Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Vi Part 32

It seems, however, quite unnecessary to lay down any general rules regarding the frequency of coitus. Individual desire and individual apt.i.tude, even within the limits of health, vary enormously. Moreover, if we recognize that the restraint of desire is sometimes desirable, and often necessary for prolonged periods, it is as well to refrain from any appearance of a.s.serting the necessity of s.e.xual intercourse at frequent and regular intervals. The question is chiefly of importance in order to guard against excess, or even against the attempt to live habitually close to the threshold of excess. Many authorities are, therefore, careful to point out that it is inadvisable to be too definite. Thus Erb, while remarking that, for some, Luther's dictum represents the extreme maximum, adds that others can go far beyond that amount with impunity, and he considers that such variations are congenital.[397] Ribbing, again, while expressing general agreement with Luther's rule, protests against any attempt to lay down laws for everyone, and is inclined to say that as often as one likes is a safe rule, so long as there are no bad after-effects.[398]

It seems to be generally agreed that bad effects from excess in coitus, when they do occur, are rare in women (see, e.g., Hammond, s.e.xual Impotence, p. 127). Occasionally, however, evil effects occur in women. (The case, possibly to be mentioned in this connection, has been recorded of a man whose three wives all became insane after marriage, Journal of Mental Science, Jan., 1879, p. 611.) In cases of s.e.xual excess great physical exhaustion, with suspicion and delusions, is often observed. Hutchinson has recorded three cases of temporary blindness, all in men, the result of s.e.xual excess after marriage (Archives of Surgery, Jan., 1893). The old medical authors attributed many evil results to excess in coitus. Thus Schurig (Spermatologia, 1720, pp. 260 et seq.) brings together cases of insanity, apoplexy, syncope, epilepsy, loss of memory, blindness, baldness, unilateral perspiration, gout, and death attributed to this cause; of death many cases are given, some in women, but one may easily perceive that post was often mistaken for propter.

There is, however, another consideration which can scarcely escape the reader of the present work. Nearly all the estimates of the desirable frequence of coitus are framed to suit the supposed physiological needs of the husband,[399] and they appear usually to be framed in the same spirit of exclusive attention to those needs as though the physiological needs of the evacuation of the bowels or the bladder were in question. But s.e.xual needs are the needs of two persons, of the husband and of the wife. It is not enough to ascertain the needs of the husband; it is also necessary to ascertain the needs of the wife. The resultant must be a harmonious adjustment of these two groups of needs. That consideration alone, in conjunction with the wide variations of individual needs, suffices to render any definite rules of very trifling value.

It is important to remember the wide limits of variation in s.e.xual capacity, as well as the fact that such variations in either direction may be healthy and normal, though undoubtedly when they become extreme variations may have a pathological significance. In one case, for instance, a man has intercourse once a month and finds this sufficient; he has no nocturnal emissions nor any strong desires in the interval; yet he leads an idle and luxurious life and is not restrained by any moral or religious scruples; if he much exceeds the frequency which suits him he suffers from ill-health, though otherwise quite healthy except for a weak digestion. At the other extreme, a happily married couple, between forty-five and fifty, much attached to each other, had engaged in s.e.xual intercourse every night for twenty years, except during the menstrual period and advanced pregnancy, which had only occurred once; they are hearty, full-blooded, intellectual people, fond of good living, and they attribute their affection and constancy to this frequent indulgence in coitus; the only child, a girl, is not strong, though fairly healthy.

The cases are numerous in which, on special occasions, it is possible for people who are pa.s.sionately attached to each other to repeat the act of coitus, or at all events the o.r.g.a.s.m, an inordinate number of times within a few hours. This usually occurs at the beginning of an intimacy or after a long separation. Thus in one case a newly-married woman experienced the o.r.g.a.s.m fourteen times in one night, her husband in the same period experiencing it seven times. In another case a woman who had lived a chaste life, when s.e.xual relationships finally began, once experienced o.r.g.a.s.m fourteen or fifteen times to her partner's three times. In a case which, I have been a.s.sured may be accepted as authentic, a young wife of highly erotic, very erethic, slightly abnormal temperament, after a month's absence from her husband, was excited twenty-six times within an hour and a quarter; her husband, a much older man, having two o.r.g.a.s.ms during this period; the wife admitted that she felt a "complete wreck" after this, but it is evident that if this case may be regarded as authentic the o.r.g.a.s.ms were of extremely slight intensity. A young woman, newly married to a physically robust man, once had intercourse with him eight times in two hours, o.r.g.a.s.m occurring each time in both parties. Guttceit (Dreissig Jahre Praxis, vol. ii. p. 311), in Russia, knew many cases in which young men of twenty-two to twenty-eight had intercourse more than ten times in one night, though after the fourth time there is seldom any s.e.m.e.n. He had known some men who had m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed in early boyhood, and began to consort with women at fifteen, yet remained s.e.xually vigorous in old age, while he knew others who began intercourse late and were losing force at forty. Mantegazza, who knew a man who had intercourse fourteen times in one day, remarks that the stories of the old Italian novelists show that twelve times was regarded as a rare exception. Burchard, Alexander VI's secretary, states that the Florentine Amba.s.sador's son, in Rome in 1489, "knew a girl seven times in one hour" (J. Burchard, Diarium, ed. Thuasne, vol. i, p. 329). Olivier, Charlemagne's knight, boasted, according to legend, that he could show his virile power one hundred times in one night, if allowed to sleep with the Emperor of Constantinople's daughter; he was allowed to try, it is said, and succeeded thirty times (Schultz, Das Hofische Leben, vol. i, p. 581).

It will be seen that whenever the s.e.xual act is repeated frequently within a short time it is very rarely indeed that the husband can keep pace with the wife. It is true that the woman's s.e.xual energy is aroused more slowly and with more difficulty than the man's, but as it becomes aroused its momentum increases. The man, whose energy is easily aroused, is easily exhausted; the woman has often scarcely attained her energy until after the first o.r.g.a.s.m is over. It is sometimes a surprise to a young husband, happily married, to find that the act of s.e.xual intercourse which completely satisfies him has only served to arouse his wife's ardor. Very many women feel that the repet.i.tion of the act several times in succession is needed to, as they may express it, "clear the system," and, far from producing sleepiness and fatigue, it renders them bright and lively.

The young and vigorous woman, who has lived a chaste life, sometimes feels when she commences s.e.xual relationships as though she really required several husbands, and needed intercourse at least once a day, though later when she becomes adjusted to married life she reaches the conclusion that her desires are not abnormally excessive. The husband has to adjust himself to his wife's needs, through his s.e.xual force when he possesses it, and, if not, through his skill and consideration. The rare men who possess a genital potency which they can exert to the gratification of women without injury to themselves have been, by Professor Benedikt, termed "s.e.xual athletes," and he remarks that such men easily dominate women. He rightly regards Casanova as the type of the s.e.xual athlete (Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, Jan., 1896). Nacke reports the case of a man whom he regards as a s.e.xual athlete, who throughout his life had intercourse once or twice daily with his wife, or if she was unwilling, with another woman, until he became insane at the age of seventy-five (Zeitschrift fur s.e.xualwissenschaft, Aug., 1908, p. 507). This should probably, however, be regarded rather as a case of morbid hyperaesthesia than of s.e.xual athleticism.

At this stage we reach the fundamental elements of the art of love. We have seen that many moral practices and moral theories which have been widely current in Christendom have developed traditions, still by no means extinct among us, which were profoundly antagonistic to the art of love. The idea grew up of "marital duties," of "conjugal rights."[400] The husband had the right and the duty to perform s.e.xual intercourse with his wife, whatever her wishes in the matter might be, while the wife had the duty and the right (the duty in her case being usually put first) to submit to such intercourse, which she was frequently taught to regard as something low and merely physical, an unpleasant and almost degrading necessity which she would do well to put out of her thoughts as speedily as possible. It is not surprising that such an att.i.tude towards marriage has been highly favorable to conjugal unhappiness, more especially that of the wife,[401] and it has tended to promote adultery and divorce. We might have been more surprised had it been otherwise.

The art of love is based on the fundamental natural fact of courtship; and courtship is the effort of the male to make himself acceptable to the female.[402] "The art of love," said Vatsyayana, one of the greatest of authorities, "is the art of pleasing women." "A man must never permit himself a pleasure with his wife," said Balzac in his Physiologie du Mariage, "which he has not the skill first to make her desire." The whole art of love is there. Women, naturally and instinctively, seek to make themselves desirable to men, even to men whom they are supremely indifferent to, and the woman who is in love with a man, by an equally natural instinct, seeks to shape herself to the measure which individually pleases him. This tendency is not really modified by the fundamental fact that in these matters it is only the arts that Nature makes which are truly effective. It is finally by what he is that a man arouses a woman's deepest emotions of sympathy or of antipathy, and he is often pleasing her more by displaying his fitness to play a great part in the world outside than by any acquired accomplishments in the arts of courtship. When, however, the serious and intimate play of physical love begins, the woman's part is, even biologically, on the surface the more pa.s.sive part.[403] She is, on the physical side, inevitably the instrument in love; it must be his hand and his bow which evoke the music.

In speaking of the art of love, however, it is impossible to disentangle completely the spiritual from the physical. The very attempt to do so is, indeed, a fatal mistake. The man who can only perceive the physical side of the s.e.xual relationship is, as Hinton was accustomed to say, on a level with the man who, in listening to a sonata of Beethoven on the violin, is only conscious of the physical fact that a horse's tail is being sc.r.a.ped against a sheep's entrails.

The image of the musical instrument constantly recurs to those who write of the art of love. Balzac's comparison of the unskilful husband to the orang-utan attempting to play the violin has already been quoted. Dr. Jules Guyot, in his serious and admirable little book, Breviaire de l'Amour Experimental, falls on to the same comparison: "There are an immense number of ignorant, selfish, and brutal men who give themselves no trouble to study the instrument which G.o.d has confided to them, and do not so much as suspect that it is necessary to study it in order to draw out its slightest chords.... Every direct contact, even with the c.l.i.toris, every attempt at coitus [when the feminine organism is not aroused], exercises a painful sensation, an instinctive repulsion, a feeling of disgust and aversion. Any man, any husband, who is ignorant of this fact, is ridiculous and contemptible. Any man, any husband, who, knowing it, dares to disregard it, has committed an outrage.... In the final combination of man and woman, the positive element, the husband, has the initiative and the responsibility for the conjugal life. He is the minstrel who will produce harmony or cacophony by his hand and his bow. The wife, from this point of view, is really the many-stringed instrument who will give out harmonious or discordant sounds, according as she is well or ill handled" (Guyot, Breviaire, pp. 99, 115, 138).

That such love corresponds to the woman's need there cannot be any doubt. All developed women desire to be loved, says Ellen Key, not "en male" but "en artiste" (Liebe und Ehe, p. 92). "Only a man of whom she feels that he has also the artist's joy in her, and who shows this joy through his timid and delicate touch on her soul as on her body, can keep the woman of to-day. She will only belong to a man who continues to long for her even when he holds her locked in his arms. And when such a woman breaks out: 'You want me, but you cannot caress me, you cannot tell what I want,' then that man is judged." Love is indeed, as Remy de Gourmont remarks, a delicate art, for which, as for painting or music, only some are apt.

It must not be supposed that the demand on the lover and husband to approach a woman in the same spirit, with the same consideration and skilful touch, as a musician takes up his instrument is merely a demand made by modern women who are probably neurotic or hysterical. No reader of these Studies who has followed the discussions of courtship and of s.e.xual selection in previous volumes can fail to realize that-although we have sought to befool ourselves by giving an illegitimate connotation to the word "brutal"-consideration and respect for the female is all but universal in the s.e.xual relationships of the animals below man; it is only at the furthest remove from the "brutes," among civilized men, that s.e.xual "brutality" is at all common, and even there it is chiefly the result of ignorance. If we go as low as the insects, who have been disciplined by no family life, and are generally counted as careless and wanton, we may sometimes find this att.i.tude towards the female fully developed, and the extreme consideration of the male for the female whom yet he holds firmly beneath him, the tender preliminaries, the extremely gradual approach to the supreme s.e.xual act, may well furnish an admirable lesson.

This greater difficulty and delay on the part of women in responding to the erotic excitation of courtship is really very fundamental and-as has so often been necessary to point out in previous volumes of these Studies-it covers the whole of woman's erotic life, from the earliest age when coyness and modesty develop. A woman's love develops much more slowly than a man's for a much longer period. There is real psychological significance in the fact that a man's desire for a woman tends to arise spontaneously, while a woman's desire for a man tends only to be aroused gradually, in the measure of her complexly developing relationship to him. Hence her s.e.xual emotion is often less abstract, more intimately a.s.sociated with the individual lover in whom it is centred. "The way to my senses is through my heart," wrote Mary Wollstonecraft to her lover Imlay, "but, forgive me! I think there is sometimes a shorter cut to yours." She spoke for the best, if not for the largest part, of her s.e.x. A man often reaches the full limit of his physical capacity for love at a single step, and it would appear that his psychic limits are often not more difficult to reach. This is the solid fact underlying the more hazardous statement, so often made, that woman is monogamic and man polygamic.

On the more physical side, Guttceit states that a month after marriage not more than two women out of ten have experienced the full pleasure of s.e.xual intercourse, and it may not be for six months, a year, or even till after the birth of several children, that a woman experiences the full enjoyment of the physical relationship, and even then only with a man she completely loves, so that the conditions of s.e.xual gratification are much more complex in women than in men. Similarly, on the psychic side, Ellen Key remarks (Ueber Liebe und Ehe, p. 111): "It is certainly true that a woman desires s.e.xual gratification from a man. But while in her this desire not seldom only appears after she has begun to love a man enough to give her life for him, a man often desires to possess a woman physically before he loves her enough to give even his little finger for her. The fact that love in a woman mostly goes from the soul to the senses and often fails to reach them, and that in a man it mostly goes from the senses to the soul and frequently never reaches that goal-this is of all the existing differences between men and women that which causes most torture to both." It will, of course, be apparent to the reader of the fourth volume of these Studies on "s.e.xual Selection in Man" that the method of stating the difference which has commended itself to Mary Wollstonecraft, Ellen Key, and others, is not strictly correct, and the chastest woman, after, for example, taking too hot a bath, may find that her heart is not the only path through which her senses may be affected. The senses are the only channels to the external world which we possess, and love must come through these channels or not at all. The difference, however, seems to be a real one, if we translate it to mean that, as we have seen reason to believe in previous volumes of these Studies, there are in women (1) preferential sensory paths of s.e.xual stimuli, such as, apparently, a predominence of tactile and auditory paths as compared with men; (2) a more ma.s.sive, complex, and delicately poised s.e.xual mechanism; and, as a result of this, (3) eventually a greater amount of nervous and cerebral s.e.xual irradiation.

It must be remembered, at the same time, that while this distinction represents a real tendency in s.e.xual differentiation, with an organic and not merely traditional basis, it has about it nothing whatever that is absolute. There are a vast number of women whose s.e.xual facility, again by natural tendency and not merely by acquired habits, is as marked as that of any man, if not more so. In the s.e.xual field, as we have seen in a previous volume (a.n.a.lysis of the s.e.xual Impulse), the range of variability is greater in women than in men.

The fact that love is an art, a method of drawing music from an instrument, and not the mere commission of an act by mutual consent, makes any verbal agreement to love of little moment. If love were a matter of contract, of simple intellectual consent, of question and answer, it would never have come into the world at all. Love appeared as art from the first, and the subsequent developments of the summary methods of reason and speech cannot abolish that fundamental fact. This is scarcely realized by those ill-advised lovers who consider that the first step in courtship-and perhaps even the whole of courtship-is for a man to ask a woman to be his wife. That is so far from being the case that it constantly happens that the premature exhibition of so large a demand at once and for ever d.a.m.ns all the wooer's chances. It is lamentable, no doubt, that so grave and fateful a matter as that of marriage should so often be decided without calm deliberation and reasonable forethought. But s.e.xual relationships can never, and should never, be merely a matter of cold calculation. When a woman is suddenly confronted by the demand that she should yield herself up as a wife to a man who has not yet succeeded in gaining her affections she will not fail to find-provided she is lifted above the cold-hearted motives of self-interest-that there are many sound reasons why she should not do so. And having thus squarely faced the question in cool blood and decided it, she will henceforth, probably, meet that wooer with a tunic of steel enclosing her breast.

"Love must be revealed by acts and not betrayed by words. I regard as abnormal the extraordinary method of a hasty avowal beforehand; for that represents not the direct but the reflex path of transmission. However sweet and normal the avowal may be when once reciprocity has been realized, as a method of conquest I consider it dangerous and likely to produce the reverse of the result desired." I take these wise words from a thoughtful "Essai sur l'Amour" (Archives de Psychologie, 1904) by a non-psychological Swiss writer who is recording his own experiences, and who insists much on the predominance of the spiritual and mental element in love.

It is worthy of note that this recognition that direct speech is out of place in courtship must not be regarded as a refinement of civilization. Among primitive peoples everywhere it is perfectly well recognized that the offer of love, and its acceptance or its refusal, must be made by actions symbolically, and not by the crude method of question and answer. Among the Indians of Paraguay, who allow much s.e.xual freedom to their women, but never buy or sell love, Mantegazza states (Rio de la Plata e Tenerife, 1867, p. 225) that a girl of the people will come to your door or window and timidly, with a confused air, ask you, in the Guarani tongue, for a drink of water. But she will smile if you innocently offer her water. Among the Tarahumari Indians of Mexico, with whom the initiative in courting belongs to the women, the girl takes the first step through her parents, then she throws small pebbles at the young man; if he throws them back the matter is concluded (Carl Lumholtz, Scribner's Magazine, Sept., 1894, p. 299). In many parts of the world it is the woman who chooses her husband (see, e.g., M. A. Potter, Sohrab and Rustem, pp. 169 et seq.), and she very frequently adopts a symbolical method of proposal. Except when the commercial element predominates in marriage, a similar method is frequently adopted by men also in making proposals of marriage.

It is not only at the beginning of courtship that the act of love has little room for formal declarations, for the demands and the avowals that can be clearly defined in speech. The same rule holds even in the most intimate relationships of old lovers, throughout the married life. The permanent element in modesty, which survives every s.e.xual initiation to become intertwined with all the exquisite impudicities of love, combines with a true erotic instinct to rebel against formal demands, against verbal affirmations or denials. Love's requests cannot be made in words, nor truthfully answered in words: a fine divination is still needed as long as love lasts.

The fact that the needs of love cannot be expressed but must be divined has long been recognized by those who have written of the art of love, alike by writers within and without the European Christian traditions. Thus Zacchia, in his great medico-legal treatise, points out that a husband must be attentive to the signs of s.e.xual desire in his wife. "Women," he says, "when s.e.xual desire arises within them are accustomed to ask their husbands questions on matters of love; they flatter and caress them; they allow some part of their body to be uncovered as if by accident; their b.r.e.a.s.t.s appear to swell; they show unusual alacrity; they blush; their eyes are bright; and if they experience unusual ardor they stammer, talk beside the mark, and are scarcely mistress of themselves. At the same time their private parts become hot and swell. All these signs should convince a husband, however inattentive he may be, that his wife craves for satisfaction" (Zacchiae Quaestionum Medico-legalium Opus, lib. vii, t.i.t. iii, quaest. I; vol. ii, p. 624 in ed. of 1688).

The old Hindu erotic writers attributed great importance alike to the man's attentiveness to the woman's erotic needs, and to his skill and consideration in all the preliminaries of the s.e.xual act. He must do all that he can to procure her pleasure, says Vatsyayana. When she is on her bed and perhaps absorbed in conversation, he gently unfastens the knot of her lower garment. If she protests he closes her mouth with kisses. Some authors, Vatsyayana remarks, hold that the lover should begin by sucking the nipples of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. When erection occurs he touches her with his hands, softly caressing the various parts of her body. He should always press those parts of her body towards which she turns her eyes. If she is shy, and it is the first time, he will place his hands between her thighs which she will instinctively press together. If she is young he will put his hands on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and she will no doubt cover them with her own. If she is mature he will do all that may seem fitting and agreeable to both parties. Then he will take her hair and her chin between his fingers and kiss them. If she is very young she will blush and close her eyes. By the way in which she receives his caresses he will divine what pleases her most in union. The signs of her enjoyment are that her body becomes limp, her eyes close, she loses all timidity, and takes part in the movements which bring her most closely to him. If, on the other hand, she feels no pleasure, she strikes the bed with her hands, will not allow the man to continue, is sullen, even bites or kicks, and continues the movements of coitus when the man has finished. In such cases, Vatsyayana adds, it is his duty to rub the v.u.l.v.a with his hand before union until it is moist, and he should perform the same movements afterwards if his own o.r.g.a.s.m has occurred first.

With regard to Indian erotic art generally, and more especially Vatsyayana, who appears to have lived some sixteen hundred years ago, information will be found in Valentino, "L'Hygiene conjugale chez les Hindous," Archives Generales de Medecine, Ap. 25, 1905; Iwan Bloch, "Indische Medizin," Puschmann's Handbuch der Geschichte der Medizin, vol. i; Heimann and Stephan, "Beitrage zur Ehehygiene nach der Lehren des Kamasutram," Zeitschaft fur s.e.xualwissenschaft, Sept., 1908; also a review of Richard Schmidt's German translation of the Kamashastra of Vatsyayana in Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1902, Heft 2. There has long existed an English translation of this work. In the lengthy preface to the French translation Lamairesse points out the superiority of Indian erotic art to that of the Latin poets by its loftier spirit, and greater purity and idealism. It is throughout marked by respect for women, and its spirit is expressed in the well-known proverb: "Thou shalt not strike a woman even with a flower." See also Margaret n.o.ble's Web of Indian Life, especially Ch. III, "On the Hindu Woman as Wife," and Ch. IV, "Love Strong as Death."

The advice given to husbands by Guyot (Breviaire de l'Amour Experimental, p. 422) closely conforms to that given, under very different social conditions, by Zacchia and Vatsyayana. "In a state of s.e.xual need and desire the woman's lips are firm and vibrant, the b.r.e.a.s.t.s are swollen, and the nipples erect. The intelligent husband cannot be deceived by these signs. If they do not exist, it is his part to provoke them by his kisses and caresses, and if, in spite of his tender and delicate excitations, the lips show no heat and the b.r.e.a.s.t.s no swelling, and especially if the nipples are disagreeably irritated by slight suction, he must arrest his transports and abstain from all contact with the organs of generation, for he would certainly find them in a state of exhaustion and disposed to repulsion. If, on the contrary, the accessory organs are animated, or become animated beneath his caresses, he must extend them to the generative organs, and especially to the c.l.i.toris, which beneath his touch will become full of appet.i.te and ardor."

The importance of the preliminary t.i.tillation of the s.e.xual organs has been emphasized by a long succession alike of erotic writers and physicians, from Ovid (Ars Amatoria end of Bk. II) onwards. Eulenburg (Die s.e.xuale Neuropathie, p. 79) considers that t.i.tillation is sometimes necessary, and Adler, likewise insisting on the preliminaries of psychic and physical courtship (Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, p. 188), observes that the man who is gifted with insight and skill in these matters possesses a charm which will draw sparks of sensibility from the coldest feminine heart. The advice of the physician is at one in this matter with the maxims of the erotic artist and with the needs of the loving woman. In making love there must be no haste, wrote Ovid:-

"Crede mihi, non est Veneris properanda voluptas, Sed sensim tarda prolicienda mora."

"Husbands, like spoiled children," a woman has written, "too often miss the pleasure which might otherwise be theirs, by clamoring for it at the wrong time. The man who thinks this prolonged courtship previous to the act of s.e.x union wearisome, has never given it a trial. It is the approach to the marital embrace, as well as the embrace itself, which const.i.tutes the charm of the relation between the s.e.xes."

It not seldom happens, remarks Adler (op. cit., p. 186), that the insensibility of the wife must be treated-in the husband. And Guyot, bringing forward the same point, writes (op. cit., p. 130): "If by a delay of tender study the husband has understood his young bride, if he is able to realize for her the ineffable happiness and dreams of youth, he will be beloved forever; he will be her master and sovereign lord. If he has failed to understand her he will fatigue and exhaust himself in vain efforts, and finally cla.s.s her among the indifferent and cold women. She will be his wife by duty, the mother of his children. He will take his pleasure elsewhere, for man is ever in pursuit of the woman who experiences the genesic spasm. Thus the vague and unintelligent search for a half who can unite in that delirious finale is the chief cause of all conjugal dissolutions. In such a case a man resembles a bad musician who changes his violin in the hope that a new instrument will bring the melody he is unable to play."

The fact that there is thus an art in love, and that s.e.xual intercourse is not a mere physical act to be executed by force of muscles, may help to explain why it is that in so many parts of the world defloration is not immediately effected on marriage.[404] No doubt religious or magic reasons may also intervene here, but, as so often happens, they harmonize with the biological process. This is the case even among uncivilized peoples who marry early. The need for delay and considerate skill is far greater when, as among ourselves, a woman's marriage is delayed long past the establishment of p.u.b.erty to a period when it is more difficult to break down the psychic and perhaps even physical barriers of personality.

It has to be added that the art of love in the act of courtship is not confined to the preliminaries to the single act of coitus. In a sense the life of love is a continuous courtship with a constant progression. The establishment of physical intercourse is but the beginning of it. This is especially true of women. "The consummation of love," says Senancour,[405] "which is often the end of love with man is only the beginning of love with woman, a test of trust, a gage of future pleasure, a sort of engagement for an intimacy to come." "A woman's soul and body," says another writer,[406] "are not given at one stroke at a given moment; but only slowly, little by little, through many stages, are both delivered to the beloved. Instead of abandoning the young woman to the bridegroom on the wedding night, as an entrapped mouse is flung to the cat to be devoured, it would be better to let the young bridal couple live side by side, like two friends and comrades, until they gradually learn how to develop and use their s.e.xual consciousness." The conventional wedding is out of place as a preliminary to the consummation of marriage, if only on the ground that it is impossible to say at what stage in the endless process of courtship it ought to take place.

A woman, unlike a man, is prepared by Nature, to play a skilful part in the art of love. The man's part in courtship, which is that of the male throughout the zoological series, may be difficult and hazardous, but it is in a straight line, fairly simple and direct. The woman's part, having to follow at the same moment two quite different impulses, is necessarily always in a zigzag or a curve. That is to say that at every erotic moment her action is the resultant of the combined force of her desire (conscious or unconscious) and her modesty. She must sail through a tortuous channel with Scylla on the one side and Charybdis on the other, and to avoid either danger too anxiously may mean risking shipwreck on the other side. She must be impenetrable to all the world, but it must be an impenetrability not too obscure for the divination of the right man. Her speech must be honest, but yet on no account tell everything; her actions must be the outcome of her impulses, and on that very account be capable of two interpretations. It is only in the last resort of complete intimacy that she can become the perfect woman,

"Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought, Nor Love her body from her soul."

For many a woman the conditions for that final erotic avatar-"that splendid shamelessness which," as Rafford Pyke says, "is the finest thing in perfect love"-never present themselves at all. She is compelled to be to the end of her erotic life, what she must always be at the beginning, a complex and duplex personality, naturally artful. Therewith she is better prepared than man to play her part in the art of love.

The man's part in the art of love is, however, by no means easy. That is not always realized by the women who complain of his lack of skill in playing it. Although a man has not to cultivate the same natural duplicity as a woman, it is necessary that he should possess a considerable power of divination. He is not well prepared for that, because the traditional masculine virtue is force rather than insight. The male's work in the world, we are told, is domination, and it is by such domination that the female is attracted. There is an element of truth in that doctrine, an element of truth which may well lead astray the man who too exclusively relies upon it in the art of love. Violence is bad in every art, and in the erotic art the female desires to be won to love and not to be ordered to love. That is fundamental. We sometimes see the matter so stated as if the objection to force and domination in love const.i.tuted some quite new and revolutionary demand of the "modern woman." That is, it need scarcely be said, the result of ignorance. The art of love, being an art that Nature makes, is the same now as in essentials it has always been,[407] and it was well established before woman came into existence. That it has not always been very skilfully played is another matter. And, so far as the man is concerned, it is this very tradition of masculine predominance which has contributed to the difficulty of playing it skilfully. The woman admires the male's force; she even wishes herself to be forced to the things that she altogether desires; and yet she revolts from any exertion of force outside that narrow circle, either before the boundary of it is reached or after the boundary is pa.s.sed. Thus the man's position is really more difficult than the women who complain of his awkwardness in love are always ready to admit. He must cultivate force, not only in the world but even for display in the erotic field; he must be able to divine the moments when, in love, force is no longer force because his own will is his partner's will; he must, at the same time, hold himself in complete restraint lest he should fall into the fatal error of yielding to his own impulse of domination; and all this at the very moment when his emotions are least under control. We need scarcely be surprised that of the myriads who embark on the sea of love, so few women, so very few men, come safely into port.

It may still seem to some that in dwelling on the laws that guide the erotic life, if that life is to be healthy and complete, we have wandered away from the consideration of the s.e.xual instinct in its relationship to society. It may therefore be desirable to return to first principles and to point out that we are still clinging to the fundamental facts of the personal and social life. Marriage, as we have seen reason to believe, is a great social inst.i.tution; procreation, which is, on the public side, its supreme function, is a great social end. But marriage and procreation are both based on the erotic life. If the erotic life is not sound, then marriage is broken up, practically if not always formally, and the process of procreation is carried out under unfavorable conditions or not at all.

This social and personal importance of the erotic life, though, under the influence of a false morality and an equally false modesty, it has sometimes been allowed to fall into the background in stages of artificial civilization, has always been clearly realized by those peoples who have vitally grasped the relationships of life. Among most uncivilized races there appear to be few or no "s.e.xually frigid" women. It is little to the credit of our own "civilization" that it should be possible for physicians to-day to a.s.sert, even with the faintest plausibility, that there are some 25 per cent. of women who may thus be described.

The whole s.e.xual structure of the world is built up on the general fact that the intimate contact of the male and female who have chosen each other is mutually pleasurable. Below this general fact is the more specific fact that in the normal accomplishment of the act of s.e.xual consummation the two partners experience the acute gratification of simultaneous o.r.g.a.s.m. Herein, it has been said, lies the secret of love. It is the very basis of love, the condition of the healthy exercise of the s.e.xual functions, and, in many cases, it seems probable, the condition also of fertilization.

Even savages in a very low degree of culture are sometimes patient and considerate in evoking and waiting for the signs of s.e.xual desire in their females. (I may refer to the significant case of the Caroline Islanders, as described by Kubary in his ethnographic study of that people and quoted in volume iv of these Studies, "s.e.xual Selection in Man," Sect. III.) In Catholic days theological influence worked wholesomely in the same direction, although the theologians were so keen to detect the mortal sin of l.u.s.t. It is true that the Catholic insistence on the desirability of simultaneous o.r.g.a.s.m was largely due to the mistaken notion that to secure conception it was necessary that there should be "insemination" on the part of the wife as well as of the husband, but that was not the sole source of the theological view. Thus Zacchia discusses whether a man ought to continue with his wife until she has the o.r.g.a.s.m and feels satisfied, and he decides that that is the husband's duty; otherwise the wife falls into danger either of experiencing the o.r.g.a.s.m during sleep, or, more probably, by self-excitation, "for many women, when their desires have not been satisfied by coitus, place one thigh on the other, pressing and rubbing them together until the o.r.g.a.s.m occurs, in the belief that if they abstain from using the hands they have committed no sin." Some theologians, he adds, favor that belief, notably Hurtado de Mendoza and Sanchez, and he further quotes the opinion of the latter that women who have not been satisfied in coitus are liable to become hysterical or melancholic (Zacchiae Quaestionum Medico-legalium Opus, lib. vii, t.i.t. iii, quaest. VI). In the same spirit some theologians seem to have permitted irrumatio (without e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n), so long as it is only the preliminary to the normal s.e.xual act.

Nowadays physicians have fully confirmed the belief of Sanchez. It is well recognized that women in whom, from whatever cause, acute s.e.xual excitement occurs with frequency without being followed by the due natural relief of o.r.g.a.s.m are liable to various nervous and congestive symptoms which diminish their vital effectiveness, and very possibly lead to a breakdown in health. Kisch has described, as a cardiac neurosis of s.e.xual origin, a pathological tachycardia which is an exaggeration of the physiological quick heart of s.e.xual excitement. J. Inglis Parsons (British Medical Journal, Oct. 22, 1904, p. 1062) refers to the ovarian pain produced by strong unsatisfied s.e.xual excitement, often in vigorous unmarried women, and sometimes a cause of great distress. An experienced Austrian gynaecologist told Hirth (Wege zur Heimat, p. 613) that of every hundred women who come to him with uterine troubles seventy suffered from congestion of the womb, which he regarded as due to incomplete coitus.

It is frequently stated that the evil of incomplete gratification and absence of o.r.g.a.s.m in women is chiefly due to male withdrawal, that is to say coitus interruptus, in which the p.e.n.i.s is hastily withdrawn as soon as involuntary e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n is impending; and it is sometimes said that the same widely prevalent practice is also productive of slight or serious results in the male (see, e.g., L. B. Bangs, Transactions New York Academy of Medicine, vol. ix, 1893; D. S. Booth, "Coitus Interruptus and Coitus Reservatus as Causes of Profound Neurosis and Psychosis," Alienist and Neurologist, Nov., 1906; also, Alienist and Neurologist, Oct., 1897, p. 588).

It is undoubtedly true that coitus interruptus, since it involves sudden withdrawal on the part of the man without reference to the stage of s.e.xual excitation which his partner may have reached, cannot fail to produce frequently an injurious nervous effect on the woman, though the injurious effect on the man, who obtains e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, is little or none. But the practice is so widespread that it cannot be regarded as necessarily involving this evil result. There can, I am a.s.sured, be no doubt whatever that Blumreich is justified in his statement (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. ii, p. 783) that "interrupted coitus is injurious to the genital system of those women only who are disturbed in their sensation of delight by this form of cohabitation, in whom the o.r.g.a.s.m is not produced, and who continue for hours subsequently to be tormented by feelings of an unsatisfied desire." Equally injurious effects follow in normal coitus when the man's o.r.g.a.s.m occurs too soon. "These phenomena, therefore," he concludes, "are not characteristic of interrupted coitus, but consequences of an imperfectly concluded s.e.xual cohabitation as such." Kisch, likewise, in his elaborate and authoritative work on The s.e.xual Life of Woman, also states that the question of the evil results of coitus interruptus in women is simply a question of whether or not they receive s.e.xual satisfaction. (Cf. also Furbringer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, pp. 232 et seq.) This is clearly the most reasonable view to take concerning what is the simplest, the most widespread, and certainly the most ancient of the methods of preventing conception. In the Book of Genesis we find it practiced by Onan, and to come down to modern times, in the sixteenth century it seems to have been familiar to French ladies, who, according to Brantome, enjoined it on their lovers.

Coitus reservatus,-in which intercourse is maintained even for very long periods, during which the woman may have o.r.g.a.s.m several times while the man succeeds in holding back o.r.g.a.s.m,-so far from being injurious to the woman, is probably the form of coitus which gives her the maximum of gratification and relief. For most men, however, it seems probable that this self-control over the processes leading to the involuntary act of detumescence is difficult to acquire, while in weak, nervous, and erethic persons it is impossible. It is, however, a desirable condition for completely adequate coitus, and in the East this is fully recognized, and the apt.i.tude carefully cultivated. Thus W. D. Sutherland states ("Einiges uber das Alltagsleben und die Volksmedizin unter den Bauern Britischostindiens," Munchener Medizinische Wochenschrift, No. 12, 1906) that the Hindu smokes and talks during intercourse in order to delay o.r.g.a.s.m, and sometimes applies an opium paste to the glans of the p.e.n.i.s for the same purpose. (See also vol. iii of these Studies, "The s.e.xual Impulse in Women.") Some authorities have, indeed, stated that the prolongation of the act of coitus is injurious in its effect on the male. Thus R. W. Taylor (Practical Treatise on s.e.xual Disorders, third ed., p. 121) states that it tends to cause atonic impotence, and Lowenfeld (s.e.xualleben und Nervenleiden, p. 74) thinks that the swift and unimpeded culmination of the s.e.xual act is necessary in order to preserve the vigor of the reflex reactions. This is probably true of extreme and often repeated cases of indefinite prolongation of p.r.o.nounced erection without detumescence, but it is not true within fairly wide limits in the case of healthy persons. Prolonged coitus reservatus was a practice of the complex marriage system of the Oneida community, and I was a.s.sured by the late Noyes Miller, who had spent the greater part of his life in the community, that the practice had no sort of evil result. Coitus reservatus was erected into a principle in the Oneida community. Every man in the community was theoretically the husband of every woman, but every man was not free to have children with every woman. s.e.xual initiation took place soon after p.u.b.erty in the case of boys, some years later in the case of girls, by a much older person of the opposite s.e.x. In intercourse the male inserted his p.e.n.i.s into the v.a.g.i.n.a and retained it there for even an hour without emission, though o.r.g.a.s.m took place in the woman. There was usually no emission in the case of the man, even after withdrawal, and he felt no need of emission. The social feeling of the community was a force on the side of this practice, the careless, unskilful men being avoided by women, while the general romantic sentiment of affection for all the women in the community was also a force. Masturbation was unknown, and no irregular relations took place with persons outside the community. The practice was maintained for thirty years, and was finally abandoned, not on its demerits, but in deference to the opinions of the outside world. Mr. Miller admitted that the practice became more difficult in ordinary marriage, which favors a more mechanical habit of intercourse. The information received from Mr. Miller is supplemented in a pamphlet ent.i.tled Male Continence (the name given to coitus reservatus in the community), written in 1872 by the founder, John Humphrey Noyes. The practice is based, he says, on the fact that s.e.xual intercourse consists of two acts, a social and a propagative, and that if propagation is to be scientific there must be no confusion of these two acts, and procreation must never be involuntary. It was in 1844, he states, that this idea occurred to him as a result of a resolve to abstain from s.e.xual intercourse in consequence of his wife's delicate health and inability to bear healthy children, and in his own case he found the practice "a great deliverance. It made a happy household." He points out that the chief members of the Oneida community "belonged to the most respectable families in Vermont, had been educated in the best schools of New England morality and refinement, and were, by the ordinary standards, irreproachable in their conduct so far as s.e.xual matters are concerned, till they deliberately commenced, in 1846, the experiment of a new state of society, on principles which they had been long maturing and were prepared to defend before the World." In relation to male continence, therefore, Noyes thought the community might fairly be considered "the Committee of Providence to test its value in actual life." He states that a careful medical comparison of the statistics of the community had shown that the rate of nervous disease in the community was considerably below the average outside, and that only two cases of nervous disorder had occurred which could be traced with any probability to a misuse of male continence. This has been confirmed by Van de Warker, who studied forty-two women of the community without finding any undue prevalence of reproductive diseases, nor could he find any diseased condition attributable to the s.e.xual habits of the community (cf. C. Reed, Text-Book of Gynecology, 1901, p. 9).

Noyes believed that "male continence" had never previously been a definitely recognized practice based on theory, though there might have been occasional approximation to it. This is probably true if the coitus is reservatus in the full sense, with complete absence of emission. Prolonged coitus, however, permitting the woman to have o.r.g.a.s.m more than once, while the man has none, has long been recognized. Thus in the seventeenth century Zacchia discussed whether such a practice is legitimate (Zacchiae Quaestionum Opus, ed. of 1688, lib. vii, t.i.t. iii, quaest. VI). In modern times it is occasionally practiced, without any theory, and is always appreciated by the woman, while it appears to have no bad effect on the man. In such a case it will happen that the act of coitus may last for an hour and a quarter or even longer, the maximum of the woman's pleasure not being reached until three-quarters of an hour have pa.s.sed; during this period the woman will experience o.r.g.a.s.m some four or five times, the man only at the end. It may occasionally happen that a little later the woman again experiences desire, and intercourse begins afresh in the same way. But after that she is satisfied, and there is no recurrence of desire.

It may be desirable at this point to refer briefly to the chief variations in the method of effecting coitus in their relationship to the art of love and the attainment of adequate and satisfying detumescence.

The primary and essential characteristic of the specifically human method of coitus is the fact that it takes place face to face. The fact that in what is usually considered the typically normal method of coitus the woman lies supine and the man above her is secondary. Psychically, this front-to-front att.i.tude represents a great advance over the quadrupedal method. The two partners reveal to each other the most important, the most beautiful, the most expressive sides of themselves, and thus multiply the mutual pleasure and harmony of the intimate act of union. Moreover, this face-to-face att.i.tude possesses a great significance, in the fact that it is the outward sign that the human couple has outgrown the animal s.e.xual att.i.tude of the hunter seizing his prey in the act of flight, and content to enjoy it in that att.i.tude, from behind. The human male may be said to retain the same att.i.tude, but the female has turned round; she has faced her partner and approached him, and so symbolizes her deliberate consent to the act of union.

The human variations in the exercise of coitus, both individual and national, are, however, extremely numerous. "To be quite frank," says Furbringer (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, p. 213), "I can hardly think of any combination which does not figure among my case-notes as having been practiced by my patients." We must not too hastily conclude that such variations are due to vicious training. That is far from being the case. They often occur naturally and spontaneously. Freud has properly pointed out (in the second series of his Beitrage zur Neurosenlehre, "Bruchstuck" etc.) that we must not be too shocked even when the idea of f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o spontaneously presents itself to a woman, for that idea has a harmless origin in the resemblance between the p.e.n.i.s and the nipple. Similarly, it may be added, the desire for cunnilinctus, which seems to be much more often latently present in women than is the desire for its performance in men, has a natural a.n.a.logy in the pleasure of suckling, a pleasure which is itself indeed often erotically tinged (see vol. iv of these Studies, "s.e.xual Selection in Man," Touch, Sect. III).

Every variation in this matter, remarks Remy de Gourmont (Physique de l'Amour, p. 264) partakes of the sin of luxury, and some of the theologians have indeed considered any position in coitus but that which is usually called normal in Europe as a mortal sin. Other theologians, however, regarded such variations as only venial sins, provided e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n took place in the v.a.g.i.n.a, just as some theologians would permit irrumatio as a preliminary to coitus, provided there was no e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. Aquinas took a serious view of the deviations from normal intercourse; Sanchez was more indulgent, especially in view of his doctrine, derived from the Greek and Arabic natural philosophers, that the womb can attract the sperm, so that the natural end may be attained even in unusual positions.

Whatever difference of opinion there may have been among ancient theologians, it is well recognized by modern physicians that variations from the ordinary method of coitus are desirable in special cases. Thus Kisch points out (Sterilitat des Weibes, p. 107) that in some cases it is only possible for the woman to experience s.e.xual excitement when coitus takes place in the lateral position, or in the a posteriori position, or when the usual position is reversed; and in his s.e.xual Life of Woman, also, Kisch recommends several variations of position for coitus. Adler points out (op. cit., pp. 151, 186) the value of the same positions in some cases, and remarks that such variations often call forth latent s.e.xual feelings as by a charm. Such cases are indeed, by no means infrequent, the advantage of the unusual position being due either to physical or psychic causes, and the discovery of the right variation is sometimes found in a merely playful attempt. It has occasionally happened, also, that when intercourse has habitually taken place in an abnormal position, no satisfaction is experienced by the woman until the normal position is adopted. The only fairly common variation of coitus which meets with unqualified disapproval is that in the erect posture. (See e.g., Hammond, op. cit. pp. 257 et seq.)

Lucretius specially recommended the quadrupedal variation of coitus (Bk. iv, 1258), and Ovid describes (end of Bk. iii of the Ars Amatoria) what he regards as agreeable variations, giving the preference, as the easiest and simplest method, to that in which the woman lies half supine on her side. Perhaps, however, the variation which is nearest to the normal att.i.tude and which has most often and most completely commended itself is that apparently known to Arabic erotic writers as dok el arz, in which the man is seated and his partner is astride his thighs, embracing his body with her legs and his neck with her arms, while he embraces her waist; this is stated in the Arabic Perfumed Garden to be the method preferred by most women.

The other most usual variation is the inverse normal position in which the man is supine, and the woman adapts herself to this position, which permits of several modifications obviously advantageous, especially when the man is much larger than his partner. The Christian as well as the Mahommedan theologians appear, indeed, to have been generally opposed to this superior position of the female, apparently, it would seem, because they regarded the literal subjection of the male which it involves as symbolic of a moral subjection. The testimony of many people to-day, however, is decidedly in favor of this position, more especially as regards the woman, since it enables her to obtain a better adjustment and greater control of the process, and so frequently to secure s.e.xual satisfaction which she may find difficult or impossible in the normal position.

The theologians seem to have been less unfavorably disposed to the position normal among quadrupeds, a posteriori, though the old Penitentials were inclined to treat it severely, the Penitential of Angers prescribing forty days penance, and Egbert's three years, if practiced habitually. (It is discussed by J. Petermann, "Venus Aversa," s.e.xual-Probleme, Feb., 1909). There are good reasons why in many cases this position should be desirable, more especially from the point of view of women, who indeed not infrequently prefer it. It must be always remembered, as has already been pointed out, that in the progress from anthropoid to man it is the female, not the male, whose method of coitus has been revolutionized. While, however, the obverse human position represents a psychic advance, there has never been a complete physical readjustment of the female organs to the obverse method. More especially, in Adler's opinion (op. cit., pp. 117-119), the position of the c.l.i.toris is such that, as a rule, it is more easily excited by coitus from behind than from in front. A more recent writer, Klotz, in his book, Der Mensch ein Vierfussler (1908), even takes the too extreme position that the quadrupedal method of coitus, being the only method that insures due contact with the c.l.i.toris, is the natural human method. It must, however, be admitted that the posterior mode of coitus is not only a widespread, but a very important variation, in either of its two most important forms: the Pompeiian method, in which the woman bends forwards and the man approaches behind, or the method described by Boccaccio, in which the man is supine and the woman astride.