 
 being apparently muscular and due to the exertion. 
 
 Obsebvation III. — ^Aged 29, recently married, belonging to a neu- 
 rotic and morbid family, herself healthy, and living usually in the 
 country; vivacious, passionate, enthusiastic, intellectual, and taking a 
 prominent part in philanthropic schemes and municipal affairs; at the 
 same time, fond of society, and very attractive to men. For many years 
 she had been accustomed to excite herself, though she felt it was not 
 good for her. The habit was merely practiced faute de mieux. "1 used 
 to sit on the edge of the bed sometimes," she said, "and it came over 
 me so strongly that I simply couldn't resist it. I felt that I should 
 go mad, and I thought it was better to touch myself than be insane. 
 . . . I used to press my clitoris in. . . . It made me very tired 
 afterward — ^not like being with my husband." The confession was made 
 from a conviction of the importance of the subject, and with the hope 
 that some way might be found out of the difficulties whioh so often 
 beset women. 
 
 Obsebvation IV. — Unmarried, aged 27; possesses much force of 
 character and high intelligence; is actively engaged in a professional 
 career. As a child of seven or eight she began to experience what she 
 describes as lightning-like sensations, "mere, vague, uneasy feelings or 
 momentary twitches, which took place alike in the vulva or the vagina 
 or the uterus, not amounting to an orgasm and nothing like it.'' These 
 
272 PSYCHOLOGY OF SES. 
 
 sensations, it should be added, have continued into adult life. "1 al- 
 ways experience them just before menstruation, and afterward for a 
 few days, and, occasionally, though it seems to me not so often, during 
 the period itself. I may have the sensation four or five times during 
 the day; it is not dependent at all upon external impressions, or my 
 own thoughts, and is sometimes absent for days together. It is just one 
 flash, as if you would snap your fingers, and it is over." 
 
 As a child, she was, of course, quite unconscious that there was any- 
 thing sexual in these sensations. They were then usually associated 
 with various imaginary scenes. The one usually indulged in was that 
 a black bear was waiting for her up in a tree, and that she was slowly 
 raised up toward the bear by means of ropes and then lowered again, and 
 raised, feeling afraid of being caught by the bear, and yet having a 
 morbid desire to be caught. In after years she realized that there was a 
 physical sexual cause underlying these imaginations, and that what she 
 liked was a feeling of resistance to the bear giving rise to the physical 
 sensation. 
 
 At a somewhat later age, though while still a child, she cherished 
 an ideal passion for a person very much older than herself, this passion 
 absorbing her thoughts for a period of two years, during which, however, 
 there was no progress made in physical sensation. It was when she was 
 nearly thirteen years of age, soon after the appearance of menstruation, 
 and under the influence of this ideal passion, that she first learned to 
 experience conscious orgasm, which was not associated with the thought 
 of any person. "I did not associate it with anything high or beautiful, 
 owing to the fact that I had imbibed our current ideas in regard to 
 sexual feelings, and viewed them in a very poor light indeed." She con- 
 siders that her sexual feelings were stronger at this period than at any 
 other time in her life. She could, however, often deny herself physical 
 satisfaction for weeks at a time, in order that she might not feel unworthy 
 of the object of her ideal passion. "As for the sexual satisfaction," she 
 writes, "it was experimental. I had heard older girls speak of the 
 pleasure of such feelings, but I was not taught anything by example, or 
 otherwise. I merely rubbed myself with the wash-rag while bathing, 
 waiting for a result, and having the same peculiar feeling I had so often 
 experienced. I am not aware of any ill effects having resulted, but I 
 felt degraded, and tried hard to overcome the habit. No one had spoken 
 to me of the habit, but from the secrecy of grown people, and passages 
 I had heard from the Bible, I conceived the idea that it was a repre- 
 hensible practice. And, while this did not curb my desire, it taught me 
 self-control, and I vowed that each time should be the last. I was often 
 able to keep the resolution for two or three weeks." Some four years 
 later she gradually succeeded in breaking herself of the practice in so 
 far as it had become a habit; she has, however, acquired a fuller 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 273 
 
 knowledge of sexual matters, and, though she has still a great dread of 
 masturbation as a vice, she does not hesitate to relieve her physical feel- 
 ings when it seems best to her to do so. "I am usually able to direct 
 my thoughts from these sensations," she writes, "but if they seem to 
 make me irritable or wakeful, I relieve myself. It is a physical act, un- 
 associated with deep feeling of any kind. I have always felt that it was 
 a rather unpleasant compromise with my physical nature, but certainly 
 necessary in my case. Yet, I have abstained from gratification for very 
 .long periods. If the feeling is not strong at the menstrual period, I 
 go on very well without either the sensation or the gratification until 
 the next period. And, strange as it may seem, the best antidote I have 
 found and the best preventive is to think about spiritual things or 
 someone whom I love. It is simply a matter of training, I suppose, — a 
 sort of mental gymnastics, — ^which draws the attention away from the 
 physical feelings." This Indy has never had any sexual relationships, 
 and, since she is ambitious, and believes that the sexual emotions may 
 be transformed so as to become a source of motive power throughout 
 the whole of life, she wishes to avoid such relationships. 
 
 Observation V. — ^Unmarried, aged 31, in good health, with, how- 
 ever, a somewhat hysterical excess of energy. "When I was about 26 
 years of age," she writes, "a friend came to me with the confession 
 that for several years she had masturbated, and had become such a 
 slave to the habit that she severely suffered from its ill effects. At that 
 time I had never heard of self-abuse by women. I listened to her story 
 with much sympathy and interest, but some skepticism, and determined 
 to try experiments upon. myself, with the idea of getting to understand 
 the matter in order to assist my friend. After some manipulation, I 
 succeeded in awakening what had before been unconscious and unknown. 
 I purposely allowed the habit to grow upon me, and one night — for I 
 always operated upon myself before going to sleep, never in the morn- 
 ing — I obtained considerable pleasurable satisfaction, but the following 
 day my conscience awoke; I also felt pain located at the back of my 
 head and down the spinal column. I ceased my operations for a time, and 
 then began again somewhat regularly, once a month, a few days after men- 
 struation. During those months in which I exercised moderation, I 
 think 1 obtained much local relief with comparatively little injury, but, 
 later on, finding myself in robust health, I increased my experiments, 
 the habit grew upon me, and it was only with an almost superhuman 
 effort that I broke myself free. Needless to say that I gave no assist- 
 ance to my suffering friend, nor did I ever refer to the subject after 
 her confession to me. 
 
 "Some two years later I heard of sexual practices between women 
 as a frequent habit in certain quarters. I again interested myself in 
 masturbation, for I had been told something that led me to believe that 
 
 18 
 
274 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 there was much, more for me to discover. Not knowing the most 
 elementary physiology, I questioned some of my friends, and then com- 
 menced again. I restricted myself to relief from local congestion and 
 irritation by calling forth the emission of mucus, rather than by seeking 
 pleasure. At the same time, I sought to discover what manipulation of 
 the clitoris would lead to. The habit grew upon me with startling 
 rapidity, and I became more or less its slave, but I suffered from no very 
 great ill effects until I started in search of more discoveries. I found 
 that I was a complete ignoramus as to the formation of a woman's body, 
 and by experiments upon myself sought to discover the vagina. I con- 
 tinued my operations until I obtained an entrance. I think the rough 
 handling of myself during this final stage disturbed my nervous system, 
 and caused me considerable pain and exhaustion at the back of my 
 head, the spinal column, the back of my eyes, and a general feeling of 
 languor, etc. 
 
 "I could not bear to be the slave of a habit, and after much suffer- 
 ing and efforts, which only led to falls to lower depths of conscious 
 failure, my better self rebelled, until, by a, great effort and much prayer, 
 I kept myself pure for a whole week. This partial recovery gave me 
 hope, but then I again fell a victim to the habit, much to my chagrin, 
 and became hopeless of ever retracing my steps toward my ideal of 
 virtue. For some days I lost energy, spirit, and hope; my nervous sys- 
 tem appeared to be ruined, but I did not really despair of victory in 
 the end. I thought of all the drunkards chained by their intemperate 
 habits, of inveterate smokers who could not exist without tobacco, and 
 of all the various methods by which men were slaves, and the longing to 
 be freed of what had, in my case, proved to be a painful and unnecessary 
 habit, increased daily until, after one night when I struggled with my- 
 self for hours, I believed I had finally succeeded. 
 
 "At times, when I reached a, high degree of sexual excitement, I 
 felt that I was at least one step removed from those of morbid and 
 repressed sex, who had not the slightest suspicion of the latent joys of 
 womanhood within them. For a little while the habit took the shape 
 of an exalted passion, but I rapidly tired it out by rough, thoughtless, 
 and too impatient handling. Revulsion set in with the pain of an ex- 
 hausted and badly used nervous system, and finding myself the slave 
 of a passion, I determined to endeavor to be its master. 
 
 "In conclusion, I should say that mastui-bation has proved itself 
 to be to me one of the blind turnings of my life's history, from which 
 I have gained much valuable experience.'' 
 
 The practice was, however, by no means thus dismissed. Some 
 time later the subject writes : "I have again restarted masturbation for 
 the relief of localized feelings. One morning I was engaged in reading a 
 very heavy volume which, for convenience sake, I held in my lap. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 275 
 
 leaning back on my chair. I had become deep in my study for an hour 
 or so when I became aware of certain feelings roused by the weight of 
 the book. Being tempted to see what would happen by such conduct, I 
 shifted so that the edge of the volume came in closer contact. The 
 pleasurable feelings increased, so I gave myself up to my emotions for 
 some thirty minutes. 
 
 "Notwithstanding the intense pleasure I enjoyed for so long a 
 period, I maintain that it is wiser to refrain, and, although I admit in 
 the same breath that, by gentle treatment, such pleasure may be harm- 
 less to the general health, it does lead to a desire for solitude, which is 
 not conducive to a happy frame of mind. There is an accompanying 
 reticence of speech concerning the pleasure, which, therefore, appears to 
 be unnatural, like the eating of stolen fruit. After such an event, one 
 seems to require to fly to the woods, and to listen to the song of the 
 birds, so as to shake off after-effects." 
 
 In a letter dated some months later, she writes: "I think I have 
 risen above the masturbation habit." In the same letter the writer 
 remarks: "If I had consciously abnormal or unsatisfied appetites I 
 would satisfy them in the easiest and least harmful way." 
 
 Again, eighteen months later, she writes: "It is curious to note 
 that for months this habit is forgotten, but awakens sometimes to self- 
 assertion. If a feeling of pressure is felt in the head, and a slight 
 irritation elsewhere, and experience shows that the time has come for 
 pacification, exquisite pleasure can be enjoyed, never more than twice 
 a month, and sometimes less often." 
 
 Obsekvation VI. — Unmarried, actively engaged in the practice 
 of her profession. Well-developed, feminine in contour, but boyish in 
 manner and movements; strong, though muscles small, and healthy, with 
 sound nervous system; never had anaemia. Thick brown hair; pubic 
 hair thick, and hair on toes and legs up to umbilicus; it began to 
 appear at the age of 10 (before pubic hair) and continued until 18. 
 A few stray hairs round nipples, and much dark down on upper lip, as 
 well as light down on arms and hands. Hips, normal ; nates, small; labia 
 minora, large; and clitoris, deeply hooded. Hymen thick, vagina, prob- 
 ably small. Considerable pigmentation of parts. Menstruation began 
 at 15, but not regular till 17; is painless and scanty; the better the 
 state of health, the less it is. No change of sexual or other feelings con- 
 nected with it; it lasts one to three days. 
 
 "I believe," she writes, "my first experience of physical sex sensa- 
 tions was when I was about 16, and in sleep. But I did not then 
 recognize it, and seldom, indeed, gave the subject of sex a thought. I 
 was a child far beyond the age of childhood. The accompanying dreams 
 were disagreeable, but I cannot remember what they were about. It 
 was not until I was nearly 19 that I knew the sexual orgasm in my 
 
276 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 waking state. It surprised me completely, but I knew that I liad known 
 it before in my sleep. 
 
 "The knowledge came one summer when I was leading a rather 
 Isolated life, and my mind was far from sex subjects, being deep in 
 books, Carlyle, Ruskin, Huxley, Darwin, Scott, etc. I noticed that when 
 I got up in the morning I felt very hot and uncomfortable. The clitoris 
 and the parts around were swollen and erect, and often tender and 
 painful. I had no idea what it was, but found I was unable to pass 
 my water for an hour or two. One day, when I was straining a little 
 to pass water, the full orgasm occurred. The next time it happened, 
 I tried to check it by holding myself firmly, of course, with the opposite 
 result. I do not know that I found it highly pleasurable, but it was 
 a very great relief. I allowed myself a good many experiments, to 
 come to a conclusion in the matter, and I thought about it. I was 
 much too shy to speak to any one, and thought it was probably a sin. 
 I tried not to do it, and not to think about it, saying to myself that 
 surely I was lord of my body. But I found that the matter was not 
 entirely under my control. However unwilling or passive I might be, 
 there were times when the involuntary discomfort was not in my keep- 
 ing. My touching myself or not did not save me from it. Because 
 it sometimes gave me pleasure, I thought it might be a form of self- 
 indulgence, and did not do it until it could scarcely be helped. Soon 
 the orgasm began to occur fairly frequently in my sleep, perhaps onee 
 or twice a week. I had no erotic dreams, then or at any other time, 
 but I had nights of restless sleep, and woke as it occurred, dreaming 
 that it was happening, as, in fact, it was. At times I hardly awoke, 
 but went to sleep again in a moment. I continued for two or three 
 years to be sorely tried by day at frequent intervals. I acquired a, 
 remarkable degree of control, so that, though one touch or steadily di- 
 rected thought would have caused the orgasm, I could keep it off, and 
 go to sleep without 'wrong doing.' Of course, when I fell asleep, my 
 control ended. All this gave me a good deal of physical worry, and kept 
 my attention unwillingly fixed upon the matter. I do not think my body 
 was readily irritable, but I had unquestionably very strong sexual ' 
 impulses. 
 
 "After a year or two, when I was working hard, I could not 
 afford the attention the control cost me, or the prolonged mitigated sexual 
 excitement it caused. I took drugs for a tim'e, but they lost effect, 
 produced lassitude, and agreed with me badly. I therefore put away 
 my scruples and determined to try the effect of giving myself an in- 
 stant and business-like relief. Instead of allowing my feelings to 
 gather strength, I satisfied them out of hand. Instead of five hours 
 of heat and discomfort, I did not allow myself five minutes, if I could 
 help it. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 277 
 
 "The effect was marvelous. I practically had no more trouble. 
 The thing rarely came to me at all by day, and though it continued 
 at times by night, it became less frequent and less strong; often it 
 did not wake me. The erotic images and speculations that had begun to 
 come to me died down. I left off being afraid of my feelings, or, 
 indeed, thinking about them. I may say that I had decided that I 
 should be obliged to lead a single life, and that the less I thought 
 about matters of sex, the more easy I should find life. Later on I 
 had religious ideas which helped me considerably in my ideals of a 
 decent, orderly, self-contained life. I do not lay stress on these; they 
 were not at all emotional, and my physical and psychical development do 
 not appear to have run much on parallel lines. I had a strong moral 
 sense before I had a religious one, and a 'common-sense' which I perhaps 
 trusted more than either. 
 
 "When I was about 28 I thought I might perhaps leave off the 
 habit of regular relief I had got into. (It was not regular as regards 
 time, being anything from one day to six weeks.) The change was 
 probably made easier by a severe illness I had had. I gave this ab- 
 stinence a fair trial for several years (until I was about 34), but my 
 nocturnal manifestations certainly gathered strength, especially when 
 I got much better in health, and, finally, as at puberty, began to worry 
 my waking life. I reasoned that by my attempt at abstinence I had 
 only exchanged control for uncontrol, and reverted to my old habits 
 of relief, with the same good results as before. The whole trouble 
 subsided and I got better at once. (The orgasm during sleep con- 
 tinued, and occurs about once a fortnight; it is increased by change 
 of air, especially at the seaside, when it may occur on two or 
 three nights running.) I decided that, for the proper control of my 
 single life, relief was normal and right. It would be very difficult for 
 anyone to demonstrate the contrary to me. My aim has always been 
 to keep myself in the best condition of physical and mental balance 
 that a single person is capable of." 
 
 There is some interest in briefly reviewing the remarkable 
 transformations in the attitude toward masturbation from Greek 
 times down to our own day. The Greeks treated masturbation 
 with little opprobrium. At the worst they regarded it as un- 
 manly, and Aristophanes, in various passages, connects the prac- 
 tice with women, children, slaves, and feeble old men. .^Eschines 
 seems to have publicly brought it as a charge against Demos- 
 thenes that he had practiced masturbation, though, on the other 
 hand, Plutarch tells us that Diogenes — described by Zeller, the 
 
278 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 historian of Greek philosophy, as "the most typical figure of 
 ancient Greece" — ^was praised by Chrysippus, the famous philos- 
 opher, for masturbating in the market-place. The more stren- 
 uous Eomans, at all events as exemplified by Juvenal and Martial, 
 condemned masturbation more vigorously.^ Aretseus, without 
 alluding to masturbation, dwells on the tonic effects of retaining 
 the semen ; but, on the other hand, Galen regarded the retention 
 of semen as injurious, and advocated its frequent expulsion, a 
 point of view which tended to justify masturbation. In classical 
 days, doubtless, masturbation and all other forms of the auto- 
 erotic impulse were comparatively rare. So much scope was 
 allowed in early adult age for homosexual and later for hetero- 
 sexual relationships that any excessive or morbid development of 
 solitary self-indulgence could seldom occur. The case was 
 altered when Christian ideals became prominent. Christian 
 morality strongly proscribed sexual relationships except under cer- 
 tain specified conditions. It is true that Christianity discouraged 
 all sexual manifestations, and that therefore its ban fell equally on 
 masturbation, but, obviously, masturbation lay at the weakest line 
 of defence against the assaults of the flesh; it was there that 
 resistance would most readily yield. Christianity thus probably 
 led to a considerable increase of masturbation. The attention 
 which the theologians devoted to its manifestations clearly bears 
 witness to their magnitude. It is noteworthy that Mohammedan 
 theologians regarded masturbation as a Christian vice. In Islam 
 both doctrine and practice tended to encourage sexual relation- 
 ships, and not much attention was paid to masturbation, nor even 
 any severe reprobation directed against it. Omer Haleby re- 
 marks that certain theologians of Islam are inclined to consider 
 the practice of masturbation in vogue among Christians as allow- 
 able to devout Mussulmans when alone on a journey ; he himself 
 regards this as a practice good neither for soul nor body (seminal 
 emissions during sleep providing all necessary relief) ; should, 
 however, a Mussulman fall into this error, God is merciful I^ 
 
 1 Northcote discusses the classic attitude towards masturbation, 
 Christianity and Sece Problems, p. 233. 
 
 2 El Ktah, traduetion de Paul de Rggla, Paris, 1893. 
 
AUTO-EKOTISM. 279 
 
 In Theodore's Penitential of the seventh century, forty days' pen- 
 ance is prescribed for masturbation. Aquinas condemned masturbation 
 as worse than fornication, though less heinous than other sexual of- 
 fences against Nature; in opposition, also, to those who believed that 
 distillatio usually takes place without pleasure, he observed that it was 
 often caused by sexual emotion, and should, therefore, always be men- 
 tioned to the confessor. Liguori also regarded masturbation as a graver 
 sin than fornication, and even said that distillatio, if voluntary and with 
 notable physical commotion, is without doubt a mortal sin, for in such 
 u, case it is the beginning of a pollution. On the other hand, some 
 theologians have thought that distillatio may be permitted, even if there 
 is some commotion, so long as it has not been voluntarily procured, 
 and Caramuel, who has been described as a theological enfant terrible, 
 declared that "natural law does not forbid masturbation," but that 
 proposition was condemned by Innocent XI. The most enlightened 
 modern Catholic view is probably represented by Debreyne, who, after 
 remarking that he has known pious and intelligent persons who had 
 an irresistible impulse to masturbate, continues: "Must we excuse, or 
 condemn, these people? Neither the one nor the other. If you con- 
 demn and repulse absolutely these persons as altogether guilty, against 
 their own convictions, you will perhaps throw them into despair; if, 
 on the contrary, you completely excuse them, you maintain them in a 
 disorder from which they may, perhaps, never emerge. Adopt a wise 
 middle course, and, perhaps, with God's aid, you may often cure them." 
 
 Under certain circumstances some Catholic theologians have per- 
 mitted a married woman to masturbate. Thus, the Jesuit theologian, 
 Gury, asserts that the wife does not sin "quce se ipsam tactiius eoccitat 
 ad seminationem statim post copulam in qud, vir solus seminavit." 
 This teaching seems to have been misunderstood, since ethical and even 
 medical writers have expended a certain amount of moral indignation 
 on the Church whose theologians committed themselves to this state- 
 ment. As a matter of fact, this qualified permission to masturbate 
 merely rests on a false theory of procreation, which is clearly expressed 
 in the word seminatio. It was believed that ejaculation in the woman 
 is as necessary to fecundation as ejaculation in the man. Galen, 
 Avieenna, and Aquinas recognized, indeed, that such feminine semination 
 was not necessary; Sanchez, however, was doubtful, while Suarez and 
 Zacchia, following Hippocrates, regarded it as necessary. As sexual 
 intercourse without fecundation is not approved by the Catholic Church, 
 it thus became logically necessary to permit women to masturbate when- 
 ever the ejaculation of mucus had not occurred at or before coitus. 
 
 The belief that the emission of vaginal mucus, under the influence 
 •of sexual excitement in women, corresponded to spermatic emission, has 
 led to the practice of masturbation on hygienic grounds. Gamier 
 
280 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 (Celibat, p. 255) mentions that Mesu6, in the eighteenth century, 
 invented a special pessary to take the place of the penis, and, as he 
 stated, effect the due expulsion of the feminine sperm. 
 
 Protestantism, no doubt, in the main accepted the general 
 Catholic tradition, but the tendency of Protestantism, in reaction 
 against the minute inquisition of the earlier theologians, has 
 always been to exercise a certain degree of what it regarded as 
 wholesome indifference toward the less obvious manifestations of 
 the flesh. Thus in Protestant countries masturbation seems to 
 have been almost ignored until Tissot, combining with his repu- 
 tation as a physician the fanaticism of a devout believer, raised 
 masturbation to the position of a colossal bogy which during a 
 hundred years has not only had an unfortunate influence on 
 medical opinion in these matters, but has been productive of 
 incalculable harm to ignorant youth and tender consciences. 
 During the past forty years the efforts of many distinguished 
 physicians — a few of whose opinions I have already quoted — have 
 gradually dragged the bogy down from its pedestal, and now, as 
 I have ventured to suggest, there is a tendency for the reaction 
 to be excessive. There is even a tendency to-day to regard mas- 
 turbation, with various qualifications, as normal. Eemy de 
 Gourmont, for instance, considers that masturbation is natural 
 because it is the method by which fishes procreate : "All things 
 considered, it must be accepted that masturbation is part of the 
 doings of Nature. A different conclusion might be agreeable, 
 but in every ocean and under the reeds of every river, myriads of 
 beings would protest."^ Tillier remarks that since masturbation 
 appears to be universal among the higher animals we are not 
 entitled to regard it as a vice; it has only been so considered 
 because studied exclusively by physicians under abnormal condi- 
 tions. 2 Hirth, while asserting that masturbation must be 
 strongly repressed in the young, regards it as a desirable method 
 of relief for adults, and especially, under some circumstances, for 
 women.3 Venturi, a well-known Italian alienist, on the other 
 
 1 Remy de Gourmont, Physique de I'Amour, p. 133. 
 
 2 Tillier, L'InsHnct Sexuel, Paris, 1889, p. 270. 
 
 3 G. Hirth, Wege zur Beimat, p. 648. 
 
AUTO-EEOTISM. 281 
 
 hand, regards masturbation as strictly physiological in youth ; it 
 is the normal and natural passage toward the generous and 
 healthy passion of early manhood ; it only becomes abnormal and 
 vicious, he holds, when continued into adult life. 
 
 The appearance of masturbation at puberty, Venturi considers, "is 
 a moment in the course of the development of the function of that organ 
 which is the necessary instrument of sexuality." It finds its motive 
 in the satisfaction of an organic need having much analogy with 
 that which arises from the tickling of a very sensitive cutaneous 
 surface. In this masturbation of early adolescence lies, according to 
 Venturi, the germ of what will later be love : a pleasure of the body and 
 of the spirit, following the relief of a satisfied need. "As the youth 
 develops, onanism becomes a sexual act comparable to coitus as a dream 
 is comparable to reality, imagery forming in correspondence with the de- 
 sires. In its fully developed form in adolescence," Venturi continues, 
 "masturbation has an almost hallucinatory character; onanism at this 
 period psychically approximates to the true sexual act, and passes in- 
 sensibly into it. If, however, continued or. into adult age, it becomes 
 morbid, passing into erotic fetiehism; what in the inexperienced youth 
 is the natural auxiliary and stimulus to imagination, in the degenerate 
 onanist of adult age_is a sign of arrested development. Thus, onanism," 
 the author concludes, "is not always a vice such as is fiercely combated 
 by educators and moralists. It is the natural transition by which we 
 reach the warm and generous love of youth, and, in natural succession 
 to this, the tranquil, positive, matrimonial love of the mature man." 
 (Silvio Venturi, Le Degenerazioni Psico-sessuale, 1892, pp. 6-9.) 
 
 It may be questioned whether this view is acceptable even for the 
 warm climate of the south of Europe, where the impulses of sexuality 
 are undoubtedly precocious. It is certainly not in harmony with gen- 
 eral experience and opinion in the north; this is well expressed in the 
 following passage by Edward Carpenter {International Journal of Ethics, 
 July, 1899): "After all, purity (in the sense of continence) is of the 
 first importance to boyhood. To prolong the period of continence in a 
 boy's life is to prolong the period of growth. This is a simple physi- 
 ological law, and a very obvious one; and, whatever other things may 
 be said in favor of purity, it remains, perhaps, the most weighty. To 
 introduce sensual and sexual habits — and one of the worst of them is 
 self-abuse — at an early age, is to arrest growth, both physical and 
 mental. And what is even more, it means to arrest the capacity for 
 afl'ection. All experience shows that the early outlet toward sex cheapens 
 and weakens afi'ectional capacity." 
 
282 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 
 
 I do not consider that we can decide the precise degree in 
 which masturbation may fairly be called normal so long as we 
 take masturbation by itself. We are thus^ in conclusion, brought 
 back to the point which I sought to emphasize at the outset: 
 masturbation belongs to a group of auto-erotic phenomena. 
 From one point of view it may be said that all auto-erotic phe- 
 nomena are unnatural, since the natural aim of the sexual im- 
 pulse is sexual conjunction, and all exercise of that impulse out- 
 side such conjunction is away from the end of Nature. But we 
 do not live in a state of Nature which answers to such demands ; 
 all our life is "unnatural." And as soon as we begin to restrain 
 the free play of sexual impulse toward sexual ends, at once auto- 
 erotic phenomena inevitably spring up on every side. There is 
 no end to them ; it is impossible to say what finest elements in 
 art, in morals, in civilization generally, may not really be rooted 
 in an auto-erotic impulse. "Without a certain overheating of 
 the sexual system," said Nietzsche, "we could not have a 
 Eaphael." Auto-erotic phenomena are inevitable. It is our 
 wisest course to recognize this inevitableness of sexual and 
 transmuted sexual manifestations under the perpetual restraints 
 of civilized life, and, while avoiding any attitude of excessive 
 indulgence or indifEerence,! to avoid also any attitude of exces- 
 sive horror, for our horror not only leads to the facts being 
 effectually veiled from our sight, but itself serves to manufacture 
 artificially a greater evil than that which we seek to combat. 
 
 The sexual impulse is not, as some have imagined, the sole 
 root of the most massive human emotions, the most brilliant 
 human aptitudes, — of sympathy, of art, of religion. In the com- 
 plex human organism, where all the parts are so many-fibred and 
 so closely interwoven, no great manifestation can be reduced to 
 one single source. But it largely enters into and molds all of 
 these emotions and aptitudes, and that by virtue of its two most 
 peculiar characteristics : it is, in the first place, the deepest and 
 
 1 F6re, in the course of his valuable work, L'Instinot Sexuel, stated 
 that my conclusion is that masturbation is normal, and that "I'indul- 
 gence s'impose." I had, however, already guarded myself against this 
 misinterpretation. 
 
AUTO-EROTISM. 283 
 
 most Toleanie of human impulses, and, in the second place, — ^un- 
 like the only other human impulse with which it can be com- 
 pared, the nutritive impulse, — it can, to a large extent, be trans- 
 muted into a new force capable of the strangest and most various 
 uses. So that in the presence of all these manifestations we may 
 assert that in a real sense, though siibtly mingled with very 
 diverse elements, auto-erotism everywhere plays its part. In the 
 phenomena of auto-erotism, when we take a broad view of those 
 phenomena, we are concerned, not with a form of insanity, not 
 necessarily with a form of depravity, but with the inevitable by- 
 products of that mighty process on which the animal creation 
 rests. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 The Influence of Menstruation on the 
 Position of Women. 
 
 A QUESTION of historical psychology which, so far as 1- 
 know, has never been fully investigated is the influence of men- 
 struation in constituting the emotional atmosphere through 
 which men habitually view women.i j ^q uq^ purpose to deal 
 fully with this question, because it is one which may be more 
 properly dealt with at length by the student of culture and by the 
 historian, rather than from the standpoint of empirical psy- 
 chology. It is, moreover, a question full of complexities in 
 regard to which it is impossible to speak with certainty. But 
 we here strike on a factor of such importance, SHch neglected 
 importance, for the proper understanding of the sexual relations 
 of men and women, that it cannot be wholly ignored. 
 
 Among the negroes of Surinam a woman must live in soli- 
 tude during the time of her period ; it is dangerous for any man 
 or woman to approach her, and when she sees a person coming 
 near she cries out anxiously : "Mi Jcay! Mi hay!" — I am unclean ! 
 I am unclean ! Throughout the world we find traces of the cus- 
 tom of which this is a typical example, but we must not too 
 hastily assume that this custom is evidence of the inferior posi- 
 tion occupied by semi-civilized women. It is necessary to take a 
 broad view, not only of the beliefs of semi-civilized man regarding 
 menstruation, but of his general beliefs regarding the super- 
 natural forces of the world. 
 
 There is no fragment of folk-lore so familiar to the European 
 world as that which connects woman with the serpent. .It is. 
 
 1 Several recent works, however, notably Frazer's Golden Bough ' 
 and Crawley's Mystic Rose, throve light directly or indirectly on this 
 question. % 
 
 (284) 
 
MENSTRUATION ON THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 285 
 
 indeed, one of the foundation stones of Christian theology.^ Yet 
 there is no fragment of folk-lore which remains more obscure. 
 How has it happened that in all parts of the world the snake or 
 his congeners, the lizard and the crocodile, have been credited 
 with some design, sinister or erotic, on women ? 
 
 Of the wide prevalence of the belief there can be no doubt. 
 Among the Port Lincoln tribe of South Australia a lizard is said 
 to have divided man from woman.2 Among the Chiriguanos of 
 Bolivia, on the appearance of menstruation, old women ran about 
 with sticks to hunt the snake that had wounded the girl. Frazer, 
 who quotes this example from the "Lettres edifiantes et cwi- 
 euses" also refers to a modem Greek folk-tale, according to which 
 a princess at puberty must not let the sun shine upon her, or she 
 would be turned into a lizard.^ The lizard was a sexual symbol 
 among the Mexicans. In some parts of Brazil at the onset of 
 puberty a girl must not go into the woods for fear of the amorous 
 attacks of snakes, and so it is also among the Macusi Indians of 
 British Guiana, according to Sehomburgk. Among the Basutos 
 of South Africa the young girls must dance around the clay 
 image of a snake. In Polynesian mythology the lizard is a very 
 sacred animal, and legends represent women as often giving 
 birth to lizards.* At a widely remote spot, in. Bengal, if you 
 
 1 Robertson Smith points out that since snakes are the last noxious 
 animals which man is able to exterminate, they are the last to be asso- 
 ciated with demons. They were ultimately the only animals directly 
 and constantly associated with the Arabian jinn, or demon, and the 
 serpent of Eden was a demon, and not a temporary disguise of Satan 
 {Ueligion of Semites, pp. 129 and 442). Perhaps it was, in part, because 
 
 the snake was thus the last embodiment of demonic power that women 
 were associated with it, women being always connected with the most 
 ancient religious beliefs. 
 
 2 In the northern territory of the same colony menstruation is said 
 to be due to a bandicoot scratching the vagina and causing blood to flow 
 {Journal of the Anthropological Institute, p. 177, November, 1894). 
 
 At Glenelg, and near Portland, in Victoria, the head of a snake was 
 inserted into a virgin's vagina, when not considered large enough for 
 intercourse (Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. ii, p. 319). 
 
 SFrazer, Golden Bough, vol. ii, p. 231. Crawley {The Mystic Rose, 
 p. 192) also brings together various cases of primitive peoples who be- 
 lieve the bite of a snake to be the cause of menstruation. 
 
 4Meyners d'Estrcz, "Etude ethnographique sur le Igzard ehez les 
 peuples malais et polynesiens." L' Anthropologic, 1892; see also, as re- 
 gards the lizard in Samoan folk-lore. Globus, vol. Ixxiv, No. 16. 
 
286 APPENDIX A. 
 
 dream of a snake a child will be bom to you, reports Sarat Chan- 
 dra Mitra.i In the Berlin Museum fiir Volkerkunde there is a 
 carved wooden figure from New Guinea of a woman into whose 
 vulva a crocodile is inserting its snout, while the same museum 
 contains another figure of a snake-like crocodile crawling out of 
 a woman's vulva, and a third figure shows a small round snake 
 with a small head, and closely resembling a penis, at the mouth of 
 the vagina. All these figures are reproduced by Ploss and Bar- 
 tels. Even in modern Europe the same ideas prevail. In Portu- 
 gal, according to Eeys, it is believed that during menstruation 
 women are liable to be bitten by lizards, and to guard against this 
 risk they wear drawers during the period. In Germany, again, it 
 was believed, up to the eighteenth century at least, that the hair 
 of a menstruating woman, if buried, would turn into a snake. 
 It may be added that in various parts of the world virgin priest- 
 esses are dedicated to a snake-god and are married to the god.^ 
 At Eome, it is interesting to note, the serpent was the symbol of 
 fecundation, and as such often figures at Pompeii as the genius 
 patrisfamilias, the generative power of the family.^ In Eab- 
 binical tradition, also, the serpent is the symbol of sexual desire. 
 
 There can be no doubt that — aa Ploss and Bartels, from 
 whom some of these examples have been taken, point out — in 
 widely different parts of the world menstruation is believed to 
 have been originally caused by a snake, and that this conception 
 is frequently associated with an erotic and mystic idea.* How 
 the connection arose Ploss and Bartels are unable to say. It can 
 
 1 Journal Anthropological Society of Bombay, 1890, p. 589. 
 
 2 Boudin (Etude Anthropologique : Culte du Serpent, Paris, 1864, 
 pp. 66-70) brings forwfird examples of this aspect of snake- worship. 
 
 SAttilio de Marchi, II Gulto privato di Boma, p. 74. The associa- 
 tion of the power of generation with a god in the form of a serpent is, 
 indeed, common; see, e.g. Sir W. M. Ramsay, Cities of Phrygia, vol. i, 
 p. 94. 
 
 4 It is noteworthy that one of the names for the penis used by the 
 Swahili women of German East Africa, in a kind of private language of 
 their own, is "the snake" (Zache, Zeitschrift filr Ethnologic, p. 73, 1899). 
 It may be added that Maeder ("Interpretation de Quelques Rgves," 
 Archives de Psychologic, April, 1907) brings forward various items of 
 folk-lore showing the phallic significance of the serpent, as well as evi- 
 dence indicating that, in the dreams of women of to-day, the snake some- 
 times has a sexual significance. 
 
MENSTKDATION ON THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 287 
 
 only be suggested that its shape and appearance, as well as its 
 venomous nature, may have contributed to the mystery every- 
 where associated with the snake — a mystery itself fortified by 
 the association with women — ^to build up this world-wide belief 
 regarding the origin of menstruation. 
 
 This primitive theory of the origin of menstruation prob- 
 ably brings before us in its earliest shape the special and intimate 
 bond which has ever been held to connect women, by virtue of 
 the menstrual process, with the natural or supernatural powers 
 of the world. Everywhere menstruating women are supposed to 
 be possessed by spirits and charged with mysterious forces. It 
 is at this point that a serious misconception, due to ignorance 
 of primitive religious ideas, has constantly intruded. It is stated 
 that the menstruating woman is "unclean" and possessed by an 
 evil spirit. As a matter of fact, however, the savage rarely dis- 
 criminates between bad and good spirits. Every spirit may have 
 either a beneficial or malignant influence. An interesting in- 
 stance of this is given in Colenso's Maori Lexicon as illustrated 
 by the meaning of the Maori word atua. 
 
 The importance of recognizing the special sense in which the 
 word "unclean" is used in this connection was clearly pointed out 
 by Eobertson Smith in the case of the Semites. "The Hebrew 
 word tame (unclean)," he remarked, "is not the ordinary word 
 for things physically foul; it is a ritual term, and corresponds 
 exactly to the idea of taboo. The ideas 'unclean' and Tioly' seem 
 to us to stand in polar opposition to one another, but it was not 
 so with the Semites. Among the later Jews the Holy Books 
 'defiled the hands' of the reader as contact with an impure thing 
 did; among Lucian's Syrians the dove was so holy that he who 
 touched it was unclean for a day; "and the tahoo attaching to the 
 swine was explained by some, and beyond question correctly ex- 
 plained, in the same way. Among the heathen Semites,^ there- 
 fore, unclean animals, which it was pollution to eat, were simply 
 
 IW. R. Smith, KinsJiip and Marriage in Early Arabia, 1885, p. 
 307. The point is elaborated in the same author's Religion of Semites, 
 second edition, Appendix on "Holiness, Uneleanness, and Taboo," pp. 446- 
 54. See also Wellhausen, Reste Arahischen Beidentums, second edition, 
 pp. 167-77. Even to the early Arabians, Wellhausen remarks (p. 168), 
 
288 APPENDIX A. 
 
 holy animals." Eobertson Smith here made no reference to 
 menstruation, but he exactly described the primitive attitude 
 toward menstruation. Wellhausen, however, dealing with the 
 early Arabians, expressly mentions that in pre-Islamic days, 
 "clean" and "unclean" were used solely with reference to women 
 in and out of the menstrual state. At a later date Frazer 
 developed this aspect of the conception of taboo, and showed how 
 it occurs among savage races generally. He pointed out that 
 the conceptions of holiness and pollution not having yet been 
 differentiated, women at childbirth and during menstruation are 
 on the same level as divine kings, chiefs, and priests, and must 
 observe the same rules of ceremonial purity. To seclude such 
 persons from the rest of the world, so that the dreaded spiritual 
 danger shall not spread, is the object of the taboo, which Prazer 
 compares to "an electrical insulator to preserve the spiritual 
 force with which these persons are charged from sufEering or 
 inflicting harm by contact with the outer world." After de- 
 scribing the phenomena (especially the prohibition to touch the 
 ground or see the sun) found among various races, Prazer con- 
 cludes: "The object of secluding women at menstruation is to 
 neutralize the dangerous influences which are supposed to 
 emanate from them at such times. The general effect of these 
 rules is to keep the girl suspended, so to say, between heaven and 
 earth. Whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to the 
 roof, as in South America, or elevated above the ground in a 
 dark and narrow cage, as in New Zealand, she may be considered 
 to be out of the way of doing mischief, since, being shut off both 
 from the earth and from the sun, she can poison neither of these 
 great sources of life by her deadly contagion. The precautions 
 thus taken to isolate or insuMe the girl are dictated by regard 
 for her own safety as well as for the safety of others. . 
 In short, the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force 
 which, if not kept within bounds, may prove the destruction both 
 of the girl herself and of all with whom she comes in contact. To 
 
 "clean" meant "profane and allowed," while "unclean" meant "sacred 
 and forbidden." It wafl the same, as Jastrow remarks (ReUgion of 
 Babylonia, p. 662), among the Babylonian Semites. 
 
MENSTRUATION ON THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 289 
 
 repress this force within the limits necessary for the safety of 
 all concerned is the object of the taboos in question. The same 
 explanation applies to the observance of the same rules by divine 
 kings and priests. The uncleanliness, as it is called, of girls at 
 puberty and the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive 
 mind, differ from each other. They are only different mani- 
 festations of the same supernatural energy, which, like energy 
 in general, is in itself neither good nor bad, but becomes benefi- 
 cent or malignant according to its application." ^ 
 
 More recently this view of the matter has been further ex- 
 tended by the distinguished French sociologist, Durkheim. In- 
 vestigating the origins of the prohibition of incest, and arguing 
 that it proceeds from the custom of exogamy (or marriage out- 
 side the clan), and that this rests on certain ideas about blood, 
 which, again, are traceable to totemism, — a theory which we need 
 not here discuss, — Durkheim- is brought face to face with the 
 group of conceptions that now concern us. He insists on the 
 extreme ambiguity found in primitive culture concerning the 
 notion of the divine, and the close connection between aversion 
 and veneration, and points out that it is not only at puberty and 
 ■each recurrence of the menstrual epoch that women have aroused 
 these emotions, but also at childbirth. "A sentiment of religious 
 horror," he continues, "which can reach such a degree of in- 
 tensity, which can be called forth by so many circumstances, and 
 reappears regularly every month to last for a week at least, can- 
 not fail to extend its influence beyond the periods to which it 
 was originally confined, and to affect the whole course of life. 
 A being who must be secluded or avoided for weeks, months, or 
 years preserves something of the characteristics to which the 
 isolation was due, even outside those special periods. And, in 
 fact, in these communities, the separation of the sexes is not 
 merely intermittent ; it has become chronic. The two elements 
 of the population live separately." Durkheim proceeds to argue 
 that the origin of the occult powers attributed to the feminine 
 organism is to be found in primitive ideas concerning blood. 
 Not only menstrual blood but any kind of blood is the object of 
 
 1 J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, Chapter IV. 
 
 19 
 
290 APPENDIX A. 
 
 such feelings among savage and barbarous peoples. All sorts 
 of precautions must be observed with regard to blood ; in it re- 
 sides a divine principle, or as Eomans, Jews, and Arabs believed, 
 life itself. The prohibition to drink wine, the blood of the grape, 
 found among some peoples, is traced to its resemblance to blood, 
 and to its sacrificial employment (as among the ancient Arabians 
 and still in the Christian sacrament) as a substitute for drinking 
 blood. Throughout, blood is generally taboo, and it taboos every- 
 thing that comes in contact with it. Now woman is chronically 
 "the theatre of bloody manifestations," and therefore she tends 
 to become chronically taboo for the other members of the com- 
 munity. "A more or less conscious anxiety, a certain religious 
 fear, cannot fail to enter into all the relations of her companions 
 with her, and that is why all such relations are reduced to a mini- 
 mum. Eelations of a sexual character are specially excluded. In 
 the first place, such relations are so intimate that they are incom- 
 patible with the sort of repulsion which the sexes must experi- 
 ence for each other; the barrier between them does not permit 
 of such a close union. In the second place, the organs of the 
 body here specially concerned are precisely the source of the 
 dreaded manifestations. Thus it is natural that the feelings of 
 aversion inspired by women attain their greatest intensity at this 
 point. Thus it is, also, that of all parts of the feminine organ- 
 ization it is this region which is most severely shut out from 
 commerce." So that, while the primitive emotion is mainly one 
 of veneration, and is allied to that experienced for kings and 
 priests, there is an element of fear in such veneration, and what 
 men fear is to some extent odious to them.^ 
 
 These conceptions necessarily mingled at a very early period 
 with men's ideas of sexual intercourse with women and espe- 
 cially with menstruating women. Contact with women, as 
 Crawley shows by abundant illustration, is dangerous. In any 
 case, indeed, the same ideas being transferred to women also. 
 
 1 E. Durkheim, "La Prohibition de I'lnceste et ses Origines," 
 L'Annie Sociologique, Premiere Ann6e, 1898, esp. pp. 44, 46-47, 48, 50-57. 
 Crawley (Mystic Rose, p. 212) opposes Durkheim's view as to the sig- 
 nificance of blood in relation to the attitude towards women. 
 
MENSTRUATION ON THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 291 
 
 coitus produces weakness, and it prevents the acquisition of 
 supernatural powers. Thus, among the western tribes of Canada, 
 Boas states : "Only a youth who has never touched a woman, or 
 a virgin, both being called tc 'e 'its, can become shamans. After 
 having had sexual intercourse men as well as women become 
 t 'k-6 'el, i.e., weak, incapable of gaining supernatural powers. 
 The faculty cannot be regained by subsequent fasting and ab- 
 stinence."^ The mysterious effects of sexual intercourse in gen- 
 eral are intensified in the case of intercourse with a menstruating 
 woman. Thus the ancient Indian legislator declares that "the 
 wisdom, the energy, the strength, the sight, and the vitality of 
 a man who approaches a woman covered with menstrual excre- 
 tions utterly perish."^ It will be seen that these ideas are 
 impartially spread over the most widely separated parts of the 
 globe. They equally affected the Christian Church, and the 
 Penitentials ordained forty or fifty days penance for sexual inter- 
 course during menstruation. 
 
 Yet the twofold influence of the menstruating woman re- 
 mains clear when we review the whole group of influences which 
 in this state she is supposed to exert. She by no means acts 
 only by paralyzing social activities and destroying the powers 
 of life, by causing flowers to fade, fruit to fall from the trees, 
 grains to lose their germinative power, and grafts to die. She 
 is not accurately summed up in the old lines : — 
 
 "Oh! menstruating woman, thou'rt a fiend 
 From whom all nature should be closely screened." 
 
 Her powers are also beneficial. A woman at this time, as 
 ^lian expressed it, is in regular communication with the starry 
 bodies. Even at other times a woman when led naked around 
 the orchard protected it from caterpillars, said Pliny, and this 
 belief is acted upon (according to Bastanzi) even in the Italy of 
 to-day.3 A garment stained with a virgin's menstrual blood, it 
 
 1 British Association Report on 'North Western Triies of Canada, 
 1890, p. 581. 
 
 2 laws of Manu, iv, 41. 
 
 3 Pliny, who, in Book VII, Chapter XIII, and Book XXVIII, Chari- 
 ter XXIII, of his Natural History, gives long lists of the various good 
 and evil influences attributed to menstruation, writes in the latter 
 
292 APPENDIX A. 
 
 is said in Bavaria, is a certain safeguard against cuts and stabs. 
 It will also extinguish fire. It was valuable as a love-philter; 
 as a medicine its uses have been endless.^ A sect of Valentinians 
 even attributed sacramental virtues to menstrual blood, and par- 
 took of it as the blood of Christ. The Church soon, however, 
 acquired a horror of menstruating women ; they were frequently 
 not allowed to take the sacrament or to enter sacred places, and 
 it was sometimes thought best to prohibit the presence of women 
 altogether.2 The Anglo-Saxon Penitentials declared that men- 
 struating women must not enter a church. It appears to have 
 been Gregory II who overturned this doctrine. 
 
 In our own time the slow disintegration of primitive ani- 
 mistic conceptions, aided certainly by the degraded conception 
 of sexual phenomena taught by mediaeval monks — for whom 
 woman was "templum cedificatum super cloacam"- — ^has led to a 
 disbelief in the more salutary influences of the menstruating 
 woman. A fairly widespread faith in her pernicious influence 
 alone survives. It may be traced even ,in practical and com- 
 mercial — one might add, medical — quarters. In the great sugar- 
 refineries in the North of Prance the regulations strictly forbid 
 a woman to enter the factory while the sugar is boiling or cool- 
 ing, the reason given being that, if a woman were to enter during 
 her period, the sugar would blacken. Por the same reason — ^to 
 turn to the East — ^no woman is employed in the opium manu- 
 factory at Saigon, it being said that the opium would turn and 
 
 place: "Hailstorms, they say, whirlwinds, and lightnings, even, will 
 be scared away by a woman uncovering her body while her mdnthly 
 courses are upon her. The same, too, with all other kinds of tempestuous 
 weather; and out at sea, a storm may be stilled by a woman uncover- 
 ing her body merely, even though not menstruating at the time. At 
 any other time, also, if a woman strips herself naked while she is men- 
 struating, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, 
 beetles, and other vermin will fall from off the ears of corn." 
 
 1 See Bourke, Soatologic Rites of a.ll Nations, 1891, pp. 217-219, 
 250 and 254; Ploss and Max Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i; H. L. Strack, 
 Der Bluiaberglaube in der MensoKheit, fourth edition, 1892, pp. 14-18. 
 The last mentioned refers to the efficacy frequently attributed to men- 
 strual blood in the Middle Ages in curing leprosy, and gives instances, 
 occurring even in Germany to-day, of girls who have administered drops 
 of menstrual blood in coffee to their sweethearts, to make sure of retain- 
 ing their affections. 
 
 2 See, e.g., Dufour, Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. iii, p. 115. 
 
MENSTRUATION ON THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 293 
 
 become bitter, while Annamite women say that it is very difficult 
 for them to prepare opium-pipes during the catamenial period. ^ 
 In India, again, when a native in charge of a limekiln which 
 had gone wrong, declared that one of the women workers 
 must be menstruating, all the women — Hindus, Mahometans, 
 aboriginal Gonds, etc., — showed by their energetic denials that 
 they understood this superstition.^ 
 
 In 1878 a member of the British Medical Association wrote 
 to the British Medical Journal, asking whether it was true that 
 if a woman cured hams while menstruating the hams would be 
 spoiled. He had known this to happen twice. Another medical 
 man wrote that if so, what would happen to the patients of men- 
 struating lady doctors ? A third wrote (in the Journal for April 
 27, 1878) : "I thought the fact was so generally known to every 
 housewife and cook that meat would spoil if salted at the men- 
 strual period, that I am surprised to see so many letters on the 
 subject in the Journal. If I am not mistaken, the question was 
 mooted many years ago in the periodicals. It is undoubtedly 
 the fact that meat will be tainted if cured by women at the cata- 
 menial period. Whatever the rationale may be, I can speak posi- 
 tively as to the fact." 
 
 It is probably the influence of these primitive ideas which 
 has caused surgeons and gynaecologists to dread operations during 
 the catamenial period. Such, at all events, is the opinion of a 
 distinguished authority. Dr. William Goodell, who wrote in 
 1891^ : "I have learned to unlearn the teaching that women must 
 not be subjected to a surgical operation during the monthly flux. 
 Our forefathers, from time immemorial, have thought and taught 
 that the presence of a menstruating woman would pollute sol- 
 emn religious rites, would sour milk, spoil the fermentation in 
 wine-vats, and much other mischief in a general way. Influenced 
 
 1 Dr. L. Laurent gives these instances, "De Quelques Phenom6nes 
 Mecaniques produits au moment de la Menstruation," Annates des Sci- 
 ences PsycTiiques, September and October, 1897. 
 
 ^Journal Anthropological Society of Bombay, 1890, p. 403. Even 
 the glance of a menstruating woman is widely believed to have serious 
 results. See Tuchmann, "La Fascination," Milasine, 1888, pp. 347 et seq. 
 
 3 As quoted in the Provincial Medical Journal, April, 1891. 
 
294 APPENDIX A. 
 
 by hoary tradition, modern physicians very generally postpone 
 all operative treatment until the ilow has ceased. But why this 
 delay, if time is precious, and it enters as an important factor in 
 the case? I have found menstruation to be the very best time 
 to curette away fungous vegetations of the endometrium, for, 
 being swollen then by the afflux of blood, they are larger than 
 at any other time, and can the more readily be removed. There 
 is, indeed, no surer way of cheeking or of stopping a metror- > 
 rhagia than by curetting the womb during the very flow. While 
 I do not select this period for the removal of ovarian cysts, or for 
 other abdominal work, such as the extirpation of the ovaries, or 
 a kidney, or breaking up intestinal adhesions, etc., yet I have not 
 hesitated to perform these operations at such a time, and have 
 never had reason to regret the course. The only operations that 
 I should dislike to perform during menstruation would be those 
 involving the womb itself." 
 
 It must be added to this that we still have to take into 
 consideration not merely the surviving influence of ancient 
 primitive beliefs, but the possible existence of actual nervous 
 conditions during the menstrual period, producing what may 
 be described as an abnormal nervous tension. In this way, we 
 are doubtless concerned with a tissue of phenomena, inextricably 
 woven of folk-lore, autosuggestion, false observation, and real 
 mental and nervous abnormality. Laurent {loc. cit.) has brought 
 forward several cases which may illustrate this point. Thus, he 
 speaks of two young girls of about 16 and 17, slightly neuropathic, 
 but without definite hysterical symptoms, who, during the men- 
 strual period, feel themselves in a sort of electrical state, "with 
 tingling and prickling sensations and feelings of attraction or 
 repulsion at the contact of various objects." These girls believe 
 their garments stick to their skin during the periods ; it was only 
 with difficulty that they could remove their slippers, though fit- 
 ting easily ; stockings had to be drawn oif violently by another per- 
 son, and they had given up changing their chemises during the 
 period because the linen became so glued to the skin. An 
 orchestral performer on the double-bass informed Laurent that 
 whenever he left a tuned double-bass in his lodgings during 
 
MEKSTEUATIOK ON THE POSITION 03? WOMEN. 295 
 
 his wife's period a string snapped; consequently he always re- 
 moved his instrument at this time to a friend's house. He added 
 that the same thing happened two years earlier with a mistress, 
 a cafe-concert singer, who had, indeed, warned him beforehand. 
 A harpist also informed Laurent that she had been obliged to 
 give up her profession because during her periods several strings 
 of her harp, always the same strings, broke, especially when she 
 was playing. A friend of Laurent's, an official in Cochin China, 
 also told him that the strings of his violin often snapped during 
 the menstrual periods of his Annamite mistress, who informed 
 him that Annamite women are familiar with the phenomenon, 
 and are careful not to play on their instruments at this time. 
 Two young ladies, both good violinists, also affirmed that ever 
 since their first menstruation they had noted a tendency for the 
 strings to snap at this period; one, a genuine artist, who often 
 performed at charity concerts, systematically refused to play at 
 these times, and was often embarrassed to find a pretext; the 
 other, who admitted that she was nervous and irritable at such 
 times, had given up playing on account of the trouble of changing 
 the strings so frequently. Laurent also refers to the frequency 
 with which women break things during the menstrual periods, 
 and considers that this is not simply due to the awkwardness 
 caused by nervous exhaustion or hysterical tremors, but that there 
 is spontaneous breakage. Most usually it happens that a glass 
 breaks when it is being dried with a cloth; needles also break 
 with unusual facility at this time ; clocks are stopped by merely 
 placing the hand upon them. 
 
 I do not here attempt to estimate critically the validity of 
 these alleged manifestations (some of which may certainly be 
 explained by the unconscious muscular action which forms the 
 basis of the phenomena of table-turning and thought-reading) ; 
 such a task may best be undertaken through the minute study of 
 isolated cases, and in this place I am merely concerned with the 
 general influence of the menstrual state in affecting the social 
 position of women, without reference to the anaylsis of the ele- 
 ments that go to make up that influence. 
 
 There is only one further point to which attention may be 
 
296 APPENDIX A. 
 
 called. I allude to the way in which the more favorable side 
 of the primitive conception of the menstruating woman — as 
 priestess, sibyl, prophetess, an almost miraculous agent for good, 
 an angel, the peculiar home of the divine element — ^was slowly 
 and continuously carried on side by side with the less favorable 
 view, through the beginnings of European civilization until our 
 own times. The actual physical phenomena of menstruation, 
 with the ideas of taboo associated with that state, sank into the 
 background as culture evolved; but, on the other hand, the 
 ideas of the angelic position and spiritual mission of women, 
 based on the primitive conception of the mystery associated with 
 menstruation, still in some degree persisted. 
 
 It is evident, however, that, while, in one form or another, 
 the more favorable aspect of the primitive view of women's magic 
 function has never quite died out, the gradual decay and deg- 
 radation of the primitive view has, on the whole, involved a lower 
 estimate of women's nature and position. Woman has always 
 been the witch; she was so even in ancient Babylonia; but she 
 has ceased to be the priestess. The early Teutons saw "sanctum 
 aliquid et providum" in women who, for the mediaeval German 
 preacher, were only "hestice Hpedales" ; and Schopenhauer and 
 even Kietzsche have been more inclined to side with the preacher 
 than with the half-naked philosophers of Tacitus's day. But 
 both views alike are but the extremes of the same primitive con- 
 ception; and the gradual evolution from one extreme of the 
 magical doctrine to the other was inevitable. 
 
 In an advanced civilization, as we see, these ideas having 
 their ultimate basis on the old story of the serpent, and on a spe- 
 cial and mysterious connection between the menstruating woman 
 and the occult forces of magic, tend to die out. The separation of 
 the sexes they involve becomes unnecessary. Living in greater 
 community with men, women are seen to possess something, it 
 may well be, but less than before, of the angel-devil of early 
 theories. Menstruation is no longer a monstrific state requiring 
 spiritual taboo, but a normal physiological process, not without 
 its psychic influences on the woman herself and on those who 
 live with her. 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 Sexual PjiRiODiciTY in Men. 
 By F. H. Pebbt-Coste, B.Sc. (Lond.). 
 
 In a recent brochure on the "Ehythm of the Pulse"^ I 
 showed inter alia that the readings of the pulse, in both man and 
 woman, if arranged ia limar monthly periods, and averaged over 
 several years, displayed a clear, and sometimes very strongly 
 marked and symmetrical, rhythm.^ After pointing out that, in 
 at any rate some cases, the male and female pulse-curves, both 
 monthly and annual, seemed to be converse to one another, I 
 added : "It is difficult to ignore the suggestion that in this trac- 
 ing of the monthly rhythm of the pulse we have a history of the 
 monthly function in women ; and that, if so, the tracing of the 
 male pulse may eventually afEord us some help in discovering a 
 corresponding monthly period in men: the existence of which 
 has been suggested by Mr. Havelock Ellis and Professor Stanley 
 Hall, among other writers. Certainly the mere fact that we can 
 trace a clear monthly rhythm in man's pulse seems to point 
 strongly to the existence of a monthly physiological period in 
 him also." 
 
 Obviously, however, it is only indirectly and by inference 
 that we can argue from a monthly rhythm of the pulse in men 
 to a male sexual periodicity ; but 1 am now able to adduce more 
 direct evidence that will fairly demonstrate the existence of a 
 sexual periodicity in men. 
 
 1 First published in the University Magazine and Free Review of 
 February, 1898, and since reprinted as a pamphlet. A preliminary com- 
 munication appeared in Nature, May 14, 1891. 
 
 [2 Later study (1906) has convinced me that my attempt to find 
 a lunar-monthly period in the female pulse was vitiated by a hopeless 
 error : for any monthly rhythm in a woman must be sought by arranging 
 her records according to her own menstrual month; and this menstrual 
 month may vary in different women, from considerably less than a lunar 
 month to thirty days or more.] 
 
 (297) 
 
298 APPENDIS B. 
 
 We will start from the fact that celibacy is profoundly "un- 
 natural, and is, therefore, a physical — as well as an emotional and 
 intellectual — abnormality. This being so, it is entirely in accord 
 with all that we know of physiology that, when relief to the sex- 
 ual secretory system by Nature's means is denied, and when, in 
 consequence, a certain degree of tension or pressure has been 
 attained, the system should relieve itself by a spontaneous dis- 
 charge — such discharge being, of course, in the strict sense of 
 the term, pathological, since it would never occur in any animal 
 that followed the strict law of its physical being without any re- 
 gard to other and higher laws of concern for its fellows. 
 
 ISTotoriouslj'^, that which we should have anticipated a priori 
 actually occurs; for any unmarried man, who lives in strict 
 chastity, periodically experiences, while sleeping, a loss of semi- 
 nal fluid — such phenomena being popularly referred to as wet 
 dreams.'^ 
 
 During some eight or ten years I have carefully recorded the 
 (j.currence of such discharges as I have experienced myself, and 
 I have now accumulated sufficient data to justify an attempt to 
 formulate some provisional conclusions. ^ 
 
 In order to render these observations as Serviceable as may 
 be to students of periodicity, I here repeat (at the request of Mr. 
 Havelock Ellis) the statement which was subjoined, for the same 
 reasons, to my "Ehythm of the Pulse." These observations upon 
 myself were made between the ages of 20 and 33. I am about 5 
 feet, 9 inches tall, broad-shouldered, and weigh about 10 stone 
 3 lbs. net — this weight being, I believe, about 7 lbs. below the 
 normal for my height. Also I have green-brown eyes, very dark- 
 brown hair, and a complexion that leads strangers frequently to 
 
 1 I may add, however, that in my own ease these discharges are — so 
 far as I can trust my waking consciousness — frequently, if not usually, 
 dreamless; and that strictly sexual dreams are extremely rare, notwith- 
 standing the possession of a strongly emotional temperament. 
 
 2 If I can trust my memory, I first experienced this discharge when 
 a few months under fifteen years of age, and, if so, within a few weeks 
 of the time when I was, in an instant, suddenly struck with the thought 
 that possibly the religion in which I had been educated might be false. 
 It is curiously interesting that the advent ol puberty should have been 
 heralded by this intellectual crisis. 
 
SEXUAL PERIODICITY IN MEN. 299 
 
 mistake me for a foreigner — this complexion being, perhaps, 
 attributable to some Huguenot blood, although on the maternal 
 side I am, so far as all information goes, pure English. I can 
 stand a good deal of heat, enjoy relaxing climates, am at once 
 upset by ^'bracing" sea-air, hate the cold, and sweat profusely 
 after exercise. To this it will sufBce to add that my tempera- 
 ment is of a decidedly nervous and emotional type. 
 
 Before proceeding to remark upon the various rhythms that 
 I have discovered, I will tabulate the data on which my conclu- 
 sions are founded. The numbers of discharges recorded in the 
 years in question are as follows: — 
 
 In 1886, 30. (Eecords commenced in April.) 
 
 In 1887, 40. 
 
 In 1888, 37. 
 
 In 1889, 18. (Pretty certainly not fully recorded.) 
 
 In 1890, (No records kept this year.^) 
 
 In 1891, 19. (Eecords recommenced in June.) 
 
 In 1893, 35. 
 
 In 1893, 40. 
 
 In 1894, 38. 
 
 In 1895, 36. 
 
 In 1896, 36. 
 
 In 1897, 35. 
 
 Average, 37. (Omitting 1886, 1889, and 1891.) 
 
 Thus I have complete records for eight years, and incom- 
 plete records for three more; and the remarkable concord be- 
 tween the respective annual numbers of observations in these 
 eight years not only affords us intrinsic evidence of the accuracy 
 of my records, but, also, at once proves that there is an undeni- 
 able regularity in the occurrence of these sexual discharges, and, 
 therefore, gives us reason for expecting to find this regularity 
 
 1 This unfortunate breach in the records was due to the fact that, 
 failing to discover any regularity in, or law of, the occurrences of the 
 discharges, I became discouraged and abandoned my records. In June, 
 1891, a re-examination of my pulse-records having led to my discovery 
 of a lunar-monthly rhythm of the pulse, my interest in other physio- 
 logical periodicities was reawakened, and I recommenced my records of 
 these discharges. 
 
300 APPENDIX B. 
 
 rhythmical. Moreover, since it seemed reasonable to expect that 
 there might be more than one rhythm, I have examined my data 
 with a view to discovering (1) an annual, (2) a lunar-monthly, 
 and (3) a weekly rhythm, and I now proceed to show that all 
 three such rhythms exist. 
 
 The Annual Ehtthm. 
 
 It is obvious that, in searching for an annual rhythm, we 
 must ignore the records of the three incomplete years ; but those 
 of the remaining eight are graphically depicted upon Chart 8. 
 The curves speak so plainly for themselves that any comment 
 were almost superfluous, and the concord between the various 
 curves, although, of course, not perfect, is far greater than the 
 scantiness of the data would have justified us in expecting. The 
 curves all agree in pointing to the existence of three well-defined 
 maxima, — viz., in March, June, and September, — ^these being, 
 therefore, the months in which the sexual instinct is most active ; 
 and the later curves show that there is also often a fourth maxi- 
 mum in January. In the earlier years the March and June 
 maxima are more strikingly marked than the September one; 
 but the uppermost curve shows that on the average of all eight 
 years the September maximum is the highest, the June and 
 January maxima occupying the second place, and the March 
 maximum being the least strongly marked of all. 
 
 Now, remembering that, in calculating the curves of the 
 annual rhythm of the pulse, I had found it necessary to average 
 two months' records together, in order to bring out the full 
 significance of the rhythm, I thought it well to try the effect 
 upon these curves also of similarly averaging two months to- 
 gether. At first my results were fairly satisfactory ; but, as my 
 data increased year by year, I found that these curves were con- 
 tradicting one another, and therefore concluded that I had 
 selected unnatural periods for my averaging. My first attempted 
 remedy was to arrange the months in the pairs December-Jan- 
 uary, February-March, etc., instead of in January-February, 
 March-April, etc.; but with these pairs I fared no better than 
 with the former. I then arranged the months in the triplets. 
 
SEXUAL PEKIODICITY IN MEN. 301 
 
 January-Pebruary-March, etc.; and the results are graphically 
 recorded on Chart 7. Here, again, comment would be quite 
 futile, but I need only point out that, on the whole, the sexual 
 activity rises steadily during the first nine months in the year 
 to its maximum in September, and then sinks rapidly and 
 abruptly during the next three to its minimum in December. 
 
 The study of these curves suggests two interesting ques- 
 tions, to neither of which, however, do the data afford us an 
 answer. 
 
 In the first place, are the alterations, in my case, of the 
 maximum of the discharges from March and June in the earlier 
 years to September in the later, and tbe interpolation of a new 
 secondary maximum in January, correlated with the increase in 
 age ; or is the discrepancy due simply to a temporary irregularity 
 that would have been equally averaged out had I recorded the 
 discharges of 1881-89 instead of those from 1887 to 1897 ? 
 
 The second question is one of very great importance — so- 
 cially, ethically, and physically. How often, in this climate, 
 should a man have sexual connection with his wife in order to 
 maintain himself in perfect physiological equilibrium? My re- 
 sults enable us to state definitely the minimum limits, and to 
 reply that 37 embraces annually would be too few; but, unfor- 
 tunately, they give us no clue to the maximum limit. It is 
 obvious that the necessary frequency should be greater than 37 
 times annually, — possibly very considerably in excess thereof, — 
 seeing that the spontaneous discharges, with which we are dealing, 
 are due to over-pressure, and occur only when the system, being 
 denied natural relief, can no longer retain its secretions; and, 
 therefore, it seems very reasonable to suggest that the frequency 
 of natural relief should be some multiple of 37. I do not per- 
 ceive, however, that the data in hand afford us any clue to this 
 multiple, or enable us to suggest either 2, 3, 4, or 5 as the re- 
 quired multiple of 37. It is true that other observations upon 
 myself have afforded me what I believe to be a fairly satisfactory 
 and reliable answer so far as concerns myself ; but these observa- 
 tions are of such a natu're that they cannot be discussed here, and 
 I have no inclination to offer as a counsel to others an opinion 
 
302 APPENDIX B. 
 
 which I am unable to justify by the citation of facts and statis- 
 tics. Moreover, I am quite unable to opine whether, given 3 7 as 
 the annual frequency of spontaneous discharges in a number of 
 men, the multiple required for the frequency of natural relief 
 should be the same in every ease. For aught I know to the con- 
 trary, the physiological idiosyncrasies of men may be so varied 
 that, given two men with an annual frequency of 37 spontaneous 
 discharges, the desired multiple may be in one case X and in 
 the other 3X.1 Our data, however, do clearly denote that the 
 frequency in the six or eight summer months should bear to the 
 frequency of the six or four winter months the proportion of 
 three or four to two.^ It should never be forgotten, however, 
 that, under all conditions, both man and wife should exercise 
 prudence, both selfward and ofherward, and that each should 
 utterly refuse to gratify self by accepting a sacrifice, however 
 willingly offered, that may be gravely prejudicial to the health 
 of the other; for only experience can show whether, in any 
 
 1 As a matter of fact, I take it that we may safely assert that no 
 man who is content to be guided by his own instinctive cravings, and 
 who neither suppresses these, on the one hand, nor endeavors to force 
 himself, on the other hand, will be in any danger of erring by either 
 excess or the contrary. 
 
 [2 It is obvious that the opportunity of continuing such an inquiry 
 as that described in this Appendix, ceases with marriage; but I may 
 add (1906) that certain notes that I have kept with scrupulous exactness 
 during eight years of married life, lend almost no support to tne sugges- 
 tion made in the text — i.e., that sexual desire is greater at one season of 
 the year than at another. The nature of these notes I cannot discuss; 
 but, they clearly indicate that, although there is a slight degree more of 
 sexual desire in the second and third quarters of the year, than in the 
 first and fourth, yet, this difference is so slight as to be almost negligible. 
 Even if the months be rearranged in the triplets — November-December- 
 January, etc.,- — so as to bring the maximum months of May, June, and 
 July together, the difference between the highest quarter and the lowest 
 amounts to an increase of only ten per cent, upon the latter — after 
 allowing, of course, for the abnormal shortness of February; and, 
 n?glecting February, the increase in the maximum months (June and 
 July) over the minimum (November) is equal to an increase of under 14 
 ner cent, upon the latter. These differences are so vastly less than those 
 shoM'n on Chart 7 that they possess almost no significance: but, 
 lest too much stress be laid upon the apparently equalizing influence 
 of married life, it must be added that the records discussed in the text 
 were obtained during residence in London, whereas, since my marriage, 
 I have lived in South Cornwall, where the climate is both milder and 
 more equable.] 
 
SEXUAL PERIODICITY IN MEN. 303 
 
 union, the receptivity of the woman be greater or less than, or 
 equal to, the physical desire of the man. To those, of course, 
 who regard marriage from the old-fashioned and grossly immoral 
 standpoint of Melancthon and other theologians, and who con- 
 sider a wife as the diviaely ordained vehicle for the chartered 
 intemperance of her husband, it will seem grotesque in the high- 
 est degree that a physiological inquirer should attempt to advise 
 them how often to seek the embraces of their wives ; but those 
 who regard woman from the standpoint of a higher ethics, who 
 abhor the notion that she should be only the vehicle for her hus- 
 band's passions, and who demand that she shall be mistress of her 
 own body, will not be ungrateful for any guidance that physiology 
 can afford them. It will be seen presently, moreover, that the 
 study of the weekly rhythm does afford us sonie less inexact clue 
 to the desired solution. 
 
 One curious fact may be mentioned before we quit this in- 
 teresting question. It is stated that "Solon required [of the 
 husband] three payments per month. By the Misna a daily debt 
 was imposed upon an idle vigorous young husband ; twice a week 
 on a citizen ; once in thirty days on a camel-driver ; once in six 
 months on a seaman."^ Now it is certainly striking that Solon's 
 "three payments per month" exactly correspond with my rec- 
 ords of 37 discharges annually. Had Solon similarly recorded a 
 series of observations upon himself? 
 
 The Ldnae-Monthlt Ehtthm. 
 
 We now come to that division of the inquiry which is of 
 the greatest physiological interest, although of little social im- 
 port. Is there a monthly period in man as well as in woman? 
 My records indicate clearly that there is. 
 
 In searching for this monthly rhythm I have utilized not 
 only the data of the eight completely-recorded years, but also 
 those of the three years of 1886, 1889, and 1891, for, although 
 it would obviously have been inaccurate to utilize these ineom- 
 
 1 Seidell's Uasor Eebraica as quoted in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, 
 vol. V, p. 52, of Bohn's edition. 
 
304 APPENDIX B. 
 
 plete records when calculating the yearly rhythm, there seems 
 no objection to making use of them in the present section of 
 the iaquiry. It is hardly necessary to remark that the terms 
 "iirst day of the month," "second day," "third day," etc., are to 
 be understood as denoting "new-moon day," "day after new 
 moon," "third lunar day," and so on ; but it should be explained 
 that, since these discharges occur at night, I have adopted the 
 astronomical, instead of the civil, day; so that a new moon oc- 
 curring between noon yesterday and noon to-day is reckoned as 
 occurring yesterday, and yesterday is regarded as the first lunar 
 day : thus, a discharge occurring in the night between December 
 31st and January 1st is tabulated as occurring on December 31st, 
 and, in the present discussion, is assigned to the lunar day com- 
 prised between noon of December 31st and noon of January 1st. 
 
 Since it is obvious that the number of discharges in any 
 one year— averaging, as they do, only 1.25 per day — are far too 
 few to yield a curve of any value, I have combined my data in 
 two series. The dotted curve on Chart 9 is obtained by com- 
 bining the results of the years 1886-92 : two of these years are 
 incompletely recorded, and there are no records for 1890; the 
 total number of observations was 179. The broken curve is 
 obtained by combining those of the years 1893-97, the total num- 
 ber of observations being 185. Even so, the data are far too 
 scanty to yield a really characteristic curve; but the continuous 
 curve, which sums up the results of the eleven years, is more 
 reliable, and obviously more satisfactory. 
 
 If the two former curves be compared, it will be seen that, 
 on the whole, they display a general concordance, such differ- 
 ences as exist being attributable chiefly to two facts: (1) that 
 the second curve is more even throughout, neither maximum nor 
 minimum being so strongly marked as in the first ; and (2) that 
 the main maximum occurs in the middle of the month instead 
 of on the second lunar day, and the absence of the marked 
 initial maximum alters the character of the first week or so of 
 this curve. It is, however, scarcely fair to lay any great stress 
 on the characters of curves obtained from such scanty data, and 
 
SEXUAL PERIODICITY IN MEN. 305 
 
 we will, therefore, pass to the continuous curve, the study of 
 which will prove more valuable, i 
 
 Now, even a cursory examination of this continuous curve 
 will yield the following results : — 
 
 1. The discharges occur most frequently on the second lunar 
 day. 
 
 3. The days of the next most frequent discharges are the 
 32d; the 13th; the 7th, 30th, and 26th; the 11th and 16th; 
 so that, if we regard only the first six of these, we find that the 
 discharges occur most frequently on the 2d, 7th, 13th, 20th, 23d, 
 and 26th lunar days — i.e., the discharges occur most frequently 
 on days separated, on the average, by four-day intervals; but 
 actually the period between the 20th and 32d days is that char- 
 acterized by the most frequent discharges. 
 
 3. The days of minimum of discharge are the 1st, 5th, 15th, 
 18th, and 21st. 
 
 4. The curve is characterized by a continual see-sawing; so 
 that every notable maximum is immediately followed by a 
 notable minimum. Thus, the curve is of an entirely different 
 character from that representing the monthly rhythm of the 
 pulse,2 and this is only what one might have expected; for, 
 whereas the mean pulsations vary only very slightly from day 
 to day, — ^thus giving rise to a gradually rising or sinking curve, 
 — a discharge from the sexual system relieves the tension by 
 exhausting the stored-up secretion, and is necessarily followed 
 by some days of rest and inactivity. In the very nature of the 
 case, therefore, a curve of this kind could not possibly be other- 
 wise than most irregular if the discharges tended to occur most 
 frequently upon definite days of the month; and thus the very 
 irregularity of the curve affords us proof that there is a regular 
 male periodicity, such that on certain days of the month there 
 is greater probability of a spontaneous discharge than on any 
 other days. 
 
 1 1 may add that the curve yielded by 1896-97 is remarkably parallel 
 with that yielded by the preceding nine years, but I have not thought 
 it worth while to chart these two additional curves. 
 
 2 See "Ehythm of the Pulse," Chart 4. 
 
 20 
 
306 APPENDIX B. 
 
 5. Gratifying, however, though this irregularity of the curve 
 may be, yet it entails a corresponding disadvantage, for we are 
 precluded thereby from readily perceiving the characteristics of 
 the monthly rhythm as a whole. I thought that perhaps this 
 aspect of the rhythm might be rendered plainer if I calculated 
 the data into two-day averages; and the result, as shown iq 
 Chart 10, is extremely satisfactory. Here we can at once perceive 
 the wonderful and almost geometric sjrmmetry of the monthly 
 rhythm ; indeed, if the third maximum were one unit higher, if 
 the first minimum were one unit lower, and if the lines joining 
 the second minimum and third maximum, and the fourth maxi- 
 mum and fourth minimum, were straight instead of being slightly 
 broken, then the curve would, in its chief features, be geometric- 
 ally symmetrical; and this symmetry appears to me to afford a 
 convincing proof of the representative accuracy of the curve. 
 We see that the month is divided into five periods; that the 
 maxima occur on the following pairs of days: the 19th-20th, 
 13th-14th, 25th-26th, lst-2d, 7th-8th; and that the minima 
 occur at the beginning, end, and exact middle of the month. 
 There have been many idle superstitions as to the influence of 
 the moon upon the earth and its inhabitants, and some beliefs 
 that — once deemed equally idle — have now been re-instated in 
 the regard of science; but it would certainly seem to be a very 
 fascinating and very curious fact if the influence of the moon 
 upon men should be such as to regulate the spontaneous dis- 
 charges of their sexual system. Certainly the lovers of all ages 
 would then have 'Tjuilded better than they knew," when they 
 reared altars of devotional verse to that chaste goddess Artemis. 
 
 The Weekly Rhythm. 
 We now come to the third branch of our inquiry, and have 
 to ask whether there be any weekly rhythm of the sexual activity. 
 A priori it might be answered that to expect any such weekly 
 rhythm were absurd, seeing that our week — unlike the lunar 
 month of the year — is a purely artificial and conventional period ; 
 while, on the other hand, it might be retorted that the existence 
 of an induced weekly periodicity is quite conceivable, such perio- 
 
SEXUAL PEEIODICITT IN MEN. 807 
 
 dicity being induced by the habitual difference between our oc- 
 cupation, or mode of life, on one or two days of the week and 
 that on the remaining days. In such an inquiry, however, a 
 priori argument is futile, as the question can be answered only 
 by an induction from observations, and the curves on Chart 11 
 {A and B) prove conclusively that there is a notable weekly 
 rhythm. The existence of this weekly rhythm being granted, 
 it would naturally be assumed that either the maximum or the 
 minimum would regularly occur on Saturday or Sunday; but 
 an examination of the curves discloses the unexpected result that 
 the day of maximum discharge varies from year to year. Thus 
 itisi 
 
 Sunday in 1888, 1892, 1896. 
 
 Tuesday in 1894. 
 
 Thursday in 1886, 1897. 
 
 Friday in 1887. 
 
 Saturday in 1893 and 1895. 
 
 Since, in Chart 11, the curves are drawn from Sunday to 
 Sunday, it is obvious that the real symmetry of the curve is 
 brought out in those years only which are characterized by a 
 Sunday maximum ; and, accordingly, in Chart 12 I have depicted 
 the curves in a more suitable form. 
 
 Chart 12 A is obtained by combining the data of 1888, 
 1892, and 1896 : the years of a Sunday maximum. Curve 12 B 
 represents the results of 1894, the year of a Tuesday maximum — 
 multiplied throughout by three in order to render the curve 
 strictly comparable with the former. Curve 12 C represents 1886 
 and 1897 — ^the years of a Thursday maximum — similarly multi- 
 plied by 1.5. In Curve 12 D we have the results of 1887 — ^the 
 year of a Friday maximum — again multiplied by three; and in 
 Curve 12 E those of 1893 and 1895 — ^the years of a Saturday 
 maximum — ^multiplied by 1.5. Finally, Curve 12 F represents 
 the combined results of all nine years plus (the latter half of) 
 
 1 Aa will be observed, I have omitted the results of the incompletely 
 recorded years of 1889 and 1891. The apparent explanation of this 
 curious oscillation will be given directly. 
 
308 APPENDIX B. 
 
 1891 ; and this curve shows that, on the whole period, there is a 
 very strongly marked Sunday maximum. 
 
 I hardly think that these curves call for much comment. 
 In their general character they display a notable concord among 
 themselves ; and it is significant that the most regular of the five 
 curves are A and B, representing the combinations of three 
 years and of two years, respectively, while the least regular is B, 
 which is based upon the records of one year only. In every case 
 we find that the maximum which opens the week is rapidly suc- 
 ceeded by a minimum, which is itself succeeded by a secondary 
 maximum, — usually very secondary, although in 1894 it nearly 
 equals the primary maximum, — followed again by a second miai- 
 mum — usually nearly identical with the first minimum, — after 
 which there is a rapid rise to the original maximum. The study 
 of these curves fortunately amplifies the conclusion drawn from 
 our study of the annual rhythm, and suggests that, in at least 
 part of the year, the physiological condition of man requires 
 sexual union at least twice a week. 
 
 As to Curve 12 F, its remarkable symmetry speaks for itself. 
 The existence of two secondary maxima, however, has not the 
 same significance as had that of our secondary maximum in the 
 preceding curves; for one of these secondary maxima is due to 
 the influence of the 1894 curve with its primary Tuesday maxi- 
 mum, and the other to the similar influence of Curve with its 
 primary Thursday maximum. Similarly, the veiled third sec- 
 ondary maximum is due to the influence of Curve E. Probably, 
 any student of curves will concede that, on a still larger average, 
 the two secondary maxima of Curve ¥ would be replaced by a 
 single one on Wednesday or Thursday. 
 
 One more question remains for consideration in connection 
 with this weekly rhythm. Is it possible to trace any connection 
 between the weekly and yearly rhythms of such a character that 
 the weekly day of maximum discharge should vary from month 
 to month in the year ; in other words, does the greater frequency 
 of a Sunday discharge characterize one part of the year, that of 
 a Tuesday another, and so on ? In order to answer this question 
 I have re-calculated all my data, with results that are graphically 
 
SEXUAL PERIODICITY IN MEN. 309 
 
 represented in Chart 13. These curves prove that the Sunday 
 maxima discharges occur ia March and September, and the 
 minima in June; that the Monday maxima discharges occur in 
 September, Friday in July, and so on. Thus, there is a regular 
 rhythm, according to which the days of maximum discharge vary 
 from one month of the year to another ; and the existence of this 
 final rhythm appears to me very remarkable. I would especially 
 direct attention to the almost geometric symmetry of the Sunday 
 curve, and to the only less complete symmetry of the Thursday 
 and Friday curves. Certainly in these rhythms we have an 
 ample field for farther study and speculation. 
 
 I have now concluded my study of this fascinating inquiry ; 
 a study that is necessarily incomplete, since it is based upon rec- 
 ords furnished by one individual only. The fact, however, that, 
 even with so few observations, and notwithstanding the conse- 
 quently exaggerated disturbing influence of minor irregularities, 
 such remarkable and \mexpected symmetry is evidenced by these 
 curves, only increases one's desire to have the opportunity of 
 handling a series of observations sufficiently numerous to render 
 the generalizations induced from them absolutely conclusive. I 
 would again appeal^ to heads of colleges to assist this inquiry by 
 enlisting in its aid a band of students. If only one hundred stu- 
 dents, living under similar conditions, could be induced to keep 
 such records with scrupulous regularity for only twelve months, 
 the results induced from such a series of observations would be 
 more than ten times as valuable as those which have only been 
 reached after ten years' observations on my part; and, if other 
 centuries of students in foreign and colonial colleges — e.g.^ in 
 Italy, India, Australia, and America — could be similarly enlisted 
 in this work, we should quickly obtain a series of results exhibit- 
 ing the sexual needs and sexual peculiarities of the male human 
 animal in various climates. Obviously, however, the records of 
 any such students would be worse than useless unless their cai'e 
 and accuracy, on the one hand, and their habitual chastity, on 
 the other, could be implicitly guaranteed. 
 
 1 See "Rhythm of the Pulse," p. 21. 
 
APPENDIX C. 
 
 The Auto-eeotic Factok in Eeligion. 
 
 The intimate association between the emotions of love and 
 religion is well known to all those who are habitually brought 
 into close contact with the phenomena of the religious life. Lore 
 and religion are the two most volcanic emotions to which the 
 human organism is liable^ and it is not surprising that, when 
 there is a disturbance in one of these spheres, the vibrations 
 should readily estend to the other. Nor is it surprising that the 
 two emotions should have a dynamic relation to each other, and 
 that the auto-erotic impulse, being the more primitive and funda- 
 mental of the two impulses, should be able to pass its unex- 
 pended energy over to the religious emotion, there to find t'le 
 expansion hitherto denied it, the love of the human becoming 
 the love of the divine. 
 
 "I was not good enough for man. 
 And so am given to God." 
 
 Even when there is absolute physical suppression on the sex- 
 ual side, it seems probable that thereby a greater intensity of 
 Fpiritual fervor is caused. Many eminent thinkers seem to have 
 been without sexual desire. 
 
 It is a noteworthy and significant fact that the age of love 
 is also the age of conversion. Starbuck, for instance, in his very 
 elaborate study of the psychology of conversion shows that the 
 majority of conversions take place during the period of adoles- 
 cence ; that is, from the age of puberty to about 34 or 25. ^ 
 
 It would be easy to bring forward a long series of observa- 
 tions, from the most various points of view, to show the wide 
 
 1 Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion, 1899. Also, A. H. Daniels, 
 "The New Life," American Journal of Psychology, vol. vi, 1893. Cf. 
 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience. 
 
 (310) 
 
THE AUTO-EEOTIO FACTOR IN EELIGION. 311 
 
 recognition of this close aiSnity between the sexual and the re- 
 ligious emotions. It is probable, as Hahn points out, that the 
 connection between sexual suppression and religious rites, which, 
 we may trace at the very beginning of culture, was due to an 
 instinctive impulse to heighten rather than abolish the sexual 
 element. Early religious rites were largely sexual and orgiastic 
 because they were largely an appeal to the generative forces of 
 Nature to exhibit a beneficial productiveness. Among happily 
 married people, as Hahn remarks, the sexual emotions rapidly 
 give place to the cares and anxieties involved in supporting chil- 
 dren; but when the exercise of the sexual function is prevented 
 by celibacy, or even by castration, the most complete form of 
 celibacy, the sexual emotions may pass iato the psychical sphere 
 to take on a more pronounced shape.^ The early Christians 
 adopted the traditional Eastern association between religion and 
 celibacy, and, as the writings of the Fathers amply show, they 
 expended on sexual matters a concentrated fervor of thought 
 rarely known to the Greek and Eoman writers of the best period.^ 
 As Christian theology developed, the minute inquisition into sex- 
 ual things sometimes became almost an obsession. So far as I am 
 aware, however (I cannot profess to have made any special in- 
 vestigation), it was not until the late Middle Ages that there is 
 any clear recognition of the fact that, between the religious emo- 
 tions and the sexual emotions, there is not only a superficial 
 antagonism, but an underlying relationship. At this time so 
 great a theologian and philosopher as Aquinas said that it is 
 especially on the days when a man is seeking to make himself 
 pleasing to God that the Devil troubles him by polluting him 
 -with, seminal emissions. With somewhat more psychological 
 insight, the wise old Knight of the Tower, Landry, in the four- 
 teenth century, tells his daughters that "no young woman, in 
 
 1 Ed. Hahn, Demeter und Baubo, 1896, pp. 50-51. Hahn is argu- 
 ing for the religious origin of the plough, as a generative implement, 
 drawn by a saered and castrated animal, the ox. G. Herman, in his 
 Genesis, develops the idea that modern religious rites have arisen out of 
 sexual feasts and mysteries. 
 
 2 Bloch {Beitrdge eur ^tiologie der Psychopathia Sesoualis, Bd. I, p. 
 98) points out the great interest taken by the saints and ascetics in 
 sex matters. 
 
312 APPENDIX C. 
 
 love, can ever serve her God with that unfeignedness which she 
 did aforetime. Por I have heard it argued by many who, in 
 their young days, had been in love that, when they were in the 
 church, the condition and the pleasing melancholy in which they 
 found themselves would infallibly set them brooding over all 
 their tender love-sick longings and all their amorous passages, 
 when. they should have been attending to the service which was 
 going on at the time. And such is the property of this mystery 
 of love that it is ever at the moment when the priest is holding 
 our Saviour upon the altar that the most enticing emotions come." 
 After narrating the history of two queens beyond the seas 
 who indulged in amours even on Holy Thursday and Good Fri- 
 day, at midnight in their oratories, when the lights were put out, 
 he concludes : "Every woman in love is more liable to fall in 
 church or at her devotion than at any other time." 
 
 The connection between religious emotion and sexual emo- 
 tion was very clearly set forth by Swift about the end of the 
 seventeenth century, in a passage which it may be worth while to 
 quote from his "Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation 
 of the Spirit." After mentioning that he was informed by a very 
 eminent physician that when the Quakers first appeared he was 
 seldom without female Quaker patients affected with nympho- 
 mania. Swift continues: "Persons of a visionary devotion, 
 either men or women, are, in their complexion, of all others the 
 most amorous. For zeal is frequently kindled from the same 
 spark with other fires, and from inflaming brotherly love will 
 proceed to raise that of a gallant. If we inspect into the usual 
 process of modern courtship, we shall find it to consist in a devout 
 turn of the eyes, called ogling; an artificial form of canting and 
 whining, by rote, every interval, for want of other matter, made 
 up with a shrug, or a hum ; a sigh or a groan ; the style compact 
 of insignificant words, incoherences, and repetitions. These I 
 take to be the most accomplished rules of address to a mistress;. . 
 and where are these performed wifh more dexterity than by the 
 saints? Nay, to bring this argument yet closer, I have been 
 informed by certain sanguine brethren of the first class, that in 
 the height and orgasmus of their spiritual exercise, it has been 
 
THE AUTO-EEOTIC FACTOR IN RELIGION. 313 
 
 frequent with themi . . . ; immediately after which, they 
 found the spirit to relax and flag of a sudden with the -rierves, 
 and they were forced to hasten to a conclusion. This may be far- 
 ther strengthened by observing with wonder how unaccountably 
 all females are attracted by visionary or enthusiastic preachers, 
 though never so contemptible in their outward mien; which is 
 usually supposed to be done upon considerations purely spiritual, 
 without any carnal regards at all. But I have reason to think, 
 the sex hath certain characteristics, by which they form a truer 
 Judgment of human abilities and performings than we ourselves 
 can possibly do of each other. Let that be as it will, thus much 
 is certain, that however spiritual intrigues begin, they generally 
 conclude like all others; they may branch upwards toward 
 heaven, but the root is in the earth. Too intense a contemplation 
 is not the business of flesh and blood ; it must, by the necessary 
 course of things, in a little time let go its hold, and fall into 
 matter. Lovers for the sake of celestial converse, are but an- 
 other sort of Platonics, who pretend to see stars and heaven in 
 ladies' eyes, and to look or think no lower ; but the same pit is 
 provided for both." 
 
 To come down to recent times, in the last century the head" 
 master of Clifton College, when discussing the sexual vices of 
 boyhood, remarked that the boys whose temperament exposes them 
 to these faults are usually far from destitute of religious .'eelings; 
 that there is, and always has been, an undoubted co-existence of 
 religion. and animalism; that emotional appeals and revivals are 
 far from rooting out carnal sin; and that in some places, as is 
 well known, they seem actually to stimulate, even at the present 
 day, to increased licentiousness.^ 
 
 1 This omission was made by the original publisher of the "Dis- 
 course;" several of the most important passages throughout have been 
 similarly cut out. 
 
 2 Rev. J. M. Wilson, Jov/rnal of Education, 1881. At about the 
 same period ( 1882) Spurgeon pointed out in one of his sermons that by a 
 strange, yet natural law, excess of spirituality is next door to sensuality. 
 Theodore Sehroeder has recently brought together a number of opinions 
 of religious teachers, from Henrv More the Platonist to Baring Gould, 
 concerning the close relationshin between sexual passion and religious 
 passion, American Journal of Religious Psychology, 1908. 
 
314 APPENDIX 0. 
 
 It is not difficult to see how, even in technique, the method 
 of the revivalist is a quasi-sexual method, and resembles the 
 attempt of the male to overcome the sexual shyness of the female. 
 "In each case," as W. Thomas remarks, "the will has to be 
 set aside, and strong suggestive means are used; and in both 
 cases the appeal is not of the conflict type, but of an intimate, 
 sympathetic and pleading kind. In the efliort to make a moral 
 adjustment it consequently turns out that a technique is used 
 which was derived originally from sexual life, and the use, so to 
 speak, of the sexual machinery for a moral adjustment involves, 
 in some cases, the carrying over into the general process of some 
 sexual manifestations."! 
 
 The relationship of the sexual and the religious emotions^ 
 like so many other of the essential characters of human nature — 
 is seen in its nakedest shape by the alienist. Esquirol referred 
 to this relationship, and, many years ago, J. B. Friedreich, a 
 German alienist of wide outlook and considerable insight, em- 
 phasized the connection between the sexual and the religious 
 emotions, and brought forward illustrative cases.^ Schroder Van 
 der Kolk also remarked: "I venture to express my conviction 
 that we should rarely err if, in a case of religious melancholy, 
 we assumed the sexual apparatus to be implicated."^ Eegis, in 
 Prance, lays it down that "there exists a close connection be- 
 tween mystic ideas and erotic ideas, and most often these two 
 orders of conception are associated in insanity."* Berthier con- 
 sidered that erotic forms of insanity are those most frequently 
 found in convents. Bevan-Lewis points out how frequently 
 religious exaltation occurs at puberty in women, and religious 
 depression at the climacteric, the period of sexual decline.^ "Re- 
 ligion is very closely allied to love," remarks Savage, "and the 
 
 1 W. Thomas, "The Sexual Element in Sensibility," Psychological 
 Review, Jan., 1904. 
 
 2 System der geriohtUchen PsycTiologie, second edition, 1842, pp. 
 266-68; and more at length in his Allgemeine Diagnostih der psy- 
 chischen Erankheiten, second edition, 1832, pp. 247-51. 
 
 3 Handboek van de Pathologic en Therapie der Krankzinnigheid, 
 1863, p. 139 of English edition. 
 
 4 Manuel pratique de MMecine mentale, 1892, p. 31. 
 B Tecot-hooh of Mental Diseases, p. 393. 
 
THE AUTO-EROTIO FACTOR IN RELIGION. 315 
 
 love of woman and the worship of God are constantly sources of 
 trouble in unstable youth ; it is very interesting to note the fre- 
 quency with which these two deep feelings are associated." ^ 
 "Closely connected with salacity, particularly in women," re- 
 marks Conolly Norman, when discussing mania (Tuke's Dic- 
 tionary of Psychological Medicine), "is religious excitement. 
 . Ecstasy, as we see in cases of acute mental disease, 
 is probably always connected with sexual excitement, if not 
 with sexual depravity. The same association is constantly 
 seen in less extreme cases, and one of the commonest features 
 in the conversation of an acutely maniacal woman is the inter- 
 mingling of erotic and religious ideas." "Patients who believe," 
 remarks Clara Barrus, "that they are the Virgin Mary, the bride 
 of Christ, the Church, 'God's wife,' and 'Kaphael's consort,' are 
 sure, sooner or later, to disclose symptoms which show that they 
 are some way or other sexually depraved."^ Porel, who devotes 
 a chapter of his book Die Sexuelle Frage, to the subject, argues 
 that the strongest feelings of religious emotion are often uncon- 
 sciously rooted in erotic emotion or represent a transformation 
 of such emotion; and, in an interesting discussion (Ch. VI) of 
 this question in his Sexuallehen unserer Zeit, Bloch states that 
 "in a certain sense we may describe the history of religions as the 
 history of a special manifestation of the human sexual instinct." 
 Ball, Brouardel, Morselli, Vallon and Marie,^ C. H. Hughes,* 
 to mention but a few names among many, have emphasized the 
 same point.^ KrafEt-Ebing deals briefly with the connection be- 
 tween holiness and the sexual emotion, and the special liability 
 of the saints to sexual temptations ; he thus states his own con- 
 clusions : "Eeligious and sexual emotional states at the height of 
 their development exhibit a harmony in quantity and quality of 
 excitement, and can thus in certain circumstances act vicariously. 
 
 1 G. H. Savage, Insanity, 1886. 
 
 ^American Journal of Insanity, April, 1895. 
 
 3 "Des Psychoses Religieuses," Archives de Neurologie, 1897. 
 
 4 "Erotopathia," Alienist and Neurologist, October, 1893. 
 
 5 Reference may be specially made to the interesting cTiapter on 
 "Delire Religieux" in Icard's La Femme pendant la Piriode Menstruelle, 
 pp. 211-234. 
 
316 APPENDIX C. 
 
 Both," he adds, "can be converted into cruelty under patho- 
 logical conditions."! 
 
 After quotiag these opinions it is, perhaps, not unnecessary 
 to point out that, while sexual emotion constitutes the main 
 reservoir of energy on which religion can draw, it is far from 
 constituting either the whole content of religion or its root. 
 Murisier, in an able study of the psychology of religious ecstasy, 
 justly protests against too crude an explanation of its nature, 
 though at the same time he admits that "the passion of the re- 
 ligious ecstatic lacks nothing of what goes to make up sexual 
 love, not even jealousy."^ 
 
 Serieux, in his little work, Recherches Cliniques sur les 
 Anomalies de I'lnstinct Sexuel, valuable on account of its instruc- 
 tive cases, records in detail a case which so admirably illustrates 
 this phase of auto-erotism on the borderland between ordinary 
 erotic day-dreaming and religious mysticism, the phenomena for 
 a time reaching an insane degree of intensity, that I summarize 
 it. "Therese M., aged 34, shows physical stigmata of degenera- 
 tion. The heredity is also bad ; the father is a man of reckless 
 and irregular conduct; the mother was at one time in a lunatic 
 asylum. The patient was brought up in' an orphanage, and was a 
 troublesome, volatile child; she treated household occupations 
 with contempt, but was fond of study. Even at an early age her 
 lively imagination attracted attention, and the pleasure which 
 she took in building castles in the air. Prom the age of seven 
 to ten she masturbated. At her first communion she felt that 
 Jesus would for ever be the one master of her heart. At thir- 
 teen, after the death of her mother, she seemed to see her, and 
 to hear her say that she was watching over her child. Shortly 
 
 1 Psychopathia Bemualis, eighth edition, pp. 8 and 11. Gannouch- 
 kine ("La VoluptS, la Cruantg et la Religion," Annates Medico- 
 Psychologique,, 1901, No. 3) has further emphasized this convertibility. 
 
 2 E. Murisier, "Le Sentiment Religieux dans I'Extase,'' Revue Philo- 
 sophique, November, 189S. Starbuck, again (Psychology of Religion, 
 Chapter XXX), in a brief discussion of this point, concludes that "the 
 sexual life, although it has left its impress on fully developed religion, 
 seems to have originally given the psychic impulse which called out the 
 latent possibilities of developments, rather than to have furnished the 
 raw material out of which religion was constructed." 
 
THE AUTO-EROTIC FACTOR IN REUGION, 317 
 
 afterward she was overwhelmed by a new grief, the death of a 
 teacher for whom she cherished great aiiection on account of her 
 pure character. On the following day she seemed to see and 
 hear this teacher, and would not leave the house where the body 
 lay. Tendencies to melancholy appeared. Saddened by the 
 funeral ceremonies, exhorted by nuns, fed on mystic revery, she 
 passed from the orphanage to a convent. She devoted herself 
 solely to the worship of Jesus ; to be like Jesus, to be near Jesus, 
 became her constant pre-occupations. The Virgin's name was 
 rarely seen in her writings, God's name never. 'I wanted,' she 
 said, 'to love Jesus more than any of the nuns I saw, and I evea 
 thought that he had a partiality for me.' She was also haunted 
 by the idea of preserving her purity. She avoided frivolous con- 
 versation, and left the room when marriage was discussed, such a 
 union being incompatible with a pure life ; 'it was my fixed idea 
 for two years to make my soul ever more pure in order to be 
 agreeable to Him; the Beloved is well pleased among the lilies.' 
 "Already, however, in a rudimentary form appeared con- 
 trary tendencies [strictly speaking they were not contrary, but 
 related, tendencies]. Beneath the mystic passion which con- 
 cealed it sexual desire was sometimes felt. At sixteen she ex- 
 perienced emotions which she could not master, when thinking 
 of a priest who, she said, loved her. In spite of all remorse she 
 would have been willing to have relations with him. ITotwith- 
 standing these passing weaknesses, the idea of purity always 
 possessed her. The nuns,, however, were concerned about her 
 exaltation. She was sent away from the convent, became dis- 
 couraged, and took a place as a servant, but her fervor continued. 
 Her confessor inspired her with great affection; she sends 
 him tender letters. She would be willing to have relations with 
 him, even though she considers the desire a temptation of the 
 devil. The ground was now prepared for the manifestation of 
 hallucinations. 'One evening in May,' she writes, 'after being 
 absorbed in thoughts of my confessor, and feeling discouraged, 
 as I thought that Jesus, whom I loved so much, would have noth- 
 ing to do with me, "Mother," I cried out, "what must I do to win 
 your son?" My eyes were fixed on the sky, and I remained in 
 
318 APPENDIX 0. 
 
 a state of mad expectation. It was absurd. I to become the 
 mother of the World ! My heart went on repeating : "Yes, he is 
 coming; Jesus is coming!" ' The psychic erethism, reverbera- 
 ting on the sensorial and sensory centres, led to genital, auditory, 
 and visual hallucinations, which produced the sensation of sexual 
 connection. Tor the first time I went to bed and was not alone. 
 As soon as I felt that touch, I heard the words : "Pear not, it is 
 I." I was lost in. Him whom I loved. For many days I was 
 cradled in a world of pleasure; I saw Him everywhere, over- 
 whelming me with His chaste caresses.' On the following day at 
 mass she seemed to see Calvary before her. 'Jesus was naked 
 and surrounded by a thousand voluptuous imaginations; His 
 arms were loosened from the cross, and he said to me : "Come !" 
 I longed to fly to Him with my body, but could not make up my 
 mind to show myself naked. However, I was carried away by a 
 force I could not control, I threw myself on my Saviour's neck, 
 and felt that all was over between the world and me.' From 
 that day, Tjy sheer reasoning,' she has understood everything. 
 Previously she thought that the religious life was a renunciation 
 of the joys of marriage and enjoyment generally; now she under- 
 stands its object. Jesus Christ desires that she should have rela- 
 tions with a priest ; he is himself incarnated in priests ; just as 
 St. Joseph was the guardian of the Virgin, so are priests the 
 guardians of nuns. She has been impregnated by Jesus, and this 
 imaginary pregnancy pre-occupies her in the highest degree. 
 From this time she masturbated daily. She cannot even go to 
 communion without experiencing voluptuous sensations. Her 
 delusions having thus become systematized, nothing shakes her 
 tenacity in seeking to carry them out ; she attempts at all costs 
 to have relations with her confessor, embraces him, throws her- 
 self at his knees, pursues him, and so becomes a cause of scandal. 
 When brought to the asylum, there is intense sexual excitement, 
 and she masturbates a dozen times a day, even when talking to the 
 doctor. The sexual organs are normal, the vulva moist and red, 
 the vagina is painful to touch ; the contact of the finger causes 
 erectile turgescence. She has had no rest, she says, since she has 
 
THE AUTO-EROTIO FAOTOK IN RELIGION. 319 
 
 learned to love her Jesus. He desires her to have sexual relations 
 with someone, and she cannot succeed ; 'all my soul's strength is 
 arrested by this constant endeavor.' Her new surroundings 
 modify her behavior, and now it is the doctor whom she pursues 
 with her obsessions. 'I expected everything from the charity of 
 the priests I have known; I have not deserved what I wanted 
 from them. But is not a doctor free to do everything for the 
 good of the patients intrusted to him by Providence ? Cannot a 
 doctor thus devote himself ? Since I have tasted the tree of life 
 I am tormented by the desire to share it with a loving friend.' 
 Then she falls in love with an employee, and makes the crudest 
 advances to him, believing that she is thus executing the will of 
 Jesus. 'Necessity makes laws,' she exclaims to him, 'the moments 
 are pressing, I have been waiting too long.' She still speaks of 
 her religious vocation which might be compromised by so long a 
 delay. 'I do not want to get married.' Gradually a transforma- 
 tion took place ; the love of God was effaced and earthly love be-' 
 came more intense than ever. 'Quitting the heights in which I 
 wished to soar, I am coming so near to earth that I shall soon 
 fix my desires there.' In a last letter Therese recognizes with 
 terror the insanity to which the exaltation of her imagination had 
 led her. 'Now I only believe in God and in suffering; I feel 
 that it is necessary for me to get married.' " 
 
 Mariani^ has very fully described a case of erotico-religious 
 insanity (climacteric paranoia on an hysterical basis) in a mar- 
 ried woman of 44. During the early stages of her disorder she 
 inflicted all sorts of penances upon herself (fasting, constant 
 prayer, drinking her own urine, cleaning dirty plates with her 
 tongue, etc.). Finally she felt that by her penances she had 
 obtained forgiveness of her sins, and then began a stage of joy 
 and satisfaction during which she believed that she had entered 
 into a state of the most intimate personal relationship with Jesus. 
 She finally recovered. Mariani shows how closely this history 
 corresponds with the histories of the saints, and that all the acts 
 
 1 "Una Santa,," Archivio di PsioUatria, vol. xix, pp. 438-47, 1898. 
 
320 APPENDIX C. 
 
 and emotions of this woman can be exactly paralleled in the lives 
 of famous saints.^ 
 
 The justice of these comparisons becomes manifest when we 
 turn to the records that have been left by holy persons. A most 
 instructive record from this point of view is the autobiography 
 of Soeur Jeanne des Anges, superior of the Ursulines of Loudun 
 in the seventeenth century.^ She was clever, beautiful, ambitious, 
 fond of pleasure, still more of power. With this, as sometimes 
 happens, she was highly hysterical, and in the early years of her 
 religious life was possessed by various demons of unchastity and 
 blasphemy with whom for many years she was in constant strug- 
 gle. She fell in love with a priest of Loudun, Grandier, a man 
 whom she had never even seen, only Icaowing of him as a pow- 
 erful and fascinating personality at whose feet all women fell, 
 and she imagined that she and the other nuns of her convent 
 were possessed through his influence. She was thus the cause 
 of the trial and execution of Grandier, a famous case in the annals 
 of witchcraft. In her autobiography Sceur Jeanne describes in 
 detail how the demons assailed her at night, appearing in las- 
 civious attitudes, making indecent proposals, raising the bed- 
 clothes, touching all parts of Jier body, imploring her to yield to 
 them, and she tells how strong her temptation was to yield. On 
 one night, for instance, she writes : "I seemed to feel someone's 
 breath, and I heard a voice saying : 'The time for resistance has 
 gone by, you must no longer rebel ; by putting off your consent 
 to what has been proposed you will be injured ; you cannot per- 
 sist in this resistance ; God has subjected you to the demands of 
 a nature which you must satisfy on occasions so urgent.' Then 
 I felt impure impressions in my imagination and disordered 
 movements in my body. I persisted in saying at the bottom of 
 my heart that I would do nothing. I turned to God and asked 
 Him for strength in this extraordinary struggle. Then there 
 was a loud noise in my room, and I felt as if someone had 
 
 1 With regard to the sexual element in the worship of the Virgin, 
 see "Ueber den Mariencultus," L. Feuerbaeh's 8ammtliohe Werke, Bd. 
 I, 1846. 
 
 2 Published for the first time (with a Preface by Charcot) in a 
 volume of the Bibliothique Diabolique, 1886. 
 
THE AUTO-EROXIO FACTOR IN RELIGION. 321 
 
 approached me and put his hand into my bed and touched me; 
 aJid having perceived this I rose, in a state of restlessness, which 
 lasted for a long time afterward. Some days later, at midnight, 
 I began to tremble all over my body as I lay in bed, and to 
 experience much mental aniexty without knowing the cause. 
 After this had lasted for some time I hear^ noises in various parts 
 of my room; the sheet was twice pulled without entirely un- 
 covering me ; the oratory close to my bed was upset. I heard a 
 voice on the left side, toward which I was lying. I was 
 asked if I had thought over the advantageous offer that had been 
 made to me. It was added : 'I have come to know your reply ; 
 I will keep my promise if you will give your consent ; if, on the 
 contrary, you refuse, you will be the most miserable girl in the 
 world, and all sorts of mischances will happen to you.' I 
 replied : 'If there were no God I would fear those threats ; I am 
 consecrated to Him.' It was replied to me: 'You will not get 
 much help from God; He will abandon you.' I replied: 'God 
 is my father; He will take care of me; I have resolved to be 
 faithful to Him.' He said : 'I will give you three days to think 
 over it.' I rose and went to the Holy Sacrament with an anxious 
 mind. Having returned to my room, and being seated on a chair, 
 it was drawn from under me so that I fell on the floor. Then 
 the same things happened again. I heard a man's voice saying 
 lascivious and pleasant things to seduce me; he pressed me to 
 give him room in my bed ; he tried to touch me in an indecent 
 way; I resisted and prevented him, calling the nuns who were 
 near my room ; the window had been open, it was closed ; I felt 
 strong movements of love for a certain person, and improper 
 desire for dishonorable things." 
 
 She writes again, at a later period : "These impurities and 
 the fire of concupiscence which the evil spirit caused me to feel, 
 heyond all that I can say, forced me to throw myself on to braziers 
 of hot coal, where I would remain for half an hour at a time, in 
 order to extinguish that other fire, so that half my body was quite 
 burnt. At other times, in the depth of winter, I have sometimes 
 passed part of the night entirely naked in the snow, or in tubs 
 of icy water. I have besides often gone among thorns so that I 
 
 21 
 
322 APPENDIX C. 
 
 have been torn by them ; at other times I have rolled in nettles, 
 and I have passed whole nights defying my enemies to attack 
 me, and assuring them that I was resolved to defend myself with 
 the grace of God." With her confessor's permission, she also had 
 an iron girdle made, with spikes, and wore this day and night 
 for nearly six months ijntil the spikes so entered her flesh that 
 the girdle could only be removed with difficulty. By means of 
 these austerities she succeeded in almost exorcising the demons 
 of unchastity, and a little later, after a severe illness, of which 
 she believed that she was miraculously cured by St. Joseph, she 
 appeared before the world almost as a saint, herself possessing 
 a miraculous power of healing; she traveled through France, 
 bringing healing wherever she went; the king, the queen, and 
 Cardinal Eiehelieu were at her feet, and so great became the fame 
 of her holiness that her tomb was a shrine for pilgrims for more 
 than a century after her death. It was not until late in lifie, 
 and after her autobiography terminates, that sexual desire in 
 Soeur Jeanne (though its sting seems never to have quite disap- 
 peared) became transformed into passionate love of Jesus, and 
 it is only in her later letters that we catch glimpses of the com- 
 plete transmutation. Thus, in one of her later letters we read : 
 "I cried with ardor, 'Lord ! join me to Thyself, transform Thy- 
 self into me!' It seemed to me that that lovable Spouse was 
 reposing in my heart as on His throne. What makes me almost 
 swoon with love and admiration is a certain pleasure which it 
 seems to me that He takes when all my being flows into His, 
 restoring to Him with respect and love all that He has given to 
 me. Sometimes I have permission to speak to our Lord with 
 more familiarity, calling Him my Love, interesting Him in all 
 that I ask of Him, as well for myself as for others." 
 
 The lives of all the great saints and mystics bear witness 
 to operations similar to those so vividly described by Soeur 
 Jeanne des Anges, though it is very rarely that any saint has so 
 frankly presented the dynamic mechanism of the auto-erotic 
 process. The indications they give us, however, are sufficiently 
 clear. It is enough to refer to the special affection which the 
 
THE ATJTO-EROTIC FACTOR IN EELIGION. 323 
 
 mystics have ever borne toward the Song of Songs,i and to note 
 how the most earthly expressions of love in that poem enter as a 
 perpetual refrain into their writings.^ 
 
 The courage of the early Christian martyrs, it is abundantly 
 evident, was in part supported by an exaltation which they 
 frankly drew from the sexual impulse. Felicula, we are told in 
 the acts of Achilles and Nereus,^ preferred imprisonment, tor- ' 
 ture, and death to marriage or pagan sacrifices. When on the 
 rack she was bidden to deny Christianity, she exclaimed: "Ego 
 non nego amatorem meum!" — I will not deny my lover who for 
 mv sake has eaten gall and drunk viaegar. crowned with thorns. 
 
324 APPENDIX C. 
 
 her dear master; she is betrothed to Him, He is the most 
 passionate of lovers, nothing can be sweeter than His caresses, 
 they are so excessive she is beside herself with the delight of 
 them. The central imagination of the mystic consists essen- 
 tially, as Eibot remarks, in a love romance.^ 
 
 If we turn to the most popular devotional work that was 
 ever written. The Imitation of Christ, we shall find that the 
 "love" there expressed is precisely and exactly the love that finds 
 its motive power in the emotions aroused by a person of the 
 other sex. (A very intellectual woman once remarked to me that 
 the book seemed to her "a sort of religious aphrodisiac") If we 
 read, for instance. Book III, Chapter V, of this work ("De Mira- 
 bili affectu Divini amoris"), we shall find in the eloquence of 
 this solitary monk in the Low Countries neither more nor less 
 than the emotions of every human lover at their highest limit 
 of exaltation. "Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, 
 nothing higher, nothing broader, nothing pleasanter, nothing 
 fuller nor better in heaven or in earth. He who loves, flies, runs, 
 and rejoices ; he is free and cannot be held. He gives all in ex- 
 change for all, and possesses all in all. He looks not at gifts, but 
 turns to the giver above all good things. Love knows no meas- 
 ure, but is fervent beyond all measure. Love feels no burden, 
 thinks nothing of labor, strives beyond its force, reckons not of 
 impossibility, for it judges that all things are possible. There- 
 fore it attempts all things, and therefore it effects much when he 
 who is not a lover fails and falls. . . . My Love ! thou all 
 mine, and I all thine." 
 
 There is a certain natural disincliaation in many quarters 
 to recognize any special connection between the sexual emotions 
 and the religious emotions. But this attitude is not reasonable. 
 A man who is swayed by religious emotions cannot be held re- 
 sponsible for the indirect emotional results of his condition; he 
 can be held responsible for their control. Nothing is gained by 
 refusing to face the possibility that such control may be neces- 
 sary, and much is lost. There is certainly, as I have tried to 
 
 I Eibot, La Logique des Sentiments, p. 174. 
 
THE AUTO-EROTIC FACTOR IN EKLIGION. 325 
 
 indicate, good reason to think that the action and interaction 
 between the spheres of sexual and religious emotion are very inti- 
 mate. The obscure promptings of the organism at puberty fre- 
 quently assume on the psychic side a wholly religious character; 
 the activity of the religious emotions sometimes tends to pass 
 over into the sexual region; the suppression of the sexual emo- 
 tions often furnishes a powerful reservoir of energy to the relig- 
 ious emotions ; occasionally the suppressed sexual emotions break 
 through all obstacles. 
 
INDEX OF AUTHOES. 
 
 Abrieosoff, G., 212. 
 
 Adinsell, 90, 91. 
 
 Adler, 3, 104, 199, 244, 247, 263. 
 
 iElian, 291. 
 
 Jjlachines, 277. 
 
 Aetius, 109. 
 
 Alacoque, M., 323. 
 
 Albreeht, 108. 
 
 Allin, 5. 
 
 Anagnos, 77. 
 
 Angelueci, 216. 
 
 Anges, Soeur Jeanne des, 320. 
 
 Angus, H. C, 17. 
 
 Anstie, 187, 249, 265. 
 
 Apuleius, 25. 
 
 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 184, 188, 
 
 279, 311. 
 Archemholtz, 170. 
 Areteus, 24, 149, 211, 212, 278. 
 Aretino, 71. 
 Aristophanes, 169, 277. 
 Aristotle, 199. 
 Arnold, G. J., 173. 
 Aschaffenburg, 151. 
 Ashe, T., 44. 
 Ashwell, 231. 
 Athenaeus, 23, 68, 174. 
 Augustine, St., 6, 241, 195. 
 Avicenna, 279. 
 Axenfeld, 215. 
 Azara, 89. 
 
 Babinsky, 209. 
 Bachaumont, 168. 
 Baelz, 22, 62, 70. 
 Baker, Smith, 262. 
 Baldwin, J. M., 36. 
 Ball, 216, 315. 
 Ballantyne, 103. 
 Ballion, 51. 
 Balls-Headley, 213. 
 Bancroft, H. H., 127. 
 Baraduc, 249. 
 Bargagli, 76. 
 Barnes, R., 89, 101. 
 
 Barrus, Clara, 252, 258, 315. 
 Bartels, Max, 35, 54, 68, 98, 103, 
 
 127, 140, 165, 286. 
 Bartian, 8. 
 Bastanzi, 291. 
 Batut, 19. 
 Bauer, Max, 27. 
 Bauermann, 170. 
 Bazalgette, 187. 
 Beard, 260. 
 
 Beard, J., 95, 98, 109, 113. 
 Bechterew, 258, 263. 
 Bee, J., 170. 
 Bekkers, 249. 
 Bell, Blair, 98. 
 Bell, Sanford, 37, 148. 
 Berger, 235. 
 Bellamy, 203. 
 Berkhan, 253. 
 Berthier, 314. 
 Beukemann, 139, 142. 
 Beuttner, 96. 
 Bevan-Lewis, 314. 
 Biernaoki, 233. 
 Billuart, 188. 
 Binet, 155. 
 Binswanger, 260. 
 Bishop, Mrs., 70. 
 Blackwell, Elizabeth, 104, 197. 
 Blandford, 238. 
 Bloch, Iwan, 73, 170, 174, 181, 
 
 206, 210, 243, 311, 315. 
 Block, 239. 
 
 Blumenbach, 165, 190. 
 Boas, F., 291. 
 Boethius, 55. 
 Bohnius, 92. 
 Bolton, T. L., 86. 
 Bonavia, 148. 
 Bond, C. H., 96. 
 Bonnier, 250. 
 Bosai, 95. 
 Boudin, 286. 
 
 Bourke, J. G., 47, 54, 131, 292. 
 Brachet, 217.' 
 
 (327) 
 
328 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Brantome, 170. 
 
 Breuer, 205, 219 et seq. 
 
 Briquet, 215, 216, 217. 
 
 Brockman, 236. 
 
 Brouardel, 315. 
 
 Brown, J. D., 142. 
 
 Brown-S6quard, 267. 
 
 Brunton, Sir Lauder, 190. 
 
 Bryce, T., 95. 
 
 Buehan, A. P., 193. 
 
 Biichler, 56. 
 
 Biichner, 41. 
 
 Buffon, 92, 109. 
 
 Bunge, 233. 
 
 Burchard, 169. 
 
 Burdach, 95. 
 
 Burk, F., 155. 
 
 Burnet, 64. 
 
 Burns, J., 30. 
 
 Burr, 200. 
 
 Burton, Robert, 45, 61, 76. 
 
 Buxton, D. W., 102. 
 
 Caiger, 157. 
 
 Callari, 71. 
 
 Calmeil, 205. 
 
 Camerer, 159. 
 
 Cameron, 48. 
 
 Campbell, H., 7, 77, 104, 108, 109, 
 
 112. 
 Caramuel, 279. 
 Carmichael, 95. 
 Carpenter, E., 281. 
 Carrara, 16. 
 Casanova, 1, 50, 78. 
 Chamberlain, A. F., 76. 
 Chapman, J., 249. 
 Charcot, 214, 218, 320. 
 Charrin, 233. 
 Chaucer, 50, 149, 189. 
 Christian, 168, 243, 253, 260. 
 Chrysostom, 27. 
 Cicero, 7. 
 
 Clark, Campbell, 108. 
 Clement of Alexandria, 26, 27, 50. 
 Clement of Eome, 25. 
 Clipson, 249. 
 
 Clouston, 109, 213, 258, 269. 
 Coe, H. C, 270. 
 Cohn, Hermann, 236, 250, 260. 
 Cohn, Salmo, 251. 
 Cohnstein, 123. 
 Colenso, W., 287. 
 Cook, Capt., 10, 11, 48. 
 
 Cook, Dr. F., 89, 126. 
 
 Corre, 151. 
 
 Coryat, 30. 
 
 Crawley, A. E., 40, 42, 48, 49, 54, 
 
 55, 56, 61, 67, 284, 285, 290. 
 Criehton-Browne, Sir J., 149, 155. 
 Crooke, W., 130. 
 Croom, Sir J. Halliday, 90. 
 CuUen, 231. 
 Cullingworth, 91. 
 Curr, 9. 
 
 Curschmann, 255, 257, 260, 266. 
 Cuvier, 92. 
 Cyprian, 26, 50. 
 
 Dallemagne, 268. 
 
 Dalton, E. T., 14, 128. 
 
 Dalziel, 124. 
 
 Dana, 243. 
 
 Dandinus, 76. 
 
 Daniels, 310. 
 
 Dartigues, 168. 
 
 Darwin, C, 73, 74, 86. 
 
 Darwin, Erasmus, 111, 148. 
 
 Davidsohn, 21. 
 
 Debreyne, 98, 181, 184, 188, 237. 
 
 Deniker, 13, 39 94, 132, 167. 
 
 Dennis, 23. 
 
 Denuce, 173. 
 
 Depaul, 90. 
 
 D'Epinay, Mme., 69. 
 
 Dercum, 200. 
 
 Deslandes, 243. 
 
 Dessoir, Max, 268. 
 
 Dexter, 151. 
 
 Didey, 103. 
 
 Diderot, 63. 
 
 Distant, W. L., 93. 
 
 Donkin, 214. 
 
 Down, Langdon, 176. 
 
 Dudley, 173. 
 
 Dufour, P., 24, 28, 66, 67, 68, 
 
 188, 202. 
 Dugas, 7, 53, 83. 
 Diihren, see Bloch, Iwan. 
 Dukes, C, 236. 
 Dulaure, 29. 
 Du Maurier, 61. 
 Duncan, Matthews, 215, 258. 
 Durr, 250. 
 Duval, A., 75. 
 Duveyrier, 56. 
 Dyer, L., 130. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 329 
 
 Ellenberger, 92. 
 
 Ellis, Sir A. B., 68, 188. 
 
 Ellis, Havelock, 68, 90, 100, 158, 
 
 200, 215, 245, 297. 
 Ellis, Sir W., 252. 
 Ellis, W. G., 67. 
 Emin, Pasha, 59, 78. 
 Emminghaus, 253. 
 Epicharmus, 36. 
 Eram, 167. 
 Erb, 257, 260. 
 Ernst, 237. 
 Esquirol, 252, 314. 
 Eulenburg, 191, 199, 259, 264. 
 Evans, M. M., 23. 
 Ezekiel, 169. 
 
 Fahne, 29. 
 
 Fasbender, 90. 
 
 Fehling, 90. 
 
 Felkin, 61. 
 
 Fere, 73, 110, 165, 207, 219, 230, 
 
 256, 282. 
 Fernel, 199, 212. 
 Ferrero, 52, 71, 213, 241. 
 Ferriani, 71, 238. 
 Fewkes, J. W., 127. 
 Findley, 90. 
 Fleiachmann, 115. 
 Fliess, 36, 90, 109, 113, 250. 
 Forel, 65, 255, 264, 315. 
 Forestus, 212. 
 Forster, J. R., 10, 60. 
 Fortini, 169. 
 
 Fothergill, J. M., 177, 198. 
 Fournier, 176. 
 Foville, 212. 
 Franklin, A., 38. 
 Frazer, J. G., 54, 132, 133, 175, 
 
 284, 285, 289. 
 Freeman, K. A., 18. 
 French-Sheldon, Mrs., 16. 
 Freud, 81, 174, 181, 195, 205, 210, 
 
 219 et seq., 239, 260. 
 Friedreich, J. B., 314. 
 Fritsch, 6., 56, 167. 
 Fuehs, 247. 
 Fiirbringer, 257, 260 
 
 Gaedeken, 140, 153. 
 Galen, 199, 212, 278, 279. 
 Gall, 230, 252, 269. 
 Gant, 148. 
 Gardiner, J. S., 12. 
 Garland, Hamlin, 186. 
 
 Garnier, 150, 170, 243, 269, 279. 
 
 Gason, 87. 
 
 Gattel, 260. 
 
 Gehrung, 102. 
 
 Gennep, A. von, 58. 
 
 Gerard- Varet, 135. 
 
 Gerland, 35. 
 
 Gibbon, 303. 
 
 Giessler, 771. 
 
 Giles, A. E., 90. 
 
 Gillen, 9, 60, 67, 128. 
 
 Gilles de la Tourette, 202, 211, 
 
 212, 214, 218, 221, 260. 
 GioflFredi, 220. 
 Girandeau, 250. 
 Godfrey, 263. 
 Goepel, 155. 
 Goethe, 266. 
 Goncourt, 3, 70. 
 Goodell, W., 293. 
 Goodman, 90. 
 Gould, 107. 
 
 Gourmont, Reray de, 280. 
 Gowers, Sir W. E., 250, 256. 
 Grashoff, 70. 
 Greenlees, 167. 
 Griesinger, 250, 253. 
 Grimaldi, 51. 
 Grimm, J., 131, 134, 136. 
 Groos, 5, 28, 39, 41, 174. 
 Grosse, 6. 
 Gruner, 250. 
 Grunfeld, 171. 
 Gualino, 191, 237. 
 Gubernatis, 193. 
 Gufiniot, 90. 
 Guerry, 115. 
 Guibout, 199. 
 Guise, R. E., 128. 
 Gury, 279. 
 
 Guttceit, 174, 244, 254, 258, 265. 
 Guyau, 5, 6. 
 Guyot, 104. 
 
 Haddon, A. C., 9. 
 
 Hahn, E., 88, 132, 311. 
 
 Haig, 101, 159, 209. 
 
 Hall, Fielding, 130. 
 
 Hall, G. Stanley, 5, 62, 73, 77, 78, 
 
 79, 146, 192, 235, 236, 237, 257, 
 
 297. 
 Haller, 101. 
 Hammond, W., 183, 190, 254, 258, 
 
 260. 
 
330 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Harris, D. F., 112. 
 
 Hartmann, 94. 
 
 Hawksworth, J., 10, 11, 48. 
 
 Haycraft, 140. 
 
 Heape, W., 93, 94, 96, 101, 123, 
 
 126. 
 Hegar, 90, 213. 
 Helbigiua, 0., 92. 
 Heifer, J. W., 19. 
 Henle, 73. 
 
 Herman, 232, 260, 311. 
 Herodotus, 22, 50. 
 Herondas, 168, 169. 
 Herriok, 62. 
 Hersman, 200. 
 Herter, 250. 
 Hesiod, 55, 147. 
 Hick, P., 98. 
 Hill, S. A., 139. 
 Hinton, James, 64. 
 Hippocrates, 210, 259, 279. 
 Hirschsprung, 181. 
 Hirth, G., 280. 
 Hoche, 242. 
 
 Holienemser, 6, 49, 83. 
 Holder, A. B., 13, 89. 
 Holm, 60. 
 Homer, 63. 
 Hopkins, H. R., 32. 
 Houssay, 51. 
 Howe, J. W., 166, 175. 
 Huchard, 215. 
 Hufeland, 162. 
 
 Hughes, C. H., 200, 207, 315. 
 Hummel, 260. 
 Hunter, John, 257. 
 Hutchinson, Sir J., 75. 
 Hyades, 13, 39. 167. 
 Hyrtl, 171. 
 
 Icard, 92, 102, 103, 105, 215, 216, 
 
 315. 
 Imbert-Gouheyre, 217. 
 
 Jacobi, M. P., 90, 104, 
 
 Jacobs, 167, 168. 
 
 Jaeger, 162. 
 
 James, 212. 
 
 James, W., 310. 
 
 Janet, Pierre, 48, 185, 195, 219, 
 
 228, 262, 267. 
 Jastrow, Morris, 88, 136, 188, 288. 
 Jenjko, 155. 
 Jerome, St., 50. 
 
 Jessett, 250. 
 
 Joal, 250. 
 
 Joest, 168. 
 
 Johnston, Sir H. H., 16, 17, 128. 
 
 Johnstone, A. W., 100, 124. 
 
 Jolly, 91, 95. 
 
 Jones, Lloyd, 234. 
 
 Jortin, 27. 
 
 Juvenal, 278. 
 
 Kaan, 162. 
 
 Kahlbaum, 254. 
 
 Keill, 107. 
 
 Keith, 94. 
 
 Keller, 90. 
 
 Kellogg, 243, 256. 
 
 Kemble, Fanny, 81. 
 
 Kemsoes, 116. 
 
 Kiernan, J. G., 175, 178, 186, 200, 
 
 245, 253, 254. 
 Kind, A., 30, 184. 
 King, A. F. A., 229. 
 Kleinpaul, 66. 
 Klemm, K., 15. 
 Kline, L. W., 149. 
 Koch, J. L. A., 254. 
 Koster, 88. 
 Kossmann, 104. 
 Kowalewsky, M., 133. 
 Kraepelin, 254, 264, 265. 
 Krafft-Ebing, 104, 110, 207, 217, 
 
 254, 260, 315. 
 Krauss, F. S., 168. 
 Krauss,. W. C, 265. 
 Krieger, 90, 146. 
 Kreiehmar, 250. 
 Kroner, 74. 
 Kulischer, 123. 
 
 Lacassagne, 150, 151, 249. 
 
 Laetantius, 23. 
 
 Lallemand, 249. 
 
 Landouzy, 212, 216. 
 
 Landry, 64, 311. 
 
 Lane, 42. 
 
 Laschi, 150. 
 
 Laupts, 162. 
 
 Laurent, L., 293, 294. 
 
 Laycock, 90, 106, 107, 115, 122, 
 
 148, 212. 
 Learoyal, Mabel, 185. 
 Lecky, 24. 
 Legludic, 151, 258. 
 Lentz, 150. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 331 
 
 Lepois, C, 212. 
 
 Letamendi, 162. 
 
 Letourneau, 35, 60, 63. 
 
 Leuba, 205, 323. 
 
 Leyden, 260. 
 
 Liguori, 279. 
 
 Lippert, 31. 
 
 Lipps, 6. 
 
 Lobsien, 158. 
 
 Loiman, 262. 
 
 Loliee, 131. 
 
 Lombroso, C, 16, 52, 71, 150, 209, 
 
 213. 
 Lombroso, P., 35, 75. 
 Lorion, 167. 
 Lowenfeld, 190, 192, 197, 199, 232, 
 
 255, 256. 
 Lucretius, 51. 
 Lull, Raymond, 323. 
 Luther, 189. 
 Luzet, 233. 
 Lydston, 178. 
 
 MacDonald, A., 235. 
 MacGillicuddy, 183. 
 Mackenzie, J. N., 250. 
 MacLean, 91. 
 MacMurehy, 90. 
 Maeder, 193, 286. 
 Malins, 30. 
 Malling-Hansen, 154. 
 Man, E. H., 14. 
 Mandeville, 65, 70. 
 Mannhardt, 131, 133. 
 Mantegazza, 12, 20, 35, 63, 87, 89, 
 
 166. 
 Marchi, Attilio dc, 286. 
 Mareuse, J., 236. 
 Mariani, 319. 
 Marie, A., 203. 
 Marie, P., 214. 
 
 Marro, 152, 191, 217, 238,, 255. 
 Marsh, 91. 
 
 Marshall, F., 91, 95, 96. 
 Marston, 169. 
 Martial, 78, 278. 
 Martineau, 179, 258. 
 Mason, Otis, 13. 
 Matignon, 20. 
 Maudsley, 254. 
 Mayr, G., 141. 
 Melinaud, 36, 72. 
 Menjago, 42. 
 Mercier, 33. 
 
 Metehnikoff, 209. 
 
 Meteyard, 31. 
 
 Meyners, d'Estrez, 285. 
 
 Michelet, 211. 
 
 Miklueho-Maelea,y, 128. 
 
 Minovici, 153. 
 
 Mirabeau, 171. 
 
 Mitchell, H. W., 96. 
 
 Mitford, 21. 
 
 Modigliani, 14. 
 
 MoliSre, 65. 
 
 Moll, 94, 99, 110, 115, 162, 166, 
 
 177, 190, 195, 204, 207, 226, 
 
 240, 243, 270. 
 Mondiere, 126, 167. 
 Mongeri, 217, 232. 
 Montague, Lady M. W., 31. 
 Montaigne, 42, 51, 61. 
 Montmorand, 323. 
 Moraglia, 168, 236, 238, 244, 250. 
 Morris, R. T., 174, 243, 245. 
 Morselli, 153, 315. 
 Mortimer, G., 35, 256. 
 Moryson, Fynes, 30, 63. 
 Moses, Julius, 37. 
 Mailer, R., 41. 
 Murisier, 316. 
 
 Nacke, 78, 87, 110, 195, 196, 207, 
 238, 241, 243, 244, 254, 256. 
 
 Nansen, 60. 
 
 Nggrier, 103. 
 
 Nelson, J., 87, 112, 113, 143, 144. 
 
 Neugebauer, 4. 
 
 Niceforo, 66, 183, 237. 
 
 Nicolas of Casa, 106. 
 
 Niebuhr, C, 19. 
 
 Nietzsche, 282, 296. 
 
 Nipho, 148. 
 
 Norman, Conolly, 110, 315. 
 
 Northcote, H., 40, 165, 166, 167, 
 278. 
 
 Oettinger, 139. 
 Ogle, 153. 
 Oldfield, 127. 
 Oliver, 101. 
 Omer, Haleby, 278. 
 Oribasius, 148. 
 Osier, 112. 
 Ossendovsky, 249. 
 Osterloh, 87. 
 Ostwald, Hans, 44. 
 Ott, von, 90. 
 
332 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Overbury, Sir T., 199. 
 Ovid, 39. 
 
 Paget, Sir J., 190, 257. 
 
 Paget, John, 186. 
 
 Pare, A., 212. 
 
 Parent-Duchatelet, 217. 
 
 Parke, T. H., 18. 
 
 Partridge, 72, 73, 185. 
 
 Passek, 29. 
 
 Paulus, iEgineta, 148. 
 
 Pausanias, 188. 
 
 Pearson, K., 132. 
 
 Peehuel-Loesche, 18. 
 
 Peckham, 154. 
 
 Penta, 150, 151. 
 
 Pepys, S., 32. 
 
 Perez, 37. 
 
 Perry-Coste, 111, 116, 117. 144, 
 
 145, 159, 297 et seq. 
 Peschel, 35. 
 Peyer, A., 249. 
 Peyer, J., 92. 
 Pick, 185. 
 Pierracini, 216. 
 Pilcz, 112. 
 Pitcairn, 203. 
 Pitres, 200, 202, 217. 
 Plant, 97. 
 Plato, 22, 210. 
 Plazzon, 171. 
 Pliny the Elder, 147, 291. 
 Ploss, 35, 54, 68, 98, 103, 127, 
 
 140, 165, 188, 286. 
 Plutarch, 22, 24, 277. 
 Pouchet, 98. 
 
 Pouillet, 171, 172, 176, 243, 250. 
 Poulet, 172. 
 Power, 251. 
 Prat, 47. 
 
 Priestley, Sir W., 90, 91. 
 Procopius, 27. 
 Pyle, 107. 
 
 Qvietelet, 137. 
 
 Quiros, Bernaldo de, 153. 
 
 Rabelais, 131, 137, 148. 
 Eaciborski, 92, 97, 103. 
 Kaflfalovich, 186. 
 Ramsay, Sir W. M., 286. 
 Rasmussen, 266. 
 Ratzel, 35. 
 Rauber, 142. 
 
 Raymond, 48, 195, 262, 267. 
 
 Regis, 314. 
 
 Reinach, S., 38, 55, 99. 
 
 Reinl, 90. 
 
 Rengger, 92. 
 
 Renooz, Mme. Celine, 3. 
 
 Renouvier, 47. 
 
 Restif de la Bretonne, 42, 46, 246. 
 
 Reuss, 70. 
 
 Reverdin, 173, 181. 
 
 Reys, 286. 
 
 Rhys, Sir J., 136. 
 
 Ribbing, 190. 
 
 Ribot, 6, 324. 
 
 Richelet, 91. 
 
 Richer, 212. 
 
 Richet, 47, 82. 
 
 Riedel, 54. 
 
 Ries, 193. 
 
 Riolan, 184. 
 
 Ritter, 29. 
 
 Rochholz, 131. 
 
 Robe, 200. 
 
 Rohleder, 110, 172, 176, 190, 195, 
 
 197, 207, 235, 236, 243, 244, 255, 
 
 257, 260. 
 Roland, Mme., 189. 
 Rolfincius, 175, 199. 
 Romer, L. S. A. M. von, 120. 
 Roos, J. de, 152. 
 Rosenbach, 140. 
 Rosenstadt, 123, 140. 
 Rosenthal, 217, 230, 260. 
 Rosner, 90. 
 
 Rosse, Irving, 33, 165. 
 Roth, H. Ling, 15. 
 Roth, W., 10, 67, 166. 
 Roubaud, 257. 
 Rousseau, 186, 265. 
 Routh, A., 91. 
 Rudeck, 27, 28. 
 Rush, 231. 
 
 Sade, De, 174. 
 
 St. Andre, 188. 
 
 St. Hilaire, J. G., 92. 
 
 St. Paul, Dr., 162. 
 
 Salerni, 90. 
 
 Sanchez, T., 175, 279. 
 
 Sanctis, Sante de, 202. 
 
 Sanctorius, 106, 107. 
 
 Savage, 249, 314. 
 
 Savill, 260, 262. 
 
 Schemer, 195. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 333 
 
 Schmid-Monnard, 154. 
 
 Sehrenck-Notzing, 183. 
 
 Schroeder, T., 313. 
 
 Schroeder, van der Kolk, 314. 
 
 Schule, 254. 
 
 Schultz, Alwyn, 28. 
 
 Schulz, 33. 
 
 Schiirigius, 68, 92, 148, 184. 
 
 Schurtz, 53, 63. 
 
 Sehuyten, 158. 
 
 SchAvartz, 131. 
 
 Schweinfurth, 16. 
 
 Scott, Colin, 39, 44. 
 
 Seerley, 236, 249. 
 
 Selden, 303. 
 
 Seler, 88. 
 
 Selous, E., 166. 
 
 Semen, 86. 
 
 Semper, 8. 
 
 Senaneour, 82. 
 
 Sfirieux, 316. 
 
 Sergi, 3, 4. 
 
 Shakespeare, 42. 
 
 Shaw, Capel, 156. 
 
 Shufeldt, E. W., 243, 250. 
 
 Shuttleworth, 239. 
 
 Siebert, 178. 
 
 Sieroshevski, 21, 128. 
 
 Skeat, W. W., 130. 
 
 Skene, 250. 
 
 Smith, E., 116, 122, 142, 158, 159. 
 
 Smith, E. H., 172, 246. 
 
 Smith, F., 124. 
 
 Smith, Robertson, 135, 285, 287. 
 
 Smith, Theodate, 79, 185. 
 
 Smyth, Brough, 285. 
 
 Sollier, 209. 
 
 Solon, 303. 
 
 Somerville, 8. 
 
 Sonnini, 78. 
 
 Sorel, 90. 
 
 Sormani, 138. 
 
 Soutzo, 180. 
 
 Spencer, Baldwin, 9, 60, 67, 128. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 35. 
 
 Spltta, 195. 
 
 Spitzka, E. C, 243, 249, 255. 
 
 Spurgeon, 313. 
 
 Starbuck, 37, 310. 
 
 Stein, G., 229. 
 
 Steinen, Karl von den, 13, 48, 60, 
 
 62. 
 Stendhal, 2. 
 Stephenson, 90, 107. 
 
 Stern; B., 19, 171. 
 
 Sterne, 65. 
 
 Stevens, H. V., 48, 52. 
 
 Stieda, 22, 233. 
 
 Stirling, 9. 
 
 Stockman, 233. 
 
 Stokes, 173. 
 
 Storer, 90. 
 
 Strack, 292. 
 
 Stratz, -31, 38, 76. 
 
 Stubbs, 184. 
 
 Sudduth, 269. 
 
 Sumner, W. G., 35, 56. 
 
 Susruta, 101. 
 
 Sutton, Bland, 91, 93, 94, 150. 
 
 Swift, 65, 312. 
 
 Sydenham, 212, 233. 
 
 Tacitus, 134. 
 
 tait, Lawson, 98, 173, 243. 
 
 Tallemont des Beaux, 65. 
 
 Tardieu, 258. 
 
 Taylor, E. W., 172, 181. 
 
 Teacher, J., 95. 
 
 Tertullian, 25, 56. 
 
 Theresa, St., 206, 323. 
 
 Thomas, W., 314. 
 
 Thueydides, 22. 
 
 Thurn, Sir E. im, 12. 
 
 Tille, 134, 136. 
 
 Tillier, 166. 
 
 Tilt 32 
 
 Tisit, 243, 249, 280. 
 
 Toulouse, 257. 
 
 Tout, Hill, 68, 168. 
 
 Townsend, C. W., 179. 
 
 Treutler, 81. 
 
 Trousseau, 255. 
 
 Tuehmann, 293. 
 
 Turner, 12. 
 
 Uffelmann, 253. 
 
 Vahness, 9. 
 Valera, 206. 
 Valleix, 90. 
 Vallon, 315. 
 Vedeler, 179. 
 Velde, van de, 91. 
 Velpeau, 89. 
 Venette, '46, 148. 
 Venturi, 3, 238, 280. 
 Viazzi, 3. 
 Villagomez, 128. 
 
334 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Villermay, 212. 
 Villermg, 138, 151. 
 Virchow, 233. 
 Vogel, 253. 
 Volkelt, 192. 
 Voltaire, 249. 
 Voornveld, van, 90. 
 
 Wade, Sir W. P., 101. 
 
 Wahl, 153. 
 
 Waitz, 35, 63, 74. 
 
 Walker, A., 58. 
 
 Wappiius, 138. 
 
 Ward, H., 18. 
 
 Wargentin, 137. 
 
 Warman, 211. 
 
 WasserschlebeTi, 169. 
 
 Wedge wood, 31. 
 
 Weismann, 86. 
 
 Welsser, 128. 
 
 Wellhausen, 19, 56, 135, 287. 
 
 Wenek, 147. 
 
 West, C, 256. 
 
 West, J. P., 239. 
 Westcott, Wynn, 35. 
 Westermarck, 6, 35, 54, 61, 123, 
 
 126, 132, 142. 
 Wey, H. D., 147, 152. 
 Wichmann, 148. 
 Wiel, Van der, 92. 
 Willis, 212. 
 Wilson, J. M., 313. 
 Wiltshire, A., 92, 123, 126. 
 Winekel, 171, 250. 
 Winkler, G., 30. 
 Winter, J. T., 239. 
 Witkowski, 30. 
 WoUstoneoraft, M., 7, 31. 
 Wood, H. C, 200. 
 Wraxall, Sir N., 31. 
 
 Yellowlees, 253, 256. 
 
 Zacehia, 279. 
 Zaehe, 67, 180, 286. 
 Zeller, 23, 277. 
 
INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 
 
 Africa, modesty in, 15 et seq., 48, 
 59, 78. 
 
 sexual periodicity in, 128. 
 Ainu, modesty of, 22. 
 American Indians, menstruation 
 in, 89. 
 
 modesty of, 13. 
 Anaemia and hysteria, 233. 
 Andamanese modesty, 14. 
 Animals, breeding season of, 124. 
 
 hysteria in, 215. 
 
 masturbation in, 164 et seiq. 
 
 modesty in, 37. 
 
 their dislike of dirt, 51. 
 Annual sexual rhythm, 122 et 
 
 seq., 300 et seq. 
 Anus as a centre of modesty, 52. 
 Apes, masturbation in, 165. 
 
 menstruation in, 94. 
 Arabian festivals, 135. 
 Arabs, modesty in, 19, 42. 
 
 their ancient conception of un- 
 cleanness, 287. 
 Art and auto-erotism, 265, 28? 
 Asafoetida in hysteria, 211. 
 Attitudes passionnelles, 224. 
 Australia, modesty in, 9, 60. 
 
 sexual festivals in, 127. 
 Autumn festivals, 136. 
 
 Baboon, menstruation in, 93. 
 
 Babylonian festivals, 135. 
 
 Bashfulness, 36. 
 
 Bathing, promiscuous, 26, 34. 
 
 Beltane fires, 131. 
 
 Bengal, modesty in, 14. 
 
 sexual periodicity in, 128. 
 Birds, dreams of, 193. 
 Birthrate, periodicity of, 137 et 
 
 seq. 
 Bladder, as a source of dreams, 
 
 193. 
 foreign bodies in, 171 et seq. 
 periodicity in expulsive force of, 
 
 158. 
 
 Blindness in relation to modesty, 
 
 77. 
 Blood, primitive ideas about, 289. 
 supposed virtues of menstrual, 
 
 292. 
 Blood-pressure, 101. 
 Blushing, the significance of, 46, 
 
 72 et seq. 
 Bonfire festivals, 131. 
 Borneo, modesty in, 15. 
 Bosom in relation to modesty, 38. 
 Brazil, modesty in, 12, 60. 
 Bread, periodicity in consumption 
 
 of, 155. 
 Breeding season, 123 et seq. 
 Brumalia, 130. 
 
 Camargo, 33. 
 
 Catholic theologians, on delectatio 
 morosa, 184. 
 
 on erotic dreams, 188. 
 
 on masturbation, 279. 
 Celibacy and religion, 311. 
 Ceremonial element' in religion, 
 
 135. 
 Chastity in Polynesia, 10. 
 Chemical rays and sexual period- 
 icity, 140. 
 Childbirth, modesty in, 29. 
 Children, masturbation in, 239. 
 
 periodicity of growth in, 153. 
 
 spring fever in, 149. 
 
 their lack of modesty, 36. 
 Chimpanzee, menstruation in, 94. 
 Chinese modesty, 20, 62. 
 Chivalry and modesty, 64. 
 Chlorosis and hysteria, 233. 
 Christianity, in relation to mod- 
 esty, 25 et seq., ii. 
 
 its attitude towards masturba- 
 tion, 278 et seq. 
 Christmas festivals, 133, 137. 
 Clothing and modesty, 58 et seq. 
 Cod-piece, 28. 
 
 (335) 
 
336 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Coitus, and ceremonial ritual, 54. 
 
 as a sedative, 269. 
 
 in relation to masturbation, 257. 
 
 in relation to menstruation, 98 
 et seq. 
 
 in relation to modesty, 40. 
 
 often painful in hysteria, 203. 
 Conception rate, 137 et seq. 
 Conduct, periodicity in, 152. 
 Continence, importance of, 282. 
 Convents, hysteria in, 217. 
 Coquetry, function of, 41, 59. 
 Courtship, the essential element 
 
 in, 41. 
 Crime, periodicity of, 150. 
 Criminals, masturbation among, 
 238. 
 
 sexual outbursts in, 147. 
 Crow, breeding habits of, 125. 
 Cycling in relation to sexual 
 excitement, 177. 
 
 Dancing, auto-erotic aspects of, 
 
 180. 
 Dancing and modesty, 28. 
 Darkness in relation to blushing, 
 
 76. 
 Day-dreaming, 184 et seq. 
 Deer, breeding habits of, 124. 
 Delectatio morosa, 183, 184. 
 Denmark, modesty in, 29. 
 Diogenes, 277. 
 Dionysian festivals, 130. 
 Disgust as a factor of modesty, 
 
 47 et seq., 82. 
 Distillatio, 279. 
 Dog, breeding season of, 124. 
 Dravpers, origin of feminine, 28, 
 
 32. 
 Dreams, and sexual periodicity, 
 112. 
 day, 184 et seq. 
 erotic, 191 et seq. 
 Freud on, 222. 
 inverted, 195. 
 vesical, 193 et seq. 
 
 Easter festivals, 131, 135. 
 Eating, modesty in, 48, 55. 
 Ecbolie curve, 112 et seq. 
 Economic factor of modesty, 64. 
 Elephants, masturbation in, 165. 
 Enuresis, nocturnal, 193. 
 
 Epilepsy, anciently confused with 
 hysteria, 211. 
 
 in relation to masturbation, 256. 
 Erotic dreams, 191 et seq. 
 
 festivals, 127 et seq. 
 
 hallucinations, 200. 
 Eskimo, menstruation in, 89. 
 
 modesty of, 47, 60. 
 
 sexual habits of, 126. 
 Etruscans, modesty among, 23. 
 Evil eye and modesty, 56. 
 Excretory customs and modesty, 
 
 52. 
 Eye disorders and masturbation, 
 250. 
 
 Face as a centre of modesty, 78. 
 Fear, modesty based on, 36, 47. 
 Ferrets, masturbation in, 165. 
 Festivals, erotic, 127 et seq. 
 Fools, Feast of, 130. 
 Foot and modesty, 20. 
 Frigidity caused by masturbation, 
 
 262. 
 Fuegians, modesty of, 13. 
 
 General paralysis, annual curve 
 
 of, 150. 
 Globus hystericus, 210. 
 Goethe, 266. 
 Gogol, 265. 
 Greeks, festivals of, 130. 
 
 modesty among, 22. 
 
 their attitude towards mastur- 
 bation, 297. 
 Growth, periodicity in, 153. 
 
 Hair-pin used in masturbation, 
 172 et seq. 
 
 Hallucinations, erotic, 200. 
 
 Head, covering the, 56. 
 
 Heart disease, monthly rhythm in, 
 111. 
 
 "Heat" in animals, 91. 
 
 its relation to menstruation, 98. 
 
 Hemicrania, periodicity in, 112. 
 
 Horse exercise and sexual excite- 
 ment, 175. 
 
 Horses, masturbation in, 165. 
 
 Hottentots, masturbation among, 
 167. 
 
 Hymen in relation to modesty, 39. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 837 
 
 Hysteria, alleged seasonal pre- 
 valence of, 148. 
 
 and chlorosis, 233. 
 
 and masturbation, 256. 
 
 Breuer and Freud on, 219 et seq. 
 
 Charcot and, 214 et seq. 
 
 coitus often painful in, 203. 
 
 in relation to sexual emotion, 
 205 et seq. 
 
 nocturnal hallucinations of, 200. 
 
 physiological, 227 et seq. 
 
 the theory of, 209 et seq. 
 
 Iceland, modesty in, 30. 
 Illegitimate births, periodicity of, 
 
 139. 
 Incubus, 188. 
 India, conception rate in, 139. 
 
 masturbation in, 167. 
 
 modesty in, 14. 
 Infants, masturbation in, 238. 
 Insane, masturbation in the, 238, 
 243. 
 
 modesty in the, 51. 
 Insanity and masturbation, 252 
 et seq. 
 
 periodicity of, 88, 110, 112, 149. 
 Inversion, dreams in, 195. 
 Ireland, modesty in, 30, 63. 
 Ishtar, 135; 
 Italy, modesty in, 30, 35. 
 
 Japanese, masturbation among, 
 167. 
 modesty of, 21, 70, 76. 
 Jealousy in relation to modesty, 
 40, 63. 
 
 Kadishtu, 135. 
 Kierkegaard, 266. 
 
 Lapps, menstruation among, 89. 
 
 modesty of, 20. 
 Lizard and women in folk-lore, 
 
 285, 286. 
 Love largely based on modesty, 
 
 1, 5, 53, 82 et seq. 
 
 Macaque, menstruation in, 93. 
 
 Malay festivals, 130. 
 
 Maori, modesty, 11. 
 
 Marriage caused by masturbation, 
 
 aversion to, 262. 
 Marriage and the hysterical, 216, 
 
 232. 
 
 Masturbation among animals, 164 
 et seq. 
 
 among lower human races, 166. 
 
 among higher human races, 169. 
 
 as a sedative, 268 et seq. 
 
 combined with religious emo- 
 tions, 312 et seq. 
 
 in men of genius, 265. 
 
 interrupted, 195. 
 
 in the insane, 238, 243. 
 
 methods of, 166 et seq. 
 
 periodicity of, 115. 
 
 prevalence of, 235 et seq. 
 
 symptoms and results of, 248 
 et seq. 
 May-day festivals, 131. 
 Medifeval modesty, 27. 
 Medicean Venus, attitude of, 38. 
 Menstrual blood, supposed virtues 
 
 of, 292. 
 Menstrual cycle in men, 106 et seq. 
 Menstruation, among primitive 
 peoples, 89. 
 
 and hysteria, 216. 
 
 and modesty, 55. 
 
 and pregnancy, 109. 
 
 and social position of women, 
 284 et seq. 
 
 as a continuous process, 90. 
 
 as a process of purification, 55. 
 
 cause doubtful, 94. 
 
 euphemisms for, 68. 
 
 in animals, 91 et seq. 
 
 occasional absence in health, 96. 
 
 origin of, 86. 
 
 precocity in, 238. 
 
 primitive theory of, 286. 
 
 relation to "heat," 98. 
 
 relation to ovulation, 95. 
 
 relation to sexual desire, 98 
 et seq. 
 Mental energy, periodicity of, 158. 
 Metabolism, seasonal influences on, 
 
 159. 
 MitteUchmerz, 89 et seq. 
 Mohammedans, attitude towards 
 menstruation, 278. 
 
 modesty of, ID, 55. 
 . mysticism among, 323. 
 Midsummer festivals, 132. 
 Monkeys, breeding season of, 124, 
 126. 
 
 masturbation in, 165. 
 
 menstruation in, 92. 
 
 22 
 
338 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Moon and masturbation, 86 et 
 
 seq., Ill, 199. 
 Moral element in modesty, 83. 
 Moritz, K. P., 265. 
 Muscular force, periodicity of, 158. 
 Mysticism and sexual emotion, 
 
 205, 315 et seq. 
 
 Nakedness, chaste in its effects, 61. 
 in relation to modesty, 8 et seq., 
 75. 
 
 Narcissism, 206. 
 
 Nates as a centre of modesty, 59. 
 
 Negroes, modesty of, 15 et seq. 
 
 Nervous diseases and masturba- 
 tion, 252 et seq. 
 
 Neurasthenia and masturbation, 
 259. 
 
 New England, modesty in, 33. 
 
 New Georgians, modesty among, 8. 
 
 New Guinea, folk-lore of men- 
 struation in, 286. 
 modesty in, 9. 
 
 New Hebrides, modesty in, 8. 
 
 New Zealand, modesty in, 11. 
 
 Nicobarese modesty, 14. 
 
 Night-inspiration, 76. 
 
 Novel-reading, alleged sexual 
 periodicity in, 155. 
 
 Obscenity, Roman horror of, 67. 
 CEstrus, 91, 101. 
 "Onanism," the term, 162. 
 Orang-utan, menstruation in, 92. 
 Orgasm, spontaneous, 182 et seq. 
 Ornament as a sexual lure, 61. 
 Ovaries with hysteria, alleged 
 
 association of, 216. 
 Ovulation and menstruation, 95. 
 
 Papuans, modesty of, 9. 
 
 sexual periodicity among, 128. 
 Penis succedaneus, 169. 
 PoUutio, 188. 
 Pollutio interruptus, 195. 
 Polynesian modesty, 10, 60. 
 Precocity, sexual, 238, 244. 
 Pregnancy, menstrual cycle during, 
 
 109. 
 Prostitutes, hysteria among, 217. 
 
 masturbation in, 238. 
 
 modesty of, 70. 
 Prudery, 33, 35. 
 Prurience based on modesty, 65. 
 
 Psychic coitus, 183. 
 
 Psychic traumatism, 220. 
 
 Pulse, periodicity of the. 111, 297. 
 
 Railway travelling aa cause of 
 sexual excitement, 176. 
 
 Rapes, periodicity of, 150. 
 
 Religion and sexual emotions, 310 
 et seq. 
 
 Revery, 184 et seq. 
 
 Rhythm, 85. 
 
 Riding as a cause of sexual excite- 
 ment, 175. 
 
 Ritual factor of modesty, 54, 65. 
 
 Roland, Mme., 189. 
 
 Romans, modesty of, 24, 67. 
 
 Rosalia, 130. 
 
 Rousseau, 265. 
 
 Russia, conception rate in, 139. 
 modesty in, 31. 
 
 Rest, 91, 100. 
 
 Sacro-pubic region as a, centre of 
 
 modesty, 51. 
 St. John's Eve, festival of, 132. 
 Samoa, 12. 
 Samoyeds, menstruation among, 
 
 89. 
 Saturnalia, 132. 
 
 Scarlet fever, periodicity of, 157. 
 Schools, auto-erotic phenomena in, 
 
 240 et seq. 
 Seasonal periodicity of sexual 
 
 impulse, 112 et seq. 
 Seduction and menstruation, 103. 
 Seminal emissions during sleep, 
 
 188 et seq. 
 Serpent in folk-lore, 284 et seq. 
 Sewing-machine as a causa of 
 
 sexual excitement, 176. 
 Sexual anaesthesia induced by 
 
 masturbation, 262. 
 Sexual factor of modesty, 37 et 
 
 seq. 
 Sexual desire, in relation to blush- 
 in, 74. 
 in relation to hysteria, 212 
 
 et seq. 
 in relation to menstruation, 
 
 100 et seq. 
 in relation to modesty, 42 ct 
 
 seq., 64. 
 in relation to season, 122 et seq. 
 in women, 3, 100 et seq. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 339 
 
 Sexual periodicity in men, 107 
 et seq., 297 et seq. 
 wliat we owe to irradiations of, 
 5. 
 
 Sexual organs viewed differently 
 by savage and civilized peo- 
 ples, 61. 
 
 Shame, definition and nature of, 
 6, 36, 48, 83. 
 
 Short sight and modesty, 77. 
 
 Shyness, 77. 
 
 Slang, private, 66. 
 
 Sleep in relation to sexual activity, 
 188 et seq. 
 
 Snake and women in folk-lore, 
 284 et seq. 
 
 Somnambulism of bladder, 194. 
 
 Speech, modesty in, 66. 
 
 Spring, as season of sexual excite- 
 ment, 148. 
 festivals of, 134 et seq. 
 
 Swinging, auto-erotic aspects of, 
 174. 
 
 Suecubus, 188. 
 
 Suicide, periodicity of, 115, 153. 
 
 Taboo and menstruation, 287. 
 
 and modesty, 55. 
 Tahiti, 10. 
 
 Tammuz festival, 135. 
 Theologians, opinions of, 184, 188, 
 
 278 279. 
 Theresa' St., 205, 220, 323. 
 Thigh-friction, 179, 239. 
 Thumb-sucking, 239. 
 Timidity, 7. 
 Tight-lacing as a cause of sexual 
 
 excitement, 178. 
 
 Torres Straits, modesty at, 9. 
 Turkish modesty, 19, 31. 
 
 Uncleanness, primitive conception 
 of, 287 et seq. 
 
 Uric acid, excretion, periodicity 
 of, 159. 
 
 Urine, incontinence of, 193. 
 
 Urtication, as a form of auto- 
 erotism, 181. 
 
 Valentine's Day, 131. 
 
 Veil, origin of tlie, 55 et seq. 
 
 Vesical dreams, 193 et seq. 
 
 Vocabularies, private, 66. 
 
 TValpurgisnacht, 134. 
 
 Weekly sexual rhythm, 115 et seq., 
 
 306 et seq. 
 Witches, erotic hallucinations of, 
 
 202. 
 Womb anciently thought source of 
 
 hysteria, 212. 
 Women, as property in relation to 
 modesty, 63. 
 masturbation among, 169 et seq., 
 
 243 et seq., 264 et seq. 
 menstruation in, 86 et seq., 284 
 
 et seq. 
 sexual impulse in, 3. 
 their auto-erotic manifestations 
 
 in sleep, 196. 
 their night-inspiration, 76. 
 whether more modest than men, 
 3, 75. 
 
 year, primitive divisions of, 134. 
 
 Zeus, auto-erotic manifestations 
 
 in, 188. 
 
DIAGRAMS. 
 
DIAGRAMS. 
 
 343 
 
 Chart I. — The Monthly Ecbolic Curve. 
 
344 
 
 DIAGRAMS. 
 
 
 SLP. OCT NOV. DEC. JAN. FEB.MAR.APR.MAY.dUN. JLY.A UG. SEP. 
 
 1160 -mo 
 1150 -mo 
 mo -1150 
 
 1130 -1140 
 
 mo -wo 
 wo -im 
 mo -mo 
 mo -1100 
 mo -1090 
 mo -1080 
 
 1060 -1070 
 1050 -1060 
 low -1050 
 1030 -104-0 
 
 mo -mo 
 1010 -loao 
 700.0 -7010 
 
 
 
 
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 Chart II.— The Annual Curve of the Conception-rate in Europe. 
 
DIAGRAMS. 
 
 345 
 
 hhUBi 
 
 Chart III.— The Annual Ecbolic Curve. 
 
 Chart IV. — Curve of the Annual Incidence of Insanity in London. 
 
 Chart V. — Curve of the Annual Incidence of General Paralysis 
 in Paris (Gamier). 
 
346 
 
 DIAGXAUS. 
 
 Chart VI. — ^The Suicide-rate in London. 
 
 Chart VII. 
 
DIAGRAMS. 
 
 347 
 
 Chart VIII. 
 
348 
 
 DIAGRAMS. 
 
 Dotted line Sum of years lSS6,sy,SS,S9,0),9-' 
 
 Broken line , Sum of years 1S9:JM,S5M9Y 
 
 Continuous line Sum of all the eleven ycciny. 
 
 I Tjai/6 of Lunar Month. 
 
 i%s'^y^'f^-.6'-6 y 8 S JO inz 13 M-J516iy 18 ISSOZI Zii3Z'iZ5Z6Z1282930 
 
 T "7! ; t 
 
 ■■ -A : i M 
 
 6f /\r/r, 
 
 f f^f-bH^-^^ 
 
 
 »■■ ) »-- r -i- -I ! \ 
 
 Chart IX. — Lunar-monthly Rhythm of Male Sexual Period. 
 
DIAGRAUS. 
 
 349 
 
 ^ Pairs Of days of Lunar Mot 
 
 ^^r ■s'*- ^«0 00 ^ £^ > <5 T =>i ^' 
 
 -^^ "4 "'■o >^ 4 =: ^ KS ^ ^ 5; 
 
 
 
 
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 is - - ^l L__l , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ___ 
 
 
 
 n 
 
 Chart X. — Curves of Lunar-monthly Rhythm as Smoothed by 
 taking Fairs of Days. 
 
350 
 
 DIAGRAMS. 
 
 Chart XIa. — Weekly Rhythm of Male Sexual Period. 
 
DIAGRAMS. 
 
 351 
 
 Chart XIb. — Weekly Rhythm of Male Sexual Period, 
 
352 
 
 DIAGRAMS. 
 
 Chart XII.— Weekly Rhythm of Male Sexual Period. 
 
Chart XIII.— Joint Weekly Rhythm of Male Sexual Period, years 1886, 1887, 1888, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1897 cojnbine