Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Iii Part 2

Among the hill tribes of the Central Indian Hills may be traced a desire to secure communion with the spirit of fertility embodied in vegetation. This appears, for instance, in a tree-dance, which is carried out on a date a.s.sociated not only with the growths of the crops or with harvest, but also with the seasonal period for marriage and the annual Saturnalia. (W. Crooke, "The Hill Tribes," Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, new series, vol. i, 1899, p. 243.) The a.s.sociation of dancing with seasonal ritual festivals of a generative character-of which the above is a fairly typical instance-leads us to another aspect of these phenomena on which I have elsewhere touched in these Studies (vol. i) when discussing the "Phenomena of Periodicity."

The Tahitians, when first discovered by Europeans, appear to have been highly civilized on the s.e.xual side and very licentious. Yet even at Tahiti, when visited by Cook, the strict primitive relationship between dancing and courtship still remained traceable. Cook found "a dance called Timorodee, which is performed by young girls, whenever eight or ten of them can be collected together, consisting of motions and gestures beyond imagination wanton, in the practice of which they are brought up from their earliest childhood, accompanied by words which, if it were possible, would more explicitly convey the same ideas. But the practice which is allowed to the virgin is prohibited to the woman from the moment that she has put these hopeful lessons in practice and realized the symbols of the dance." He added, however, that among the specially privileged cla.s.s of the Areoi these limitations were not observed, for he had heard that this dance was sometimes performed by them as a preliminary to s.e.xual intercourse. (Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages, etc., 1775, vol. ii, p. 54.)

Among the Marquesans at the marriage of a woman, even of high rank, she lies with her head at the bridegroom's knees and all the male guests come in single file, singing and dancing-those of lower cla.s.s first and the great chiefs last-and have connection with the woman. There are often a very large number of guests and the bride is sometimes so exhausted at the end that she has to spend several days in bed. (Tautain, "Etude sur le Mariage chez les Polynesiens," L'Anthropologie, November-December, 1895, p. 642.) The interesting point for us here is that singing and dancing are still regarded as a preliminary to a s.e.xual act. It has been noted that in s.e.xual matters the Polynesians, when first discovered by Europeans, had largely gone beyond the primitive stage, and that this applies also to some of their dances. Thus the hula-hula dance, while primitive in origin, may probably be compared more to a civilized than to a primitive dance, since it has become divorced from real life. In the same way, while the s.e.xual pantomime dance of the Azimba girls of central Africa has a direct and recognized relationship to the demands of real life, the somewhat allied danses du ventre of the Hamitic peoples of northern Africa are merely an amus.e.m.e.nt, a play more or less based on the s.e.xual instinct. At the same time it is important to bear in mind that there is no rigid distinction between dances that are, and those that are not, primitive. As Haddon truly points out in a book containing valuable detailed descriptions of dances, even among savages dances are so developed that it is difficult to trace their origin, and at Torres Straits, he remarks, "there are certainly play or secular dances, dances for pure amus.e.m.e.nt without any ulterior design." (A. C. Haddon, Head Hunters, p. 233.) When we remember that dancing had probably become highly developed long before man appeared on the earth, this difficulty in determining the precise origin of human dancing cannot cause surprise.

Spix and Martius described how the Muras of Brazil by moonlight would engage all night in a Bacchantic dance in a great circle, hand in hand, the men on one side, the women on the other, shouting out all the time, the men "Who will marry me?" the women, "You are a beautiful devil; all women will marry you," (Spix and Martius, Reise in Brasilien, 1831, vol. iii, p. 1117.) They also described in detail the dance of the Brazilian Puris, performed in a state of complete nakedness, the men in a row, the women in another row behind them. They danced backward and forward, stamping and singing, at first in a slow and melancholy style, but gradually with increasing vigor and excitement. Then the women began to rotate the pelvis backward and forward, and the men to thrust their bodies forward, the dance becoming a pantomimic representation of s.e.xual intercourse (ibid., vol. i, 1823, pp. 373-5).

Among the Apinages of Brazil, also, the women stand in a row, almost motionless, while the men dance and leap in front of them, both men and women at the same time singing. (Buscalioni, "Reise zu den Apinages," Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1899, ht. 6, p. 650.)

Among the Gilas of New Mexico, "when a young man sees a girl whom he desires for a wife, he first endeavors to gain the good-will of the parents; this accomplished, he proceeds to serenade his lady-love, and will often sit for hours, day after day, near her home, playing on his flute. Should the girl not appear, it is a sign she rejects him; but if, on the other hand, she comes out to meet him, he knows that his suit is accepted, and he takes her to his home. No marriage ceremony is performed."[33] (H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific, vol. i, p. 549.)

"Among the Minnetarees a singular night-dance is, it is said, sometimes held. During this amus.e.m.e.nt an opportunity is given to the squaws to select their favorites. A squaw, as she dances, will advance to a person with whom she is captivated, either for his personal attractions or for his renown in arms; she taps him on the shoulder and immediately runs out of the lodge and betakes herself to the bushes, followed by the favorite. But if it should happen that he has a particular preference for another from whom he expects the same favor, or if he is restrained by a vow, or is already satiated with indulgence, he politely declines her offer by placing his hand in her bosom, on which they return to the a.s.sembly and rejoin the dance." It is worthy of remark that in the language of the Omahas the word watche applies equally to the amus.e.m.e.nt of dancing and to s.e.xual intercourse. (S. H. Long, Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, 1823, vol. i, p. 337.)

At a Kaffir marriage "singing and dancing last until midnight. Each party [the bride's and the bridegroom's] dances in front of the other, but they do not mingle together. As the evening advances, the spirits and pa.s.sions of all become greatly excited; and the power of song, the display of muscular action, and the gesticulations of the dancers and leapers are something extraordinary. The manner in which, at certain times, one man or woman, more excited than the rest, bounds from the ranks, leaps into the air, bounces forward, and darts backward beggars all description. These violent exercises usually close about midnight, when each party retires; generally, each man selects a paramour, and, indulging in s.e.xual gratification, spends the remainder of the night." (W. C. Holden, The Kaffir Race, 1866, p. 192.)

At the initiation of Kaffir boys into manhood, as described by Holden, they were circ.u.mcised. "Cattle are then slaughtered by the parents, and the boys are plentifully supplied with flesh meat; a good deal of dancing also ensues at this stage of the proceedings. The ukut-shila consists in attiring themselves with the leaves of the wild date in the most fantastic manner; thus attired they visit each of the kraals to which they belong in rotation, for the purpose of dancing. These dances are the most licentious which can be imagined. The women act a prominent part in them, and endeavor to excite the pa.s.sions of the novices by performing all sorts of obscene gesticulations. As soon as the soreness occasioned by the act of circ.u.mcision is healed the boys are, as it were, let loose upon society, and exempted from nearly all the restraints of law; so that should they even steal and slaughter their neighbor's cattle they would not be punished; and they have the special privilege of seizing by force, if force be necessary, every unmarried woman they choose, for the purpose of gratifying their pa.s.sions." Similar festivals take place at the initiation of girls. (W. C. Holden, The Kaffir Race, 1866, p. 185.)

The Rev. J. Macdonald has described the ceremonies and customs attending and following the initiation-rites of a young girl on her first menstruation among the Zulus between the Tugela and Delagoa Bay. At this time the girl is called an intonjane. A beast is killed as a thank-offering to the ancestral spirits, high revel is held for several days, and dancing and music take place every night till those engaged in it are all exhausted or daylight arrives. "After a few days and when dancing has been discontinued, young men and girls congregate in the outer apartment of the hut, and begin singing, clapping their hands, and making a grunting noise to show their joy. At nightfall most of the young girls who were the intonjane's attendants, leave for their own homes for the night, to return the following morning. Thereafter the young men and girls who gathered into the hut in the afternoon separate into pairs and sleep together in puris naturalibus, for that is strictly ordained by custom. s.e.xual intercourse is not allowed, but what is known as metsha or uk.u.metsha is the sole purpose of the novel arrangement. Uk.u.metsha may be defined as partial intercourse. Every man who sleeps thus with a girl has to send to the father of the intonjane an a.s.segai; should he have formed an attachment for his partner of the night and wish to pay her his addresses, he sends two a.s.segais." (Rev. J. Macdonald, "Manners, etc., of South African Tribes," Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, vol. xx, November, 1890, p. 117.)

Goncourt reports the account given him by a French officer from Senegal of the dances of the women, "a dance which is a gentle oscillation of the body, with gradually increasing excitement, from time to time a woman darting forward from the group to stand in front of her lover, contorting herself as though in a pa.s.sionate embrace, and, on pa.s.sing her hand between her thighs, showing it covered with the moisture of amorous enjoyment." (Journal, vol. ix, p. 79.) The dance here referred to is probably the Bamboula dance of the Wolofs, a spring festival which has been described by Pierre Loti in his Roman d'un Spahi, and concerning which various details are furnished by a French army-surgeon, acquainted with Senegal, in his Untrodden Fields of Anthropology. The dance, as described by the latter, takes place at night during full moon, the dancers, male and female, beginning timidly, but, as the beat of the tam-tams and the encouraging cries of the spectators become louder, the dance becomes more furious. The native name of the dance is anamalis fobil, "the dance of the treading drake." "The dancer in his movements imitates the copulation of the great Indian duck. This drake has a member of a corkscrew shape, and a peculiar movement is required to introduce it into the duck. The woman tucks up her clothes and convulsively agitates the lower part of her body; she alternately shows her partner her v.u.l.v.a and hides it from him by a regular movement, backward and forward, of the body." (Untrodden Fields of Anthropology, Paris, 1898, vol. ii, p. 112.)

Among the Gurus of the Ivory Coast (Gulf of Guinea), Eysseric observes, dancing is usually carried on at night and more especially by the men, and on certain occasions women must not appear, for if they a.s.sisted at fetichistic dances "they would die." Under other circ.u.mstances men and women dance together with ardor, not forming couples but often vis-a-vis: their movements are lascivious. Even the dances following a funeral tend to become s.e.xual in character. At the end of the rites attending the funeral of a chief's son the entire population began to dance with ever-growing ardor; there was nothing ritualistic or sad in these contortions, which took on the character of a lascivious dance. Men and women, boys and girls, young and old, sought to rival each other in suppleness, and the festival became joyous and general, as if in celebration of a marriage or a victory. (Eysseric, "La Cote d'Ivoire," Nouvelles Archives des Missions Scientifiques, tome ix, 1890, pp. 241-49.)

Mrs. French-Sheldon has described the marriage-rites she observed at Taveta in East Africa. "During this time the young people dance and carouse and make themselves generally merry and promiscuously drunk, carrying the excess of their dissipation to such an extent that they dance until they fall down in a species of epileptic fit." It is the privilege of the bridegroom's four groomsmen to enjoy the bride first, and she is then handed over to her legitimate husband. This people, both men and women, are "great dancers and merry-makers; the young fellows will collect in groups and dance as though in compet.i.tion one with the other; one lad will dash out from the circle of his companions, rush into the middle of a circ.u.mscribed s.p.a.ce, and scream out 'Wow, wow!' Another follows him and screams; then a third does the same. These men will dance with their knees almost rigid, jumping into the air until their excitement becomes very great and their energy almost spasmodic, leaving the ground frequently three feet as they spring into the air. At some of their festivals their dancing is carried to such an extent that I have seen a young fellow's muscles quiver from head to foot and his jaws tremble without any apparent ability on his part to control them, until, foaming at the mouth and with his eyes rolling, he falls in a paroxysm upon the ground, to be carried off by his companions." The writer adds significantly that this dancing "would seem to emanate from a species of voluptuousness." (Mrs. French-Sheldon, "Customs among the Natives of East Africa," Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, vol. xxi, May, 1892, pp. 366-67.) It may be added that among the Suaheli dances are intimately a.s.sociated with weddings; the Suaheli dances have been minutely described by Velten (Sitten und Gebrauche der Suaheli, pp. 144-175). Among the Akamba of British East Africa, also, according to H. R. Tate (Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, Jan.-June, 1904, p. 137), the dances are followed by connection between the young men and girls, approved of by the parents.

The dances of the Faroe Islanders have been described by Raymond Pilet ("Rapport sur une Mission en Islande et aux lies Feroe," Nouvelles Archives des Missions Scientifiques, tome vii, 1897, p. 285). These dances, which are entirely decorous, include poetry, music, and much mimicry, especially of battle. They sometimes last for two consecutive days and nights. "The dance is simply a permitted and discreet method by which the young men may court the young girls. The islander enters the circle and places himself beside the girl to whom he desires to show his affection; if he meets with her approval she stays and continues to dance at his side; if not, she leaves the circle and appears later at another spot."

Pitre (Usi, etc., del Popolo Siciliano, vol. ii, p. 24, as quoted in Marro's p.u.b.erta) states that in Sicily the youth who wishes to marry seeks to give some public proof of his valor and to show himself off. In Chiaramonte, in evidence of his virile force, he bears in procession the standard of some confraternity, a high and richly adorned standard which makes its staff bend to a semicircle, of such enormous weight that the bearer must walk in a painfully bent position, his head thrown back and his feet forward. On reaching the house of his betrothed he makes proof of his boldness and skill in wielding this extremely heavy standard which at this moment seems a plaything in his hands, but may yet prove fatal to him through injury to the loins or other parts.

This same tendency, which we find in so highly developed a degree among animals and primitive human peoples, is also universal among the children of even the most civilized human races, although in a less organized and more confused way. It manifests itself as "showing-off." Sanford Bell, in his study of the emotion of love in children, finds that "showing-off" is an essential element in the love of children in what he terms the second stage (from the eighth to the twelfth year in girls and the fourteenth in boys). "It const.i.tutes one of the chief numbers in the boy's repertory of love charms, and is not totally absent from the girl's. It is a most common sight to see the boys taxing their resources in devising means of exposing their own excellencies, and often doing the most ridiculous and extravagant things. Running, jumping, dancing, prancing, sparring, wrestling, turning handsprings, somersaults, climbing, walking fences, swinging, giving yodels and yells, whistling, imitating the movements of animals, 'taking people off,' courting danger, affecting courage are some of its common forms.... This 'showing-off' in the boy lover is the forerunner of the skilful, purposive, and elaborate means of self-exhibition in the adult male and the charming coquetry in the adult female, in their love-relations." (Sanford Bell, "The Emotion of Love Between the s.e.xes," American Journal Psychology, July, 1902; cf. "Showing-off and Bashfulness," Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1903.)

If, in the light of the previous discussion, we examine such facts as those here collected, we may easily trace throughout the perpetual operations of the same instinct. It is everywhere the instinctive object of the male, who is very rarely pa.s.sive in the process of courtship, to a.s.sure by his activity in display, his energy or skill or beauty, both his own pa.s.sion and the pa.s.sion of the female. Throughout nature s.e.xual conjugation only takes place after much expenditure of energy.[34] We are deceived by what we see among highly fed domesticated animals, and among the lazy cla.s.ses of human society, whose s.e.xual instincts are at once both unnaturally stimulated and unnaturally repressed, when we imagine that the instinct of detumescence is normally ever craving to be satisfied, and that throughout nature it can always be set off at a touch whenever the stimulus is applied. So far from the instinct of tumescence naturally needing to be crushed, it needs, on the contrary, in either s.e.x to be submitted to the most elaborate and prolonged processes in order to bring about those conditions which detumescence relieves. A state of tumescence is not normally constant, and tumescence must be obtained before detumescence is possible.[35] The whole object of courtship, of the mutual approximation and caresses of two persons of the opposite s.e.x, is to create the state of s.e.xual tumescence.

It will be seen that the most usual method of attaining tumescence-a method found among the most various kinds of animals, from insects and birds to man-is some form of the dance. Among the Negritos of the Philippines dancing is described by A. B. Meyer as "jumping in a circle around a girl and stamping with the feet"; as we have seen, such a dance is, essentially, a form of courtship that is widespread among animals. "The true cake-walk," again, Stanley Hall remarks, "as seen in the South is perhaps the purest expression of this impulse to courtship antics seen in man."[36] Muscular movement of which the dance is the highest and most complex expression, is undoubtedly a method of auto-intoxication of the very greatest potency. All energetic movement, indeed, tends to produce active congestion. In its influence on the brain violent exercise may thus result in a state of intoxication even resembling insanity. As Lagrange remarks, the visible effects of exercise-heightened color, bright eyes, resolute air and walk-are those of slight intoxication, and a girl who has waltzed for a quarter of an hour is in the same condition as if she had drunk champagne.[37] Groos regards the dance as, above all, an intoxicating play of movement, possessing, like other methods of intoxication,-and even apart from its relationship to combat and love,-the charm of being able to draw us out of our everyday life and lead us into a self-created dream-world.[38] That the dance is not only a narcotic, but also a powerful stimulant, we may clearly realize from the experiments which show that this effect is produced even by much less complex kinds of muscular movement. This has been clearly determined, for instance, by Fere, in the course of a long and elaborate series of experiments dealing with the various influences that modify work as measured by Mosso's ergograph. This investigator found that muscular movement is the most efficacious of all stimulants in increasing muscular power.[39] It is easy to trace these pleasurable effects of combined narcotic and stimulant motion in everyday life and it is unnecessary to enumerate its manifestations.[40]

Dancing is so powerful an agent on the organism, as Sergi truly remarks (Les Emotions, p. 288), because its excitation is general, because it touches every vital organ, the higher centers no longer dominating. Primitive dancing differs very widely from that civilized kind of dancing-finding its extreme type in the ballet-in which energy is concentrated into the muscles below the knee. In the finest kinds of primitive dancing all the limbs, the whole body, take part. For instance, "the Marquisan girls," Herman Melville remarked in Typee, "dance all over, as it were; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers,-ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads. In good sooth, they so sway their floating forms, arch their necks, toss aloft their naked arms, and glide, and swim, and whirl," etc.

If we turn to a very different people, we find this characteristic of primitive dancing admirably ill.u.s.trated by the missionary, Holden, in the case of Kaffir dances. "So far as I have observed," he states, "the perfection of the art or science consists in their being able to put every part of the body into motion at the same time. And as they are naked, the bystander has a good opportunity of observing the whole process, which presents a remarkably odd and grotesque appearance,-the head, the trunk, the arms, the legs, the hands, the feet, bones, muscles, sinews, skin, scalp, and hair, each and all in motion at the same time, with feathers waving, tails of monkeys and wild beasts dangling, and shields beating, accompanied with whistling, shouting, and leaping. It would appear as though the whole frame was hung on springing wires or cords. Dances are held in high repute, being the natural expression of joyous emotion, or creating it when absent. There is, perhaps, no exercise in greater accordance with the sentiments or feelings of a barbarous people, or more fully calculated to gratify their wild and ungoverned pa.s.sions." (W. C. Holden, The Kaffir Race, 1866, p. 274.)

Dancing, as the highest and most complex form of muscular movement, is the most potent method of obtaining the organic excitement muscular movement yields, and thus we understand how from the earliest zoological ages it has been brought to the service of the s.e.xual instinct as a mode of attaining tumescence. Among savages this use of dancing works harmoniously with the various other uses which dancing possesses in primitive times and which cause it to occupy so large and vital a part in savage life that it may possibly even affect the organism to such an extent as to mold the bones; so that some authorities have a.s.sociated platycnemia with dancing. As civilization advances, the other uses of dancing fall away, but it still remains a s.e.xual stimulant. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, brings forward a number of quotations from old authors showing that dancing is an incitement to love.[41]

The Catholic theologians (Debreyne, Mchialogie, pp. 190-199) for the most part condemn dancing with much severity. In Protestant Germany, also, it is held that dance meetings and musical gatherings are frequent occasions of unchast.i.ty. Thus in the Leipzig district when a girl is asked "How did you fall?" she nearly always replies "At the dance." (Die Geschlechtlich-Sittliche Verhaltnisse im Deutschen Reiche, vol. i, p. 196.) It leads quite as often, and no doubt oftener, to marriage. Rousseau defended it on this account (Nouvelle Helose, bk. iv, letter x); dancing is, he held, an admirable preliminary to courtship, and the best way for young people to reveal themselves to each other, in their grace and decorum, their qualities and defects, while its publicity is its safeguard. An International Congress of Dancing Masters was held at Barcelona in 1907. In connection with this Congress, Giraudet, president of the International Academy of Dancing Masters, issued an inquiry to over 3000 teachers of dancing throughout the world in order to ascertain the frequency with which dancing led to marriage. Of over one million pupils of dancing, either married or engaged to be married, it was found that in most countries more than 50 per cent. met their conjugal partners at dances. The smallest proportion was in Norway, with only 39 per cent., and the highest, Germany, with 97 per cent. Intermediate are France, 83 per cent.; America, 80 per cent.; Italy, 70 per cent.; Spain, 68 per cent.; Holland, Bulgaria, and England, 65 per cent.; Australia and Roumania, 60 per cent., etc. Of the teachers themselves 92 per cent. met their partners at dances. (Quoted from the Figaro in Beiblatt "s.e.xualreform" to Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, 1907, p. 175.)

In civilization, however, dancing is not only an incitement to love and a preliminary to courtship, but it is often a subst.i.tute for the normal gratification of the s.e.xual instinct, procuring something of the pleasure and relief of gratified love. In occasional abnormal cases this may be consciously realized. Thus Sadger, who regards the joy of dancing as a manifestation of "muscular eroticism," gives the case of a married hysterical woman of 21, with genital anesthesia, but otherwise strongly developed skin eroticism, who was a pa.s.sionate dancer: "I often felt as though I was giving myself to my partner in dancing," she said, "and was actually having coitus with him. I have the feeling that in me dancing takes the place of coitus."[42] Normally something of the same feeling is experienced by many young women, who will expend a prodigious amount of energy in dancing, thus procuring, not fatigue, but happiness and relief.[43] It is significant that, after s.e.xual relations have begun, girls generally lose much of their ardor in dancing. Even our modern dances, it is worthy of note, are often of s.e.xual origin; thus, the most typical of all, the waltz, was originally (as Schaller, quoted by Groos, states) the close of a complicated dance which "represented the romance of love, the seeking and the fleeing, the playful sulking and shunning, and finally the jubilation of the wedding."[44]

Not only is movement itself a source of tumescence, but even the spectacle of movement tends to produce the same effect. The pleasure of witnessing movement, as represented by its stimulating effect on the muscular system,-for states of well-being are accompanied by an increase of power,-has been found susceptible of exact measurement by Fere. He has shown that to watch a colored disk when in motion produced stronger muscular contractions, as measured by the dynamometer, than to watch the same disk when motionless. Even in the absence of color a similar influence of movement was noted, and watching a modified metronome produced a greater increase of work with the ergograph than when working to the rhythm of the metronome without watching it.[45] This psychological fact has been independently discovered by advertisers, who seek to impress the value of their wares on the public by the device of announcing them by moving colored lights. The pleasure given by the ballet largely depends on the same fact. Not only is dancing an excitation, but the spectacle of dancing is itself exciting, and even among savages dances have a public which becomes almost as pa.s.sionately excited as the dancers themselves.[46] It is in virtue of this effect of dancing and similar movements that we so frequently find, both among the lower animals and savage man, that to obtain tumescence in both s.e.xes, it is sufficient for one s.e.x alone, usually the male, to take the active part. This point attracted the attention of Kulischer many years ago, and he showed how the dances of the men, among savages, excite the women, who watch them intently though un.o.btrusively, and are thus influenced in choosing their lovers. He was probably the first to insist that in man s.e.xual selection has taken place mainly through the agency of dances, games, and festivals.[47]

It is now clear, therefore, why the evacuation theory of the s.e.xual impulse must necessarily be partial and inadequate. It leaves out of account the whole of the phenomena connected with tumescence, and those phenomena const.i.tute the most prolonged, the most important, the most significant stage of the s.e.xual process. It is during tumescence that the whole psychology of the s.e.xual impulse is built up; it is as an incident arising during tumescence and influencing its course that we must probably regard nearly every s.e.xual aberration. It is with the second stage of the s.e.xual process, when the instinct of detumescence arises, that the a.n.a.logy of evacuation can alone be called in. Even here, that a.n.a.logy, though real, is not complete, the nervous element involved in detumescence being out of all proportion to the extent of the evacuation. The typical act of evacuation, however, is a nervous process, and when we bear this in mind we may see whatever truth the evacuation theory possesses. Beaunis cla.s.ses the s.e.xual impulse with the "needs of activity," but under this head he coordinates it with the "need of urination." That is to say, that both alike are nervous explosions. Micturition, like detumescence, is a convulsive act, and, like detumescence also, it is certainly connected with cerebral processes; thus in epilepsy the pa.s.sage of urine which may occur (as in a girl described by Gowers with minor attacks during which it was emitted consciously, but involuntarily) is really a part of the process.[48]

There appears, indeed, to be a special and intimate connection between the explosion of s.e.xual detumescence and the explosive energy of the bladder; so that they may reinforce each other and to a limited extent act vicariously in relieving each other's tension. It is noteworthy that nocturnal and diurnal incontinence of urine, as well as "stammering" of the bladder, are all specially liable to begin or to cease at p.u.b.erty. In men and even infants, distention of the bladder favors tumescence by producing venous congestion, though at the same time it acts as a physical hindrance to s.e.xual detumescence[49]; in women-probably not from pressure alone, but from reflex nervous action-a full bladder increases both s.e.xual excitement and pleasure, and I have been informed by several women that they have independently discovered this fact for themselves and acted in accordance with it. Conversely, s.e.xual excitement increases the explosive force of the bladder, the desire to urinate is aroused, and in women the s.e.xual o.r.g.a.s.m, when very acute and occurring with a full bladder, is occasionally accompanied, alike in savage and civilized life, by an involuntary and sometimes full and forcible expulsion of urine.[50] The desire to urinate may possibly be, as has been said, the normal accompaniment of s.e.xual excitement in women (just as it is said to be in mares; so that the Arabs judge that the mare is ready for the stallion when she urinates immediately on hearing him neigh). The a.s.sociation may even form the basis of s.e.xual obsessions.[51] I have elsewhere shown that, of all the influences which increase the expulsive force of the bladder, s.e.xual excitement is the most powerful.[52] It may also have a reverse influence and inhibit contraction of the bladder, sometimes in a.s.sociation with shyness, but also independently of shyness. There is also reason to suppose that the nervous energy expended in an explosion of the tension of the s.e.xual organs may sometimes relieve the bladder; it is well recognized that a full bladder is a factor in producing s.e.xual emissions during sleep, the explosive energy of the bladder being inhibited and pa.s.sing over into the s.e.xual sphere. Conversely, it appears that explosion of the bladder relieves s.e.xual tension. An explosion of the nervous centers connected with the contraction of the bladder will relieve nervous tension generally; there are forms of epilepsy in which the act of urination const.i.tutes the climax, and Gowers, in dealing with minor epilepsy, emphasizes the frequency of micturition, which "may occur with spasmodic energy when there is only the slightest general stiffness," especially in women. He adds the significant remark that it "sometimes seems to relieve the cerebral tension,"[53] and gives the case of a girl in whom the aura consisted mainly of a desire to urinate; if she could satisfy this the fit was arrested; if not she lost consciousness and a severe fit followed.

If micturition may thus relieve nervous tension generally, it is not surprising that it should relieve the tension of the centers with which it is most intimately connected. Serieux records the case of a girl of 12, possessed by an impulse to masturbation which she was unable to control, although anxious to conquer it, who only found relief in the act of urination; this soothed her and to some extent satisfied the s.e.xual excitement; when the impulse to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e was restrained the impulse to urinate became imperative; she would rise four or five times in the night for this purpose, and even urinate in bed or in her clothes to obtain the desired s.e.xual relief.[54] I am acquainted with a lady who had a similar, but less intense, experience during childhood. Sometimes, especially in children, the act of urination becomes an act of gratification at the climax of s.e.xual pleasure, the imitative symbol of detumescence. Thus Schultze-Malkowsky describes a little girl of 7 who would bribe her girl companions with little presents to play the part of horses on all fours while she would ride on their necks with naked thighs in order to obtain the pleasurable sensation of close contact. With one special friend she would ride facing backward, and leaning forward to embrace her body impulsively, and at the same time pressing the neck closely between her thighs, would urinate.[55] Fere has recorded the interesting case of a man who, having all his life after p.u.b.erty been subject to monthly attacks of s.e.xual excitement, after the age of 45 completely lost the liability to these manifestations, but found himself subject, in place of them, to monthly attacks of frequent and copious urination, accompanied by s.e.xual day-dreams, but by no genital excitement.[56] Such a case admirably ill.u.s.trates the compensatory relation of s.e.xual and vesical excitation. This mutual interaction is easily comprehensible when we recall the very close nervous connection which exists between the mechanisms of the s.e.xual organs and the bladder.

Nor are such relationships found to be confined to these two centers; in a lesser degree the more remote explosive centers are also affected; all motor influences may spread to related muscles; the convulsion of laughter, for instance, seems to be often in relation with the s.e.xual center, and Groos has suggested that the laughter which, especially in the s.e.xually minded, often follows allusions to the genital sphere is merely an effort to dispel nascent s.e.xual excitement by liberating an explosion of nervous energy in another direction.[57] Nervous discharges tend to spread, or to act vicariously, because the motor centers are more or less connected.[58] Of all the physiological motor explosions, the s.e.xual o.r.g.a.s.m, or detumescence, is the most ma.s.sive, powerful, and overwhelming. So volcanic is it that to the ancient Greek philosophers it seemed to be a minor kind of epilepsy. The relief of detumescence is not merely the relief of an evacuation; it is the discharge, by the most powerful apparatus for nervous explosion in the body, of the energy acc.u.mulated and stored up in the slow process of tumescence, and that discharge reverberates through all the nervous centers in the organism.

"The sophist of Abdera said that coitus is a slight fit of epilepsy, judging it to be an incurable disease." (Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, bk. ii, chapter x.) And Clius Aurelia.n.u.s, one of the chief physicians of antiquity, said that "coitus is a brief epilepsy." Fere has pointed out that both these forms of nervous storm are sometimes accompanied by similar phenomena, by subjective sensations of sight or smell, for example; and that the two kinds of discharge may even be combined. (Fere, Les Epileptiques, pp. 283-84; also "Exces Veneriens et Epilepsie," Comptes-rendus de la Societe de Biologie, April 3, 1897, and the same author's Instinct s.e.xuel, pp. 209, 221, and his "Priapisme Epileptique," La Medecine Moderne, February 4, 1899.) The epileptic convulsion in some cases involves the s.e.xual mechanism, and it is noteworthy that epilepsy tends to appear at p.u.b.erty. In modern times even so great a physician as Boerhaave said that coitus is a "true epilepsy," and more recently Roubaud, Hammond, and Kowalevsky have emphasized the resemblance between coitus and epilepsy, though without identifying the two states. Some authorities have considered that coitus is a cause of epilepsy, but this is denied by Christian, Strumpell, and Lowenfeld. (Lowenfeld, s.e.xualleben und Nervenleiden, 1899, p. 68.) Fere has recorded the case of a youth in whom the adoption of the practice of masturbation, several times a day, was followed by epileptic attacks which ceased when masturbation was abandoned. (Fere, Comptes-rendus de la Socitete de Biologie, April 3, 1897.)

It seems unprofitable at present to attempt any more fundamental a.n.a.lysis of the s.e.xual impulse. Beaunis, in the work already quoted, vaguely suggests that we ought possibly to connect the s.e.xual excitation which leads the male to seek the female with chemical action, either exercised directly on the protoplasm of the organism or indirectly by the intermediary of the nervous system, and especially by smell in the higher animals. Clevenger, Spitzka, Kiernan, and others have also regarded the s.e.xual impulse as protoplasmic hunger, tracing it back to the pres.e.xual times when one protozoal form absorbed another. In the same way Joanny Roux, insisting that the s.e.xual need is a need of the whole organism, and that "we love with the whole of our body," compares the s.e.xual instinct to hunger, and distinguishes between "s.e.xual hunger" affecting the whole system and "s.e.xual appet.i.te" as a more localized desire; he concludes that the s.e.xual need is an aspect of the nutritive need.[59] Useful as these views are as a protest against too crude and narrow a conception of the part played by the s.e.xual impulse, they carry us into a speculative region where proof is difficult.

We are now, however, at all events, in a better position to define the contents of the s.e.xual impulse. We see that there are certainly, as Moll has indicated, two const.i.tuents in that impulse; but, instead of being unrelated, or only distantly related, we see that they are really so intimately connected as to form two distinct stages in the same process: a first stage, in which-usually under the parallel influence of internal and external stimuli-images, desires, and ideals grow up within the mind, while the organism generally is charged with energy and the s.e.xual apparatus congested with blood; and a second stage, in which the s.e.xual apparatus is discharged amid profound s.e.xual excitement, followed by deep organic relief. By the first process is const.i.tuted the tension which the second process relieves. It seems best to call the first impulse the process of tumescence; the second the process of detumescence.[60] The first, taking on usually a more active form in the male, has the double object of bringing the male himself into the condition in which discharge becomes imperative, and at the same time arousing in the female a similar ardent state of emotional excitement and s.e.xual turgescence. The second process has the object, directly, of discharging the tension thus produced and, indirectly, of effecting the act by which the race is propagated.

It seems to me that this is at present the most satisfactory way in which we can attempt to define the s.e.xual impulse.

[1]

C. Lloyd Morgan, "Instinct and Intelligence in Animals," Nature, February 3, 1898.

[2]

Essais, livre iii, ch. v.

[3]

Fere, "La Predisposition dans l'etiologie des perversions s.e.xuelles," Revue de medecine, 1898. In his more recent work on the evolution and dissolution of the s.e.xual instinct Fere perhaps slightly modified his position by stating that "the s.e.xual appet.i.te is, above all, a general need of the organism based on a sensation of fullness, a sort of need of evacuation," L'Instinct s.e.xuel, 1899, p. 6. Lowenfeld (Ueber die s.e.xuelle Konst.i.tution, p. 30) gives a qualified acceptance to the excretory theory, as also Rohleder (Die Zeugung beim Menschen, p. 25).

[4]

Goltz, Centralblatt fur die med. Wissenschaften, 1865, No. 19, and 1866, No. 18; also Beitrage zur Lehre von den Funktionen des Frosches, Berlin, 1869, p. 20.

[5]

J. Tarchanoff, "Zur Physiologie des Geschlechtsapparatus des Frosches," Archiv fur die Gesammte Physiologie, 1887, vol. xl, p. 330.

[6]

E. Steinach, "Untersuchungen zur vergleichenden Physiologie der mannlicher Geschlechtsorgane insbesondere der accessorischen Geschlechtsdrusen," Archiv fur die Gesammte Physiologie, vol. lvi, 1894, pp. 304-338.

[7]

See, e.g., Shattock and Seligmann, "The Acquirement of Secondary s.e.xual Characters," Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. lxxiii, 1904, p. 49.

[8]

For facts bearing on this point, see Guinard, art. "Castration," Richet's Dictionnaire de Physiologie. The general results of castration are summarized by Robert Muller in ch. vii of his s.e.xualbiologie; also by F. H. A. Marshall, The Physiology of Reproduction, ch, ix; see also E. Pittard, "Les Skoptzy," L'Anthropologie, 1903, p. 463.

[9]

For an ancient discussion of this point, see Schurig, Spermatologia, 1720, cap. ix.

[10]

J. J. Matignon, Superst.i.tion, Crime, et Misere en Chine, "Les Eunuques du Palais Imperial de Pekin," 1901.

[11]

P. Marie, "Eunuchisme et Erotisme," Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpetriere, 1906, No. 5, and Progres medical, Jan. 26, 1907.

[12]

Pedagogical Seminary, July, 1897, p. 121.