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THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

LA JOLLA. CALIFORNIA

THE SEXUAL LIFE OF OUR TIME

THE SEXUAL LIFE OF
OUR TIME

ITS RELATIONS TO MODERN
CIVILIZATION

IWAN BLOCK, M.D.

PHYSICIAN FOR DISEASES OF THE SKIN, AND FOR DISEASES OF THE SEXUAL SYSTEM
IN CHARLOTTENBURG. BERLIN

AUTHOR OF "THE ORIGIN OF SYPHILIS." ETC.

TRANSLATED FROM THE SIXTH GERMAN EDITION

M. EDEN PAUL, M.D.

LONDON

' REBMAN LIMITED, 129, SHAFTESBURY AVENUE, W.C.

1909

Entered at Stationers' Hall, 1908
All riylits reserved

PUBLISHERS' NOTE TO THE ENGLISH
EDITION

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

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION - - 1

CHAPTER I

THE ELEMENTARY PHENOMENA OF HUMAN LOVE 7

CHAPTER II

THE SECONDARY PHENOMENA OF HITMAN LOVE (BRAIN AND

SENSES) - 19

CHAPTER III

THE SECONDARY PHENOMENA OF HUMAN LOVE (REPRODUCTIVE

ORGANS, SEXUAL IMPULSE, SEXUAL ACT) - 37

CHAPTER IV

PHYSICAL DIFFERENTIAL SEXUAL CHARACTERS - - 53

CHAPTER V

PSYCHICAL DIFFERENTIAL SEXUAL CHARACTERS — THE WOMAN'S

QUESTION. APPENDIX I SEXUAL SENSIBILITY IN WOMEN - 67

CHAPTER VI

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT EN LOVE — RELIGION AND SEXUALITY - 87

CHAPTER VII

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT IN LOVB — THE EROTIC SENSE OF SHAME

(NAKEDNESS AND CLOTHING) 125

CHAPTER VIII

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT IN LOVE — THE INDIVID UALIZATION OF

LOVE - 159

vii

CHAPTER IX

THE AUTISTIC ELEMENT IN MODERN LOVE 177

CHAPTER X

THE SOCIAL FORMS OF THE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP — MARRIAGE - 185

CHAPTER XI

FREE LOVE 233

CHAPTER XII

SEDUCTION, THE SENSUAL LIFE, AND WILD LOVE 279

CHAPTER XIII

PROSTITUTION — APPENDIX : THE HALF-WORLD - 303

CHAPTER XIV

VENEREAL DISEASES — APPENDIX I VENEREAL DISEASES IN THE

HOMOSEXUAL 349

CHAPTER XV

PROPHYLAXIS, TREATMENT, AND SUPPRESSION OF VENEREAL

DISEASES 371

CHAPTER XVI

STATES OF SEXUAL IRRITABILITY AND SEXUAL WEAKNESS (AUTO-
EROTISM, MASTURBATION, 8EXUAL HYPER^STHESIA AND
SEXUAL ANAESTHESIA, SEMINAL EMISSIONS, IMPOTENCE, AND
SEXUAL NEURASTHENIA) - 407

CHAPTER XVII

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASPECT OF PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS —

APPENDIX : SEXUAL PERVERSIONS DUE TO DISEASE - 453

CHAPTER XVIII

MISOGYNY - 479

CHAPTER XIX

THE RIDDLE OF HOMOSEXUALITY — APPENDIX I THEORY OF HOMO-
SEXUALITY .------ 487

CHAPTER XX

PAGE

PSEUDO-HOMOSEXUALITY (GREEK AND ORIENTAL PAEDERASTY,

HERMAPHRODITISM, BISEXUAL VARIETIES) - - 537

CHAPTER XXI

ALGOLAGNIA (SADISM AND MASOCHISM) — APPENDIX t A CONTRIBU-
TION TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
(HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN ALGOLAGNISTIC
REVOLUTIONIST) . T 555

CHAPTER XXII

SEXUAL FETICHISM - 609

CHAPTER XXIII

ACTS OF FORNICATION WITH CHILDREN, INCEST, ACTS OF
FORNICATION WITH CORPSES (NECROPHILIA) AND ANIMALS
(BESTIALITY), EXHIBITIONISM, AND OTHER SEXUAL PERVER-
SITIES— APPENDIX : THE TREATMENT OF SEXUAL PERVER-
SITIES - - 631

CHAPTER XXIV

OFFENCES AGAINST MORALITY FROM THE FORENSIC STANDPOINT - 659

CHAPTER XXV

THE QUESTION OF SEXUAL ABSTINENCE - -1-- 671

CHAPTER XXVI

SEXUAL EDUCATION , • 681

CHAPTER XXVII

NEO-MALTHUSIANISM, THE PREVENTION OF CONCEPTION, ARTI-
FICIAL STERILITY AND ARTIFICIAL ABORTION - 693

CHAPTER XXVIII

SEXUAL HYGIENE - 709

CHAPTER XXIX

THE SEXUAL LIFE IN ITS PUBLIC RELATIONSHIPS (SEXUAL

QUACKERY, ADVERTISEMENTS, AND SCANDALS) - - 719

CHAPTER XXX

PACK

PORNOGRAPHIC LITERATURE AND ART • : • ' • ' «' 729

CHAPTER XXXI

LOVE IN POLITE (BELLETRISTIC) LITERATURE - 741

CHAPTER XXXII

THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE OF THE SEXUAL LIFE 753

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE OUTLOOK - 763

INDEX OF NAMES - 767

INDEX OF SUBJECTS ...-.-

ERRATA

Page 189, note, line 2, for "Classes in Antiquity," read "Age Classes."
Page 361, line 1,/or " inflammation of the retina," read " syphilitic iritis.'
Page 361, line 2, for " retina," read " iris."

Page 446, lines 6 and 7 from foot, for " reflection," read " reflective."
Page 481, note 3, line 5, for "Classes of Antiquity," read "Age Classes."
Page 485, line 17, for "Classes of Antiquity," read "Age Classes."
Page 548, note 3, line 1,/or " Classes in Antiquity," read "Age Classes."
Page 747, lines 21 and 24, for " divorce," read " adultery."

INTRODUCTION

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

CONTENTS OF INTRODUCTION

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

INTRODUCTION

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

The word " love " is applicable to the sexual impulse of human
beings only. Its use implies that in the case of man the purely
animal feelings have acquired an importance far greater than that
of subserving the purposes of mere reproduction, and aim at a
goal transcending that of the preservation of the species. The
nature of human love can be understood and explained only with
reference to this intimate and inseparable union of its purposes in
respect of the preservation of the species and its independent
significance in the life of the loving individual himself. Herein is
to be found the starting-point of the whole so-called " sexual
problem," and it is necessary that the matter should be clearly
understood at the outset of this book. In earlier days human
love was mainly concerned with the purposes of the species.
Modern civilized man, conceiving history as progress in the
consciousness of freedom, has also come to recognize the profound
individual significance of love for his own inward growth, for the
proper development of his free manhood. To quote a phrase
from Georg Hirth, a cultured modern writer, the genuine ex-
perienced love of a civilized man of the present day is one of the
" ways to freedom." By love is made manifest, and through
love is developed, his inmost individual nature. For this reason
Schopenhaur's " Metaphysik der Geschlechtsliebe " (" Metaphysic
of Sexual Love "), which wholly ignores this individual factor,
must be regarded, brilliant as it unquestionably is, as a quite
inadequate explanation of the nature of love. Again, a recent
writer, Arnold Lindwurm, greatly influenced by Schopenhaur's
teaching, in the introduction to his work entitled " Ueber die

3 1—2

Geschlechtsliebe in sozial-ethische Beziehung " (" Sexual Love in
its Socio-Etkical Relations "), writes : " The fruit of love, children,
and marriage as a domestic institution indispensable for the
upbringing of children — these constitute the author's ethical
criterion in the field of sexual research ; these also form the socio-
ethical goal of all sexual love, inasmuch as the sole standard by
which sexual love can be judged is the procreation and upbringing
of children." We, however, at the very outset, contest the
validity of such a standpoint, for we consider that it fails entirely
to do justice to the nature of modern love. For the history of the
human sexual impulse teaches us beyond dispute that, in the
course of the development of the human species, that impulse,
through its progressive association with intellectual and emotional
elements to form the complex whole designated by the term
" love," has undergone a progressive individualization, and has
attained a more defined significance for the unitary human being.
At the present day sexual love constitutes a part of the very being
of the civilized man ; his sexual life clearly reflects his individual
nature, and love influences his development in an enduring
manner.

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

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

The matter may be expressed also in this way — that he who has
scientifically investigated love, who has based his conception of
it philosophically, and has personally experienced it, will become
a convinced monist in relation to life, at least, and to the organic
world, and will be compelled to regard every dualistic division
into a physical and a spiritual sphere as something quite artificial.
In love above all is manifested this mystery of the life force, as
for centuries the poets, the artists, and the metaphysicians have
declared, and more especially as the great natural philosophers of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have proved — above all
Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel. There is, indeed, no more

happily chosen metaphor, none that better describes the funda-
mentally monistic nature of love, than the saying of the old
aesthetic J. G. Sulzer — that love is a tree, that it has its roots in
the physical sphere, but that its branches extend high above the
physical world, expanding more and more, branching more and
more abundantly into the sphere of the spiritual.1 It is certainly
impossible to find a more appropriate comparison. Thereby we
show clearly the intimate organic connexion between the physical
and spiritual phenomena of love ; it is rooted for ever in Mother
Earth, but it grows always upwards into the subtle ether. Just
as the arborescence of the tree has a richer, more manifold, more
extensive development than the root, so also it is in the spiritual
form that love is first capable of extending upwards and in all
directions, compared with which its physical capacity for develop-
ment is minimal and strictly limited. But just as the arborescence
of the tree grows from, and is supplied with nutriment by, the root,
so also the higher love is inevitably founded upon a sensory basis.
Even while love becomes spiritually richer, it remains as irre-
vocably as ever dependent upon the physical.2

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

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

For the human spirit in the course of its development has
become not merely lord of the earth and of the elementary forces
of Nature : it has become also lord and master, interpreter and
guide, of the sexual impulse ; for this impulse owes to the human
spirit its new and peculiar life, its life capable of further develop-
ment as manifested in the history of human love. The history of
love is the history of mankind, of civilization. For love manifests
a continual progress, which can be denied by those only who have
failed to understand the deep significance of human love in the
entire civilized life of all times, and who, observing the persistence

1 Tho natural philosopher Kiolmeyor, the teacher of Cuvier, also compared
the genital organs with the root, the brain with the arboroscence, of a tree.
Cf. Arthur Schopenhauer, " New Paralipomena " (Grisobach's edition, p. 217).

2 Eduard von Hartmann points out very effectively that " an assumed love
without Benauality is merely a floshlosa and bloodless phantom of tho creative
imagination" (" Philosophy of the Unconscious," sixth edition, p. 190; Berlin,
1874).

of the primeval and ever-active sexual impulse, elemental in its
nature, are led only to a hopeless doubt as to the possibility of all
love, and thus justify the pessimism with which Schopenhauer
has condemned the significance of human sexual love. Un-
doubtedly this elemental impulse persists for ever, and to follow
it alone leads to death, to utter desolation, to nothingness, as
Tolstoi, Strindberg, and Weininger, the bitter opponents of
modern " love," have so vehemently declared. But did these
men know true love ? Had they become conscious of the
inevitable necessity with which civilization in the course of ages
and generations had transformed the human sexual impulse into
love as it now exists, transformed it in so manifold and so wonder-
ful a way ? Had they any idea of the development of love, and of
its place and its significance in history ?

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

CHAPTER I
THE ELEMENTARY PHENOMENA OF HUMAN LOVE

" The critical natural philosopher conceives this process, this
' crown of love,' in a very matter-of-fact manner, as the process of
conjugation of two cells and the coalescence of their nuclei" —
ERNST HAECKEL.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER I

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

CHAPTER I

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

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

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

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

" Peace reigns in the ovum, but when driven by the desire of creation
the masculine god breaks through the shell and begins his work of
fertilization, everything at once becomes movement, restless haste,

impulsive force, unending circulation. Thus the male generative
principle appears as the representative and embodiment of movement
in the visible act of creation. . . . The active principle in Nature
appears to be identical with the principle of motion. . . . Winged
is the phallus, quiescent the female ; the man is the principle of move-
ment, and the woman the principle of repose ; force is the cause of
eternal change, woman the picture of eternal repose ; for which reason
the ' earth-mother ' is almost always depicted in a sitting posture "
(Bachofen).

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

With the evolution of sexual reproduction is introduced the
opportunity for a great step forward, since an incomparably
greater sphere of action is opened to the differentiation and vari-
ability of specific forms than was possible in the case of species
reproduced asexually (Kerner von Marilaun, R. Martin). By
means of the sexual union of two differing independent individuals,
each of which, again, has been brought into the world by the
sexual union of two differing individuals, the way is freely opened
for a progressive differentiation of the individuals of this species.
No one of them is exactly similar to any other. Each one exhibits

new peculiarities, new capabilities, and all of these play their
part in the struggle for existence. This gradually results in a
progress towards higher, better, more perfect forms. The per-
sistence of specific type, due to inheritance, is largely counteracted
by sexual reproduction, inasmuch as the conjugation of reproduc-
tive cells derived from two different individuals induces a
tendency to progressive variation and improvement. Moreover, by
this sexual mode of reproduction the preservation of the species
is rendered much more secure than by asexual reproduction,
whilst at the same time the possibility of differentiation or varia-
tion is indubitably increased. We have already insisted on the
fact that in the striking difference between the sperm cell of
the male and the germ cell of the female we must seek for the
ultimate cause of the profound difference between the sexes.
Those who maintain the theory of the absolute identity of
man and woman must continually be reminded of this fact.
Unquestionably the greater motility of the male reproductive
cell as compared with the more passive quality of the female cell
implies the existence of deeply founded psychical differences ;
and the existence of these may be assumed with more confidence
since we know from experience to what a high degree the finest
psychical peculiarities of father and mother can be transmitted by
inheritance to the child.

For this reason, all attempts, whether initiated by some natural
process or by some intentional guidance of the process of civiliza-
tion, towards the obliteration of the distinction between the specific
masculine and the specific feminine, must be regarded as futile,
and as antagonistic to the process of development. The produc-
tion of the so-called " third sex " is unquestionably a step back-
wards. For bisexual differentiation is an advance upon the more
primitive form of sexual differentiation in which both the male
and the female sexual elements were produced by a single indi-
vidual (hermaphroditism). In the phylogeny of the human
species unilateral sexual reproduction gave place to the bilateral
type, the reproductive elements being formed within the bodies
of two distinct individuals — the sperm cells within the body of
the male, the germ cells within the body of the female. In this
manner originated the contrast between the individuals of the
two sexes, or bisexual differentiation, which, in the course of phylo-
genetic development, has become continually more definite, more
extensive, and more characteristic, through the operation of the
principle of sexual selection ; and thus by inheritance and adapta-
tion the mental and physical characteristics of sexuality, primi-
tive and Hiij)orad(led, have gradually become defined and fixed.

In the higher ranks of the animal kingdom and in the human
species, this heterosexuality has, through inheritance, become con-
tinually more sharply defined ; but the traces of the primitive
hermaphroditic state have never been wholly obliterated. Love
in the human species is manifested by pairing. Such is the normal
condition, and the only condition in harmony with the progressive
tendency towards perfection. But remnants of hermaphroditism,
of bisexuality in a single individual, of the " third sex," are to be
found in every human being, and are disclosed by embryology
and comparative anatomy in the form of vestiges of female repro-
ductive organs in the male and of male reproductive organs in
the female. Herein exists an indisputable proof of the originally
hermaphrodite nature of the human ancestry. But these female
organs in the male body, and their converse, the male organs
in the female body, are stunted, are rudiments merely ; whereas
in the course of evolution the masculine reproductive organs of
the male and the feminine reproductive organs of the female
have been more and more powerfully developed, and more and
more sharply differentiated in type, until they have come to
constitute the expression of the specific differences between man
and woman. They alone represent the more advanced stage.
Moreover, these vestiges of an early hermaphroditic condition are
in the human species far less extensive than in other mammals ;
and the sexual discrepancy in the human species, as compared
with the lower animals, becomes still more noticeable when we
take into account the fact that certain parts of the reproductive
system are peculiar to mankind, are new acquisitions, and, above
all, the hymen, which is non-existent even in the anthropoid
apes.

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

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

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

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

Very ably has Mantegazza described the intimate relationship
between these dreams of the " third sex " and the fantastic aberra-
tion of the sexual impulse. He writes :

" While the pathology of love recognizes in many sexual aberrations
the obscure traces of a general hermaphroditism, imagination, which
works faster than science, shows us the possibility that in more com-

plicated creations sexual differentiation might be more than twofold,
so that in such worlds sexual reproduction might be effected by a more
elaborate division of labour. Thus, in the cynical or sceptical
distinction between platonic, sexual, and licentious love, wo see the
first traces of new and monstrous possibilities of sexual union, on the
one hand reflecting the sublimity of the supcrsensual, and on the
other more brutal than the most horrible sexual aberration."

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

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

This explanation of the indisputable gradual increase in the in-
tensity of the sexual impulse, first given by the moral philosopher
Paul Ree, is more illuminating than the theory propounded by
Havelock Ellis of the increase of the sexual impulse by civiliza-
tion, which was long ago maintained by Lucretius (" De Rerum
Natura," V. 1016). In support of this latter theory, it is
asserted that among savage people the genital organs are less

powerfully developed than among civilized races, but tliis can by
no means be regarded as an established fact. Civilization has
done no more than cause a fuller development of all sides of sexual
love by a multiplication of physical and psychical stimuli ; but
it appears extremely doubtful if civilization itself is to be regarded
as the immediate causal influence in the increase of the intensity
of the sexual impulse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

That this primitive phenomenon of love has even to-day a
certain significance, although, in consequence of the enormous
development of the brain and the predominance of purely
psychical elements in man, its influence has been very notably
diminished, is shown by the existing physiological connexion
proved by Fliess to exist between the nose and the genital organs.
On the inferior turbinate bones there exist certain " genital
areas," which, under the influence of sexual stimulus and excite-

ment, as in coitus, during menstruation, etc., swell up. From
these areas it is also possible to influence directly certain condi-
tions of the genital organs.

It is noteworthy that civilization has to a large extent replaced
the natural sexual odours by artificial scents, so-called perfumes,
whose origin is partly due to the imitation or accentuation of the
natural odours, in part, however, and especially in recent times,
to an endeavour to conceal these natural odours, especially
when the latter are of a disagreeable character. For this reason,
in addition to penetrating perfumes, such as civet, ambergris,
musk, etc., we have also mild perfumes, for the most part veget-
able in origin. The markedly exciting influence of these artificial
scents is employed especially by women, above all by professional
prostitutes, in order to excite men.1 Frequently also the simple
perfume of flowers suffices for this purpose. Krauss tells us
that in the kolo-dance of the Southern Slavs the girls fasten
strong- scented flowers and sprigs in the front of their dress,
and thereby excite intense sexual desire in the young men. In
the East sexual stimulation by means of the sense of smell plays
a far more extensive role than in Europe.

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

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

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

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

According to him,

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

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

CHAPTER II

THE SECONDARY PHENOMENA OF LOVE (BRAIN AND

SENSES)

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

19 2—2

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER II

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

CHAPTER II

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

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

The present physical and mental constitution of man is the
result of an evolutionary process, of which the most marked
characteristic has been a continually more rapid increase in the
size and complexity of the brain. Phylogeny and ontogeny
clearly demonstrate the evolution of the human body from lower
states to higher, the slow but sure improvement in the direction

of a continual enlargement and increasing convolution of the brain,
which has by no means yet attained finality, but which may be
expected to continue into the far-distant future ; and associated
with this physical development will undoubtedly proceed an
equally extensive improvement in the quality of human conscious-
ness.

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

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

It is a very interesting fact that the principal " organ of volup-
tuousness " in women, the clitoris, is notably diminished in
size absolutely and relatively as compared with the clitoris of
apes. It certainly no longer represents an organ so susceptible

to voluptuous stimulation and excitement as it was assumed to
be by the older physicians and physiologists ; so that, for ex-
ample, Van Swieten, the celebrated body physician of the Empress
Maria Theresa, recommended titillatio clitoridis as the most
certain means of curing the sexual insensibility of his royal
patient.

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

A very remarkable phenomenon in the course of human evolu-
tion has been the diminution in the hairy covering of the body.
As compared with the other mammalia, especially those most
nearly allied to man — the anthropoid apes — man is relatively
bald. This baldness has been gradually acquired, and seems likely
to progress further in the future. Numerous hypotheses have
been propounded regarding the purpose and true cause of this
progressive atrophy of the hairy covering which originally
extended over the entire surface of the body. The effect of
tropical climate will not suffice to account for the change, for
in the tropics the hairy covering is useful for a covering against
the rays of the sun — witness the thick hairy coat of the tropical
apes. More apt is the idea of sexual selection, advanced by
Darwin in explanation of the loss of hair. According to this
theory, the comparatively balder women were preferred by the
men to those with a thicker covering of hair. Helbig raises the
objection that primitive man in sexual intercourse would observe
only the genital organs and the parts in their immediate neigh-
bourhood. Yet in this region the sexually mature woman has
retained a portion of the hairy covering of the body. We must
therefore, in order to rescue the idea of sexual selection as an
explanation of the increasing baldness of the human race, assume
that primitive man had cultivated aesthetic tastes, and was not
an extremely sensual person, and that in his choice of a partner
he would be guided by the appearance of the woman's entire
body. This, however, is a very questionable assumption. Very
doubtful also is the suggested connexion between largely developed
dentition and the baldness of the skin (Helbig). More apposite is
W. Bolsche's view that the atrophy of the human hairy covering
is related to the adoption of an artificial covering. Since that
time the thick hairy covering of the skin was felt to be burd< n-

some, since it hindered perspiration beneath the clothing, and
also favoured the harbouring of parasites, fleas, lice, etc., which
play so large a part in the annoyance of all hair-covered mammals.
In these circumstances bareness of skin became an ideal to
primitive man. By rubbing away the hair beneath the clothes,
by cutting it short, and by pulling it out by the roots, an artificial
baldness was produced ; this then became an ideal of beauty.
Thus it happened in the choice of a partner that those individuals
less hairy than others were preferred, and thus gradually by this
process of sexual selection the race became continually less
hairy, until ultimately the relative baldness of the present day
was attained.

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

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

It seems, however, that this process of loss of hair is not yet
completed. The male beard has already ceased to play the part
of a sexual lure, which it formerly undoubtedly possessed.
Schopenhauer's opinion, that with the advance of civilization the
beard will disappear, probably represents the truth ; he regarded
shaving as a sign of the higher civilization. It is certainly a
logical postulate of the natural course of development.1

Havelock Ellis, in " Man and Woman," comes to the conclusion
that the bodily development of our race is a progress in the
direction of a youthful type. This is merely another way of

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

expressing the fact that in the case of many organs and systems,
and more especially in the case of the hairy covering of the skin,
an arrest of development has occurred, and it is a recognition of
the fact that the retrogressive metamorphosis of these organs is
a compensation for the dominating and enormous development of
the brain.

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

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

This view is confirmed by the fact that, according to the most
recent investigation into the history of primitive man, it is
extremely probable that to palaeolithic man of the earlier diluvial
period the idea of the spiritual was still completely unknown —
that palaeolithic man was, in fact, purely a creature of impulse —
an opinion already maintained by Darwin in his work on the
" Descent of Man." In the sexual instinct, above all, every
dualistic division into physical and spiritual was entirely foreign
to primitive man. The more primitive the state of civiliza-
tion, the less is the idea " love " known, a fact first established
by Lubbock. Even at the present day, in regard to this matter,
there is a notable difference between the upper and the lower
classes in a European civilized community. For example, Elard
Hugo Meyer, in his excellent " Deutsche Volkskunde " (" German

Folk-lore," p. 152 ; Strasburg, 1898), states that from Eastern
Friesland to the Alps amongst the common people the word
" love," to us so indispensable and so exalted, is entirely un-
known ; in its place words expressing rather the sensual side of the
impulse are employed.

Rousseau suggested that primitive man embraced primitive
woman only in the fugitive moments of domination by his instinc-
tive impulse. It is no doubt very probable that primaeval man
shared with other animals the periodicity of the sexual impulse ;
this periodicity disappeared only in the subsequent course of
human development, and traces of it yet remain. It is probable
that this periodicity of the sexual impulse was associated with
variations in the supply of nutriment, and was thus, as Darwin
assumes, a kind of natural obstacle to too rapid an increase in the
population. Later, in consequence of an increase in individual
security, and of a more enduring supply of abundant nutriment,
such periodic rutting ceased to occur, or was preserved only
in the form of menstruation (ovulation) in women, in whom
at this period there is a perceptible increase in sexual excitability.
Among savage races this periodicity of the sexual impulse, its
increase at definite seasons of the year, is still clearly manifested
even in the male. Heape and Havelock Ellis have carefully
studied this primitive phenomenon, and have adduced numerous
proofs of its truth.1

Only the human female experiences true " menstruation " ;
that is to say, only in women is the maturation of the ovum
accompanied by a monthly discharge of blood from the genital
passage. The so-called menstruation of female apes is limited

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

to a periodic swelling of the external genital organs, with a
mucous discharge therefrom. According to Metchnikoff, the
menstruation of apes constitutes the intermediate stage between
the rutting of the lower animals and the menstruation of the
human female. This latter is a new acquisition, the purpose
of which is perhaps the limitation of fertility and the prevention
of the excessively early marriage of girls.

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

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

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

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

This important question regarding the origin of the love of
human beings as contrasted with the periodic instinct of the

lower animals and primitive man has hitherto, strangely enough,
hardly received any attention, notwithstanding the fact that it
is one of the most important evolutionary problems in the history
of human civilization, and represents to a certain extent the only
problem in the primitive history of love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

beyond the purposes of reproduction, subserved the spiritual
demands of the loving individual himself .l

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

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

" A woman's form, young men, fetters the heart of man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The most important part in the amatory life of man is played,
even at the present day, by the sense of touch, and by the two

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

higher senses, sight and hearing, these two latter containing so
many spiritual elements.

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

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

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

It has been well said that the first intentional touching of a
part of the skin of the loved one is already a half-sexual union ;
and this view is confirmed by the fact that such intimate bodily
contacts, even when they occur between parts far distant from
sexual organs, very speedily lead to states of marked excitement
of these organs. Quite rightly, therefore, the pleasurable sensa-
tions aroused by means of cutaneous sensibility are regarded by
Magnus Hirschfeld as the stages of transition along which the
power of self-command and the capacity for resisting the impulses
arising out of the transformation of sensory perceptions into
movements and actions most commonly break down. He who
avoids these first contacts, best protects himself against the

danger of being overpowered by his sexual impulse, and of
blindly following where that impulse leads — if, for example, he
wishes to avoid intercourse with a person whom he suspects to
be suffering from some venereal disease.

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

The contact of the lips in the kiss is one of the most powerful
stimuli of love.1 An Arabian author of the sixteenth century
(Sheikh Nefzawi) in his work, "The Perfumed Garden," an Arabian
ara amandi, alludes to this fact. He quotes the verses of an
Arabian poet :

" When the heart burns with love,
It finds, alas, nowhere a cure ;
No witch's magic art

Will give the heart that for which it thirsts ;
The working of no charm
Will perform the desired miracle ;
And the most intimate embrace
Leaves the heart cold and unsatisfied —
If the rapture of the kiss is wanting."

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

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

1 Recently Gualino [" II Riflesso Sessuale nelT Ecoitomento alle Labbra " ( " The
Sexual Reflex resulting from the Stimulation of the Lips "), published in the
Italian " Archives of Psychiatry," 1904, p. 341 et seq.] by mechanical stimula-
tion of the red parts of the lips, has produced erotic ideas and congestion of the
genital organs, and this proves that the lips are an erogenic zone. Compare also
the interesting remarks of Professor Petermann and Dr. Nacke on the origin of
the kiss, in the German " Archives of Criminal Anthropology," 1904, vol. xvi.,
pp. 356, 357.

And Byron writes :

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

It is therefore a^jarue saying, that a woman who permits a man
to kiss her will ultimately grant him complete possession.1
Moreover, by the majority of finely sensitive women the kiss is
valued just as highly as the last favour.2

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

Havelock Ellis has recently made an interesting investigation
regarding the origin of the kiss, and has proved that the love kiss
has developed from the primitive maternal kiss and from the
sucking of the infant at the maternal breast,3 which are customary
in regions where the sexual kiss is unknown. Both the sense of
touch and the sense of smell play a part in this primitive kiss,
and to simple contact primitive man superadded both licking
and biting. This primitive physiological sadism of the biting
kiss was probably inherited from the lower animals, which when
copulating often bite one another (Kleist in " Penthesilea "
writes " Kiisse " — kissing — rhymes with " Bisse "— biting).
Earlier authors — as, for example, Mohnike, in his admirable essay
on the sexual instinct — have inferred from the existence of these
passionate accompaniments of the kiss that the latter has an
intimate connexion with the nutritive impulse. We have indeed

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

3 Especially in France is this the case. Madame Adam describes very taste-
fully this feeling of loss of virtue after granting a kiss.

3 Cf. also J. Ldbrowicz, " The Kiss and Kissing," p. 22 (Hamburg, 1877).

the familiar expression, " I could eat you for love." Indeed,
according to Mohnike, the frenzy of the wild kisses of passionate
love may actually lead to anthropophagy, as in a case reported
by Metzger, in which a young man on his wedding night actually
bit and began to devour his wife. Although in this case we
doubtless have to do with an insane individual, such sadistic
feelings in a lesser degree are so often observed in association
with kissing that they may be regarded as physiological.1

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

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

With the diffusion of European civilization, the European kiss of
contact has also been diffused. It is no longer possible to deter-
mine whether the peculiar connexion between the lips and the
genital organs, as manifested for example by the growth of hair
on the upper lip at puberty in the male sex, and also by the well-
known thick " sensual " lips often seen in individuals with ex-
ceptionally powerful sexual impulses, is originally primary, or
merely a secondary result of the employment of the lips in a
sexual caress.2

To our consideration of the kiss we may naturally append a
few remarks on the role of the sense of taste in human love.
Inasmuch as taste is almost invariably closely connected with

1 It is interesting to observe that the Chinese regard tho European kiss as a
sign of cannibalism [d'Enjoy, " Le Baisor en Europe ot en Chine (" The Kiss
in Europe and in China"), Bulletin de la Sociite. <T Antiiropologie, Paris, 1897,
No. 2.]

a We can allude only in passing to tho celebrated genito-labial nerve of Vol-
taire.

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

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

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

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

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

" In the case of the eye and the ear the surrounding matter is re-
jected by the senses ; for this reason, these two senses give the freest
aesthetic enjoyment unalloyed with animal lust."

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

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

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

However, in addition to the sense of sight, the sense of hearing
plays a part of considerable importance in the amatory life of
mankind. A sufficient indication of this fact is given by the
change occurring in a man's voice at the time of puberty. Darwin's
classical investigations prove beyond a possibility of doubt the
intimate relationship between the voice and sexual life. The
masculine voice, especially, has a sexually stimulating effect upon
woman ; but the converse influence of a woman's voice upon man
may also be observed. In the other mammalia, it is especially
in the rutting season that the voice is used as a means of sexual
allurement. The repetition of this vocal lure at measured
intervals gives rise to rhythm and song. The rhythmical repeti-
tion of the same tone possesses something highly suggestive,
fascinating, and so gives rise to sexual attraction and charm in
the most powerful manner. Here lies the origin of the profound
erotic influence of singing and music. Darwin assumes that the
early progenitors of mankind, before they had acquired the
faculty of expressing their mutual love in articulate speech, used

3—2

to charm one another by musical tones and rhythms. Woman
is far more susceptible than man to the sexual influence of singing
or music, but man himself is by no means indifferent to the charms
of the beautiful feminine voice. The soft tones of a woman's
voice are, for many men, the first enthralling disclosure of woman's
nature. The French physician and natural philosopher Moreau
relates that he was once compelled to renounce the pleasure of
seeing the performance of a beautiful actress, for only thus could
he overcome a violent outburst of sexual passion which was
evoked in him by the mere stimulus of her voice.

CHAPTER III

THE SECONDARY PHENOMENA OF HUMAN LOVE (REPRO-
DUCTIVE ORGANS, SEXUAL IMPULSE, SEXUAL ACT)

" Sexual passion t*s a matter of universal experience ; and
speaking broadly and generally, we may say it is a matter on
which it is quite desirable that every adult at some time or other
should have actual experience." — EDWARD CARPENTER.

CONTENTS OP CHAPTER III

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

CHAPTER III

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

Simultaneously therewith proceeds the differentiation of the
proper internal reproductive organs, the rudiments of which are
identical in the two sexes. A portion of these primitively identical
structures undergoes further development in the male, another
portion undergoes further development in the female, whilst in
both sexes rudiments of the earlier condition are retained, and
these bear witness to the primitive state in which both reproduc-
tive glands were present in a single individual (hermaphroditism).
In this sense Weininger's theory applies — viz., that there is no
absolutely male and no absolutely female individual, that in
every man there is something of woman, and in every woman
something of man, and that between the two various transitional
forms, sexual " intermediate stages," exist. Therefore, accord-
ing to this view, every individual has in his composition so many
fractions " man " and so many fractions " woman," and according

to the preponderance of one set of elements or the other, he must
be assigned to one or the other sex. This theory, which Weininger
regards as his own discovery, is by no means new, and already
finds a place in Heinse's " Ardinghello," where we read :

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

Magnus Hirschfeld, to whom this noteworthy passage in
Heinse's book appears to be unknown, has recently, in his valuable
monographs, " Sexual Stages of Transition " (Leipzig, 1905) and
" The Nature of Love " (Leipzig, 1906), thoroughly investigated
these relations, and quotes, among others, sayings of Darwin and
Weismann, according to which the latent presence of opposite
sexual characters in every sexually differentiated bion must be
regarded as a normal arrangement. Unquestionably the widely
diffused phenomenon of " psychical hermaphroditism," or
" spiritual bisexuality," is connected with the physical facts just
enumerated, and provides us with the key for the understanding
of the nature of homosexuality. Both these states — the
physical and the mental — may be referred to primitive conditions
of sexuality. They cannot play any serious part in the future
course of human evolution, of which the progressive differentia-
tion of the sexes is so marked a characteristic. In contrast with
this differentiation, these rudimentary sexual conditions are
practically devoid of significance. Suggestion, indeed, the in-
fluence of momentary tendencies of the time and of transient
mental states, may temporarily deceive us. And when, for
example, Hirschfeld maintains that in the central nervous
system of women the more masculine, rational qualities, and in
the central nervous system of men the more feminine, emotional
qualities, are respectively on the increase, we must answer, in the
first place, that this is not generally true, and, in the second place,
that, in so far as it is true, it is a passing phenomenon, which has
already provoked a powerful reaction in the^opposite direction.1
The exuviae of a dead condition cannot again be vitalized.

1 Apart from Strindberg and Weininger, who advocate, for the salvation of
the future and as ideals of development, the most pronounced and one-sided
development of the masculine type, I need refer only to " The Physiological
Weakmindodness of Woman " by Mobius, and to such writings as B. Fried-
lander's " Renaissance des Eros Uranios " (Berlin, 1904), and to Eduard von
Mayer's " The Vital Laws of Civilization " (Hallo, 1904), as characteristic
symptoms of such a reaction.

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

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

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

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

The intimate connexion which thus obtains between the
urinary and the reproductive organs is not without significance
for the understanding of certain aberrations of the libido sexualis.
The same is true of the relations between the orifice of the

genital passage and the similarly adjacent aperture of the large
intestine, the anus. " Anus," or, better, " cloaca love," plays
a part, indeed, in many fishes, amphibia, and reptiles ; in these
the act of procreation and the excretion of urine and faeces
all take place by way of the cloaca. Among the mammals,
at an early stage of phylogenetic development the intestine
became completely separated from the sexual rudiment and the
sexual excretory passages ; and it is only in the proximity of the
respective orifices that we find an indication of the primitive
association. The act of paederasty reminds us of the same fact.
The " aperture-problem " itself leads us, in the course of progres-
sive development, to the " member-problem "—that is to say, to
the problem of the more accurate apposition of the two reproduc-
tive apertures. The penis, by its introduction into the body of a
member of the opposite sex, acts as a means for the shortening
of distance-love ; it serves for the fixation, for the clamping
together, of the copulating pair, which in earlier stages of animal
life was effected by sucking and biting ; for example, in birds,
who for the most part lack an actual penis, the cock holds the
hen firmly with his beak during intercourse, and the sucking and
biting which often occur in human beings in the sexual act persist
as a reminiscence of these relations. In various vertebrates other
means of fixation are employed : by the shape of fins, of arms, or
of legs, a close " embrace " is rendered possible ; finally, the
evolution of a special member for sexual purposes closed the
long series of means of ensuring union. Originally no more
than a peg or a spine, in man the penis is first developed into the
form of an absolutely free limb. Dogs, beasts of prey, rodents,
bats, and apes, have a strong bone in the organ, the so-called
" penis-bone." In man this bone is lacking ; the penis has become
entirely free. W. Bolsche writes :

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

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

In the clitoris woman also possesses a rudiment of a primitive

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

This leads us to the third and last problem, the " libido-problem."
In the human species voluptuous pleasure is almost completely
divorced from the process of " fusion-love," the coalescence of
spermatozoon and ovum, and has for the most part become a
phenomenon of "distance-love." It appears extremely doubtful
if there is anything specific about the voluptuous sensation —
whether there is, in fact, a special " sexual sense." Magnus
Hirschfeld assumes the existence of peculiar " sexual cells," of
receptive areas for sexual stimuli, furnished with a sensory
substance endowed with a peculiar specific sensibility. He
regards love and the sexual impulse as " a molecular movement
or force of a quite specific quality, streaming through the nervous
system," and accompanied by a quite peculiar sensation, or
pleasure-tone, arising from a condition of excitement of the
sexual cells. But, as we have already pointed out, the volup-
tuous sensation is merely a special case of general cutaneous sensi-
bility ; it is very closely allied with the cutaneous sensation of
tickling ; properly speaking, it is no more than an excessively
powerful tickling.1 It has also intimate relations with the sensa-

1 ITCHING, TICKLING, AND SEXUAL SENSIBILITY. — On September 2, 1890,
Dr. Bronson, Professor of Dermatology in the New York Polyclinic, read before
the American Durinatological Association a paper on " The Sensation of Itching "
(printed in the New York Medical Record of October 18, 1890, and republished
by the New Sydenham Society in 1893 in a volume entitled " Selected Mono-
graphs on Dermatology "). In this paper the author deals at some length with
the relations between itching and the voluptuous, or, as he calls it, the aphro-
disiac," sense. He also denies the specific character of sexual sensations, and
states that the aphrodisiac sense " is but a higher development of the primitive
sense of contact. It has a special organ or instrument — the penis in the male,
the clitoris in the female. Moreover, it is distributed over the entire cutaneous
surface " (New Sydenham Society, op. cit., p. 314). In this connexion, and more
particularly apropos of Dr. Blocn's statement on the previous page that " the
function of the clitoris is expressed by its name " (Gorman, Kitzler), it is interest-
ing to note that in German the word Kitzel variously denotes — (1) tickling,
(2) itching, (3) sexual desire, (4) sexual gratification. The more commonly em-

tion of pain.1 The structure and position of the nerve-terminal
apparatus of the genital organs, by means of which voluptuous
pleasure is rendered possible, exhibit great similarity with the
touch corpuscles and sensory end-organs of other parts of the skin.
In the sexual orgasm the general cutaneous sensation increases
to so high a degree of intensity, becomes so powerful, that for
an instant consciousness is actually lost. The association of a
momentary loss of consciousness with the acme of sensation
indicates the summit of sexual pleasure — it is an abandonment,
a dissolution, of individual personality.

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

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

" But at a precise instant this all came to a halt. The seminal cells

ployed German term for itching, Jucken, does not possess any secondary sexual
signification ; but, as Dr. Bronson points out (op. cit., p. 312), " both the English
words itch and itching, and the Latin prurio and pruritus, in their secondary
significations, convey the idea of a longing, teasing desire, while pruritus was
commonly used by the Latins as a synonym for lasciviousness." The same
idea is, of course, conveyed by the English derivations, pruriency and prurient.
Thus, we see that the familiar terminology of these three tongues (and doubtless
of many others) refuses to countenance Hirschfeld's view regarding the specific
character of sexual sensibility. — TRANSLATOR.

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

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

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

" To an earlier stage.

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

This farthest point is an act of contact.1 We have already
learnt to regard the skin as a projection of the nervous system,
and we have come to understand the significance of the skin in
the sphere of sexuality. The other senses which have arisen from
the skin must also be taken into account in this matter. In the
genital organs, this touch stimulus assumes a quite peculiar
character ; it gives rise here to the proper voluptuous sensation
which is associated with the discharge of the reproductive pro-
ducts. In man this association is most distinctly manifest.
The instant of most intense sexual pleasure coincides with ejacula-
tion, with the expulsion of the semen. The character of this
voluptuous sensation can hardly be defined ; in part, it is like an
intense tickling sensation, but, on the other hand, it has an
unmistakable relationship to pain. Later, in another connexion,
we shall consider this interesting point at greater length. Not
inaptly the sexual act has also been compared with sneezing ;
the preliminary tickling sensation, with the subsequent discharge
of nervous tension, in the form of a sneeze, have, in fact, a notable
similarity with the processes occurring in the sexual act.

The sexual act depends upon the occurrence of certain stimuli
which are connected with the complete development of the
internal and external genital organs and of the reproductive
glands. The time when this development occurs in man and
woman is known as puberty. The sum of these stimuli is known
as the " sexual impulse." Whereas in the lower animals the
sexual impulse is for the most part connected with the activity

1 Carpenter perceives in this "sense of contact" the essence of all sexual love.

of the reproductive glands, in the human species, in association
with the preponderating significance of the brain, it has attained
a relative independence of the reproductive glands ; whilst the
mind has come to influence the sexual impulse very powerfully.
Generally speaking, sexual excitement is produced in three ways :
first, by the activity of the reproductive glands ; secondly, by
peripheral excitement derived from the so-called " erogenic "
areas ; and thirdly, by central psychical influences. S. Freud
has recently studied the relations between these three causes of
sexual excitement, of the sexual impulse, and has very properly
distinguished two stages — the stage of " prelibido " (sexual
desire), and the stage of the proper sexual " libido " (sexual
gratification).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

those of the vaginal bulbs and the clitoris. On the other hand, the
turgescence and the sensitiveness of the glans penis itself are heightened
by compression of that organ, in consequence of the ever-increasing
fulness of the vessels of the vaginal mucous membrane and the two
vaginal bulbs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The vagina, especially the upper part of the passage, under-
goes rhythmical contraction and dilation, and complete gratifica-
tion terminates the act.

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

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

It is very important to note the various physiological accom-
paniments of coitus, since they assist us to understand the mode
of origin and the biological root of many sexual perversions.
Already in normal sexual intercourse sadistic and masochistic
phenomena may be observed. The biting and crying out
mentioned by Roubaud as occurring in the voluptuous ecstasy
are, indeed, of very frequent occurrence. Rudolf Bergh, the
celebrated Danish dermatologist and physician, of the Copen-
hagen Hospital for Women suffering from Venereal Diseases,
alludes regularly in his annual reports to the consequences of
" erotic bites." Amongst the Southern Slavs, the custom of
" biting one another " is very general (Krauss). The intense dark
red coloration of the face and of the reproductive organs and
their environment is also a physiological accompaniment of
sexual excitement, and this coloration is more marked in con-
sequence of the associated turgescence of the male and female
genital organs ; it leads, moreover, to associations of feeling in

which the blood plays a dominant part. Hence we deduce the
biological and ethnological significance of the colour red in the
sphere of sexuality. The nature of the sadist " to see red "
during sexual intercourse is, therefore, firmly founded upon a
physiological basis, and merely exhibits an increase of a normal
phenomenon.1 The crying and cursing in which many individuals
find sexual gratification has also a physiological representative
in the inarticulate noises and cries frequently expressed in normal
intercourse. It is remarkable that an Indian writer on erotics —
Vatsyayana — deduces this verbal sadism from the various noises
which are commonly made in normal intercourse. Similarly, in
both parties to the sexual act the presence of masochistic elements
can be detected : witness the patience with which pain is borne
when it has a voluptuous tinge.2

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

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

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

1 For this reason many ingenious prostitutes wear a red chemise. — Cf. P. Nacke,
" Un Gas de Fetichisme de Souliers," etc. ("A Case of Shoe Fetichism "), in
Bulletin de la Sociitc de Midecine Mentale de Belgique, 1894.

2 Thus it appears that sadism and masochism arc not manifestations of " genital
atavism " in the sense of Mantcgazza and Lorobroso, but aro rather due to the
gradual and pathological increase of physiological phenomena still manifest at
the present day.

CHAPTER JV
PHYSICAL DIFFERENTIAL SEXUAL CHARACTERS

" We have here a primitive inequality, whose primitiveness goes
back to the opposition between content and form. From this prim-
eval difference arise all the other secondary differences." — ALFONS

BlLHARZ.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IV

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

CHAPTER IV

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

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

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

" The undulatory periodicity of the principal functions of the
feminine organism, which depends on the processes of ovulation and
menstruation, and is invariable in the females of the human species,
does not occur in the other mammalia (with the exception of apes).
In these latter, as far as we have been able to observe, the secondary
sexual characters, in the matter of differences in muscular develop-
ment and in strength, are not so developed, or sometimes are not so
developed, as in the human species. We must in this connexion
exclude the differences which appear in domestic, animals as a result

of domestication (for example, the difference between the cow and the
bull). In the human female, the periodicity, which begins to act even
on the youthful, still undeveloped body, has during thousands of years
increased the secondary sexual differences. Periodicity is, in my
opinion, an important cause of the fact that woman is inferior to man,
more especially in the development of the muscular system and in
strength, and that her organs, for the most part, are more closely
approximated to the infantile type.

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

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

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

ment of mankind is striving, is represented by the feminine —
that is, by a youthful type.1

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

" The medieval painters, when representing the general type of
angels and saints, van Eyck and Memmlmg in their Madonnas and
female saints, paint heads exhibiting the most clearly defined indi-
vidual characteristics, but into these feeling representations of delicate
virginity there intrude certain harsh lineaments, so that the heads
strike us as masculine, or as a little too old. Van Eyck's Madonnas,

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

with the Christ-child at their breast, frequently look to us like women
of thirty years old. But the painter must have followed Nature ;
it is Nature which since his time has changed. The tender virgin of
three hundred years ago had more masculine lineaments than she has
at the present day, and he who in the portrait of a Maria Stuart expects
to find a face like one he would meet in a modern journal of fashion
will find himself greatly disappointed by certain traits in the pictures
of this celebrated beauty, traits which to the nineteenth century would
seem almost masculine."

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

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

Certain phenomena and aberrations of the movement for the
emancipation of women, such as the adoption of a masculine
style of dress and the use of tobacco, are no more than relapses
into a primitive condition, which among the common people has
persisted unaltered to the present day. We need merely allude
to the man's hat, the short coat, and the high-laced boot of the
Tyrolese women, and to the tobacco-smoking of the women at
the wedding festivals among the German peasantry. A false
" emancipation " of this kind is frequently encountered among
peasants, vagabonds, and gipsies, to which, moreover, the neuter

designation of the women of this class as das Mensch and
" woman-fellow," etc., bears witness ; we have herein character-
istic indications of the fact that " peculiar to the woman of the
people is a self-conscious, actively progressive masculine nature."

That the comparative obliteration of sexual contrasts among
the lower orders of modern society is a vestigial relic of primitive
conditions, is shown also by the primeval history of the nations.
The idea appearing already in the Biblical creation myth, and
the thought later expressed by Plato, and recently by Jacob
Bohme, that the first human being was originally both man and
woman, and that the woman was subsequently formed out of
this primeval human being Adam — this pregnant thought merely
expresses the fact of the indifference of the sexes among savage
people and in the primitive history of mankind. The herma-
phrodite of ancient art is, like the man-woman of the modern
woman's movement, an atavism, a retrogression to these long-
past stages, of which we have only the above-mentioned vestiges
to remind us.1

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

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

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

The masculine body has evolved to a greater extent than the

1 W. Havclburg, in his essay, " Climate, Raoo, and Nationality in Relation
to Marriage," published in " Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage and
the Married State," by Senator and Kaminer, p. 127 (London, Rebman,
Limited, 1904), also alludes to the significance of progressive sexual differentiation
in the process of civilization, and draws attention to the increase in feminine boauty.

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

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

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

The enlargement of the female pelvis in the course of human
evolution is dependent upon the most important of all the factors
of civilization, the brain. Even in the human foetus the great
size of the brain gives rise to a far greater proportionate develop-
ment of the skull than we find in the fo3tus of any other mammal.
This influences the pelvic inlet and the sacrum, but also the large
pelvis, since, in consequence of the adoption by man of the upright
posture, the pregnant uterus expands more laterally, and thus
opens out the iliac fossae. In the lower races of man, it is precisely
this plate-like expansion of the iliac fossae which is so much less
developed than in the case of civilized races.

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

The mean stature of woman is somewhat less than that of man.
Among Europeans it is about 1-60 metres (5 feet 3 inches), as
compared with 1-72 metres (5 feet 7£ inches) for the average
stature of the male. According to Vierordt, the new-born boy
is already on the average from £ to 1 centimetre (i to f inch)
longer than the new-born girl. Johannes Ranke characterizes
the individual factors which give rise to these differences in the
following manner :

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

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

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

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

The body-weight of man is likewise notably greater than that
of woman. According to Vierordt, the average weight of a new-
born boy in middle Europe is 3,333 grammes (7-348 pounds), as
compared with that of a new-born girl 3,200 grammes (7-055
pounds). The difference, therefore, is 133 grammes (0-293
pounds = about 4J ounces). In the case of adults, the mean

difference amounts to 7 kilogrammes (15 pounds), since the
average weight of man is 65 kilogrammes (143 pounds), that of
woman 58 kilogrammes (128 pounds).

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

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

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

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

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

According to the investigations of Pfitzner, the measurements
of the head (length, breadth, height, circumference) are smaller
in woman than in man. Woman's skull remains, in respect of

numerous peculiarities of structure, strikingly like the skull of
the child.1 This infantile quality of a woman's skull, we must
again point out, justifies no conclusion regarding the inferiority
of woman. Schultze, when presenting these data for our con-
sideration, rightly reminds us of the well-known fact that the
man of genius is also frequently distinguished by infantile
peculiarities.

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

In this connexion 0. Schultze remarks :

" The question immediately arises, whether we are justified in speak-
ing of the mental ' inferiority ' of woman, because her brain weighs
less than that of man.

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

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

Whether the study of the finer structure of the brain in man
and woman will enable us to form more trustworthy conclusions
regarding their respective intellectual valuation, is a question
whose answer must for the present be postponed. According to
Riidinger and Passet, in new-born boys and girls there exist very
remarkable differences in the formation and development of the
brain. In the male foetal brain the frontal lobes are larger,
wider, and higher ; the convolutions, especially those of the

1 We may refer also to Paul Bartel's valuable work, " Ueber Goschlechte-
unterschiede am Schadol " — " Sexual Differences in the Skull " (Berlin, 1898).
The author concludes : " Wo are unable to recognize any important difference
between man's skull and woman's — probably, indeed, no such difference
exists."

parietal lobe, are better formed than in the female foetal brain.
Waldeyer was able to confirm tliis observation, and he considers
it of great importance, especially in view of the large share which
the frontal lobes have in the performance of purely intellectual
functions. Broca, however, was unable to detect a lesser develop-
ment of the frontal lobes in woman. Eberstaller and Cunning-
ham even believed that they could establish that this portion of
the brain was more powerfully developed in woman ! Finally,
the great Swedish cerebral anatomist, G. Retzius, made an exact
investigation of the sexual differences between the brains of man
and woman in the adult state. According to 0. Schultze, his
results can be regarded as authoritative. Retzius stated that
hitherto no specific invariably recurrent peculiarity had been found
by which the female brain could always with certainty be dis-
tinguished from the male ; still, he was inclined to attribute to
woman's brain a greater simplicity of structure ; it showed less
divergence from the fundamental type.

This coincides with the fact to which we have already alluded,
that woman as compared with man possesses less variability,
that she is the simpler, more primitive being. Similarly, experi-
ence teaches ethnologists that the men of a race differ from one
another to a much greater extent than the women.1

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

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

The observation of the physical differences between man and
woman also teaches us the futility of the old dispute as to whether
man's body or woman's was the more beautiful.2 The different

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

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

tasks which lie before the male and female bodies respectively
give rise to different development of individual parts. If this
development is complete in its kind, the body is beautiful. Stratz,
in the introduction to his book on " The Beauty of the Female
Body," has rightly identified perfect beauty with perfect health.
Man's body and woman's will alike be beautiful if all secondary
sexual characters are developed in a harmonious and not exces-
sive degree, if the idea of " manliness in man " and " woman-
liness in woman " have attained full expression, and have not
been unduly limited by isolated peculiarities and variations.

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

CHAPTER V

PSYCHICAL DIFFERENTIAL SEXUAL CHARACTERS— THE
WOMAN'S QUESTION

(Appendix : SEXUAL SENSIBILITY IN WOMAN)

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

67 5—2

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER V

The fact of psychical sexual differences — Attempts to deny their existence —
Rosa Mayreder's " Critique of Femininity " — The sexual nuances of the
psyche — Ineradicability of these — Condemnation of psychical bisexuality —
Expression of psychical difference in the demeanour of the sperm cell and
the germ cell — Original representatives of the differing natures of man and
woman — Recent researches regarding psychical sexual differences — Sensory
sensations — Intellectual differences — Experiments of Jastrow, Minot, and
others — Inquiries of Delaunay and Havelock Ellis — Readier suggestibility of
women — Tendencies to independent activity on the part of women — Higher
spiritual activities in man and woman — Woman's talent for politics —
Emotivity of woman — Greater susceptibility to fatigue — Decline of emo-
tivity in the modern woman — Artistic talents of man and woman — Greater
variability of man — Influence of menstruation on the feminine physique —
Psychological experiments of H. B. Thompson — Woman and man hetero-
geneous natures — Comparison by Alfons Bilharz — The enigmatical in woman
— Poets and thinkers on this question — A saying of Theodor Mundt —
Antipathy of the sexes — Love as the solution of the enigma — Significance
of psychical differences for the woman's question — Part played by women
in civilization — Retrospect of primeval history — Women as the discoverers
of handicrafts and arts — As the teachers of man — Thomas Henry Huxley
on the woman's question — The value of work for woman — Improvement of
domestic service according to Schmoller — The woman of the future.

Appendix: Sexual Sensibility in Woman. — An old topic of dispute —
Sexual sensibility in man — Feminine erotic types — Theory of Lombroso
and Ferrero — Adler's monograph — Refutation of the theory of the lessor
sensual sensibility of woman — Diffuse character of the feminine sexual
sphere — Researches of Havelock Ellis regarding the sexual impulse in
woman — Experience of alienists regarding sexuality in woman — A case of
temporary sexual anaesthesia — Causes of sexual frigidity.

CHAPTER V

THE unquestionably existing physical differences between the
sexes respectively, correspond equally without question to
existing psychical differences. Psychically, also, man and woman
are completely different beings. We must not employ the word
" psychical," as it is so often employed, in the sense of pure
" intelligence " ; we must understand the term to relate to the
entire conception and content of the psyche, to the whole spiritual
being — the spiritual habitus, emotional character, feelings, and
will : we shall then immediately be convinced that masculine and
feminine beings differ through and through, that they are hetero-
geneous, incomparable natures.

Under the influence of Weininger's book, the attempt has
recently been made to deny the existence of sexual differences
in the psychical sphere, and especially to contest the origin of
these differences from the fundamentally different nature of the
masculine and feminine types. (Weininger himself not only
went so far as to declare the obliteration and equalization of
sexual differences, but he even asserted that all feminine nature
was a personification of nothingness, of evil ; he wished to anni-
hilate fernininity, in order to allow the existence of one sex only,
the male, this being to him the embodiment of the objective
and the good.) I recently read with great interest a most intelli-
gent book, one full of new ideas, by Rosa Mayreder — " Zur Kritik
der Weiblichkeit " (A Critique of Femininity), Jena, 1905 — in
which the author maintains what she calls the " primitively
teleological character of sexuality " ; that is, she considers
the different sexual functions of man and woman to be compara-
tively unimportant for the determination of their spiritual nature,
and regards the individual psychical differentiation as indepen-
dent of sexuality and of the different sexual natures. In her
opinion, sexual polarity does not extend to the " higher nature "
of mankind, to the spiritual sphere. She offers as a proof of this,
among other points, the fact that by crossed inheritance spiritual
peculiarities of the father can be transmitted to the daughter.
Very true. Moreover, no objective student of Nature will deny
that a woman can attain the same degree of individual psychical
differentiation as a man, or that she can bring her " higher
nature " to an equally great development. But quite as
incontestable is the fact which Rosa Mayreder keeps too much in

the background : that everything psychical, the entire emotional
and voluntary life, receives from the particular sexual nature a
peculiar characterization, a distinctive colouring, and a specific
nuance ; and that these precisely constitute the heterogeneous
and the incomparable in the masculine and the feminine natures.

The attempts to annihilate sexual differences in theory are very
old,1 but they have always proved untenable in practice. They
have invariably been shattered by contact with — sexual differences.

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret (You may
drive out Nature with a pitchfork, but she will inevitably
return). And this return of Nature is, in fact, a step forward,
in advance of primitive hermaphroditic states. Sexual differ-
ences are ineradicable ; civilization shows an unmistakable
tendency to increase them. There is also an individual differ-
entiation of sexual characters. It is proportional to the differ-
entiation of the psychical characters of man and woman. And
the problem is this : How is it possible for woman to ensure the
development and perfectibility of her higher nature, without
eliminating and obscuring her peculiar character as a sexual being ?

When Rosa Mayreder herself, at the end of her book (p. 278),
comes to the conclusion —

" In the province of the physical, about which no doubt is possible,
the development towards ' homologous monosexuality,' towards the un-
conditional sexual differentiation of individuals, constitutes the most
desirable aim. Every divergence from the normal renders the indi-
vidual an imperfect being ; physical hermaphroditism is repulsive
because it represents a state of insufficiency, an inadequate and
malformed structure. It appertains to the qualities of beautiful
and healthy human beings that the body should be that of an entire
man or an entire woman, just as it is desirable that the body should
be intact in all other respects "

— she has at the same time expressed a judgment regarding the
value of psychical bisexuality which must ever be a rudiment
merely in the " entire man " or the " entire woman," and can

1 The hermaphroditic idea of antiquity has repeatedly fascinated the
human spirit. It certainly cannot be denied that something great and noble
underlay this idea of overcoming sex. As long as eighty years before, Weininger
and the modern apostles of bisexuality, Johann Michael Leupoldt, Professor of
Medicine at the University of Erlangen, made the following prophecy : " The
reconciliation of the sexual contrast in every human individual mil some day proceed
so far that, dynamically understood, with the general attainment of a kind of herma-
phroditism, humanity, having reached its earthly goal, will become totally
extinct " (" Eubiotik oder Grundzuge der Kunst, als Mensch rich tig, tuchtig,
wohl und lang zu leben " — " Eubiotics, or Principles of the Art of Living as Man
Rightly, Virtuously, Well, and Long," pp. 232, 233; Berlin and Leipzig, 1828).
This would amount to a kind of natural realization of E. von Hartmann's ideal
of conscious self-annihilation at the end of time !

never attain the transcendent importance, can never represent
the progress towards higher altitudes, which the author, in her
singular misunderstanding of the true relations, wishes to ascribe
to that condition. We may admit that the bisexual character
is more or less strongly developed in the individual male or female,
without thereby abandoning the fundamental natural difference
between man and woman, which involves not merely the physical,
but also the psychical sphere.

I disbelieve, therefore, in Rosa Mayreder's " synthetic human
being," who is " subordinate alike to the conditions of the
masculine and the feminine "; but I do believe, as I have already
stated in earlier writings, in an individualization of love, in an
ennobling and deepening of the relationship between the sexes,
such as is possible only to free personalities. This is easily
attainable in conjunction with the retention of all bodily and
mental peculiarities, as these have developed during the process
of sexual differentiation between man and woman.

There can be no possible doubt that psychically woman is a
different creature from man. And quite rightly Mantegazza
declares the opinion of Mirabeau, that the soul has no sex, but
only the body, to be a great blunder.

Let us now return to the directly visible elementary pheno-
menon of love, to the process of coalescence of the spermatozoon
and the ovum. From our study of other natural processes we
feel we are justified by analogy in drawing the conclusion that the
observed kinetic difference between the spermatozoon and the
ovum is the expression also of different psychical processes.
Georg Hirth draws attention to these remarkable differences in
respect of their modes of energy between spermatozoa and ova.1
He also infers from the greater variability of the spermatozoa
in the different animal species, as compared with the usual
spherical form of the ova, that to the spermatozoon is allotted
the most important kinetic function in the process of reproduc-
tion, to which opinion its aggressive mobility would also lead
us, whereas the ovum rather represents potential energy.

" We can indeed hardly believe that anywhere in the entire organic
world is there anything, of the same minute size, endowed with like
energy and enterprise as these so-called spermatozoa (' little sperm
animals '), which are indeed not animals, and which yet prepare for
ua more joy and more sorrow than any animal docs. There everything
is busy. With what turbulence they hurry along until they attain
their ardently desired goal, and having attained it, thrust themselves

1 G. Hirth, " Entropy of the Germinal System and Hereditary Enfranchise-
ment," pp. 89, 90 (Munich, 1900).

head first into the interior of the ovum ! In this we have a drama for
the gods. To doubt the energy of these structures would be pre-
posterous."

Spermatozoa and ova are the original representatives of the
respective spiritual natures of man and woman. Disregarding
all further differentiation and individualization, the fundamental
lineaments of the masculine and feminine natures harmonize with
the demeanour of the reproductive cells ; and we are able to recog-
nize that for each is provided a different task, and yet that the
task of each is no less important than that of the other. Quite
rightly Rosa Mayreder points out, that the male sex stands
biologically no higher than the female from the reproductive
and procreative point of view ; that in the continued repro-
duction of life male and female have equal share.

No less true, on the other hand, is the remark of Havelock
Ellis, whose position in relation to the woman question is through-
out objective :

" As long as women are distinguished from men by primary sexual
characters — as long, that is to say, as they conceive and bear — so long
will they remain unequal to man in the highest psychical processes "
(" Man and Woman," p. 21).

The nature of man is aggressive, progressive, variable ; that
of woman is receptive, more susceptible to stimuli, simpler.

Numerous exact, scientific, ethnological, and psychological
investigations concerning the sexes, among the most important
of which we may mention those of Darwin, Allan, Miinsterberg,
C. Vogt, Ploss-Bartels, Jastrow, Lombroso and Ferrero, Shaw,
Havelock Ellis, and Helen Bradford Thompson, have confirmed
the existence of these differences in the nature of the two sexes.
Many individual points still remain obscure, but the above-
mentioned sexual difference is everywhere recognizable, and can
never be entirely eradicated, even by a higher psychical differen-
tiation. Even the author of the " Critique of Femininity," who
would open an unlimited perspective to the freedom of individu-
ality, is still compelled to admit that the majority of women
differ from men, no less in character than in intellect.

Havelock Ellis, in his classical work " Man and Woman "
(London, 1892), has given a summary of the psychical differences
between the sexes, based upon the most recent anthropological
and psychological investigations. This work forms the founda-
tion for all later researches.

Of the individual psychical phenomena in man and woman,

the sensory sensations first demand consideration. In these no
absolute and general superiority of one sex over the other can be
shown to exist. The assumption that women have a more
delicate power of sensory receptivity cannot be sustained ;
indeed, the contrary appears the truer view. It is true that
women can be more readily excited by sensory stimuli, but they
do not possess a more delicate sensory receptivity.

As regards the general intellectual endowment of the sexes, the
interesting experimental researches of Jastrow into the psychology
of woman show that she possesses a greater interest in her
immediate environment, in the finished product, in the decora-
tive, the individual, and the concrete ; man, on the other hand,
exhibits a preference for the more remote, for that which is in
process of construction or growth, for the useful, the general,
and the abstract.

In agreement with these views is a report in the Berliner
Stadtischen Jahrbuch (1870, pp. 59-77), concerning the knowledge
possessed by several thousands of boys and girls at the time of
their entry into school. The report states :

" The more usual, the more approximate, and the easier an idea is,
the greater is the probability that the girls will excel the boys, and
vice versa. In boys more frequently than in girls do we find that they
know nothing of quite common things in their immediate environ-
ment."

Professor Minot arranged that persons of both sexes should
cover ten cards with sketches of any subject they chose. It
appeared from this experiment that the sketches of the men
embraced a greater variety of subjects than those of the women.

In respect of quickness of comprehension and intellectual
mobility woman is distinctly superior to man. Women, for
example, read faster than men, and can give a better account of
what they have read. From this fact, however, no conclusion
can be drawn regarding their higher intellectual capacity, for
many men of exceptional intelligence read very slowly.

Delaunay inquired of a number of merchants regarding the
industrial capacity of the two sexes, and was informed that
women are more diligent than men, but less intelligent, so that
they can be trusted only in routine work.

In general, the experience of the postal service coincided with
what has already been stated. Havelock Ellis regarded the result
of an inquiry made at several of the large English post-offices as
" typical and trustworthy." One of the chief postmasters was
of the opinion that as counter and instrumental clerks, doing

concurrently money-order and savings-bank business, taking in
telegrams and signalling and receiving, and in attending to rough
and illiterate persons, women clerks were preferable to men.
Women telegraphists work as intelligently and as exactly as their
male colleagues. They do not, however, like the men, exhibit
an interest in the technical working of telegraphy ; and, owing to
a lack of staying power, they are unable to compete with the men
in times of pressure. The comparatively slighter strength of the
wrist made it difficult for women telegraphists to write at the
desired speed, and to produce the requisite number of copies.
All the reports agree in this — that

" Women are more docile and amenable to discipline, they do light
work as well as men, and are steadier in some respects ; on the other
hand, they more often remain away from work on the ground of
trifling indisposition, are more likely to fail to meet severe demands,
and show less intelligence in respect of tasks lying outside the course
of their current work, and in general show less desire and less capacity
for self-culture."

Unquestionable is the greater suggestibility of women, doubt-
less dependent on organic peculiarities, in consequence of which
they so quickly become subject to the influence of persons and
opinions, when the latter exercise a sufficiently powerful effect
upon their emotional life. The independent, the poietic,1 are more
distant from women, are more foreign to their nature, than in
the case of men. But that these are quite impossible to them I
am compelled to doubt. And when, for example, Havelock Ellis
considers it unthinkable that a woman should have discovered
the Copemican system, I need merely call to mind the widely
known physical discoveries of Madame Curie, whose thoroughly
independent work qualified her to succeed her husband as pro-
fessor at the Sorbonne. We cannot therefore exclude the possi-
bility that in the sphere of the natural sciences notable discoveries
and inventions may be made in the future in consequence of the
independent work of women.

Very interesting are the observations of Paul Lafitte on the
differences between the higher intellectual qualities of man and
woman. After drawing attention to the greater receptivity of
woman, he says :

" When children of both sexes are educated together, during the
first year the girls lead ; at this time they have to do chiefly with the
reception and retention of impressions, and we see every day that
women put men in the shade by the vividness of their impressions and
the excellence of their memory. In addition to this we must take into

1 See note (2), p. 92.

account the inborn sense of women for symmetry, from which it is
readily explicable that they generally receive geometrical instruction
with very beneficial results. In correspondence with this, we find that
woman students of medicine excel in the examinations in physiology
and general pathology, and show a clearness of apprehension of series
of facts which is really remarkable ; on the other hand, they are
distinctly inferior in clinical investigations, in which other intellectual
qualities are involved. In general, women are more receptive for
facts than for laws, more for the concrete than for general ideas. If
we chance to hear an opinion expressed regarding someone with whom
we are acquainted, a man's opinion will probably be more accurate
in the general outlines, but a woman's will show a clearer perception
of the nuances of character."

Thus it is that among women concrete philosophers are greater
favourites than abstract metaphysicians. According to the
experience of a London bookseller, ladies of the West End of
London prefer Schopenhauer, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus,
and Renan ; that is to say, the most concrete, the most personal,
the most poetical, and the most religious of thinkers. This last
quality especially fascinates the mind of woman. At the same
time, want of relationship between the strong suggestibility of
woman and her slight power of independent production also
strikingly manifests itself in woman's position with regard to
the religious phenomena of the spiritual life. Havelock Ellis
shows that ninety-nine in every hundred of the great religious
movements of the world have received their initial impulse
from men. And yet it has always been women who have been the
first to attach themselves to the founders of religions.

In contrast with this, women appear to possess more indepen-
dent significance in the sphere of politics, as is shown by the fact
that there has been such a large number of celebrated women
rulers. Diplomatic adroitness, finesse, and self-command, to the
extent to which these qualities favour political activity, are indeed
specific feminine peculiarities.

The above-mentioned greater suggestibility of woman is con-
nected with her greater emotivity ; that is, woman reacts to
physical and psychical stimuli more quickly than man. The
" vasomotor theory " of the emotions, originated by Mosso and
C. Lange, is true to a greater extent of woman than of man.
Woman's neuro-muscular system is more irritable, as is especially
shown in the case of the pupil of the eye, and in that of the
urinary bladder. By Mosso and Pellacani the bladder is termed
the most sensitive psychometer in the body. Contraction of the
bladder is well known to occur in many emotional states, such as
fear, expectation, tension, and bashfulness. This is much com-

moner in women and children than in men. The fact that in
women under the influence of strong excitement there arises a
powerful impulse to urinate, is a fact extremely well known to
medical men and others with special opportunities for observation.

The greater neuro-muscular irritability of woman may also be
explained as the result of the relatively greater size of her abdo-
minal organs.

To this greater irritability of woman there corresponds a greater
susceptibility to fatigue. It appears as a result of any long-
lasting task ; it is, in fact, a safeguard against over-exertion,
which in man so commonly leads to complete exhaustion, because
he works too long. The ease with which a woman becomes
exhausted is no doubt partly dependent upon the physiological
anaemia to which we alluded in the last chapter — to the larger
quantity of water and the smaller quantity of red blood-corpuscles
(erythrocytes) in her blood.

Havelock Ellis has detected a decline in the emotivity of
modern woman, under the influence of custom and education,
especially as a result of the great diffusion of bodily sports
among girls. But he does not believe that anything of the kind
can lead to a complete abolition of the emotional differences
between the sexes, since these depend upon firmly established
bodily differences, such as the greater extension of the sexual
sphere and of the visceral functions in woman, upon woman's
physiological anaemia, and upon the more marked periodicity of
her vital processes.

" So many factors work in combination, in order to give a basis for
the play of the emotions, whose greater extension can be overcome
by no alteration of the milieu, or of custom. The emotivity of woman
may be reduced to finer and more delicate shades, but it can never be
brought down to the level of the emotivity of the male sex."

In respect of artistic endowment the male sex is unquestionably
superior to the female. The long series of male poets, musicians,
painters, sculptors, of the highest genius cannot be matched by
any notable number of striking female personalities in the same
sphere of artistic activity. Even the art of cooking has been
further developed by men. Without doubt the differences in
sexuality are the principal causes of this deficiency. The im-
petuous, aggressive character of the male sexual impulse also
favours poietic endeavours, the transformation of sexual energy
into higher plastic activity, as it fulfils itself in the moments of
most exalted artistic conception. The greater variability of the

male also serves to explain the greater frequency of male artists
of the first rank.

John Hunter, Burdach, Darwin, Havelock Ellis, and others,
have shown that there exists a greater tendency on the part of
man to divergence from type. In the course of evolution, man
represents the more variable and progressive, woman the more
monotonous and conservative, moiety of mankind. These
differences find no less clear expression in the psychical sphere.
Notwithstanding increasing individual differentiation — in truth,
affecting only the minority, the elite, among women, as Rosa
Mayreder very rightly insists — this great difference in the vari-
ability of the sexes will ever continue. This biological fact is
certainly of great importance in respect of civilization and of the
relation between the sexes.

In a comparison between man and woman, the important fact
of menstruation must never be forgotten. Menstruation is only
the expression, only a phase, of a continuous undulatory move-
ment in the entire feminine organism. The intellectual and
emotional state of woman is, beyond question, a different one in
different phases of the monthly cycle. Icard, and recently
Francillon (" Essai sur la Puberte chez la Femme " — " Essay
on Puberty in Woman," pp. 189-198 ; Paris, 1906), have given
us exact information on this subject.

" In all tests of strength and cleverness," says Havelock Ellis,
" the woman's degree of strength and exactitude is related to the level
of her monthly curve. Moreover, in every criminal procedure, the
relation between the time of occurrence of the alleged crime and the
accused's monthly cycle should invariably be taken into considera-
tion."

The results obtained by Helen Bradford Thompson by experi-
mental research in her " Comparative Psychology of the Sexes "
(Wiirzburg, 1905) agree in general with the details we have
already given as the result of earlier researches. In her experi-
ment also

" man proved better developed in respect of motor capacity and
accuracy of judgment. Woman had, indeed, sharper senses and a
better memory. The opinion, however, that emotional excitement
plays a greater part in the hie of woman has not been confirmed.
On the contrary, woman's greater tendency towards religion and
towards superstition is a proof of her conservative nature, of her
function to guard established beliefs and modes of action."

Thus we cannot expel from the world the fact that man and
woman are eminently different alike physically and mentally.
Whether, as Alfons Bilharz declares, they are really throughout

equivalent opposites, or, as he expresses the comparison, like
+ 1 and— 1, their sum is equivalent to nil, must remain at present
undetermined. But that ineradicable differences exist is certain.
There is no question here of an inferiority to man. What woman
lacks on one side she has more of on another. She is through
and through a creature constructed on other lines, standing
nearer to Nature than man, and for this reason, like Nature,
problematical, the great guardian of the secrets of Nature
(Barenbach).

" Who shall explain the wonderful
Magic power of woman ?"

says Platen, thus touching an aspect of ancient German senti-
ment, which has also found expression in the sanctum aut provi-
dum of Tacitus. Ovid, Byron, Borne, and Rousseau, have also
described the wonderful and mysterious influence of woman's
nature, fundamentally different from that of man. Most
beautifully has it been described by Theodor Mundt in the
following magnificent passage of his book on Charlotte Stieglitz :

" The most secret elements of woman's nature, in association with
the magic mystery of her organization, indicate the existence in her
of peculiar and deep-lying creative ideas, and in this wonderful riddle
of love we find the sympathetic of the entire universe expressed.
The sympathetic, which attracts and binds forces, the silent music
in the innermost being of the world's soul, by means of which the
stars, the suns, bodies, spirits, are compelled to move in this eternal,
changeable rhythm, and in this continuous opposition — is the feminine
of the universe. This is the eternal feminine, of which Goethe says
that it draws us heavenward. Therefore there is nothing deeper,
more gentle, more unsearchable, than a woman's heart. All-movable,
it extends into that wonderful distance of existence, and hears with
fine nerves the most hidden elements of existence. Touched and
shaken by every sound, like a spiritual harp, the most hidden aspects
of nature and of life often evoke in its strings prophetic oscillations.
The feminine is something common to all life, the most gentle psyche
of existence, and hence the fine connexion of the feminine nature
with the general organizations, operations, and world forces; hence
the mysterious force of attraction which exercises itself in such a
magic manner as the true pole of sex, as though each one only in, and
with, the true feminine could first find peace. . . . The ancients made
a remarkable use of this idea of a common feminine element in human
nature, inasmuch as by the name they gave to the pupil of the eye
they expressed the idea that a young girl was to be found in every
man's eye. Young girls (pupillae, Kopai) — these formed the centre
of the human eye, as Winkelmann points out ; and is it possible to
describe the eye more aptly and distinctively, this radiant chiaroscuro
of the hidden basis of the soul, than by ascribing femininity to it —
femininity, which rises from that hidden basis of the soul as an Anadyo-
mene rises from the deep ?"

Nietzsche speaks also of the " veil " of beautiful possibilities
with which woman is covered, and which makes the charm of her
life. This undefinable spiritual emanation, this dark, irrational
element in woman, led von Hippel to coin the clever phrase that
woman is a comma, man a full-stop. " With man, you know
where you are — you have come to an end ; but with woman,
there is something more to be expected." From this inward
nature of woman there proceed immense results : the feminine
essence is a civilizing factor of the first rank ; were woman wanting,
civilization would be non-existent. Very beautifully has the
great Buckle drawn attention to the indispensability of woman
for the spiritual progress of mankind. He remarks that men,
the slaves of experience and of fact, have only the women to
thank for the fact that their slavery has not become much more
complete and more narrowing. Women's way of thinking, their
spiritual care, their intercourse, their influence, diffuse themselves
unnoticed through the whole of society, and take their place
throughout its entire structure. By means of this influence, more
than by any other cause, we men have been conducted, says
Buckle, to a completely thought-out world.

This obscure, wonderful nature of woman has, however, its
shadowy side. Upon it depends that primitive, deeply-rooted
antipathy of the sexes, which is due to their profound hetero-
geneity, to the impossibility that they can ever really understand
one another. Herein lie the roots of the brutal enslavement of
woman by man in the course of history ; of the belief in witchcraft ;
of contempt for women, and the continued renewal of theoretical
misogyny. The victory of sexual love over this contrast is often
apparent only. Leopardi, and Theophile Gautier (in "Made-
moiselle de Maupin "), have shown how little woman understands
the inner nature of man ; how little man understands woman
has been poetically described by Annette von Droste-Hulshoff.

For this reason, true love is an understanding of the contrasted
natures, a solution of the riddle. " fitre aime, c'est etre compris,"
says Delphine de Girardin.

What significance for the so-called " woman's question " has
the determination of the existence of psychical sexual differ-
ences ? We answer : The nature of woman, completely de-
veloped in all her peculiarities, and enriched throughout her
being by all the spiritual elements of our times adequate to her
being, ensures her an equal share in civilization and in the pro-
gress of humanity.

Complete equality between man and woman is impossible.

But are all sides of woman's nature as yet adequately worked
upon, fully developed ? Is not the civilized woman of the future
etill to be created ? The true nucleus of the woman's move-
ment is, I conceive, to be found in the emancipation of woman
from the dominion of pure sensuality, and from the not less
disastrous dominion of masculine spiritual arrogance. Have we
men really any right to pride ourselves to such a degree upon our
knowledge and intelligence ? Should we without woman have
advanced anything like so far ?

A glance at the beginnings of human civilization should teach
us a little modesty, for there we see that woman was equal, if
not superior, to man in productive, poietic activity. Gradually
only, in the progress of civilization, man supplanted woman,
and monopolized all spheres of productive activity, whilst woman
was limited more and more to domestic occupations. Accord-
ing to Karl Biicher, to women were originally allotted all the
labours connected with the obtaining and subsequent utiliza-
tion of vegetable materials, also the provision of the apparatus
and vessels necessary for this purpose ; to man, on the other
hand, were allotted the chase, fishing, herding, and the pro-
vision of weapons and tools. Thus woman was engaged in
threshing and grinding the grain, in baking bread, in the prepara-
tion of food and drink, in the making of pots, and in spinning.
Since these occupations are largely conducted in a rhythmical
manner, and the women worked together in the fields or in their
huts, while the men hunted singly in the forests, it resulted that
women were the first creators of poetry and music.

" Not," writes Biicher, " upon the steep summits of society did
poetry originate ; it sprung rather from the depths of the pure strong
soul of the people. Women have striven to produce it ; and as civilized
man owes to woman's work much the best of his possessions, so also
are her thought and her poetry interwoven in the spiritual treasure
handed down from generation to generation. To follow the traces of
woman's poetry farther, in the intellectual life of the people, would be
a valuable exercise. Although these traces have to a large extent
disappeared, during the subsequent period of man's poetic activity,
which appears to have gained predominance in proportion as men
monopolized the labours of material production, still, in a number of
races the influence of woman's poetry can be followed for a long way
into the literary period."

To a large extent men first learned from women the elements

of the various handicrafts. For instance, as Mason says,

primeval woman gave her " ulu "* to the saddler, and taught

him the mode of preparing leather. Women were the first dis-

1 The " ulu " is a kind of knife used by Eskimo women.

coverers of numerous industries and handicrafts. The further
development of these in later times was the work of men ; men
alone understood how to differentiate their work, while from the
first it was inevitable that motherhood should greatly limit the
working powers of woman.

In the middle ages there still existed in Europe, especially
in Germany and France, certain industries which were exclusively
in the hands of women — for instance, the silk-spinners, silk-
weavers, tailoresses, and girdle-makers. In all these occu-
pations there were mistresses, maids, and female apprentices.
It was not until the sixteenth century that manufactures became
a monopoly of the male sex. In the eighteenth century women
were actually forbidden by law to take part in manufactures,
until in recent times a reaction in their favour took place.

Therefore we must not from the present conditions judge the
capacity of women for practical activity outside the home. I
quite agree with Gerland, who assumes that during this oppression
of the female sex for thousands of years, a certain deteriorating
influence must have been exercised, and I agree also with
Havelock Ellis, who hopes much from the development in the
civilization of the future of an equal freedom for man and
woman, and who demands that we should acquire experience
by unlimited experiment regarding the qualifications of the female
sex for all departments of activity. Golden words as to the neces-
sity for a comprehensive emancipation of woman were uttered
in 1865 by the celebrated anthropologist Thomas Huxley, in
his essay on " Emancipation — Black and White," in which he
strongly condemns the present system for the education of girls :

" Let us have ' sweet girl graduates ' by all means. They will be
none the less sweet for a little wisdom ; and the ' golden hair ' will not
curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains
within. Nay, if obvious practical difficulties can be overcome, let
those women who feel inclined to do so descend into the gladiatorial
arena of life, not merely in the guise of retiarice, as heretofore, but as
bold sicarice, breasting the open fray. Let them, if they so please,
become merchants, barristers, politicians. Let them have a fair
field, but let them understand, as the necessary correlative, that they
are to have no favour. Let Nature alone sit high above the lists,
' rain influence and judge the prize.' '

And that men would maintain their old position cannot be
doubted. The only change wcnild be that women, too, would
take part in the work of civilization.1 They would introduce a

1 Cf. in this connexion, Alice Salomon, " The Choice of a Profession for Girls ";
Josephine Levy-Rathenau, " A Consideration of the Various IVofessions for
Women, Qualifications and Prospects "; Elizabeth Altmann-Gottheiner, " A

new and fresh element into this work ; and inasmuch as every
woman would be brought up systematically with a view to her
life's work, the physically and psychically disastrous idleness of
unmarried young girls, of " old maids," and of " misunderstood
women," would come to an end, and these unattractive types
would pass away for ever. The work of mother and housewife
must, in correspondence with these changes, be more highly
esteemed than has hitherto been the case. The technique and
the theory of domestic economy can even now, with sufficient
intelligence devoted to the question, be remodelled and trans-
formed to a satisfying activity.1

Woman is an integral constituent of the processes of civiliza-
tion, which, without her, becomes unthinkable. The present
moment is a turning-point in the history of the feminine world.
The woman of the past1 is disappearing, to give place to the woman
of the future ; instead of the bound, there appears the free
personality.

Study of Woman." These are all published in " Das Buch vom Kinde " (" The
Book of the Child "), edited by Adele Schreiber, Leipzig and Berlin, 1907, vol. ii.,
Div. 2, pp. 182-188, 189-209, 210-216 (contains an abstract of the most important
literature of the subject).

1 On this subject one of our most celebrated economists writes as follows :
" Let us observe what to-day a good housewife of the middle class is able to
get through hi the way of domestic and hygienic activity, and of the education
of children, and by means of the knowledge and employment of domestic
machines ; let us not overlook in what a one-sided way the great advances in
natural science and in the mechanical arte have hitherto been devoted to the
service of the great industries, what enormous economies are still possible if the
same knowledge and intelligence are devoted to the amelioration of domestic
service. Only the rough, barbarous housewife of the lower classes can say, ' I
have no more to-day to do in the house.' When the mode of life is a healthy one,
when to every dwelling-house is attached a garden, the housewife even to-day
is fully occupied, and in the future will be still more so, notwithstanding all the
schools that come to her assistance, all the shops, all the trades ; notwithstanding
all the products, including food-producto, which nowadays she buys ready-made.
And besides her domestic activity, she has to find time for lectures, for culture,
for music, and for various socially useful activities — even women of quite the
lower classes. Without this no social cure is possible." — G. SCHMOLLER, " Ele-
ments of General Domestic Economy," vol. L, p. 253 (Leipzig, 1901).

THE SIMPLIFICATION OF HOUSEHOLD DUTIES. — English readers will find the
questions briefly touched upon in this note — the enslavement of woman by
an unceasing round of petty domestic toil, the necessity for devoting the same
amount of finished intelligence to these domestic problems that has been devoted
to " labour-saving " in most departments of masculine activity, and the lines
on which future progress may be expected to move, bringing about in this way
alone a much-needed " emancipation " of women — fully discussed by Mr. H. G.
Wells hi his sociological studies. See " Anticipations," " Mankind hi the Making,"
" A New Utopia," " In the Days of the Comet." — TRANSLATOR.

APPENDIX : SEXUAL SENSIBILITY IN WOMAN

AN old and still unsettled subject of dispute is the strength and
nature of sexual sensibility in woman. Whilst the manifestation
of sexual appetite and sexual enjoyment in the male are fairly
simple — and in man, as A. Eulenburg has proved, the copulatory
impulse is much more powerful than the reproductive impulse —
the sexual sensibility of woman is still involved in obscurity.
Magendie remarked that no two women are exactly alike in
respect of their sexual sensations and perceptions. There is
no question that among women the varieties of erotic type are
far more numerous than among men. Rosa Mayreder, for
instance, distinguishes an erotic-eccentric, an altruistic-senti-
mental, and an egoistic-frigid type. The attempt has been
made to prove that the last-named type is the most widely
diffused — that it is, in fact, the characteristic type of woman.
Lombroso and Ferrero were the first to maintain the slight sexual
sensibility of woman ; Harry Campbell took the same view ; and
recently a Berlin physician — Dr. O. Adler — has published a
book on the " Deficient Sexual Sensibility of Woman," the con-
clusions of which are that

" the sexual impulse (desire, libido) of woman is, alike in its first
spontaneous origin and in its later manifestation, notably less intense
than that of man ; and further, that libido must first be aroused in a
suitable manner, and that often it never appears at all."

Albert Eulenburg, in an article in Zukunft (December 2, 1893).
and later in his " Sexual Neuropathy," pp. 88, 89 (Leipzig,
1895), first opposed this doctrine of the physiological sexual
anaesthesia of woman, and quoted in support of his view the
following passage from the writings of the celebrated gynae-
cologist Kisch :

" The sexual impulse is so powerful, in certain life periods it is
an elementary force which so overwhelmingly dominates the entire
organism of woman, that it leaves no room in her mind for thoughts
of reproduction ; on the contrary, she greatly desires sexual intercourse
even when she is very much afraid of becoming pregnant or when
there can be no question of any pregnancy occurring " (see Kisch,
" The Sexual Life of Woman," English translation, Rcbman, 1908).

I have myself asked a great many cultured women about this
matter. Without exception, they declared the theory of the
lesser sexual sensibility of women to be erroneous ; many were

6—2

even of opinion that sexual sensibility was greater and more
enduring in woman than in man.1

When we actually consider the physical bases of feminine
sexuality, we must admit that women's sexual sphere is a much
more widely extended one than that of men. The author of
" Splitter " has very well characterized this fact when he
says :

" Women are in fact pure sex from knees to neck. We men have
concentrated our apparatus in a single place, we have extracted it,
separated it from the rest of the body, because pret d partir. They
(women) are a great sexual surface or target ; we have only a sexual
arrow. Procreation is their proper element, and when they are engaged
in it they remain at home in their own sphere ; we for this purpose
must go elsewhere out of ourselves. In the matter of time also our
part in procreation is concentrated. We may devote to the matter
barely ten minutes ; women give as many months. Properly speaking,
they procreate unceasingly, they stand continually at the witches'
cauldron, boiling and brewing ; while we lend a hand merely in passing,
and do no more than throw one or two fragments into the vessel."

It is possible, however, that the greater extension of the sexual
sphere in woman gives rise, if one may use the expression, to a
greater dispersal of sexual sensations, which are not, as they are
in man, closely concentrated to a particular point, and for this
reason the spontaneous resolution of the libido (in the form of
the sexual orgasm) is rendered more difficult.

Recently Havelock Ellis has made a searching investigation
into the nature of the sexual impulse in woman. He found the
following differences by which it was distinguished from the
sexual impulse of the male :

1. The sexual impulse of woman shows greater external
passivity.

2. It is more complicated, less readily arises spontaneously,
more frequently needs external stimulus, while the orgasm
develops more slowly than in man.

3. It develops in its full strength only after the commencement
of regular sexual intercourse.

1 Noteworthy is the following utterance of a clergyman regarding the sen-
suality of country girls : " Young women are in no way behind young men in
the strength of their fleshly lusts ; they are only too willing to be seduced — so
willing that even older girls frequently give themselves to half -grown boys, and
girls give themselves to several men in brief succession. Moreover, it is by
no means always the young men by whom the seduction is effected. Often enough
it is the girls who lure the lads to sexual intercourse, in which case they do
not wait till the lads come to their rooms, but they go themselves to the young
men's bedrooms, or wait for them in their beds." — C. WAGNER, " The State of
Affairs as Regards Sexual Morality among the Evangelical Agricultural Popula-
tion of the German Empire," vol. i., sec. 2, p. 213 (Leipzig, 1897).

4. The boundary beyond which sexual excess begins is less
easily reached than in man.

5. The sexual sphere has a greater extension, and is more
diffusely distributed than in man.

6. The spontaneous appearances of sexual desire have a marked
tendency to periodicity.1

7. The sexual impulse exhibits in woman greater variability,
a greater extent of variation, than in man — alike when we ex-
amine separate feminine individuals, and when we compare the
different phases in the life of the same woman.

This great extension of the feminine sexual sphere is illustrated,
for example, by the case reported by Moraglia, of. a woman who
was able to induce sexual excitement by the masturbation of
fourteen different areas of her body.

How much more woman is sexuality than man is can be
observed in asylums, where the conventional inhibitions are
withdrawn. Here, according to Shaw's observations, the women
greatly exceed the men in fluency, malignity, and obscenity ;
and in this relation there is no difference between the shameless
virago from the most depraved classes of London and the elegant
lady of the upper circles. Noise, uncleanliness, and sexual
depravity in speech and demeanour, are much commoner in the
women's wards of asylums than on the male side. In all forms
of acute mental disorder, according to Shaw, the sexual element
plays a much more prominent part in woman than in man.

Another experienced alienist, Dr. E. Bleuler, confirms this
permeation of woman with sexuality. In a recently published
work he remarks :

" The whole ' career ' in the average woman depends on sexuality ;
marriage, or some equivalent of marriage, signifies to her what to
man a position in business signifies — viz., her ambition in all relations,
the happily conducted struggle for simple existence, as well as for
pleasure and for all else that life can bring, and only after these, sexu-
ality also, and the joy of having children. Not to marry, and also extra-
conjugal sexual indulgence, induce in woman inevitable consequences,
with strongly marked emotional colouring ; to the average man all
this is a trifling affair, or it may even be a matter of absolute indiffer-
ence. And we have further to consider the limits imposed by our
civilization, which make it impossible for the well-brought-up woman
to live, and even to think, as she pleases in sexual matters, and which
demand the actual suppression of sexual emotions, not merely of the

1 E. Heinrich Kisch (" The Sexual Life of Woman," English translation, Robman,
1908) names thojovaries " regulators of the sexual impulse." In the ovary,
and in the periodical changes that occur in that organ, are to be found the funda-
mental cause, and the moans of regulation, of the sexual impulse ; in the clitoris
is the seat of voluptuous sensibility.

outward manifestation of these emotions. Is it to be wondered at
that in these circumstances, in mentally disordered women, we en-
counter once more the suppressed sexual feelings, those sexual feelings
which really comprise at least half of our natural existence ? — I say at
least half, for the analogous impulse, the nutritive impulse, seems really
to be inferior in strength to the sexual impulse, in civilized as well as
in savage human beings."

In the majority of cases the sexual frigidity of woman is, in
fact, apparent merely — either because b ehind the veil prescribed
by conventional morality, behind the apparent coldness, there
is concealed an ardent sexuality, or else because the particular
man with whom she has had intercourse has not succeeded rightly
in awakening her erotic sensibility, so complicated and so difficult
to arouse.1 When he has succeeded in doing so, the sexual in-
sensibility will in the majority of cases disappear. A striking
example of this is seen in the following case :

Case of Temporary Sexual Anaesthesia. — Girl twenty years of age.
Early awakening of the sexual impulses. Already practised onanism
at the age of five years ; often for the sake of sexual stimulation
introduced hairpins into the vagina, until one day one of these re-
mained, and had to be removed by operation. Notwithstanding this,
she soon resumed masturbation, using for this purpose a finger, a
candle, etc. Ultimately this became a daily practice, which she
continued until she was eighteen years of age. She then first had
sexual intercourse with a man, in which, however, she remained quite
cold ; this was the case also in subsequent attempts witli this man
and with others. Finally she met a man with whom she was in sym-
pathy, who succeeded in inducing in her sexual gratification, by ex-
change of roles, and corresponding alteration in the position in inter-
course. Later, intercourse in the normal position also induced com-
plete sexual gratification ; since then onanism has been entirely discon-
tinued, and in coitus the orgasm occurs speedily in one or two minutes.

Where sexual frigidity in woman is enduring in character, we
have to do either with inherited influences, with sexual develop-
mental inhibition, the psycho-sexual infantilism of Eulenburg,
or with some disease (especially hysteria and other nervous
disorders), and with the consequences of habitual masturbation.

Speaking generally, the sexual sensibility of woman is, as we
have seen, of quite a different nature from that of man ; but in
intensity it is at least as great as that of man.

1 Georg Hirth remarks very aptly (" Ways to Love," Munich, 1906,
p. 570) : " For it is the task of the man to summon his whole power of self-
command, to employ all his skill, to take all the care in his power, that the
woman may be, as one says, ' ready.' The man who thinks only of his own
gratification, and who leaves his partner ungratified, is a brutal being, or, if not
brutal, ho is simply ignorant of the harm he is doing. ... In general, the man
has the tempo of gratification much better and more securely under*control than
the woman ; in many women, indeed, the sexual orgasm is very difficult to
induce, and in such cases the man must help with skill and tenderness."

CHAPTER VI

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT IN LOVE— RELIGION AND
SEXUALITY

" The more clearly we understand how the indeterminate sexual
attractive force of the most lowly organisms lias, by a continuous
addition of psychical elements, slowly developed into the love of the
higher species of animals and of mankind, the sooner shall we be
inclined to attribute to this sentiment the importance which it deserves.
Then we shall no longer be able to regard it as an individual imagina-
tion, which has no relation to reality and no roots in the depths of
life. It will become to us a measuring rule for the stage of evolution
to which we have attained." — CHARLES ALBERT.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VI

Influence of the development of the brain upon the sexual impulse — Relations
between speech and love — The psychic -emotional roots of love — Love as a
product of civilization — Relation between the physical and the spiritual
poietic impulse — The " function-impulse " of Dr. Santlus — Psychical sexual
equivalents — Schopenhauer, Hirth, and Mantagazza, on this subject — Role
of sexuality in the feelings of life — The organic necessity of love — Sexual
philosophy — The Marquis de Sade — Otto Weininger — Max Zciss — Relations
of love to the individual feelings of personality — The reproductive impulse
and the conjugativo impulse — Love and love's embrace as a personal aim.

The psychogenetic fundamental law of love — The way of the spirit in
love — Ite tendency from the general to the individual — From the remote
to the proximate — Love as a transcendental and as a personal relationship.

The association of religio-metaphysical ideas with the sexual life — A
general anthropological phenomenon — An thropomorphistic -animistic ex-
planation of the relation between religion and the sexual life — Billroth's
scientific analysis of religious perception — L. Feuerback, M'Lennan, and
Tylor on this subject — My own description of the psychological processes
in the association between the religious and the sexual life — The deification
of love according to E. von Mayer — Strongest in women — Vicarious religions
and sexual perceptions — History of religio -sexual phenomena — Religious
prostitution — Single and repeated acts of religious prostitution — Sexual self-
surrender to the deity or his representative — Defloration by divine symbols
— Defloration deities among the Indians, the Jews, and the Romans —
Religious defloration by representatives of the deity — The Babylonian
Mylitta-cult — Diffusion and explanation thereof — Religious prostitution in
India — Among primitive peoples — Bachofen's brilliant explanation of
religious prostitution as a counteraction to the individualization of love-
Contempt for virginity among primitive peoples — Permanent religious
prostitution — Sexual intercourse as a consecrated act — The temple-girls of
the Greeks, Phoanicians, and Indians — The Indian " nautch-girls " — The
sense of eternity in the leligious and the sexual impulse — Sexual mysticism
— Religio-erotic festivals — Their wide diffusion — Examples from antiquity,
from India, and from Central and South America — Sexual mysticism in
Christianity — Religio -sexual sects — The " unio mystica " — The primiz, or
mystical marriage — Mariolatry — A religious poem.

Asceticism — Its origin — Metchnikoff's explanation of the origin of
asceticism — Disharmonies of the sexual life — Psychology of ascetics — Their
hypersexuality — Great antiquity and ubiquity of asceticism — The asceticism
of the Indians, Mohammedans, and Christians — Preoccupation of Christian
ascetics with sexual matters — Sexual visions — Dissolute sects — Monastic
and cloistral life — Modern asceticism — Its difference from ancient asceticism
— Its connexion with actual experiences — Example of Schopenhauer —
Hitherto unpublished evidence of the relationship between his ascetic views
and his own life — Tolstoi on the sorrows of voluptuousness — His relative

asceticism — Weininger's renewal of early Christian asceticism — Its cause —
Characteristics of Weininger's book.

The belief in witchcraft — The principal source of all misogyny and con-
tempt of women — Not a Christian discovery — Primeval association between
sexuality and magic — The sexual origin of the belief in witchcraft — Devil's
mistresses — The predisponents of the medieval belief in witchcraft — Con-
tinuance of this belief into our own times — Role of sexuality in pastoral
medicine — External and internal causation of the theological treatment of
sexual problems — Sexual casuistic literature — The religious factor in the
sexual life of the present day — Sexual excesses of modern sects — The revival
of romanticism — Experiences of an elderly physician regarding religion and
sexuality — Deprivation of love and satiety of love as sources of religious
needs — Significance of the religious factor hi the history of love — Subordinate
role of this in the individualization of the sentiment of love.

CHAPTER VI

IF, with Friedrich Ratzel, we understand by civilization the
sum total of all the mental acquirements of a period, then also
human love, this specific product of civilization, is merely a
mirrored picture of the mental activities of the existing epoch
of civilization. We can follow this way of the spirit in love
from the primitive age down to the present day, and we can
detect, in each successive epoch of civilization, the association
with sexuality of peculiar spiritual states ; and after thus passing in
review the thousands of years of human history, we can discern
once more in our own epoch the individual psychical elements
which characterize the love of modern civilized man.

The increasing spiritualization and idealization of sensuality
in the course of civilization, notwithstanding the persistence of
the elementary intensity of the sexual impulse, is associated with
the fact to which we have already alluded — namely, the pre-
ponderance of the brain characteristic of the genus homo — a pre-
ponderance which was unquestionably gradually acquired, and
arose in consequence of an accumulation of original variations
which gave their possessors a certain advantage in the struggle
for existence.

Thus very gradually the primary, instinctive, still powerful
animal ego underwent expansion into the secondary ego (hi
Meynert's sense), into the spiritual personality, to which a fixed
foundation was given by the possession of speech. With some
justice the origin of speech has been singled out as extremely
significant for the development of the feeling of love ; and the
conquest of the primitive animal instinct has been, above all,
attributed to this faculty. A. Cabral, in his interesting work,
" La Venus Genitrix " (Paris, 1882, p. 155), expresses the opinion
that speech and song developed solely on account of sexual
relations ; and he alludes in support of this view to the well-
known manifold noises made by various animals in conditions of
sexual excitement. It is very significant in this connexion that
anthropological science has proved, as an important fact in racial
psychology, that the development of poetry preceded that of
prose.1 The original form of speech was rhythmical noise, a

1 Cf. F. von Andrian, " Some Results of Modern Ethnology," in " Correspon-
denzblatt der deutechen Gesellschaft fur Anthropologie, Ethnologic, und Urge-
schichte " (1894, No. 8, p. 71).

poem, a song. And we saw above that this was subservient to
more suggestive purposes, and, above all, to sexual allurement.
Thus the primitive natural connexion between speech and
sexuality appears somewhat probable. With these earlier erotic
noises and alluring tones were subsequently associated the first
elements of intellectual comprehension, the first thoughts.

This " withdrawal of mankind from pure instinct," which
Schiller, in his essay on the earliest human society, describes as
the " most fortunate and most important occurrence in human
history," from which time the struggle towards freedom may be
said to begin, gradually enabled the higher feeling-tones of
sensation to become more predominant. The elementary
impulses became associated with sensations of pleasure and pain
as psychical reactions. The " organic sensations " entered the
sphere of consciousness, and so gave rise, in association and
reciprocal working with the higher sensory stimuli, to the
psychico-emotional roots of the impulses. Thus, in the sexual
sphere, out of pure voluptuousness, the simple instinctive impulse
towards copulation, arose love, whose essence is an intimate
association of physical sensations with feelings and thoughts,
with the entire spiritual and emotional being of mankind.1

" Love," says Charles Albert, " is the result of all the forward steps
of human activity in all departments, and in every direction, as
manifested in then* effects upon the sexual life. It is an advance
which goes hand hi hand with all other advances. Man is an in-
separable whole, and in theory only can he be subdivided into separate
faculties. In reality, indeed, all departments of human development
are so intimately associated that progress in any one of them must
place something to the credit of all.

Increasing psychical refinement and differentiation of the
human type, domination of the intelligence and of emotion over
brute force, transformation of the social relations between man
and woman in consequence of economic conditions or of religious
and moral ideas, respect for personality, a secured provision for
the most pressing vital needs, and a consequent elevation and
complication of the sexual Life, the influence of a longing for ideal
beauty in a psychical and moral sense — all these and much more
have contributed to constitute sexual love in the sense in which
we understand and experience it at the present day. The speech

1 " Love," in the sense above defined, is peculiar to mankind, and for this
reason we must, as Ploss-Bartels also insists, admit its existence in human beings
at the very lowest levels of civilization. There it is, indeed, no more than " a
faintly glimmering, easily extinguished spark," while among civilized peoples it
has become " a bright, widely diffused flame."

of the lover of our own time is the comprehensive expression of
all human progress. The difference between animal rutting and
the lofty sensation of love corresponds exactly to the gulf which
separates primitive man, capable only of chipping for himself a
few almost useless flint tools, from civilized man who, with the
aid of innumerable machines, has tamed to his service the
elementary forces of Nature.

We must recur to the earliest beginnings of the evolution of the
human psyche in its association with sexuality, in order to
understand the profound and primitive connexion between the
bodily and the spiritual formative impulse ; this connexion has
been expressed by the saying that the sexual impulse is the
father of all those intellectual impulses peculiar to man which
have made lu'm a thinker and a discoverer. In the time of
Schelling's natural philosophy, they went so far as to speak of
the " testicular hemispheres " as analogous to the hemispheres
of the brain. And is not this connexion also expressed etymo-
logically (in German) in the verbal association of Zeugung (pro-
creation) and Ueberzeugung (certainty, i.e., higher, or intellectual,
procreation), and, further, by the fact that in the Hebrew tongue
the ideas of " procreation " and " cognition " are jointly repre-
sented by a single term ? And, returning to the physical
sphere, it may be mentioned that, according to Moebius (" Ueber
die Wirkungen der Kastration " — " Concerning the Effects of
Castration," Halle, 1906), sexuality is the common product of
testicular and cerebral activity.

Plato was already aware of this relationship when he called
thought a sublimated sexual impulse, and Buffon likewise when
he described love as " le premier essor de la sensibilite, qui
se porte ensuite a d'autres objets." In more recent times,
Dr. Santlus, in his valuable essay, " On the Psychology of the
Human Impulses " (Archiv fur Psychiatric, 1864, vol. vi.,
pp. 244 and 262), alluded to this combination of the sexual sphere
with the highest spiritual interests of mankind under the name
of the " function-impulse."

From these intimate relations between sexual and spiritual
productivity is to be explained the remarkable fact that certain
spiritual creations may take the place of the purely physical
sexual impulse ; that there are psychical sexual equivalents into
which the potential energy of the sexual impulse may be trans-
formed. Here belong numerous emotions, such as ferocity,
anger, pain, and the productive spiritual activities which find
their vent in poetry, art, and religion — in short, the whole

imaginative life of mankind in the widest sense is able, when the
natural activity of the sexual impulse is inhibited, to find such
sexual equivalents, the importance of which in the evolutionary
history of human love we shall have later to study in further
detail.

Interesting observations regarding this intimate connexion
between the spiritual and the physical procreative impulse are
to be found in the work of a thinker who made no secret of his
intense sensuality, and in whose life and thought sexuality played
a peculiar part — in the work of Schopenhauer. In his " New
Paralipomena " he lays stress on the similarity between the work
of productive genius and the modification of the sexual impulse
peculiar to the human race. In another place in which, as
Frauenstadt also insists, he is speaking from personal experience,
he writes : " In the days and hours when the voluptuous impulse
is most powerful, not a dull desire, arising from emptiness and
dullness of the consciousness, but a burning longing, a violent
ardour, precisely then also are the highest powers of the spirit
available, the finest consciousness is prepared for its intensest
activity, although at the moment when the consciousness has given
itself up to desire they are latent ; but it needs merely a powerful
effort to turn their direction, and instead of that tormenting, de-
spairing lust (the kingdom of darkness), the activity of the highest
spiritual powers fills the consciousness (the kingdom of light)."

Georg Hirth, who, in the section of his " Ways to Love "
entitled " Stark-naked Thoughts," gives in aphorisms an interest-
ing account of the psychology of love, affirms the " delightful
phenomenon of a peculiarly active enhancement of our impulse
to thought and production," after erotic satisfaction, after a
fortunate love-night. Very ably, also, has Mantegazza described
the spiritual activity produced by a happy and victorious love.1

Many great thinkers have complained of the alleged impair-
ment of pure spirituality by the sexual life, and have recom-
mended asceticism in order to arrive at a truer internal enlighten-
ment. This, however, would imply pulling up the roots of
spiritual poietic2 activity, the suppression of a rich inner life of

1 Regarding the connexion between sexuality and spiritual activity, see also
Virey, " Recherches medico-philosophiques sur la Nature ot lea Facultes de
1'Hommo" (Paris, 1817, p. 39).

2 For the apt and convenient word poietic, in preference to creative or produc-
tive, I have to thank Mr. H. G. Wolln. See his most admirable " A Modern
Utopia,1' and on p. 265 el seq. his brilliant classification of " four main classes of
mind — the Poietic, the Kinetic, the Dull, and the Base." ... " The Poietic or
creative class of mental individuality embraces a wide range of typos," but, he
goes on to say, the two principal varieties of the poietic type are those classified

thought and feeling, the destruction of all true poetry and art.
There would be left behind only the wilderness of a cold abstrac-
tion. Look at the letters of Abelard before and after his emascu-
lation. Sexuality first breathes into our spiritual being the warm
and blooming life.

" The world," says Philipp Frey, " would be conceived by us in
sharply bounded intellectual pictures, unless we saw it in the changing
lights of our sexuality. From the green of gently dreaming desire,
through the yellow of surging emotion, and from the blood-red of
eager desire to the cool blue of satisfaction — all things appear to us in
the light of our sexuality. Life would be better ordered if we were
purely intelligible machines for the purposes of nutrition, work, and
production. But without the dualism of desire and satisfaction, the
world would become torpid in a great yawn."

This intimate connexion between the psychic-emotional being
and the sexual impulse gave rise to a deepening, a concentration,
and an increasing intensity, of the feeling of love, whereby the
latter becomes the most powerful influence affecting mankind in
bodily and spiritual relations. Voltaire, in his " Pensees Philoso-
phiques," says aptly : " L'amour est de toutes les passions la
plus forte, parce qu'elle attaque a la fois la tete, le cceur, et le
corps." That it is in love that the immediate admixture of
organic processes most clearly manifests itself is a fact pointed
out already by Aristotle, and among moderns emphasized by
Griesinger.1

Thus love discloses itself as a nucleus, the axis of the individual,
and therewith also of the social life, a fact indicated already in
Schopenhauer's phrase, describing love as the " focus of the
will," and in Weismann's expression " the continuity of the
germ-plasma." And we can easily understand that there are
literary advocates of a consequent " sexual philosophy," who
base their view of the universe solely and entirely upon the
sexual. To them the sexual problem becomes a world problem,
eroticism expands into metaphysics. These sexual philosophers
start from love to unveil the mysteries of life. The most cele-
brated advocate of such a sexual philosophy was the Marquis de
Sade, of whom I have myself given an account in a pseudonymous

as artistic and scientific natures respectively. It is the quality by which these
two natures are distinguished from the kinetic and the dull to which Mr. Wells
gives the name of " poietic," and it is precisely this quality whose interconnexion
with the sexual life is insisted on in the text by Dr. Bloch and by the authors
from whom he quotes. — TRANSLATOR.

1 Cf. W. Griesinger, " Mental Disorders," third edition (Brunswick, 1871,
p. 7).

work entitled " New Researches concerning the Marquis de
Sade " (Berlin, 1904). According to de Sade, it is only through
the sexual that the world can be grasped and understood.

In a certain sense the antipodes of the Marquis de Sade is a
remarkable sexual philosopher of our own time, the author of
" Sex and Character," Dr. Otto Weininger. His whole circle of
thought also revolves exclusively round the sexual. It forms the
basis, the starting-point of his exposition ; though, indeed, it
does so in a purely negative sense. For Weininger is the apostle
of asexuality ; to him the highest type of human being is the non-
sexual, the one who renounces all sexuality. And woman, as the
incorporation of sexuality, is to him " nothingness," the
" radically evil " which must be annihilated.

A positive sexual philosopher of a nobler kind than these two
anomalous spirits is Max Zeiss, whose book, " Ragnarok, a
Philosophico-Social Study," was published at Strasburg in 1904.
He regards work, effort, creation, the strife for material position,
for honour and renown, only as subordinate aims for the attain-
ment of one aim — love.

The ever more intimate association of love with the spiritual
life, its increasing depth, the inclusion within its sphere of
influence of all feelings and thoughts, necessarily give rise to a
stronger development of the feeling of individual personality,
which, in contrast with the earlier instinctive impulse, came more
and more to dominate the amatory life. Now love gained at
least an equal importance for the individual that in former con-
ditions it had for the purposes of reproduction, and therewith
subjectively the reproductive idea was unquestionably thrust
into the background, in comparison with the idea of personal
living, of personal enrichment and development, by means of
love. Hegel says aptly (" Esthetics," Berlin, 1837, vol. ii.,
p. 186) : " The sorrows of love, these frustrate hopes, the very
state of being in love, the never-ending pains which the lover
actually experiences, this never-ending happiness and joy to
which he looks forward in imagination — these are matters devoid
of all general interest; they concern only the lover himself."
Schleiermacher also insists, in his letters concerning " Lucinde,"
on the great importance of love for the spiritual development of
the individual.

The individualization of love has certainly resulted in a great
decline in the predominance of the reproductive idea, of the
subjective sense of race, without it ever being possible for it to
lose its eminent objective significance. Nietzsche, therefore,

declares a "reproductive impulse" to be pure "mythology;"1
and Carpenter, also, in his book, " Love's Coming of Age," says
that human love is mainly a desire for complete union, and
only in much less degree a wish for the reproduction of the
race. The profound significance of individual love in the
promotion of civilization is exceedingly well described by him
when he says :

" Taking union as the main point, we may look upon the idealized
sex-love as a sense of contact pervading the whole mind and body —
while the sex-organs are a specialization of thin faculty of union in
the outermost sphere : union in the bodily sphere giving rise to bodily
generation, the same as union in the mental and emotional spheres
occasions generation of another kind."

Proof of the fact that love, in its purely individual relations, is
also of great importance for human civilization, that it is pro-
foundly significant for the higher evolution of humanity, in
addition to its importance for the perpetuation of the species — the
proof of this thesis is very important in view of certain problems
connected with the theory of population and hi view of the
practical conclusions deduced from that theory, as, for example,
the doctrine of neo-malthusianism. Love and love's embrace
do not exist only for the purposes of the species : they are also of
importance to the ego ; they are necessary for the life, the evolu-
tion, and the internal growth of the individual himself.

And we must not fail to recognize to what extent the fact that
the individual has gained much from love ultimately reacts also
to the advantage of the species. For the species, as well as for the
individual, the true path of progress lies in the direction of the
individualization of the sexual impulses.

When we study in detail the gradual permeation of sexuality
with spiritual elements, the gradual development of love, and its
advance towards perfection by means of civilization, we ascertain
that for the love of the modern civilized man there exists a kind
of biogenetic, or rather psychogenetic, fundamental law. In

1 Rudolf Topp speaks of a " degeneration " of the " healthy natural repro-
ductive impulse " into the " sexual impulse." In the primeval period of human
history, he maintains, man knew and gratified the reproductive impulse only ; the
sexual impulse developed gradually, and in a later stage of the evolutionary
history of mankind, out of the reproductive impulse, and, in fact, is a degenera-
tion (!) of the latter. In this period we may look for the first beginnings of
functional impotence, on account of the too frequent exercise of the sexual
function. Cf. R. Topp, " On the Therapeutic Use of Yohimbin ' Riedel ' as an
Aphrodisiac, with Especial Reference to Functional Impotence in the Male,"
published in the Allgemeine Medizinische Central-Zeitung, 1906, No. 10.

modern love we encounter all the spiritual elements which were
actively operative in the love of past times ; the love of the
civilized man of the present day is an extracted, shortened,
compressed repetition of the entire developmental course of love
from the earliest times to the present day. And the general course
of this development reappears also in the love of the individual.

This course is, to put the matter shortly, from the general to
the individual, from the remote to the proximate. We can
further divide the history of human love into two great epochs.
In the first epoch, love was, above all, a transcendental relation-
ship of a religio-metaphysical nature. The transcendental
relationships played a more important part than the purely human
and personal. Everywhere an ulterior element played its part.
In the second epoch, love underwent an evolution into a more
personal relationship, in which the human being himself took
foremost place, as compared with any transcendental con-
siderations. The history of love is, in fact, an illustration of
Compte's replacement of the theologico-metaphysical epoch of
mental development by the anthropological. In individual love,
however, there still remain active and demonstrable many
transcendental elements. The oldest spiritual elements of love
continue to form a portion of the content of modern love, and to
play a more or less dominant part in its genesis.

To this primeval and psychical phenomenon belongs, above all,
an intimate association between religious ideas and feelings and
the sexual life. In a certain sense, the history of religion can be
regarded as the history of a peculiar mode of manifestation of
the human sexual impulse, especially in its influence on the
imagination and its products.

Certain modern writers, members of the laity far from learned
in the history of civilization, have considered the Roman Catholic
Church pre-eminently responsible for the appearance of this
sexual element in ritual and dogma. This, however, is grossly
unjust. A scientific study of these relations teaches us that all
religions exhibit to a greater or less degree this sexual admixture,
and if this appears more prominent in the Roman Catholic Church,
it is due, in the first place, to the fact that this religion is nearer
to us in time than many of the religions of antiquity, and, in the
second place, it is expli cable on the ground that the Roman
Catholic Church has always displayed greater openness and less
hypocrisy than, for example, the Protestant pietists, who, as
the Konigsberg scandal, the Eva van Buttler affair, etc., show,
are no less blameworthy in respect of sexual vagaries.

A really objective basis for an opinion regarding the relations
between religion and sexuality can only be obtained when we
cease to consider these relations as an affair of dogma and of the
confessional, and study them upon the basis to which they
properly belong — to wit, the anthropological. For these relation-
ships are peculiar to the genus homo as such. The sexual
element is quite as prominent in the religions of primitive peoples
as in those of modern civilized nations.

Anthropological science has hitherto been occupied more with
the fact than with the explanation of the remarkable relations
between religion and sexuality. There can, however, be no
doubt that these relations arise out of the very nature of man-
kind. The various anthropologists and physicians who have
occupied themselves with these problems are in agreement upon
this point : that the connexion between religion and the sexual
life can be explained only on anthropomorphic-animistic grounds
— that is, by the same kind of ideas which Tylor has proved to
be the foundation of the primitive mental life.

Thus, the great physician and anthropologist Theodor Bill-
roth doubts the existence of any pure religious perception
entirely free from all sensual elements. In a letter to Hanslick,
dated February 21, 1891, he writes :

" In my opinion, it is nonsensical to speak of a special religious
perception. What we call by this name is either a purely fanciful and
imaginative opinion, which may rise to the intensity of hallucination,
and has for substratum any kind of imaginative product which excites
a yearning in the believing or loving individual — or else, in fanatics,
it is an actual erotic excitement, like the rhythmical prayer-move-
ments of the Mohammedans, the dancing of the Dervishes, or the
jumping of the Flagellants. The Church as bridegroom for the nun,
as bride for the monk, has a similar signification. It is, in a certain
sense, the continuation of the service of Isis, and of the festivals of
Aphrodite and Bacchus. Man has always created his gods or his god
in his own image, and prays and sings to him — that is, properly speak-
ing, to himself — in the artistic forms of the period. Since the so-called
divine is always a mere abstraction or personification of one or several
human attributes in the highest conceivable potency, it follows that
human and divine, worldly and religious, cannot really be of differing
natures. Man cannot, in fact, think anything supernatural, nor can
he do anything unnatural, because he never can think or act except
with human attributes."

This explanation coincides with the view of Ludwig Feuerbach,
who has especially insisted on the anthropomorphistic element in
religio-sexual phenomena in his essay " Concerning Mariolatry."

M'Lennan and Tylor were among the chief discoverers of the
animistic aspect of religio-sexual ideas. In a way analogous to

his attitude towards other phenomena, primitive man assumed
the activity of spirits in explanation of the sexual impulse and
everything associated therewith ; and he paid divine worship to
the sexual impulse, as the visible and palpable manifestation of
those spirits.

I myself have more fully described this physiological process
in a somewhat different manner (" Contributions to the Etiology
of Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. i., pp. 76, 77), and I quote here
my account of the primitive deification of the sexual.

As something elemental, incredible, supernatural, the sexual
impulse made its appearance in man's life at the time of puberty ;
by its overwhelming force, by the intensity, spontaneity, and
multiplicity, of the perceptions to which it gave rise, it awakened
feelings which enriched, vivified, and inflamed the imagination
in an unexpected manner. This phenomenon, overwhelming
him with elemental force, filled primitive man with a holy fear.
He ascribed it to a supernatural influence, and this supernatural
influence became associated in his circle of perceptions with those
others which he had previously experienced, and which had
aroused in him the feeling of dependence upon one or several
higher powers, before which he knelt in worship. To what
an extent the metaphysical invaded the whole sexual life of man,
Schopenhauer has clearly shown in his " Metaphysic of Sexual
Love." Religion and sexuality come into the most intimate
association in this perception of the metaphysical and in this
feeling of dependence ; hence arise the remarkable relations
between the two, and that easy transition of religious feelings
into sexual feelings which is manifest in all the relations of
life. In both cases the surrender, the renunciation, of the
individual personality is experienced as a pleasurable sensation.
Schopenhauer has described in a classical manner the meta-
physical impulsive force of love striving onward towards the
infinite and the divine, whose analogy with the religious impulse
we cannot fail to recognize.

In his thoughtful book, " The Vital Laws of Civilization "
(Halle, 1904, p. 52), Eduard von Mayer has also discussed the
religio-sexual problem. He starts from the idea that man re-
garded as higher than himself that which he was unable to
master, and, above all, hunger and love.

" The pains of ungratified hunger or love plough deep furrows, into
which falls the seed of voluptuousness, of satisfied hunger, or of the joys
of love. And to primitive man, to whom the entire universe is full
of living beings, hunger and love also appear as divine powers, which
pain and plague him until their will is satisfied."

7—2

100

The association of sexuality with religion affects both sexes
equally, although the phenomenon appears more intense in
woman, and is more enduring in her, owing to the greater depth
of her emotional life. The brothers de Goncourt, in their diary,
describe religion as simply a portion of woman's sexual life.
Feminine sexual activity thus appears something religious, pious,
holy. And those priests who pretended to " sanctify " by their
love the women whom they seduced, were certainly more accurate,
from the physiological point of view, than the Church was in its
condemnation of carnal lust as sin and the work of the devil. In
the middle ages it was a view commonly held in France that
women who had intercourse with priests were in some sort
sanctified thereby. The mistresses of priests were called the
" consecrated."

The identity of religious and sexual perceptions explains the
frequent transformation of one into the other, and the con-
tinuous association between the two. A sexual emotion will often
function vicariously for a religious emotion, in part or wholly.

The unusually interesting history of the complicated and re-
markable religio-sexual phenomena renders clear to us indi-
vidual processes of this kind and certain peculiarities of racial
psychology ; and thereby we are led to understand the powerful
after-effects of these phenomena in the customs, the morals,
and the conventions of our time, and we are enlightened as to
the role still played by the religio-sexual factor in the life of
many men even of our own day.

One of the oldest, if not the oldest, of religio-sexual phenomena
is religious prostitution — the " lust-sacrifice," as Eduard von
Mayer happily expresses it — since therein the sexual act is
regarded as a sacrifice made to the deity. We have here the
unrestricted offering by a woman of her body to every chance
comer without love, as an act of simple sensuality, and for pay-
ment, and thus we find all the characteristics of what at the
present day we term "prostitution."

According to the researches I have myself previously pub-
lished regarding religious prostitution, this may be divided into
two great groups :

1. A single act of prostitution in honour of the deity.

2. Permanent religious prostitution.

A single act of religious prostitution mostly consists in the
offering of virginity ; sometimes also in the single, not repeated,
offering of an already deflowered woman. Inr the single act of
religious prostitution, the woman either offers herself directly to

101

the deity, the bodily act of defloration being effected by a divine
physical symbol — as, for instance, by a penis made of stone,
ivory, or wood — or by direct intercourse with the statue of the
god ; or else the woman gives herself to a human representative
of the deity — for instance, to the king, to a priest, to a blood-
relative (not seldom to her own father, this being a variety of
religious incest), and sometimes to a passing stranger.1

With regard to the first mode of defloration, by means of a
divine symbol, we have especially full reports from the East
Indies. Here, in the sixteenth century, in the Southern Deccan,
the Portuguese Duarte Barbosa first saw the religious deflora-
tion of girls effected by means of the " lingam," the divine
phallus. Girls aged ten years only were sacrificed to the deity
in this brutal manner. From a later time come the accounts of
Jan Huygen van Linschoten and Gasparo Balbi, regarding the
customs of the inhabitants of Goa. The bride was taken into
the temple, where a penis of iron or ivory was thrust into the
vagina, so that the hymen was destroyed. In other cases, the
girl's genitals were brought into contact with the stone penis of
an image of the god, at a shrine eighteen miles distant from
Goa. W. Schultze, in his " East Indian Journey " (Amsterdam,
1676, p. 161o), relates :

" By means of this priapus, with the assistance of friends and rela-
tives, the maiden was deprived of her virginity with force and in a
painful manner ; at the same time the bridegroom rejoiced that the
foul and accursed idol had done him this honour, in the hope that as a
result of this sacrifice he would enjoy greater happiness in his mar-
riage."

This process of defloration of Indian virgins by the lingam
idol is confirmed by the reports of John Fryer, Roe, Jeon Moquet,
Abb£ Guyon, Demeunier, and others.

The god Baal Peor, worshipped by the Moabites and Jews,
seems also to have possessed such a divine power of deflora-
tion. His name, " Peor," " to open," is supposed to relate to
the destruction of the hymen.2

This relationship is more distinctly expressed in the names of
certain gods of the ancient Romans, such as Dea Perfica, Dea
Pertunda, Mutunus Tutunus, regarding whose functions in
connexion with defloration, shown unquestionably by the ety-
mology of their names, I have referred to at greater length in my

* ' From this fact we may draw the conclusion that the so-called hospitable
prostitution is only a variety of religious prostitution.

2 J. A. Dulaure, " Des Divinites g6neratriceH," etc. (Paris, 1885).

102

essay on " Ancient Roman Medicine " (published in Puschmann's
" Handbook of the History of Medicine," p. 407 ; Jena, 1902).

For the honour of the sexual divinities, the bride was com-
pelled, as Augustine, Lactantius, and Arnobius report, to seat
herself upon the " fascinum " — that is, the membrum virile of
the priapus statue — and in this way, either physically, or at least
symbolically, sacrifice her virginity to the deity. According to the
legend, the conception of Ocrisia was actually effected in this way I1

According to the second method by which single acts of religious
prostitution are effected, a representative of the deity exercises
the latter's right of defloration. It is a form of religious jus
primce noctis, which is given to the king, the priest, the father,
and, above all, to a casual stranger, before the girl becomes the
property of her husband or master. In cases in which the hus-
band has effected defloration, the deity may be satisfied by the
woman later giving herself once to his representative.

The best-known form of religious prostitution is the Mylitta-
cult of the Babylonians, the worship of that goddess who, accord-
ing to Bachofen, represents the uncontrolled life of Nature in
its fullest creative activity, unchecked by any man-made laws —
the goddess whose free nature is opposed to the constraining
bonds of marriage. For this reason the goddess, as representative
of the unrestrained nature principle, demands from every girl
a free gift of herself to any man wishing to have intercourse with
her. This demand is made in the name of Mylitta and in the
temple devoted to her. The money paid by the man in return
for his sexual indulgence belongs to the goddess, and is added to
the treasures of the temple.2

Herodotus and Strabo give us additional accounts of this
remarkable service of Mylitta. Women of rank, as well as those
of the lower classes, must allow themselves to be possessed once
by a stranger, and were not permitted to return home until they
had given their tribute to the goddess. Moreover, the woman
might not refuse herself to any stranger, whilst the man, on the
other hand, had a free choice. Thus in this account we find all
the characteristics of "prostitution" according to our present
ideas.

This custom was abolished by the Emperor Constantino, as
Eusebius informs us, in his biography of this Emperor. The
accounts of Strabo and of Quintus Curtius show us that it had

» W. Schwartz, " Prehistoric Anthropological Studies," p. 278 (Berlin, 1884).
2 C\. J. J. Bachofen, " The Legend of Tanaquil, an Investigation concerning
Orientalism in Rome and Italy," p. 43 (Heidelberg, 1870).

103

persisted from the time of Herodotus to the time of Constantino ;
in Cyprus, Phoenicia, Carthage, Judea, Armenia, and Lokris, the
Mylittacult was diffused.1

The true origin of this cult was a consecration to the deity, a
tribute to the goddess of voluptuousness. Secondarily only,
other elements may have entered into the practice, as, for in-
stance, the later widely diffused assumption of the uncleanness
and poisonous properties of the blood which was shed in the act
of defloration. At the same time the religious idea of a " sacri-
fice " may have become associated with the idea of " self -sur-
render " to an utterly strange and unloved man, so that it is
possible that at the root of this peculiar custom there lay a kind
of masochism on the part of the woman, whilst we cannot fail
to recognize the existence of a sadistic basis in the demeanour
of the betrothed man or husband, surrendering the woman to
a strange man ; both of these elements — sadism and masochism —
having here a religious signification.

In Eastern Asia, and among many savage races, priests
played the part of representatives of the deity to whom the
defloration of the girls and the newly-married was assigned ; for
instance, in the Indian sect of the " Maharajas," founded by
Vallabha, in which " immorality was elevated to the level of a
divine law."2

These " great kings " assumed the part of deities who had an
unlimited right of possession over the wives of the faithful — above
all, the right of defloration. They proclaimed as the most perfect
mode of honouring the god a complete surrender of the woman
to the spiritual chief of the sect, for purposes of carnal lust — in
exact imitation of the shepherdesses (" gopis "), the mistresses of
the god Krishna. This took place during the pastoral games
" rasmandali " in the autumn.3 In addition, on account of his
activity as deflorator, the priest received a present in the name of
the deity. Abel Reniusat reports in his " Nouveaux Melanges
Asiatique " (Paris, 1824, vol. i., p. 16 et seq.), following the
account of a Chinese author of the thirteenth century, the peculiar
methods employed in Cambodia for the purpose of religious de-
floration. Here the priests of Buddha or the priests of the
Tao religion were carried in sedan-chairs to the girls awaiting
them. Each girl had a candle with a mark on it. The " tshin-

1 Cf. the details and more exact reports in my work, " Contributions to the
Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. i., pp. 84, 85.

2 Karsandas Mulji, " History of the Sect of Maharajas or Vallabhacharjas

in Western India," p. 161 (London, 1865).

3 Cf. E. Hardy, History of Indian Religions,

" pp. 124-126 (Leipzig, 1898).

104

than " ( = adjustment of posture — that is, sexual intercourse)
must be finished before the candle had burnt down to this mark !

The medicine-men and wizards among the Caribs of Central
and South America, the " piaches " or " pajes," had to effect
the defloration of the young girls ;l whilst among other primitive
peoples this right was assigned to the chiefs.2

The talented and far-seeing Bachofen, one of the greatest of
our investigators into the history and psychology of civilization,
in his classical works upon " Matriarchy " and upon " The
Legend of Tanaquil," has very cleverly pointed out that religious
prostitution in general arises from the primitive opposition
to the individualization of love, instinctively felt by primitive
peoples. In fact, in the religious view of sexual matters more
value is placed upon the act than the person, the individual.
Hence arises the slight esteem — so strongly opposed to our
modern view — felt for physical and moral virginity in woman,
which to us (whether rightly or not we will not now discuss)
appears the symbol of feminine individuality. Waitz, Bachofen,
Kulischer, Post, Ploss-Bartels, Rottmann, and other ethnologists,
give additional accounts of the contempt, to us so remarkable,
felt in primitive states for the virgin woman. The tragi-comic
position of our own " old maids " is closely connected with this
primeval sentiment.3

The facts we have just given regarding single acts of religious
prostitution will pave the way for the understanding of permanent
temple prostitution as a historical phenomenon.

Sexual self-surrender as a purely sensual act is associated
with religious feeling. Thus in some cases a woman would
experience a combination of ardent sensuality with intense
religious feeling, would devote herself wholly to the service of
the god, and in his name would permanently surrender her
body ; whilst in other cases the idea of a divine harem — in
Indian belief every god has a harem — would find its earthly
exemplar in temple prostitution, by means of which the deity
would enjoy a number of women through the intermediation of
men ; or, finally, this custom would arise out of the primitive
practice, according to which sexual intercourse, regarded as a
religious act, customarily took place in a temple, or in some

1 K. Fr. Ph. von Martius, " Contributions to the Ethnography and Philology
of America," vol. i., p. 113 (Leipzig, 1867).

2 Starke, " The Primitive Family," p. 135 (Leipzig, 1888).

3 Cf. L. Toblor, " Old Maids in Belief and Custom among the German People "
(Zeitschrift fiir Volkerpsychologie), by Lazarus and Steinthal, vol. xiv., pp. 64-90
(Berlin, 1882).

105

consecrated room of a house. In support of this view, we may
quote a significant utterance from Herodotus (chapter Ixiv. of
the second book of his " History "), who in ethnological matters
had such accurate discrimination. He reports that among the
Egyptians intercourse was strictly forbidden in the temples,
and then says :

" For people of all nations, except the Egyptians and the Hellenes,
are accustomed to copulate in holy places, and proceed after inter-
course unwashed into the holy places ; and they are of opinion that
men resemble animals, and every one sees beasts and birds copulating
in the temples of the gods, and in the consecrated groves. Now, if this
were displeasing to the gods, the animals would not do it. Men, there-
fore, do this, and give this reason for it."

This custom arose, without doubt, from the need for a religious
sentiment, and from the wish to enter into direct communion
with the deity, by remaining in the temple during the sexual act.
When later the divine beings obtained their own consecrated
women in the form of the temple-girls, it was no longer neces-
sary for a man to take his own wife or some other woman into
the temple, for now communion with the deity could be obtained
by means of intercourse with the temple-girls. In the case of
feminine deities a fourth cause or influence comes into operation
in the production of temple prostitution, inasmuch as the cour-
tesans, on account of their extreme beauty and their remarkable
intellectual powers, were often regarded as representatives of the
goddess. This explains how it happened that among the Greeks
beautiful hetairae served as models for Praxiteles and Apelles,
when these sculptors were making statues for the temple.

The sacred priests of Venus, the " kade-girls " of the Phoe-
iiicians, and the " hierodules " of the Greeks, were the servants
of Aphrodite, and dwelt within the precincts of the temple.
Their number was often very great. Thus in Corinth more than
1,000 female hierodules prostituted themselves in the precincts
of the temple of Aphrodite Pome, and even within the temple.1

India, where the primitive phenomena of the amatory life can
best be studied, is also the favourite seat of temple prostitution,
since the religious view of the sexual life is nowhere so prominent
as in the Indian beliefs.2 The temple girls of India are known as
" nautch-girls," or " nautch- women." Warneck writes regarding
them :

1 W. H. Reseller, " Nectar and Ambrosia," pp. 86-89 (Leipzig, 1883).

2 Cf. Edward Sellon, " Annotations on the Sacred Writings of the Hindus,"
p. 3 (London, 1805).

106

" Every Hindu temple of any importance possesses an arsenal of
nautch-girls — that is, dancing-girls — who, next to the sacrificial
priests, are the most highly respected among the personnel of the
temple. It is not long since these temple-girls (just like the hetairae
of Ancient Greece) were among the only educated women in India.
These priestesses, betrothed to the gods from early childhood, were
under the professional obligation to prostitute themselves to every one
without distinction of caste. This self-surrender is so far from being
regarded as a disgrace that even the most highly placed families re-
garded it as an honour to devote their daughters to the service of the
temple. In the Madras Presidency alone there are about 12,000 of
these temple prostitutes." *

Shortt gives further interesting details of these temple prosti-
tutes, who are also known as " thassee."

Religious prostitution is to a certain extent still practised
in Southern Borneo ; and in a newspaper published at Amsterdam
— The German Weekly News of the Netherlands — the following
account of the practice appears in the issue of July 30, 1907 :

" In the Dyak country there are to be found in nearly every kampong
(village) individuals known as ' balians ' and ' basirs.' The balians
are prostitutes who also perform medical services. The basirs are
men who dress in women's clothing, and in other respects perform the
same functions as the balians, but not all the basirs act in this way.
Balians and basirs are also commonly employed to perform certain
religious ceremonies, on festal occasions, at marriages, funerals, births,
etc. According to the nature of the festivity, five to fifteen of them
officiate. The president of the balians and basirs goes by the name
of the ' upu ' ; usually the oldest and most experienced is chosen for
this office. The upu sits in the middle, with the others to right and
left. At an important festival the upu receives from twenty to thirty
gulden ; the others one to fifteen gulden. The further away that a
balian sits from the upu, the smaller is her honorarium ; the honor-
arium is called ' laluh.' The principal balians and basirs are known
as ' bawimait maninjan sangjang ' — that is, ' holy women.' At the
present time the basirs no longer exercise the immoral portions of their
duties, because the Government inflicts severe penalties if they do
so ; moreover, they are not allowed now to appear in public in women's
clothing."

Religion shares with the sexual impulse the unceasing yearning,
the sentiment of everlastingness, the mystic absorption into the
depths of life, the longing for the coalescence of individualities
in an eternally blessed union, free from earthly fetters. Hence the
longing for death felt by lovers and by mystically enraptured
pietists, which has been so wonderfully described by Leopardi.

1 Ploss -Bar tola, " Das Weib in dor Natur- und Volkerkunde," vol. i., p. 580
(eighth edition, Leipzig, 1905).

107

" The yearning for death felt by lovers is identical with the
yearning for sexual union," aptly remarks H. Swoboda, and
he very rightly points out that many a suicide ascribed to " un-
fortunate love " is rather the result of a happy love.

Among primitive peoples, and in ancient times, religio-
erotic festivals first gave an opportunity for the manifestation of
this religio-sexual mysticism. In this the transition of religious
ecstasy into sexual perceptions is very clearly visible, and in the
sexual orgies in which these religious frenzies often found an
appropriate finale we see the crudest expression of the relation-
ship between religion and sexuality. In such cases sexual ardour
appears to be equivalent to a prolongation and an increase of
the religious ardour — fundamentally, radically coincident, as
the natural earthly discharge of an ecstatic tension directed to
the sphere of the remote and the metaphysical.

The fact that such sexual excesses are throughout the world
found in association with religion, that since the very earliest
times they have been connected with the most various forms
of religion, proves once more that the origin of this relationship
is dependent on the very nature of religion as such, and that it
is not in any way due to the individual historic character of any
one belief. It is, moreover, quite uncritical and altogether
without justification for any modern writer to endeavour to
make Roman Catholicism responsible for such an associa-
tion ; Roman Catholicism as such has as little to do with the
matter as all other beliefs. Religio-sexual phenomena belong
to the everywhere recurring elementary ideas of the human
race (elementary ideas in the sense of Bastian) ; and the only
way of regarding such phenomena that can be considered scien-
tifically sound, is from the anthropological and ethnological
standpoint.

This sexual religious mysticism meets us everywhere — in the
religious festivals of antiquity, the festivals of Isis in Egypt, and
the festivals of imperial Rome, both alike accompanied by the
wildest sexual orgies; in the festivals of Baal Peor, among the Jews,
in the Venus and Adonis festivals of the Phoenicians, in Cyprus
and Byblos, in the Aphrodisian, the Dionysian, and the Eleu-
sinian festivals of the Hellenes ; in the festival of Flora in Rome,
in which prostitutes raw about naked ; in the Roman Bacchanalia ;
and in the festival of the bona dea, the wild sexual licence of
which is only too clearly presented to our eyes in the celebrated
account of Juvenal.

In India, the sect of Caitanya, founded in the sixteenth century,

108

celebrated the maddest religio-sexual orgies. Their ritual con-
sisted principally of long litanies and hymns, stuffed full with
unbridled eroticism, and followed by wild dances, all leading up
to the sexual culmination, in which " the love of God " (bhakti)
was to be made as clearly perceptible as possible.1 Even worse
were the Sakta sects (the name is derived from sakti, force —
that is, the sensuous manifestation of the god Siva). They gave
themselves up with ardent sensuality to the service of the female
emanations of Siva, all distinctions of caste being ignored, and
wild sensual promiscuity prevailing. Divine service always
preceded the act of sexual intercourse.

Among the Kauchiluas, one of these Sakta sects, each of the
women who took part in these divine services threw a small
ornament into a box kept by the priests. After the termination
of the religious festival, each male member of the congregation
took one of these articles out of the box, whereupon the pos-
sessor of the article must give herself to him in the subsequent
unbridled sexual excesses, even if the two should happen to be
brother and sister.2

Ancient Central and South America were also familiar with wild
outbreaks of a sexual-religious character. In Guatemala, on
the days of the great sacrifices, there occurred sexual orgies of
the worst kind, men having intercourse promiscuously with
mothers, sisters, daughters, children, and concubines ; and at
the " Akhataymita festivals " of the ancient Peruvians, the
religious observances terminated in a race between completely
nude men and women, in which each man overtaking a woman
immediately had sexual intercourse with her.3

Sexual mysticism found its way also into Christianity. When
the renowned theologian Usener, in his work " Mythology,"
writes in relation to these matters, " the whole of paganism found
its way into Christianity," we must point out that in our view
what " corrupted " Christianity was not " paganism," but the
fundamental phenomena of primitive human nature, the pri-
mordial connexion between religion and sexuality, which by a
natural necessity manifested itself in Christianity not less than
in other religions.

Thus down to the present day we encounter the most peculiar
manifestations of sexual mysticism in the most diverse Christian
sects, and not merely in Roman Catholicism.

1 E. Hardv, op. cit., p. 125.

2 Sellon, ' Annotations," etc., p. 30.

3 Plos3-Bartels, op. cit., p. 608.

109

In the fourth century of our era, the Jewish-Christian sect
of the Sarabaites concluded their religious festivals with wild
sexual orgies, which are graphically described by Cassianus. This
sect persisted into the ninth century. The later history of
the Christian sects is full of this religio - sexual element.
Religious and sexual ardour take one another's place, pass one
into the other, mutually increase one another. I need merely
allude to certain points familiar in the history of civilization,
and investigated and described by many recent students :
the religio-erotic orgiastic festivals of the Nicolaitans, the
Adamites, the Valesians, the Carpocratians, the Epiphanians, the
Cainites, and the Manichaeans. Dixon, in his " Spiritual Wives "
(2 vols., London, 1868), has described the sexual excesses of recent
Protestant sects, such as the " Mucker " of Konigsberg, the
" Erweckten " (" the awakened "), the Foxian spiritualists of
Hydesville, etc. Widely known also is the peculiar association
between sexuality and religion in Mormonism, polygamy being
among the Mormons a religious ordinance.

Not only do Roman Catholicism and Protestantism exhibit
such phenomena, but in the Greek Church also sexual mysticism
gives rise to the most remarkable offshoots. Leroy-Beaulieu
gives an account of the Russian sect of the " Skakuny," or
" Jumpers," who at their nocturnal assemblies throw themselves
into a state of erotic religious ecstasy by hopping and jumping,
like the dancing Dervishes of Islam. When the frenzy reaches a
climax, a shameless, utterly promiscuous union of the sexes
occurs, of which incest is a common feature.1

Quite apart from these sectarian peculiarities, religio-sexual
perceptions play a definite part hi the ideas of present-day, truly
pious Christians. The idea of a " unio mystica " between man
and the Deity manifests itself everywhere.2

Albrecht Dieterich, in his learned work, " A Mithraist Liturgy,"
contributes valuable material to the history of civilization con-
cerning these mystical unions. The oldest heathen cults were
familiar with the idea of love unions as a representation of the
union of man with God ; and in the New Testament the ideas of
the bridegroom and the marriage feast play a leading part.
Christ is the " bridegroom " of the Church, the Church is His
" bride." Pious maidens and nuns are happy to call themselves
the brides of Christ. This ecstatic union has always as its sub-
stratum a sexual imagination. Augustine says : " Like a bride-

1 Of. H. Beck, " Count Tolstoi's ' Kreuzor Sonata,' " etc., p. 5 (Leipzig, 1898).
a Cf. " Mystical Marriages," in the Vowtische Zeilung, No. 370, August 9, 1904.

110

groom Christ leaves His bridal chamber ; in the mood of a bride-
groom He bestrides the field of the world."

The literature, the theology, the visions, and the plastic art of
the middle ages abound in embellishments of the mystical
marriage. St. Catherine of Siena and St. Theresa were favourite
objects of this form of art. The baroque artist Bernini, in his
representation of St. Theresa, in the Church Santa Maria della
Vittoria in Rome, has painted a truly modern " alcove scene,"
so that a mocking Frenchman, President de Brosses, said,
speaking of this picture, " Ah, if that is divine love, I know
all about it."

On October 8, 1900, when Crescentia Hoss, of Kaufeuren, was
canonized in the Peterskirche, a picture was exhibited in which
was depicted the mystical union between the new saint and the
Redeemer. To the picture was attached a Latin inscription
signifying, " Our Lord Jesus Christ presents to the virgin Cre-
scentia, in the presence of the most holy Mother of God and of
Crescentia's guardian angel as groomsman, the marriage ring,
and weds her." The novice about to become a nun appears
before the altar dressed as a bride, in order to wed herself eternally
to Christ ; and in the life of the common people we find an even
more realistic view is taken of this mystical marriage. A celibate
priesthood appears to the peasant, notwithstanding all the respect
that he has for the clerical vocation, as something strange and
incomprehensible ; he regards the " primiz," the first mass of
the newly ordained priest, as a marriage which the most reverend
priest celebrates with the Church, and for this purpose the
Church is represented by a young girl. This is at the present
day still a popular custom in Baden, Bavaria, and the Tyrol. In
this ceremony, which does not lack a poetic aspect — it is admir-
ably described by F. P. Piger in the Zeitschrift des Vereins fur
Volkskunde, 1899 — the peasants who are present make the
coarsest and most pointed jokes, and as soon as the celebration is
finished, they withdraw, in the company of the " holy " bride,
to a public-house, where " they need not be embarrassed by the
presence of the reverend priest."

The intimate association between sexuality and religion in
these mystical unions and marriages has been shown by Ludwig
Feuerbach in his treatise, " Ueber den Marienkultus " ("On
Mariolatry "), Complete Works, Leipzig, 1846, vol. i., pp.
181-199. A very interesting instance of this is also afforded by
the following religious poem, which appears in a poetical devo-
tional work, at one time very widely diffused among the feminine

Ill

population of France (" Les Perles de Saint Fra^ois de Sales, ou
les plus belles Pensees du Bienheureux sur 1'Amour de Dieu,"
Paris, 1871) :

" Vive Jesus, vive sa force,
Vive son agreable amorce !
Vive Jesus, quand sa bont6
Me reduit dans la nudite ;
Vive Jesus, quand il m'appelle :
Ma soeur, ma colombe, ma belle !

Vive Jesus en tous mes pas,
Vivent ses amoureux appas !
Vive Jesus, lorsque sa Douche
D'un baiser amoureux me touche !

Vive Jesus quand ses blandices
Me comblent de chastes delices !
Vive Jesus lorsque & mon aise
II me permet que je la baise !

[" Praise to Jesus, praise His power,
Praise His sweet allurements !
Praise to Jesus, when His goodness
Reduces me to nakedness ;
Praise to Jesus when He says to me :
' My sister, My dove, My beautiful one !'

" Praise to Jesus in all my steps,
Praise to His amorous charms !
Praise to Jesus, when His mouth
Touches mine in a loving kiss !

" Praise to Jesus when His gentle caresses
Overwhelm me with chaste joys !
Praise to Jesus when at my leisure
He allows me to kiss Him !"]

In addition to religious prostitution and to sexual mysticism,
two other reb'gious manifestations show an intimate relationship
with the sexual life, are, indeed, in part of sexual origin — namely,
asceticism and the belief in witchcraft.

Neither of these is, as has often been maintained by superficial
writers, peculiar to the Christian faith. As Nietzsche says, Eros
did not poison Christianity alone ; asceticism and the belief in
witchcraft are common anthropological conceptions, met with
throughout the history of civilization, and arising from the primi-
tive ardour of religious perceptions.

To what degree is the high estimation of asceticism — that is,
the view that earthly and eternal salvation are to be found in

112

complete sexual abstinence — associated with the religious senti-
ment ? Religion is the yearning after an ideal, a belief in a pro-
cess of perfectibility. To such a belief the sexual impulse and
everything connected with it must appear as the greatest possible
hindrance to the realization of the ideal, because nowhere else is
the disharmony of existence so plainly manifest as in the sexual
life.

In the fifth chapter of his work on " The Nature of Man,"
Metchnikoff has collected all the numerous disharmonies of the
reproductive organs and the reproductive functions, in con-
sequence of which the modern man, become self-conscious,
suffers so severely. Among these disharmonious phenomena in
social life, Metchnikoff enumerates, inter alia, the troublesome,
painful, and unaesthetic menstrual haemorrhage in women, which
all primitive peoples regarded as something unclean and evil ;
the pains of childbirth ; the asynchronism between puberty
and the general maturity of the organism, the latter occurring
much later than the former, and thus giving rise to temporal
inequalities of development in different parts of the sexual
functions, causing, for example, masturbation actually before the
development of spermatozoa ; the long interval that commonly
elapses between the onset of sexual maturity and the conclusion
of marriage ; the numerous disharmonious phenomena occurring
in connexion with the decline of reproductive activity at a later
stage of life, when marked specific excitability and sexual sensi-
bility often persist after the capacity for sexual intercourse has
been lost ; and finally the disharmonies in sexual intercourse
between man and woman.

According to Metchnikoff, this disharmony of the sexual life,
from the earliest to the most advanced age, is the source of so
many evils, that almost all religions have harshly judged and
severely condemned the sexual functions, and have recommended
abstinence from coitus as the best means for the harmonious and
ideal regulation of life.

In addition to this, we have to take into consideration the oppo-
sition between spirit and matter, deeply realized already by
primitive man. The sexual, as the most intense and most sensuous
expression of material existence, was opposed to the spiritual, and
was regarded as an unclean element, which must be fought, over-
come, and, when possible, utterly uprooted, in favour of the
spiritual life. In one of the most ancient of mythologies
the first recorded instance of the gratification of sexual desire
resulted in excluding man for ever from " Paradise " — in excluding

113

him, that is to say, from the highest kind of spiritual existence.
The principal psychological characteristic of asceticism is there-
fore to be found, not only in the vow of poverty, but, in addition,
and even more, is it found in sexual abstinence, in the battle
against the " flesh " (" caro," to the fathers of the early Church,
always denoted the genital organs).

What is, however, the inevitable consequence of this continual
battle with the sexual impulse ? Weininger expressed the opinion
("Sex and Character," p. 469, second edition; Vienna, 1904):
" The renunciation of sexuality kills only the physical man, and
kills him only in order, for the first time, to ensure the complete
existence of the spiritual man " ; but this is entirely false, and
proceeds from an extremely deficient knowledge of human nature.
For the " renunciation of sexuality " is, in truth, the most
unsuitable way of securing a complete existence for the spiritual
man. Just as little will it annihilate the physical man. For he
who wishes to overcome and cast out the sexual impulse
(powerful in every normal man, and at times overwhelming
in its strength) must keep the subject constantly before his
eyes, for ever in his thoughts. Thus it came to pass that the
ascetic was actually more occupied with the subject of the
sexual impulse than is the case with the normal man. This
was favoured all the more by the ascetic's voluntary flight from
the world, by his continuous life in solitude — a life favourable
to the production of hallucinations and visions, and one which
becomes tolerable only by a sort of natural reaction in the form
of a luxuriance of imaginative sensuality. For

" Nous naissons, nous vivons pour la societ6 :
A nous-memes livres dans une solitude,
Notre bonheur bientot fait notre inquietude."

(Boileau, Satire X.)

[" We are born, we live for society :
Given up to ourselves in solitude,
Our happiness is speedily replaced by restlessness."]

This " inquietude," this intensification of the nervous life in
all relations, was especially noticeable in the sexual sphere.
Visions of a sexual character, erotic temptations, mortifications
of the flesh in the form of self-flagellation, self-emasculation and
mutilations of the genital organs, are characteristic ascetic
phenomena. On the other hand, the excessive valuation and
glorification of the pure spiritual led not only to the view that
matter was something in its nature sinful and base, but also led

114

directly to sexual excesses, for many ascetic sects declared that
what happened to the already sinful body was a matter of indiffer-
ence, that every contamination of the body was permissible.
Hence is to be explained the remarkable fact of the occurrence
of natural and unnatural unchastity in numerous ascetic
sects.

Sexual mortification and sexual excesses — these are the two
poles between which the life of the ascetic oscillates, so that we
see in each case a marked sexual intermixture. Asceticism
is, therefore, often merely the means by which sexual enjoy-
ment is obtained in another form and in a more intense
degree.

Asceticism is as old as human religion, and as widely diffused
throughout the entire world. We find individual ascetics among
many savage peoples ; ascetic sects, especially among the ancient
and modern civilized races, in Babylon, Syria, Phrygia, Judaea,
even in pre-Columbian Mexico, and most developed in India, in
Islam, and in Christianity.

The Indian samkhya-doctrine, demanding increased self-
discipline, " yoga," which was based upon the opposition between
spirit and matter, led to the adoption of asceticism in Buddhism
and in the religion of the Jains, also to the foundation of ascetic
sects, such as the " Acelakas," the " Ajivakas," the " Suthres "
or " Pure," who, according to Hardy, " are in their life a disgrace
to their name." Yogahood attained its highest development
among Sivaitic sects of the ninth to the sixteenth centuries ;
these alternated between uncontrolled satisfaction of the rudest
sexual impulses and asceticism pushed to the point of self-
torture.

In Islam it was the sect of the Sufi in which the relation
between sexuality and asceticism was especially manifest ; but
before this Christianity had developed asceticism into a formal
system, and had deduced its most extreme consequences. To
the early Christians, only the nutritive impulse appeared natural ;
the sexual impulse was debased nature ; physical and psychical
emasculation were actually recommended in the New Testament
writings (cf. Matt. xix. 12). Already in the second century of the
Christian era numerous Christians voluntarily castrated them-
selves, and in the fourth century the Council of Nicsea found it
necessary to deal with the prevalence of this ascetic abuse, and
with the predecessors of the modern " skopzen." l

1 Cf. Adolf Harnack, " Medical Data from Ancient Ecclesiastical History "
(Leipzig, 1892, pp. 27, 28, and 52).

115

Numerous ascetics and saints withdrew into solitude in order
to attain salvation by castigation of the body. But it is very
noteworthy that they almost all lived and moved exclusively in
the sexual, and that, in the way already explained, they came
to occupy themselves incessantly with all the problems of the
sexual life.

The writings of the saints are full of such references to the vita
sexualis, and are, therefore, a valuable source for the history of
ancient morals. Nothing was so interesting to these ascetics as
the life of prostitutes and the sexual excesses of the impious.
Numerous legends relate the attempts of the saints to induce
prostitutes to abandon their profession, and to turn to a holy life,
and the work of Charles de Bussy, " Les Courtisanes Saintes,"
shows the result of these labours. St. Vitalius visited the brothels
every night, to give the women money in order that they might
not sin, and prayed for their conversion.

Thus, in the case of the ascetics, whose thoughts were con-
tinually occupied with sexual matters, the sole result of then*
castigation, self-torture, and emasculation, was to lead their
sexual life ever wider astray into morbid and perverse paths.
The monstrous sexual visions of the saints reflect in a typical
manner the incredible violence of the sexual perceptions of the
ascetics. To use the words of Augustine, how far were these
unhappy beings from the " serene clearness of love," how near
were they to the " obscurity of sensual lust !" These visions, these
" false pictures," allured the " sleepers " to something to which,
indeed, in the awakening state they could not have been misled
(Augustine, " Confessions," x. 30). The forms of beautiful naked
women (with whom, moreover, the ascetics often really lay in bed
in order to test their powers) appeared to them in dreams.
Fetichistic and symbolic vision of an erotic nature pestered them,
and led to the most violent sensual temptations, until in the
sects of the Valesians, the Marcionites, and the Gnostics they
resulted in sexual excesses. Marcion, the founder of the well-
known sect named after him, preached continence, but maintained
that sexual excesses could not hinder salvation, since it was only
the soul that rose again after death ! The Gnostics oscillated
between unconditional celibacy and indiscriminate sexual indul-
gence. As late as the nineteenth century an ascetic mystic led
the Protestant sect of Konigsberg pietists into the grossest
sensual excesses.

From asceticism arose monasticism and the cloistral life, to
which the considerations above given fully apply. The un-

8—2

116

deniable unchastity of the medieval cloisters, which found its
most characteristic expression in denoting brothels by the name
of " abbeys," and, above all, in popular songs and in folk-tales,
also shows us very clearly the relations between religious asceti-
cism and the vita sexualis.

The idea of asceticism has not lost its primitive force even at the
present day, and retains it for certain men not under the influence
of the Church. But the character and origin of this modern
asceticism are different. We understand it when we remind our-
selves of the saying of Otto Weininger, this typical adherent of
" modern " asceticism, that the man who has the worst opinion of
woman is not the one who has least to do with them, but rather
the one who has had the greatest number of bonnes fortunes
(" Sex and Character," p. 315).

The ascetics of early Christianity first denied sexuality — for
example, by self-castration, or by flight into solitude — in order
subsequently to affirm it the more strongly. Our modern
fin-de-siecle ascetics, above all, the three most successful literary
apostles of asceticism — Schopenhauer, Tolstoi, and Weininger —
at first affirmed their sexuality most intensely, in order subse-
quently to deny it in the most fundamental manner. They
studied voluptuousness, not merely in the ideal, but also in
reality. For this reason, also, they have furnished us with more
valuable conclusions regarding its nature and its significance in
the life of individual men than we can obtain from the visions of
the early Christian ascetics. This is true above all of Schopen-
hauer and Tolstoi.

Schopenhauer had first to endure in his own person the whole
tragedy of voluptuousness, to experience the elemental force of
the sexual impulse, the " enmity " of love (see his own account
given to Challemel-Lacour), before he proceeded to grasp the full
significance of the ascetic idea. His asceticism is intimately
associated with his sensuality, and with the consequences of its
activity. I believe that I have myself recently furnished a
striking proof of this fact by the publication of a hitherto unknown
holograph manuscript of the philosopher,1 by which it is clearly
established that he had suffered from syphilitic infection. In
this connexion we find the explanation of the close relationship
which Schopenhauer himself postulated between the " wonderful
venereal disease " and asceticism. From his own utterances

1 Iwan Bloch, " Schopenhauer's Illness in the Year 1823 " (A Contribution to
Pathography based upon an Unpublished Document). Paper read at the Berlin
Society for the History of the Natural Sciences and Medicine on June 15, 1906.
Printed in MediziniscJie Klinik, 1906, Nos. 25 and 26.

regarding syphilis, and, above all, from the fact that he himself
had suffered from the disease, we are able to grasp the significance
that syphilis had in the conception of his ascetic views, which
were developed under the immediate influence of his experiences,
sorrows, and passions ; whereas in old age, when the elemental
force of the sexual impulse, and the unhappy consequence of
yielding to it, no longer troubled him, there appeared in his
thought a distinctly happier colouring.

Tolstoi also recognizes without reserve how much he had been
affected by voluptuousness. " I know," he says, " how lust hides
everything, how it annihilates everything, by which the heart and
the reason are nourished." Lack of continence on the part of
men is, in his view, the cause of the stupidity of life. Tolstoi's
conception of asceticism is, however, by no means identical with
the early Christian, the Buddhistic, and the Schopenhauerian
asceticism. In the beautiful saying, " Only with woman can one
lose purity, only with her can one preserve it," lies the admission
that absolute chastity is an unattainable ideal, and that man can
reach only a relative asceticism. We should hold fast to this
utterance in Tolstoi's teaching, which is in no way systemati-
cally developed, and should ignore his insane doctrine of the
unchastity of married life. Later, during our discussion
of the so-called " problem of continence," we shall return to
this idea of a relative continence, and of the good that lies
therein.

Weininger, whose views are unquestionably strongly patho-
logical, recurs wholly to the ideas of early Christian asceticism.
According to him, " coitus in every case contradicts the idea of
humanity " ! Sexuality debases man, reproduction and fertility
are "nauseating." l Man is not free, only because he has origi-
nated in an immoral manner ! In woman he denies again and
again the idea of humanity. The renunciation, the conquest of
femininity, it is this that he demands. Since all femininity is
immorality, woman must cease to be woman, and must become
man !2

Georg Hirth has described Weininger 's book as "an unparal-
leled crime against humanity."3 Since, however, Probst, in his
psychiatric study of Weininger, has brought forward evidence to

1 It is a remarkable fact that the hypersexual Marquis de Sade expressee this
identical idea, in precise agreement with the asexual Weininger.

8 Cf. the chapter " Woman and Humanity," in " Sex and Character,"
pp. 453-472.

3 G. Hirth, " Ways to Love," p. 219. Cf. also the pertinent remark of Greto
Meisel-Hess, " Misogyny and Contempt for Women " (Vienna, 1904).

118

show that in Weininger's book we have to do with the work of
a lunatic, the author of this crime cannot at any rate be held
responsible. It is only to be regretted that so many readers have
been led astray by the presence of isolated thoughtful passages
in the book to take Weininger in earnest as a " thinker," and
even in company with the bizarre August Strindberg to believe
that Weininger has solved " the most difficult of all problems " !

Very significant and influential even down to the present day
are the relations between religion and sexual sentiments exhibited
in the belief in witchcraft.1 This belief, extending backwards to
the most remote age, is the principal source of all misogyny and
contempt for women — of which fact we cannot too often remind
our modern misogynists, in order to make clear to them the
utter stupidity, the primitiveness, and the atavistic character
of their views.

Here, again, we must first show the falsity of the view that the
belief in witches is a specifically Christian experience. To the
diffusion of this error the celebrated work of J. Michelet, " La
Sorciere," has especially contributed, for in this book the witch
is represented as a Christian medieval discovery. But the
Christian religion, as such, is as little blameworthy for this belief
as are all the other confessions of faith. The belief in witches,
with its religio-sexual basis, is a primitive general anthropological
phenomenon, a fixture, a part of primitive human history arising
from the primeval relations between religious magic and the
sexual life.

" When we look deeply into the province of psychology," says
G. H. von Schubert, " we not only suspect, but recognize with great
certainty, that there exists a secret combination between the activities
of the animal carnal sexual impulse and the receptivity of human
nature for magical manifestations.

" We stand here in the depths of the abyss in which the lust of the
flesh becomes inflamed to the lust of hell, and in which the flesh, with
all its indwelling forces of sin and death, celebrated its greatest triumph
over the spirit appointed by God to command the flesh."2

The animism of primitive man, and of savage man at the
present day, sees in all frightful natural phenomena shaking his
innermost being to its foundation the manifestation and action
of demons and sorcerers. The rutting impulse also, which

1 Cf. also the exhaustive research, with regard to witch-mania and witchcraft,
by Count von Hoensbroech, " The Papacy in its Socio-Civil Reality " (third
edition, vol. i., pp. 380-599; Leipzig).

2 Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, " The Sins of Sorcery in their Old and New
Form " (Erlangen, 1864, p. 25) .

119

attracts primitive man to woman, appears to him to be due to the
influence of a demon, and soon woman herself came to seem to
man something uncanny, something magical. Thus, in its origin
the belief in witchcraft arises from the sexual impulse, and
throughout its history sorcery in all its forms remained associated
with the sexual impulse.

This sexual origin of the belief in witches and in magic has been
carefully described by the celebrated ethnologist K. Fr. Ph.
von Martius, on the basis of his observations amongst the indigens
of Central Brazil. " All sorcery arises from rutting," said an old
Indian to him.

Magic propagates itself by means of sexual desire, and, according
to Martius, will predominate among primitive peoples as long as
these remain unchaste.1 Secret arts, voluptuousness, and un-
natural vice are inseparable one from another. This is proved
by the entire history of human civilization and morals. Among
the indigens of Brazil, the " paje " or " piache," the sorcerer or
medicine-man, plays the same part as the medieval or Christian
witch.

Sorcerers and witches are, above all, experienced in the sexual
province ; popular belief always turns first to this subject. The
witches of ancient Rome resemble those of the middle ages in
respect of their evil practices in sexual relations. According to
J. Frank, the word " hexe " (witch) is derived from " hagat " —
that is, " vagabond woman." The ascetic view of the middle
ages, formulated principally by men, saw in woman one who
seduced man to sensual, sinful lust, the personification of the
Evil One, the " janua diaboli," and, ultimately, a female demon
and a witch, whose very being is an impersonation of the obscene
and the sexual. The doctrines of Original Sin and of the Immacu-
late Conception had unquestionably an important share in this
conception of woman.

The idea of woman as a witch turned almost exclusively on the
sexual, and the witch was for the most part represented as a
" mistress of the devil " (cf. W. G. Soldan, " History of Witch-
Trials," pp. 147-159 ; Stuttgart, 1843), in which sexual perversion
plays the principal part, since, instead of simple sexual inter-
course, the most horrible unnatural vice was assumed to
occur.

Holzinger, in his valuable lecture on the " Natural History of

1 Cf. K. Fr. von Martius, " Tho Nature, the Diseases, the Doctors, and the
Therapeutic Methods of the Primitive Inhabitants of Brazil " (Munich, 1843,
pp. 111-113).

120

Witches," characterized the spiritual and moral condition
of the time, which brought forth such an idea, in a few apt
words :

" Whilst in the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth cen-
turies, as those well acquainted with the state of morals during this
period can all confirm, a most unbounded freedom was dominant in
sexual relations, the State and the Church were desirous of compelling
the people to keep better order by the use of actual force, and by
religious compulsion. So forced a transformation in so vital a matter
necessarily resulted in a reaction of the worst kind, and forced into
secret channels the impulse wliich it had attempted to suppress.
This reaction occurred, moreover, with an elemental force. There
resulted widespread sexual violence and seduction, hesitating at
nothing, often insanely daring, in which everywhere the devil was
supposed to help ; every one's head was turned in this way, the un-
controlled lust of debauchees found vent in secret bacchanalian asso-
ciations and orgies, wherein many, with or without masquerade, played
the part of Satan ; shameful deeds were perpetrated by excited women
and by procuresses and prostitutes ready for any kind of immoral
abomination ; add to these sexual orgies the most widely diffused web
of a completely developed theory of witchcraft, and the systematic
strengthening by the clergy of the widely prevalent belief in the devil —
all these things woven in a labyrinthine connexion, made it possible
for thousands upon thousands to be murdered by a disordered justice
and to be sacrificed to delusion."

The study of the witch-trials of the middle ages and of recent
times — for it is well known that in the seventies of the nineteenth
century (!) such trials still occurred1 — would without doubt
afford valuable contributions to the doctrine of psychopathia
sexualis, and at the same time would throw a remarkable light
upon the origin of sexual aberrations.

What a large amount of sexual abnormality arises even to-day
from this common, human, obscure, superstitious impulse
dependent upon the intermixture of religious mysticism and
sexual desire, and which in the medieval belief in witches
attained such astonishing development !

As Michelet proved in his great work on " Sorcery," it was
the religious imagination straying into sexual by-paths, which for
the most part animated the belief in witchcraft, and thus led to
the most horrible aberrations, principally of a sadistic nature.

Like superstition, so also the sexual-religious obsession of the

1 According to Holzinger, on August 20, 1877, at St. Jacobo in Mexico, five
witches were burnt alive ! Then " hundreds of angry pens were set in motion
to declaim the horrible anachronism." As late as 1875, Friedrich Nippold, in a
work published by Holtzendorff and Oncken — " Problems of the Day in Ger-
many " — gives an account of the continued belief in witches at the present day.

121

middle ages, still persists in many persons, even at the present
day, and gives rise to sexual anomalies.

Apart from asceticism an,d the belief in witchcraft, theological
literature offers numerous instances of the relationship between
religion and sexuality.

In an essay published six years ago,1 I showed the important
part which sexual questions have played in the so-called pastoral
medicine — that is to say, in those theological writings in which
the individual facts and problems of medicine are studied from
the theological standpoint, and their relation to dogma is deter-
mined. We find here theological casuistry carried to its extreme
limits, in relation to all possible problems of the vita sexualis.
The experiences of the confessional are employed in a remarkable
manner, the religious imagination wandering, in a peculiar com-
bination of scholasticism and sensuality, in the obscure fields of
human aberration.

The ostensible inducement to the theological consideration of
sexual problems is in part offered by the statements of perverse
individuals in the confessional, and in part by public scandals.
In both cases casuistry endeavours, from the religious stand-
point, to formulate certain normal rules for the judgment of
the various matters relating to the sexual life. This would,
however, have been impossible, had there not existed an
intimate connexion between sexuality and religion.

Only in this way is it possible to explain the origin of the
gigantic literature of sexual casuistry in theology, and especially
in pastoral medicine. A comprehension of these facts has led
certain writers to launch bitter invectives against the system of
which the confessional formed so essential a part. This is a
narrow and prejudiced view, which we mention only to condemn.
There is, however, ample justification for the representations of
physicians and anthropologists, who are able to observe matters
in the great connexion sketched above, and who have recognized
the relations between religion and the sexual life to be some-
thing common to all humanity, not the artificial products of
any particular spiritual tendency. It is precisely the frequent
endeavours of the Catholic Church to overcome the worst out-
growths in this direction, which teach us, notwithstanding their
failure to eradicate sexual aberrations, that these relationships
depend upon the very nature of religion.

There is not a single sexual problem which has not been dis-

1 Iwan Bloch, " Regarding the Idea of a History of Civilization in Relation to
Medicine," published in Die Medizinische Woche, 1900, No. 36.

122

cussed in the most subtle manner by the theological casuists,1
so that their writings offer us a most instructive picture of
imaginative activity in the sexual sphere.

The most detailed discussion, verging on the salacious, of the
degree to which sexual contact is permissible, gave rise to the
name " theologiens mammillaires," because some of them—
Benzi, for example, and Rousselot — sanctioned " tatti mammil-
lari " (mammillary palpation). This doctrine was condemned
by Pope Benedict XIV., which proves that the Catholic Church
as such has not invariably sanctioned these things.

In the " Golden Key " (" LJave de Oro ") of Antonio Maria
Claret, the Archbishop of Cuba, in Debreyne's " Moechialogie,"
in the writings on moral theology of Liguori, Dens, and J. C.
Saettler, in the " Diaconales," widely diffused in France, and in
many similar works, all possible sexual problems which have
come before the confessional, or possibly might come there, have
been thoroughly discussed — even the most improbable and im-
possible. Coitus intemiptus, irrigatio vaginae post coitum, pol-
lutions (nocturnal seminal emissions), bestiality, necrophilia,
figurae Veneris (positions in which coitus is effected), procuration,
various kinds of caresses, conjugal onanism, abortion, varieties
of masturbation, paederasty, intercourse with a statue (!),
psychical onanism, paedication, etc. — all have been subjected to
a subtle critical theological analysis. In a sense, these writings
are really valuable mines for the study of psychopathia sexualis.
Later we shall have frequently to touch on the religious etiology
of the individual sexual aberrations.

From the preceding discussion it appears quite clearly that the
relations between religion and the vita sexualis are to be regarded
as general anthropological phenomena, and not as peculiarities
arising by chance, the accidental results of beliefs, time, or race.
The modern physician, jurist, and criminal anthropologist must
therefore pay the most careful attention to the religious factor
in the normal and abnormal sexual life of mankind, if he
wishes to arrive at an unprejudiced and undisturbed knowledge
of sexual anomalies. Havelock Ellis has also laid stress on
the leading significance of religious sexual perceptions. He
proved that small oscillations of erotic feelings accompany all

1 The best-known of these are Augustine, Benzi, Bouvier, Cangiamila, Capell-
mann, Claret, Debreyne, Dens, Filliucius, Gury, Liguori, Moja, Molinos, Moullet,
Pereira, Rodriguez, Rousselot, Sa, Thomas Sanchez, Samuel Schroeer, Skiers,
Soto, Suarez, Tamburini, Thomas Aquinas, Vivaldi, Wigandt, Zenardi. Copious
extracts from their writings are given by Count von Hoensbroech in the second
volume of his work—" The Papacy in its Socio-Civil Reality " (Leipzig, 1907).

123

religious perceptions, and that in some circumstances the erotic
feelings overwhelm the religious perceptions.1 We still meet
with sexual excesses under the cloak of religion, as occurred
recently (1905) in Holland, and (1901) in England. In the
English instance young girls were initiated into the most horrible
forms of unchastity in the religious association founded by the
American Horos and his wife, and known by the name of " Theo-
cratic Unity."2

Friedrich Schlegel, as Rudolf von Gottschall remarks, pro-
claimed in his " Lucinde " the new evangel of the future, in which
voluptuousness — as during the time of Astarte — is to form a part
of religious ritual. The reawakened tendency of our own day
towards romantic modes of perception would certainly seem
to involve the danger of a renewal and strengthening of religio-
sexual ideas.

For as long as the feelings of love carry with them an inex-
pressible, overwhelming force, like that of religious perceptions,
the intimate association between religion and sexuality will per-
sist both in a good and a bad sense. An elderly physician, who
in his interesting book detailed the experiences derived from
forty years of practice,3 made very apposite remarks regarding
this religious sexualism. According to him, unbounded piety is
" often no more than a sexual symptom," proceeding from
deprivation of love or satiety of love, the latter reminding us of
the saying " Young whore, old devotee." Moreover, this is
true alike of man and woman. Piety dependent upon depriva-
tion of love can often be cured by " castor, cold douches, or a
well-arranged marriage with a robust, energetic man," who
drives away for ever the " heavenly bridegroom."4

The religious perception is a completely general yearning, and
the same is the case with the associated sexual feelings. The
boundless everlasting impulsion which both contain does not
admit of any individualization. For this reason, the religio-
sexual perceptions can play only a subordinate part in the indi-

1 Havelock Ellis, " The Sexual Impulse and the Sentiment of Shame."

2 We shall return later to the religio-sexual " Masses," celebrated even at the
present day in Paris and other large towns.

3 " Personal Experiences, or Forty Years from the Life of a Well-known
Physician " (Leipzig, 1854, three vols.). In addition, " Gleanings In and Out of
Myself," from the papers of the author of the " Personal Experiences," etc.
(Leipzig, 1856, four vols.).

* " Gleanings In and Out of Myself," vol. ii., pp. 37-45. Regarding the rela-
tions between religion and sexuality, many interesting details are found in the
work of George Keben, " The Half-Christians and the Whole Devil : the Road
to Hell of Superstition " (Gross-Lichterfelde, 1905), especially in the chapter
" The Brothel/' pp. 93-110.

124

vidual love of the future ; they constitute only the first step in
the history of the idealization of the sexual impulse, and of its
spiritualization to form love.

In the romance " Scipio Cicala," by Rehfues, the Neapolitan
abbess calls out " I love love," after she has gone through the
enumeration of all the phases of passionate love towards God.
The modern man, however, says to the woman, and the woman
says to the man, " I love you "; the general religious love has
capitulated to the individual love.

This is clearly the direction taken by " the way of the spirit "
in love, which we shall now pursue further.

CHAPTER VII

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT IN LOVE— THE EROTIC SENSE OF
SHAME (NAKEDNESS AND CLOTHING)

" Shame has made no change in man as regards his bodily out-
lines, but shame has played a very important part in the entire
province of clothing, and it has acquired such spiritual power that
the entire amatory life of the higher human beings is dominated by
it. It is, in the first place, in consequence of this sense of shame
that man's amatory life has ultimately and individually separated
from that of other animals." — WILHELM BOLSCHE.

126

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VII

The individualizing influence of the sentiment of shame — Recent anthropological
researches regarding the origin and nature of the erotic sense of shame —
The animal and the social factor of shame — Shame as a biological sense of
warding off — Coquetry — The fundamental social element of the sense of
shame — Lombroso's theory of shame — The dread of arousing repulsion —
Connexion of the sense of shame with clothing — Conditions among the
indigens of Central Brazil — Nudity as a natural condition — The coverings
of the genital organs among the primitive races have a protective function,
and are not portions of clothing — Origin of clothing — The original purpose
of decoration and adornment — Relation of clothing to the feeling of love —
Tattooing a preliminary stage to clothing — Prehistoric painting of the body
— Tattooing as a sexual lure — Tattooing of the genital organs — Sexual effect
of colours — Occurrence of tattooing amongst modern civilized nations —
Recent anthropological researches regarding this subject — Erotic tattooing
— Tattooing in women of the upper classes — The colour element in clothing
— Its connexion with sexual charm — With jealousy — With sexual allurement
— Sexual influence of concealment — The stimulus of the unknown — The two
fundamental elements of fashion — Accentuation and display of portions of
the body — Influence of partial concealment, of retrousse — The two principal
forms of clothing — Accentuating and enlarging influences of clothing —
H. Lotzes's theory of the nature of clothing — Reciprocal influence between
clothing and personality — " Physiognomy " of clothing — Clothing as an
expression of the psyche — Denuding of portions of the body as a sexual
stimulus — Fashion — Its absence in antiquity — Difference between ancient
and modern clothing — Diaphanous raiment of the ancient half-world —
Analysis of clothing — Upper and under clothing — The waist — Further dif-
ferentiation into clothing proper and more intimate articles of dress —
Dressing and undressing — Separation of the body-spheres by the waist —
Beginnings of fashion in the middle ages — The corset as a witness of Christian
teaching — Contest between medieval fashion and asceticism — Victory of
fashion — Accentuation of the bosom — Decollete — Views of the aesthetics on
this subject — Harmfulness of the corset — A sin against aesthetics and
hygiene — Its deleterious influence upon the thoracic and abdominal organs
— The corset and anaemia — Atrophy of the mammary glands — Other serious
consequences — Its influence on the female reproductive organs — The corset
and " fluor albus " — The corset and sterility — Pre-Raphaelite flat-breasted-
ness — Accentuation of the regions of the hips — Tournure (cvl de Paris), the
" crinolette " — Indication of the abdominal region and of pregnancy — The
farthingale and the crinoline — Waldeyer's views regarding the cause of the
difference between men's clothing and women's — Greater simplicity of men's
clothing — Connexion of this with the greater mental differentiation of
man — Former anomalies of men's clothing — The breeches-flap — Feminine
men's clothing — Present predominance of the English style in men's clothing
— Influence of clothing on the skin — Venus im Pelz (Venus in fur) — Sacher-
Masoch's explanation of the sexual influence of furs — The face and clothing

126

127

— Sexual differentiation of the features — The relation of clothing to the
environment — Enlargement of the conception of " fashion " — Theory of
fashion — The two functions of fashion — Social equalization and individual
differentiation — The demi-monde and fashion — Fashion as a safeguard of
personality — Economic theories of fashion — Their connexion with capi-
talism— The reform of women's clothing — " Rational dress."

The relation between the feeling of shame and nudity as a problem of
modern civilization — Prudery — Natural and lascivious nakedness — Prudery
is concealed lust — Schleiermacher's talented characterization of the sexual
element in prudery — Psychiatric observations — Unnatural increase in the
sense of shame — Importance to civilization of the genuine, natural feeling
of shame — False fig-leaf morality — Natural views regarding nudity and
sexual matters the watchword for the future.

CHAPTER VII

THE first step on the road to the individualization of love was
effected at the very outset of the grey primeval age by the
origination of the sexual sense of shame. Recent researches have
for the first time established the fact that the sense of shame is
not innate in man, but that it is a specific product of civilization—
that is to say, a mental phenomenon arising in the course of pro-
gressive evolution, and as such is peculiar to man — present
already, indeed, in the naked man, but, above all, characteristic
of the clothed man. Clothing and the sense of shame have de-
veloped proportionally side by side, and in dependence each on
the other ; and originally both subserved the same purpose, to
develop more strongly, and to bring to expression the individual,
personal, peculiar nature of the individual man. They mirror
the first individual activities in the amatory life of primitive
man.

Georg Simmel has recognized very clearly this individualizing
influence of the sense of shame by saying : " The entire sense of
shame depends upon the self-uplifting of the individual."1

By means of the recent critical investigations of leading anthro-
pologists and ethnologists, we have obtained most important
conclusions regarding the erotic sense of shame. Above all
worthy of mention are the clear-sighted investigations of Have-
lock Ellis, and these have been supplemented by the researches
of C. H. Stratz, Karl von den Steinen, etc.

Havelock Ellis distinguishes an animal and a social factor of
shame. The former is specifically of a sexual nature, and is the
simplest and most primitive element in the sense of shame. It
is unquestionably more strongly developed in woman than in
man ; originally, indeed, it was peculiar to the female sex, and
was the expression of the endeavour to protect the genital organs
against the undesired approach of the male. In this form we
may observe the sense of shame in other animals.

The sexual sense of shame of the female animal, declares
Havelock Ellis, is rooted in the sexual periodicity of the female
sex in general, and is an involuntary expression of the organic
fact that the present time is not the time for love. Since this
fact persists throughout the greater part of the life of the females

1 G. Simmel, " Philosophy of Fashion " (Berlin, 1906, p. 27).

128

129

of all animals kept under man's control, the expression of this
sense of warding off becomes so much a matter of custom that it
manifests itself also at times when it has ceased to be appropriate.
We see this, for example, in the bitch, which, when on heat,
herself runs up to the dog, but then turns round again and tries
to run away, and finally permits copulation only after the most
delicate approaches on the part of the dog. In this manner the
sense of shame becomes more and more a simple manifestation
of the proximity of the male ; it comes to be expected by the male,
and takes its place among his ideas of what is sexually desirable
in the female. Thus the sense of shame would appear to be also
explicable as a psychical secondary sexual character. The
sexual sense of shame of the female, continues Havelock Ellis,
is, therefore, the unavoidable by-product of the naturally aggres-
sive demeanour of the male being in sexual relations, and of the
naturally repellent demeanour of the female ; and this, again, is
founded upon the fact that — in man and in nearly all the species
allied to him — the sexual function of the female is periodic,
and must always be treated with circumspection by the other
sex ; whereas in the male any care of this kind in regard to
the exercise of his own sexual functions is seldom or never
needed.

Groos very rightly points out that the great biological and
psychological importance of coquetry is dependent upon this pro-
tective nature of the sense of shame, coquetry arising from the
conflict between the sexual instinct and the innate sense of shame.
It is to some extent the turning to account of the sense of shame
for sensual purposes, a seldom failing speculation on the sexual
impulse of the male, and in this sense it is the outcome of a genuine
gynecocratic instinct, which we shall again encounter in our
study of masochism.

Since, then, it is no longer possible to question the data of the
most recent researches, by which we are assured of the existence
of a primitively organic animal basis for the sexual feeling of
shame, it is quite as little open to doubt that the true psychic
individual importance of the feeling of shame arises out of a
second fundamental element of that feeling, out of the social
factor ; and this factor also affords an explanation of the origin
of the sense of shame in man. This phenomenal form of the
sense of shame is, moreover, specifically human.

This second social fundamental element of the sense of shame
is the fear of arousing disgust.

In this connexion we must refer to the interesting and

130

thoroughly naturalistic theory of Lombroso regarding the origin of
the sense of shame. Lombroso starts from the observation that in
many prostitutes there exists a kind of remarkable equivalent
of the sense of shame — namely, the dislike to permit of an inspec-
tion of their genital organs when they are menstruating, or when
for any other reason the organs are not clean. Now, the Romance
term for shame is derived from " putere," which indicates the
origin of the sense of shame from the repugnance to the smell of
decomposing secretions. If we connect with this the fact that
the kiss was originally a smell, Lombroso declares that this
pseudo-shame of prostitutes represents the original, primitive
sense of shame of primeval woman — that is, the fear of being
disgusting to man.1 Sergi also accepts this hypothesis of
Lombroso's.

According to Richet's studies regarding the origin of disgust,
the genito-anal region, with its secretions and excrements, is
an object of disgust among most primitive races, for which
reason they carefully conceal it even from their own sex,
but more particularly from the other sex. Later, quite
commonly the fear of arousing dislike or disgust plays a promi-
nent part in the production of the sense of shame. This fear
relates not only to the actual sexual organs, but also to the
buttocks. Among many primitive races the latter alone are
covered.

The idea also of ceremonial uncleanness, aroused especially by
the, process of menstruation, and associated with ritual practices,
plays a part in the genesis of the sense of shame.

Incontestably, however, the sense of shame has most intimate
relations with clothing ; but clothing is in part only to be referred
to the above-described primary factors of the sense of shame.
In the later course of the development of civilization, however,
clothing has come to play a peculiar independent role in the further
development of a refined sexual sense of shame.

Karl von den Steinen is led, as the result of his own observa-
tions among the Bakairi of Central Brazil, to the most remarkable
conclusions.

" I find it," he writes, " impossible to believe that the sense of shame,
which is entirely wanting among these naked Indians, can in other
men be a primary sense. I am compelled to believe that this sense
first made its appearance after certain parts of the body had been
covered by clothing, and that the nakedness of women was first

1 Cf. C. Lombroso and G. Ferrero, " Woman as Criminal and Prostitute."

131

concealed from the gaze of others when, perhaps, in very slightly
complicated economic and social conditions, the value of marriageable
girls had increased, in consequence of more active intercourse, as is
now the case among the principal families in Schingu. I am also of
opinion that we make the explanation more difficult than it really is
when we theoretically believe ourselves to possess a greater sense of
shame than we practically have."1

Thus we find that among the Bakairi, who go completely naked,
our (sexual) sense of shame is almost completely undeveloped ;
more especially, a sense of shame due to disclosure of parts does
not exist, whilst the purely animal, physiological sense of shame
is clearly manifested by these people.2

Where nudity is customary, the erotic sense of shame is very
slightly developed. Civilized man also accustoms himself with
incredible quickness to nudity, as if it were an entirely natural
condition.

" The feeling of being in the presence of nudity is no longer noticed
after a quarter of an hour, and when those who witness it are inten-
tionally reminded of it, and are asked whether naked men and women,
fathers, mothers, and children, who are standing about or walking uncon-
cernedly, should be condemned or regarded with compassion on account
of their shamelessness, the observer only feels inclined to laugh, as at
something quite absurd, or to protest at a preposterous suggestion. . . .
With what rapidity in unfamiliar regions it is possible to become
accustomed to a purely nude environment is most clearly shown by the
fact that I myself, in the night from the 15th to the 16th September,
and again on the following night, dreamed of my German home, and
there in my dream I saw all my acquaintances as completely nude as
the Bakairi with whom I was sojourning. I myself felt astonished at
this, but my neighbour at table at a dinner-party at which in my dream
I was a guest, a lady of quality, at once bade me compose myself, and
said, ' Now we all go like this.' "3

The Bakairi, who go completely naked, have no " private
parts." They jest about these parts verbally and pictorially
with complete indifference. It would be ridiculous for this
reason to regard them as " indecent." The onset of puberty
is celebrated in the case of both sexes by noisy popular festivals,
in which the " private parts " receive a demonstrative and
joyful attention. A man who wishes to inform a stranger that
he is the father of one of those present, a woman who wishes

1 Karl von den Steinen, " Experiences among the Savage Races of Central
Brazil " (Berlin, 1894, p. 199).
1 Op, cit., p. 66.
» Op. ctVp. 64. '

9—2

132

to declare herself to be the mother of a child, grasps the genital
organs with an earnest and unconcerned demeanour, intending
by this gesture to indicate that they themselves are the pro-
creators. The cloth covering the penis of the male, and the
three cornered apron of the female, are not for purposes
of concealment, but are simply intended to protect the
mucous membranes — as a bandage or an apron in the women,
and in the men as an apparatus for the mechanical treatment
of phimosis.

It is only in jest that such things can be regarded as " articles
of clothing," the principal object of which is to subserve the
sense of shame. Sexual excitement is not concealed by this
simple covering. The red threads of the Trumai, the vari-
coloured cloths of the Bororo, are adornments, by which atten-
tion is attracted to this region rather than repelled.1 The com-
pletely naked Suya women wash their genital organs in the
river in the presence of Europeans.2

Thus among these Caribs of Central Brazil, who are still living
in the stone age, we observe in all their simplicity the results
of complete nudity, and we are able to determine that this nudity
entirely prevents the origination of an erotic sense of shame in
our meaning of the term. The physiological factors of the sense
of shame are not, taken alone, sufficiently strong to lead to the
appearance of this sense in its full strength as a special psychical
phenomenon. It is first in association with clothing that these
physiological factors have any great significance in the production
of the sense of shame.

C. H. Stratz, in a historical and anthropological study regarding
women's clothing (Stuttgart, 1900), has compared the data of

1 A discussion of the early manifestations of the sexual sense of shame as
exhibited by savages and by primitive man would hardly be complete without
an allusion to the theory mentioned by Robert Browning (" Bishop Blougram's
Apology," Collected Works, 1889, vol. iv., p. 271) :

" Suppose a pricking to incontinence —
Philosophers deduce you chastity
Or shame, from just the fact that at the first
Whoso embraced a woman in the field,
Threw club down and forewent his brains beside,
So stood a ready victim in the reach
Of any brother savage, club in hand ;
Hence saw the use of going out of sight
In wood or cave to prosecute his loves :
I read this in a French book t'other day."

2 Op. cit., pp. 190, 191, 195. Cf. also the interesting remarks regarding
the nudity of the indigens of South America by Alex, von Humboldt, " Journey
in the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent " (Stuttgart, vol. ii., pp. 15, 16).

133

the more recent ethnological investigations with the facts already
known in the history of civilization and art, and has noticed a
remarkable agreement between the two. According to him, " the
first original purpose of clothing was, not the covering, but
simply and solely the adornment of the naked body."1 The
naked man feels little or no shame ; the clothed man is the first
to feel shame — he feels it when the customary ornament is lack-
ing. This is true alike for primitive and for civilized man. For
Stratz very rightly points out that any manifestation of nudity
which is prescribed by fashion — that is to say, by the then
dominant code of beautification — is never felt as nudity. On
the contrary, a lady in a high-necked dress amongst the decol-
letee ladies of a ballroom, " would feel deeply ashamed because
her breast was not bare."

The history of clothing and of fashion, which is so closely
associated therewith, affords us the most important elements for
the understanding of the sense of shame of modern man, and for
the judgment of its importance and of its natural limitations.
Moreover, clothing has most intimate relations to love as a
psychical phenomenon. " How great an influence," says
Emanuel Herrmann, "love exercises, in all its stages, upon
clothing, and how clearly, on the other hand, love is expressed by
clothing !"2 Clothing more especially satisfies the general human
need, proved by Hoche and myself to exist, for variety in sexual
relationships, which continually demands new allurements and
new stimuli.

The preliminary stage of clothing, a kind of symbolic clothing
for primitive man, is the staining, painting, and tattooing, of the
skin, regarding which recent ethnological researches, especially
those of Westermarck,3 Joest,4 and Marquardt,5 have afforded
us noteworthy conclusions.

It is a fact of great interest that the tendency to painting and
adorning the body existed already in prehistoric times, thus

1 Somewhat diverging from these views, Karl von den Steinen (op. cit., pp. 174,
178, and 186) is of opinion that man learned first by their use for practical ends
the employment of the articles later utilized for adornment. Above all, in this
connexion, he alludes to tattooing, which originated, he believes, in the practice
of smearing the body with various coloured earths and with different kinds of
clay, these at the same time serving to promote coolness and to afford a protec-
tion against the bites of insects. Cf. also Yrjo Him, " The Origin of Art "
(Leipzig, 1904, p. 222).

2 E. Herrmann, " Natural History of Clothing " (Vienna, 1878, p. 239).

3 Edward Westermarck, " History of Human Marriage."

4 Wilholm Joest, " Tattooing, Scarifying, and Painting the Body " (Berlin,
1887).

8 Carl Marquardt, " Tattooing of Both Sexes in Samoa " (Berlin, 1899).

134

affording a notable illustration of the truth of Herbert Spencer's
opinion that the vanity of uncivilized man was much greater
than that of civilized man. In palaeolithic dwellings coloured
earths have actually been discovered, and coloured pastes made
by mixing iron rust with reindeer fat, which unquestionably were
employed for the colouring of the human body. Moreover, as
Ludwig Stein remarks, the history of cosmetics, which Lord Bacon,
in his " Cosmetica," dated from the days of Biblical antiquity, can
be traced back with certainty to the man of the ice age, upon
whose individual and moral qualities this fact throws a significant
light. According to Klaatsch, palaeolithic man was not con-
tented simply with painting his skin ; he also tattooed himself
by means of fine flint knives.1

Painting and tattooing of the body must, then, be regarded
as a primitive stage of clothing. Ploss-Bartels remarks : "I
find it impossible to doubt that the original meaning of tattooing
is to be found in the endeavour to cover nakedness "; and
Joest, the most learned student of tattooing, is of the same
opinion. He writes : " The less a man clothes himself, the more
he tattoos his skin ; and the more he clothes himself, the less he
tattoos."2

We must also regard the coloration of the skin produced by
tattooing as a means of allurement ; tattooing was, in fact,
principally carried out for the purpose of sexual allurement
and stimulation. The tattooed man is the more beautiful, the
more worthy object of desire. Even in cases in which painting
and tattooing were originally undertaken for other purposes —
for instance, with some therapeutic aim, or perhaps to serve as
means of social or political differentiation — still, these signs
and visible changes in the skin of the body speedily exerted a
powerful influence upon the other sex, and by sexual selection
were converted into sexual lures.3

This sexual character of tattooing is indicated also by the
fact that amongst numerous savage people of the South Se^s,
in the Caroline Islands, in New Guinea, and in the Pel^w Islands,
the girls, in order to attract the men, were accustomecRzLtattoo
exclusively the genital region, and especially the mons vyieris ;

1 Ludwig Stein, " The Beginnings of Human Civilization " (Leipzig, 1906,
pp. 74, 75) ; Edward Tylor, " Anthropology : an Introduction to the Study of
Man and Civilization " (Macmillan, 1881, p. 237).

- According to Karl von den Steinen (op. cit., p. 186), the oil colours used in
painting the body are "actually the clothing of the Indians, employed
for this purpose as occasion demands." Their oldest aim was protection
against heat, cutaneous irritation, and external noxious influences.

3 Of. Y. Him, " The Origin of Art " (Leipzig, 1904, pp. 223, 224).

135

thus, by tattooing, they made this region markedly apparent.
It is characteristic that Miklucho-Maclay~at the first glance
received the impression that the girl tattooed in this manner
wore on the mons Veneris a three-cornered piece of blue cloth,
so closely can tattooing simulate clothing.

The sexual nature of tattooing is also shown by its
association with phallic festivals. In Tahiti there is a very
characteristic legend regarding the sexual origin of tattooing.1
Among many primitive peoples the first appearance of menstrua-
tion gives the signal for tattooing, and for priapistic festivals.

An important sexual relationship is also manifested by the
colour element of tattooing. It appears that the sense of love
in primitive man is closely connected with the sight of particular
colouis. According to Konrad Lange, the sensual voluptuous
value of these colours obtained its peculiar character from the
feeling of love associated with viewing them ; and, speaking
generally, we can prove the existence of a certain association
between the love of colour and the sexual impulse. Lange records
an experience of his own youth, that when, about fourteen years
of age, he was glancing at a vari-coloured necktie he had feelings
which were not very different in their nature from sexual desire.
He rightly draws attention to the fact that in primitive man
this association of ideas is especially vivid, for the reason that,
as already stated, the painting of the body is usually first under-
taken at the time of the commencement of puberty.2

It is a significant fact that among modern civilized peoples the
practice of tattooing is generally confined to certain lower classes
of the population, such as sailors, criminals, and prostitutes,
among whom the primitive impulses remain active in a quite
exceptional strength, as Lombroso has more especially shown
in his " Palimsesti di Carcere," and in his works on the criminal
and the prostitute. Very frequently obscene tattooings were
found in such persons.3 Marro, Lacassagne, Batut, and Rudolf
Bergh, have also studied the tattooings of prostitutes and
criminals, and have observed the same objects and ornaments
in both classes. Salillas in Spain, Drago in the Argentine, Ellis
and Greaves in England, and Tronow in Russia, obtained similar
results. In 12-5 per cent, of the inmates of reformatories in
Brieg, Kurella found that the skin was tattooed. According to

1 Cf. my " Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. ii.,
p. 338.

2 Cf. K. Lange, " The Nature of Art " (Berlin, 1901, vol. ii., pp. 185, 186).

3 The significance of tattooing of this nature in the diagnosis of sexual per-
versities we shall later discuss at greater length.

136

him, cynicism, revenge, cruelty, remorselessness, gloomy or in-
different fatalism, bestial lewdness, with a dominant tendency to
unnatural vices of every kind, " constituted the principal psychical
manifestations exhibited by these tattoo-pictures."

" Paederastic symbols among the men, and tribadistic among the
female prostitutes, are of especially frequent occurrence, and among
these we often find a mackerel sketched on the vulva, denoting the
souteneur ; still more perverse sexual representations even French
authors such as Batut have not ventured to reproduce ; we see tilings
which would send the police des maeurs out of their minds. Already
in quite young vagabonds, frequently sons of prostitutes, we see
representations of this kind."1

Not only, however, in criminals and prostitutes, but also in the
non-criminal members of the lowest classes of the population,
we often observe erotic tattooings of the most obscene character,
which, without doubt, serve as sexual lures and stimuli. J. Robin-
sohn and Friedrich S. Krauss recently published an interesting
account of these matters.2

Cases of Tattooing in Women of the Upper Classes. — It appears that
the primitive tendency to tattooing as a sexual stimulus and means of
allurement has recently revived in certain circles of the refined sensual
world. Ren6 Schwaebl6, in his celebrated book based on his own obser-
vations and moral studies, and entitled, " Les Detraquees de Paris "
(Paris, 1904), gives an account of the increasing diffusion of tattooing
among both men and women of the upper classes of Parisian society,
for which purpose a specialist has opened an atelier in the Rue Blanche,
in Montmartre. Schwaebl6 devotes a special chapter to the
" tatouees " (pp. 47-57), and describes an assembly of some of these
distinguished libertines in a house in the Rue de la Pompe in Passy.
In one of these ladies, tattooing imitated in a most deceptive manner
a pair of stockings, thus affording a characteristic instance of the
above-mentioned association between tattooing and clothing. Another
woman had inscriptions tattooed on the thighs and hips ; in two the
legs were adorned with garlands of vine-leaves, birds were billing
on the abdomen, and on the back were depicted many coloured bouquets
of flowers, with the inscription, " X. pinxit, after Watteau." A mar-
chioness had her family coat-of-arms depicted between the shoulder-
blades ; another great lady had had tattooed on her body the maddest

1 Cf. Kurella, " The Natural History of the Criminal " (Stuttgart, 1893,
pp. 105-112).

2 " Erotic Tattooing " in " Anthropophyteia, Annual for Folk-lore and for
Researches regarding the History of the Evolution of Sexual Morals," edited by
Friedrich S. Krauss (Leipzig, 1904, vol. i., pp. 507-513). According to an account
in the Temps, in a deserter from the French army the most remarkable tattooings
were observed. On the breast there were two seductive women throwing kisses
to a sturdy musketeer, in addition to portraits of music-hall singers, both male
and female — for example, Yvette Guilbert. The entire back was covered with
love sketches. Cf. B. Z. am Mittag, August 21, 1906.

137

and most obscene drawings of a satanistic character ! Two unmistakably
homosexual women had a common tattooing — that is to say, one was
complementary to the other ; only when they were side by side had the
picture a meaning. The most remarkable of all the tattooings, how-
ever, was that of the hostess. On her body was the picture of a com-
plete hunt, the individual scenes of which wound round her body ;
it was in the most vivid colours ; carriages, packs of hounds and hunters
were all shown. The final goal of the hunt was a fox tattooed in the
genital region.

Tattooing leads on to the consideration of many-coloured
clothing, which is especially common in primitive conditions of
mankind. Such clothing, in such conditions, serves chiefly to
accentuate particular portions of the body, in order to stimulate
the sexual appetite of members of the opposite sex. According
to Moseley, the savage begins by painting and tattooing himself
for the sake of adornment. Then he takes a movable appendage,
which he throws round his body, and on which he places the
ornamentation which he had previously marked on his skin in
a more or less ineradicable manner. Now a greater variation is
rendered possible than was the case with tattooing and painting.
Thus, by means of vari-coloured and bright bands, fringes, girdles,
and aprons, which ior the most part are attached in the genital
region, attention is drawn to this part — and here a contrast of
colours is found extremely effective. The Indians of the Ad-
miralty Islands have as their only article of clothing a brilliant
white mussel-shell, which exhibits a striking contrast to the dark
colour of their skin. The Areois of Tahiti, a class of privileged
libertines and voluptuous individuals, manifested this character
in public places by wearing a girdle made of " ti-leaves."1

The first and most primitive form of clothing was this pubic
ornament, the original purpose of which was adornment, not
concealment. The latter significance it acquired only in pro-
portion as the genital organs became the object of a super-
stitious feeling of fear and respect, and were regarded as the seat
of a dangerous magic.2 The above-mentioned connexion between
sexuality and magic here made itself apparent. It was necessary
that this wonderful, daimonic region should be concealed, in order
to protect an onlooker from its evil and influence, or, contrariwise,
to protect the genital region from the evil glance of the observer.
Both ideas are ethnologically demonstrable. According to
Diirkheim, the genital organs, and especially those of women,
were covered in primitive times, in order to prevent the percep-

1 William Ellis, " Polynesian Researches " (London, 1859, vol. i., p. 235).

2 Cf. Him, " The Origin of Art," pp. 214, 215.

138

tion of any disagreeable emanations from these regions. Finally,
Waitz, Schurz, and Letourneau propounded the theory that the
jealousy of primitive man was the primary ground of clothing,
and was indirectly also the cause of the sense of shame This
view is supported by the interesting ethnological fact that in
many races only the married women are clothed, whilst the fully-
grown unmarried girls go completely naked. The married woman
is part of the property of the husband ; to the latter, clothing
appears to be a protection against glances at his property — to
unclothe the wife is a dishonour and a shame. When the idea
of possession was extended to the relationship between the
father and his unmarried daughters, these latter also were
clothed ; thus the idea of chastity and the feeling of shame were
developed.1

We can, however, adduce numerous considerations hi support
of the view that the first covering of the genital organs, in asso-
ciation with the pubic ornament, did not arise out of the feeling
of shame, but, on the contrary, that it served as a means of
sexual allurement. By all kinds of striking ornaments, such as
cat's tails, mussel-shells, or strips of hide, fastened either in front
or behind, every possible attention was attracted to the genital
region or the buttocks.2 Concealment made itself felt as a more
powerful sensual stimulus than nudity. This is an old anthropo-
logical experience which still possesses great significance in our
modern civilized life.

Virey believed that human beings had more intense and
manifold sexual enjoyments than the lower animals, because
these latter see their wives at all times without any kind of
adornment, whereas the half-opened veil with which the human
female conceals or partially discloses her charms increases a
hundredfold the already boundless lust of mankind. " The less
one sees, the more does imagination picture."3 That which
causes a refined and sensual stimulus is not the entirely naked,
but the half-naked or partial nudity. Westermarck remarks :

" We have numerous examples of races who generally go about
completely naked, but sometimes employ a covering. In such cases
they always wear the latter in circumstances which make it perfectly
clear that the covering is used simply as a means of allurement.
Thus, Lohmann relates that among the Saliras only prostitutes
wear clothing, and they do this in order to stimulate by means of the

1 Cf. Havelock Ellis, op. cit., pp. 56-62.

s It is well known that the buttocks formed an object of erotic allurement
in many savage, races, and especially so in certain African tribes.
3 J. J. Virey, " Woman " (Leipzig, 1825, p. 300).

139

unknown. Barth informs us that among many heathen races in Central
Africa, the married women go entirely naked, whilst the girls ripe for
marriage clothe themselves (in order that they may appear worthy of
desire). The married women of Tipperah wear no more than a short
apron, while the unmarried girls cover the breasts with vari-coloured
cloths with fringed edges. Among the Toungta, the breasts of the
women remain uncovered after the birth of the first child, but the
unmarried women wear a narrow breast-cloth."1

The significance of clothing and partial clothing as a sexual
stimulus, proved by K. von den Steinen and Stratz to exist
among primitive peoples, can be shown to form an element in
the " fashion " of civilized races, which provides the imagination
with entirely new sexual stimuli, by means of the two funda-
mental elements of the accentuation and disclosure of certain
parts, and speaks to man of " hidden joys." Moses made use
of this psychical sexual influence of clothing. He wished to
increase the numbers of his small people, and therefore he ordered
the concealment of the feminine charms, " in order to stimulate
the senses of the male members of his community, and thus
increase the fertility of bis people."2 Nudity, rejected by him as
unsuitable, came in the Christian teaching to be regarded as
" immoral " ; for such a change in the point of view, we can find
numerous examples in the public life of the present day.

The greatest sensual stimulus is exerted by the half-clothing or
partial disclosure of the body, the so-called retrousse — that is, the
art of bringing about a refined mutual influence between the
charms of clothing and the charms of the body.3 This plays a
very important part in the origination of the so-called " clothes
fetichism," which we shall describe at greater length when we
come to the consideration of these sexual anomalies.

There are two fundamental forms of clothing, the tropical
(coat and sash) and the arctic (doublet and hose), and these, in
addition to their simple function of protecting in the tropics
from the powerful rays of the sun, and in the northern climates
of protecting from cold, serve also in both sexes as a means of
sexual allurement. The changeful phenomena and phases of
" fashion in clothing " afford the most certain proofs of this
fact ; they may, in fact, be regarded as the most valuable sexual
psychological documents of the successive epochs of civilization.

1 Westermarck, " History of Human Marriage," pp. 193, 197.

2 C. H. Stratz, " Women's Clothing " (Stuttgart, 1900, p. 42).

3 In his " Confessions," Rousseau writes regarding the collar of the beautiful
courtesan Giuliotta : " Her cuffs and collar had silken threads running through
them, and were adorned with pictures of roses. These made a beautiful con-
trast with, her flue skin."

140

The celebrated writer on aesthetics Friedrich Theodor Vischer
has regarded them especially from this point of view in his
original work, distinguished by its pithy style, " Fashion and
Cynicism : Contributions to the Knowledge of the Forms of
Civilization and of our Moral Ideas " (Stuttgart, 1888). He
regards " the rage to excel in man-catching " as " the most
powerful of impulses, capable of inflaming to fever-heat the
madness of fashion, with its brainless changes, its furious inclina-
tions, its raging distortions." In a certain sense we may also
speak of some of the fashions of men's clothing as an art of
" woman-catching." Still, on the whole, this feature is much
less manifest here than in relation to woman's clothing.

Clothing lias a sexually stimulating influence in a twofold
manner : either certain parts are especially accentuated and
enlarged by the shape or cut of the clothing and by peculiar
kinds of ornamentation, or else particular portions of the body
are directly denuded. Both of these have a sexual influence.

The accentuation and enlargement of certain parts of the body
by means of clothing takes its origin in man's belief that by this
means he really produces certain enlargements of his person-
ality, as though these portions of clothing were actually a part
of himself. This remarkable theory of clothing, according to
which the latter represents a strengthening of the body, a kind of
outwardly projected emanation of the human personality, a direct
continuation of the body, was first enunciated by the celebrated
philosopher Hermann Lotze. He writes :

" Everywhere when we place a foreign body in connexion with the
surface of our body (for not the hand alone develops this peculiarity),
the consciousness of our personal identity is in a certain sense trans-
mitted into the ends and outer surface of this foreign body, and
there arise feelings, partly of an enlargement of our personal ego, partly
of a change in form and in extent of movement, now become possible
to us, but naturally foreign to our organs, and partly of an unaccus-
tomed tension, firmness, or security of our carriage."*

Naturally the reciprocal influence of one person upon another
is not wanting, and the observer believes that in the clothing
he actually finds the body. Parts that otherwise would not have
attracted attention now appear as important objects. For
example, the tall hat, as a prolongation of the head, seems to
give the latter a certain height and worth. Gustave Flaubert, in
" Madame Bovary," very beautifully describes this remarkable
transition, this identification of clotliing with the body :

1 H. Lotzo, " Mikrokosmus : Ideas regarding the Natural History of Man-
kind " (third edition, Leipzig, 1878, vol. ii., p. 210).

141

" Beneath her hair, which was drawn upwards towards the top of
the head, the skin of the nape of her neck appeared to have a brownish
tint, which gradually became paler, and lost itself in the shadows of
her clothing. Her dress spread out on either side over the chair on
which she was sitting ; it fell in many folds, and spread out on the
floor. When he chanced to touch it with his foot, he immediately drew
the foot back again, as if he had trodden on something living."

The same association of ideas has led to the idea that clothing
" is, as it were, a complete skin to man," as if it must represent
a kind of " ideal nudity." x Clothing represents the person, shelters
the nature, the soul. It can, therefore, become the means of
expression of human peculiarities, of individual traits of character.
There exists a " physiognomy " of clothing ; it is a mirror of the
physical and spiritual being.2 Very rightly is it asserted, in a
pseudonymous essay on the " Erotics of Clothing," that clothing,
in the course of the many thousand years of the development of
civilization, has taken up into itself so much of the spirit of
mankind that we should find a solution for all the problems of
human civilization if we were able completely and immediately
to understand the spirit of clothing. The form of clothing is at the
same time also the most subtle and accurate measuring apparatus
for the peculiar and personal in a man — for the individual in him.3

If the accentuation of certain parts is the first sexual stimulus
of clothing5 the denuding of certain parts is the second. When
once the custom of concealing the body has been introduced, the
denuding of portions of the body has acquired a sexually stimu-
lating effect which it did not previously possess, and which it
does not now possess among primitive communities. In the
saying of a thoughtful writer, that there is a great difference
from an erotic point of view between a glance at the naked leg
of a sturdy peasant girl and a glance at the naked leg of a fashion-
able young lady, this different conception of nudity finds very
clear expression. There is, in fact, a natural, sexually indifferent
nudity, and an artificial, erotically stimulating nudity. It is
the latter only which plays a part in the history of clothing and
of fashion ; and it is this, in association with the erotic accentua-
tion of certain portions of the body, which has from early times
been cultivated for the allurement of men, and above all by
the world of prostitution and by the half -world.

1 H. Bahr, " Clothing Reform," in Dokumente der Frauen, 1902, vol. vi.,
No. 23, p. 665.

3 Cf. the detailed account of thin aspect of clothing in my " Contributions to
the Etiology of the Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. ii., pp. 334-336.

3 Cf. Lucianus, " Erotics of Clothing." published inJDt'e Fackel, edited by
Karl Kraus (Vienna, No. 198, March 12, 1906, pp. 12, 13).

142

This first occurred in classical antiquity, to which, however,
true " fashion " was unknown, because clothing was not then,
as it is in modern times, fused with the body, and therefore did
not appear to be a continuation and representation of the bodily
personality. In general, the refined quality of the modern
" mode " was lacking, in regard to the accentuation of particular
parts of the body by means of clothing. Very aptly has Schopen-
hauer, in the second volume of his " Parerga and Paralipomena,"
pointed out the thorough-going difference between antique and
modern clothing in this relationship. In the days of antiquity
clothing was still a whole, which remained distinct from the
body, and which allowed the human form to be recognized as
distinctly as possible in all its parts. Sexual stimulation could be
effected only by the employment of diaphanous fabrics, which
were preferred in the circles of the half -world and by effeminate
men. Varro, Juvenal, and Seneca chastise with biting words
this immorality of " coacae vestes," and of the network clothing
imported from Egypt. Then there appeared for the first time
as a peculiar type the woman in man's clothing, a proof of the
wide diffusion of the love of boys, on which those prostitutes
who went about clothed as men must have speculated when they
assumed this dress.

The analysis of clothing into upper-clothing and under-clothing
signifies a differentiation of clothing very effective as regards
erotic influence. For the first time could the individual portions
of the body appear in definite significance in relation to the body
as a whole. And the indication of the waist became characteristic
of fashion in clothing.1

The analysis of clothing was carried a stage further in the
separation of clothing, properly speaking, from that which lies
beneath it, the more intimate covering of the body, the wash-
able underclothing — shirt, chemise, petticoat, etc. More
especially had this differentiation a great erotic significance. It
was the increase in the number of individual articles of
clothing which first gave rise to the erotically tinged idea
of the gradual " dressing " and " undressing," to the idea
of the intimate " toilet." The possibilities of disclosure,
half concealment, and semi-nudity were notably increased, and
a much larger playground was opened to the erotic imagina-
tion.

In association with this, the waist, especially in the case of

1 Cf., in this connexion, Ernest Kapp, " Fundamental Outlines of a Philo-
sophy of Technique," p. 267 (Brunswick, 1877).

143

woman, indicated a separation of the bodily spheres into an upper
sphere, associated chiefly with the intellectual, and a lower sphere,
belonging rather to the purely sexual.

" The waist, which is already, roughly speaking, indicated by the
sash or girdle, but which, in consequence of the progressive differ-
entiation of feminine clothing, comes to play a principal part in
women's dress, divides the woman's body into thorax and abdomen.
The fully clothed woman becomes an insect, a wasp, with two sharply
defined emotional and sexual spheres, with a heavenly and an earthly
division."1

With this classification and differentiation of clothing there
now developed a fertile field for the activity of " fashion," which
therefore, as such, first really takes its rise in the middle ages.
According to Sombart,2 it was in the Italian States of the fifteenth
century that it first became a living reality. Fashion is a product
of the Christian middle ages ; the specific element that this
period introduced into feminine clothing — the corset — is a witness
to Christian doctrine.

Stratz remarks on this subject :

" Strange as it may seem, it is very remarkably true that the corset
derives its origin from the Christian worship of God. Owing to the
strict ecclesiastical control in the middle ages — strict, at least, as
regards public life — the dominant ascetic point of view demanded
the fullest possible covering of the feminine body, and the mortification
of the flesh ; it insisted, at any rate, that those portions of the body
should be withdrawn from the view of sinful man which are regarded
as especially characteristic of the female sex. Through woman sin
had entered the world, and therefore woman must, above all, take
care to conceal as much as possible the sinful characteristics of her
baser sex. Whilst man, by the greatest possible increase in breadth
of shoulders and chest, endeavoured to suggest a more powerful and
warlike aspect, we find that among women from the twelfth to the
sixteenth century, the endeavour was dominant to make the breasts
as flat and childlike and as narrow as possible, and for this purpose,
for the compression and obliteration of the breasts, an early form of
the corset was employed."3

It is characteristic that fashion later employed the corset in
precisely the opposite sense — namely, in order to make the
breasts " stand out more prominently above the upper margin
of the corset, which continually became shorter." Thus there
arose a conflict between medieval fashion and the ascetic ten-

1 Lucianus, " Erotics of Clothing," p. 16.

8 W. Sombart, " Domestic Economy and Fashion " (Wiesbaden, 1902, p. 12).

> Stratz, " Woman's Clothing," pp. 123, 124.

144

dencies of the times. Fashion was victorious along the whole
line, as we can learn in detail in Hitter's interesting essay regard-
ing the nudities of the middle ages.1

Since the middle ages, two portions of the body have in the
female sex been especially accentuated by clothing — the breasts,
and the region of the hips and the buttocks.

As we have already pointed out, the corset was especially
employed to accentuate the breasts, the corset having already
produced the stimulating contrast between the prominence of
the breast and the slenderness of the waist, increased by lacing.
At the same time, at an early date the denuding of the upper part
of the breasts was associated with this accentuation, the top of
the dress being cut away in front a la grand'' gorge, whilst the
corset, strengthened by rods of whalebone or steel, produced a
bonne conche. This accentuation of the breasts dominated femi-
nine fashion down to the present day. Besides the use of the
corset in this matter, the region of the breasts was also rendered
more prominent by the use of artificial breasts made of wax, by
ornaments in the form of breast-rings, etc.

The partial denuding of the breasts represents the true decollete
of our balls and parties, a custom which a man so tolerant in other
respects as H. Bahr condemns on aesthetic grounds.2

" The art of undressing and enjoying in imagination beautiful girls
and women," says Georg Hirth, " is learnt chiefly at Court and other
balls, at wliich the feminine guests are compelled by fashion to bare
the upper part of the body. It is astonishing how quickly, how
invariably, the girls of the upper classes accustom themselves to this
exhibition, which exercises so stimulating an effect upon us of the
opposite sex. And yet they would turn up their noses if, at the
parties of non-commissioned officers and servants, the women allowed
such extensive glimpses of their charms. I once heard a girl three
years of age express a naive surprise when she saw the decolletage of her
mother, who was about to go to a ball. What a scolding would the poor
servant-girl get if she were to exhibit her nudity to the children in
such a manner !"3

Fr. Th. Vischer also severely criticizes this exposure of
feminine nudities coram publico. Moreover, the free enjoy-
ment of alcohol customary among men at these evening enter-
tainments is likely to induce a frame of mind in which the charms

1 B. Hitter, " Nudities in the Middle Ages: Outlines of the History of Morals,"
in the Annual of Science and Art, published by 0. Wigand (Leipzig, 1855, vol. iii.,
p. 229).

2 H. Bahr, " Clothing Reform," op. cit., p. 666.

3 G. Hirth, "Ways to Love," p. 619,

145

thus freely displayed before their eyes will receive an attention
not purely aesthetic.

As regards the corset more particularly, it is not only un-
aesthetic, but also unhygienic.

The corset draws in the beautiful outline of the feminine
body in the most disagreeable manner ; the wasp waist which it
produces is an ugly exaggeration of the natural condition. The
lady editor of the Documents of Women instituted an inquiry
amongst a number of artists in regard to the corset. One of these,
the architect Leopold Bauer, replied as follows :

" Nature has endowed the feminine body with a most beautiful
outline. It is almost incomprehensible that the ideal of beauty
should during so lengthy a period aim at the destruction of this wonder-
ful and unique perfection. The corset makes an ugly bend in the
vertebral column, it makes the hip shapeless, it suggests an unnatural
and even repulsive development of the breasts, which transforms our
sentiment of the sacred beauty of the human body into the lowest
sexual and perverse impulses. That the corset does not really make
the body appear slender is no longer open to doubt. All the suggested
advantages of the corset are prejudices. ... It is only when women's
dress is freed from the tyranny of this detestable corset that it will be
able to develop in a free and artistic manner."1

Physicians are unanimous regarding the unhygienic nature of
the corset. The deleterious influence of tight-lacing upon the
form and the activity of the thoracic and abdominal organs
has been thoroughly elucidated by many authors. I need refer
only, among many, to the writings of Hugo Klein,2 Menge,3 and
0. Rosenbach,4 regarding the dangers of the corset. The corset
hinders the sufficient inspiration, which is so necessary for the
adequate activity of the respiratory and circulatory organs, and
herein we find a principal cause of anaemia (0. Rosenbach) ; it
exercises the most harmful pressure on the abdominal organs,
especially on the stomach and the liver, and presses them out of
their natural situation, so that it gives rise to a descent of the
kidneys, the liver, and the genital organs. The extremely ugly
" pendulous belly " is also dependent on the influence of the
corset. The pressure of the corset also often gives rise to an
atrophy of the mammary glands, and to abnormal changes in
the nipples. Thence ensues, further, a serious hindrance to the
function of lactation, which may indeed be rendered completely

1 Leopold Bauer, in Documents of Women, March, 1902, pp. 675, 676.
J Op. cit., pp. 671, 672.

3 Mongo, " The Influence of Constricting Clothing upon the Abdominal Organs,
and more Especially upon the Reproductive Organs of Woman " (Leipzig, 1904).

4 O. Rosonbach, " The Cornet and Anaemia " (Stuttgart, 1895).

146

impossible. For this reason, Georg Hirth, in his admirable
essay upon the indispensable character of the maternal breast,
exclaims : " Away with the corset I"1

The dorsal and abdominal muscles also undergo partial atrophy
in consequence of the habitual wearing of the corset, because
this garment to some extent relieves these muscles of their natural
function. Anaemia, gastric and hepatic disorders, and intercostal
neuralgia are also dependent upon this " most disastrous error
of woman's dress," as von Krafft-Ebing calls the corset. Menge
has very thoroughly studied the hurtful influence of the corset
on the feminine reproductive organs. He enumerates, as a
result of wearing it, among many evil results, inflammatory
states and enlargement of the ovaries, relaxation of the uterine
muscles, atrophy and excessive proliferation of the uterine
mucous membrane, the onset of the extremely disagreeable
ftuor albus, premature termination of pregnancy, displacements
of the uterus (retroflexion, anteversion, prolapse), abnormal
stretching of the entire pelvic floor, retention of urine, constipa-
tion, and nervous troubles of the most varied character. Very
often, also, sterility in woman is causally dependent upon the
constriction and pressure exercised by the corset.

Rightly, therefore, the abandonment of the corset plays a
principal part in the " reformed dress " of woman — a subject to
which we shall later return.

In addition to the accentuation of the breast by the corset
and by other apparatus,2 another aim of feminine fashion has been
most persistent in very various forms, namely, the exaggeration
of the hips, or the buttocks, or both — in fact, of all the visible
parts of the clothed body which are directly related to the sexual
functions of woman ; that is to say, there has been a persistent
endeavour to indicate in the most prominent manner, in a way
to stimulate the male, the secondary sexual characters of the
female in this region of the body.

" The thoroughly modern women," says Heinrich. Pudor, " coquet
at the present day less with their breasts than with their hind-quarters
— for this reason, because for the most part they have a masculine

1 G. Hirth, " Ways to Love," p. 49.

2 The modern fancy for slender, ethereal, Pre-Raphaelite feminine figures is also
to some extent allied with a negative accentuation of the breasts. Heinrich
Pudor with good reason declares that at the present time perhaps the strongest
sexual influence of woman is dependent upon the fact that " the existence of
the breasts is concealed, and the appearance of the male sex is simulated." Cf.
his article, " Clothing and Sex," in Die Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, August number,
1906, p. 22. Still, the sexual stimulating influence of this concealment of the
breasts appears to be of a transient character, and confined to certain circles of
the hyperaesthetic and the homosexual.

147

type (?). It began with the cul de Paris. Nowadays, clothes are cut
in such a way that in the view from the back the gluteal region is
especially prominent. This is how the fashionable wife of a German
officer strikes us at present.

" ' Tailor-made ' is the phrase that has for some time been in use in
England. The tailor has made it — not the milliner. No, the tailor,
who perhaps is at the same time bath-master and masseur. . . . Certain
species of baboons are distinguished by their brightly coloured and
prominent hind-quarters — there seems to be no doubt that our modern
ladies in high life have taken these for their example. Or can it be
that they wish to avail themselves of the homosexual inclinations of
their male acquaintances ? Beyond question this is so. Here we
find the fundamental ground of the type of clothing of our own day
by which so much attention is drawn to the region of the buttocks.
What is repulsive here is not the homosexuality, but the misuse that
is made of clothing. In fact, that which is most repulsive to a refined
sentiment is this — that women have their clothes cut as tightly as
possible round the hips, in order that the broad pelvis, which is
especially characteristic of women as a sexual being, shall be as far as
possible visibly isolated." *

Similarly Fr. Th. Vischer has castigated the immorality
of the gross accentuation of kallipygian charms,2 which in the
eighteenth century was inaugurated by the invention of the so-
called tournure (cul de Paris), against which Mary Wollstone-
craft inveighed so severely. By the tension of the clothing,
not only the buttocks, but also the hips and the thighs,
were rendered grossly apparent. In certain epochs, also, the
feminine abdomen was very markedly indicated by the mode of
dress ; for instance, in the middle ages, down to the sixteenth
century, fashion provided women and girls with the insignia of
pregnancy, as is apparent in the pictures of Jan van Eyck (" The
Lamb," "Eva"), Hans Memling ("Eva"), and Titian ("The
Beauty of Urbino "). The fashion of the " thick abdomen "
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was only another
variation of the same theme.

In close relation to the variations of fashion we have just
described is the farthingale (montgolfiere) or crinoline. It was
first adopted in the sixteenth century by courtesans and prosti-
tutes, who thus exhibited rounded and provocative forms, wishing
to allure men by these vertugales, which, according to the
bon mot of a Franciscan, expelled vertu, leaving beliind only
the gale (syphilis). The aptest remarks regarding the repul-
sive and dirty fashion of the crinoline were made by Schopen-

1 Heinrich Pudor, " Nackt-Kultur," vol. ii. ; " Clothing and Sex ; Limbs and
Pelvis," pp. 7, 8 (Berlin-Steglitz, 1906).

* Cf. the passages relating to this in my work, " Contributions," etc., vol. i.,
pp. 152, 153.

10—2

148

hauer.1 It seems as if the crinoline, which is well known to have
celebrated its greatest triumph during the period of the Second
Empire in France — who is not familiar with the characteristic
daguerro types of that period ? — has recently endeavoured to
come to life once more, for it appears that attempts have actually
been made towards the rehabilitation of this monstrosity of
clothing.

The physical difference between man and woman is also
beyond question the principal cause of the difference between
masculine and feminine clothing. According to Waldeyer
(Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress of Anthropologists at
Kassel, 1895, published in the Journal of the German Society of
Anthropologists, No. 9, p. 76), it is especially the difference
in the length and position of the thigh-bones that is
responsible for the differentiation between masculine and
feminine clothing. In woman, the upper ends of the femora are,
in consequence of the greater width of the pelvis, more widely
separated than in the male ; and since in both sexes these bones
are closely approximated at the knees, in women their position
appears more oblique. This, in combination with the compara-
tive shortness of women's thighs, has a manifest influence upon
the gait, especially in running, in which man distinctly excels
woman. In this purely anatomical difference is to be found the
reason why the masculine mode of dress, which makes the lower
extremities very manifest, is not adapted for woman, especially
when in the upright posture. This is an important cause for the
differentiation between masculine and feminine clothing.

A further fundamental difference between the clothing of man
and that of woman is the much greater simplicity and monotony,
on the whole, of masculine clothing. This has, with good reason,
been associated with the greater intellectual differentiation of
man, who, therefore, stands less in need of any peculiar accentua-
tion of the individual personality by means of clothing. Woman,
who earlier was only a sexual being, utilized clothing in manifold
ways as a means of sexual allurement, as the chief means of
compensation for the life of activity denied her by Nature and
custoni, whereas to man, on the whole, the employment of sexual
stimulation by means of clothing was superfluous.

Georg Simmel writes from another point of view. He is of

opinion that woman, in comparison with man, is, on the whole,

the more constant being, but that precisely this constancy,

which expresses the equability and unity of her nature on the

1 Schopenhauer, " Parerga and Parab'pomena," vol. v., p. 176.

149

emotional side, demands, on the principle of compensation of
vital tendencies, a more active variability in other less central
provinces ; whereas, on the contrary, man, in his very nature less
constant, who is not accustomed to cleave with the same uncon-
ditional concentration of all vital interests to any once experienced
emotional relationship, precisely in consequence of this, stands
less in need of such external variability. Man, as regards
objective phenomena, is, on the whole, more indifferent than
woman, because fundamentally he is the more variable being,
and therefore can more easily dispense with such objective
variability.1

Notwithstanding this, down to the beginning of the nineteenth
century there were not wanting, in the fashion ot men's clothing,
attempts to employ certain parts of dress for the purpose of
sexual stimulation. I refer in this connexion to my earlier
contributions.2 Here I shall allude only in passing to the
peculiar and characteristic variations of men's clothing in the
form of marked attention drawn to the male genitals by the
breeches-flap (braguettes) ; to the shoe, a la poulaine, which
imitated the form of a male penis ; to certain effeminate tendencies
in the dress of man which have recurred very often since the days
of the Roman Empire,3 which are connected with the wide
diffusion of homosexual tendencies, and which sometimes have
given men's dress so variegated a character, have involved such
frequent changes and such occasional nudities, that at these times
it could enter into competition with women's clothing. In this
respect, clothing enables us to draw conclusions not merely
regarding the nature of the men who wore it, but also regarding
the character of the time. There exists also the modern dandy-
hood, which recalls many peculiarities of earlier times ; but, on
the whole, fashion in men's clothing tends to simplicity and
sexual indifference. This movement originated in England, and
the English fashion in men's clothing has become dominant
throughout the whole world, whereas women's clothing now, as
formerly, receives its fashionable stimulus from Paris.

In addition to the indirect relations of clothing with the vita
aexualis, which we have already described, there is a direct
relationship, and this is the effect of certain fabrics upon the
skin, from which certain associations of ideas and certain

1 G. Simmel, " Philosophy of Fashion, p. 24 " (Berlin, 1906).

a " Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. i., pp. 158-
162.

3 Ovid, in his " Are Amandi," long ago advised mon who wished to please
women to avoid feminine adornments, and to leave those to the homosexual.

150

abnormal tendencies may arise. Thus, for example, the contact
of woollen stuffs and of furs has a sexually stimulating influence.
Ryan compared their influence with that of flagellation.1 In
this sense, also, furs and the whip go together — these two
symbols of " masochism " ; velvet has a similar effect. The
celebrated author of " Venus im Pelz," Leopold von Sacher-
Masoch, in his well-known romance bearing this name, deals fully
with the sexual significance of furs. According to him, they
exert a peculiar, prickling, physical stimulus, perhaps dependent
upon their being charged with electricity, and upon the warmth
of their atmosphere. A woman in a fur coat is like a " great cat,2
a powerful electric battery." Influences of smell also appear to
be associated herewith. For, in a letter to his wife, Sacher-
Masoch once wrote to tell her what voluptuous pleasure it would
give to him to bathe his face in the warm odour of her furs.3
With the description of the stimulating effect of fur dependent
upon sensations of contact and smell, he associated also the fact
that fur gave woman a dominant, masterful, magical influence.
His " Venus im Pelz " is also to him " one who commands."
Titian found for the rosy beauty of his beloved one no more costly
frame than dark fur. It is doubtless the strong contrast-effect
between the delicate charm and the shaggy surroundings that
evokes that remarkable symbolical relationship to longings for
power and cruel despotism. In a thoughtful essay, " Venus im
Pelz " (Berliner Tageblatt, No. 487, September 25, 1903), the idea
is developed and explained, that the love of woman for
furs results from her inward nature. It is the secret longing
for an increase of her power and influence by means of contrast.4
Men's and women's clothing comprises the covering of the
entire body with the exception of the face — the idea does not, as
a rule, include the head-covering and the way the hair is dressed.
In a recent work, H. Pudor brings the face into a peculiar sexual
relationship with the clothing. His remarks on this subject, which
contain many valuable observations, notwithstanding the fact
that much of what he says is overdrawn, run as follows :

" There is no doubt that the face is a bearer of the sexual sense in
the second and third degree. Not only the mouth or the larynx. The

1 J. Ryan, " Prostitution in London," p. 382 (London, 1839).

2 In Alfred de Musset's erotic story, " Gamiani," he describes how a woman
danced on a mat of catskin, which gave rise in her to very voluptuous sensations.

3 " Confessions of My Life," Memoirs of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch, p. 38
(Berlin and Leipzig, 1906).

4 Here we may allude to a remark in the diary of the de Goncourts that there
is nothing to compare to the delicate voluptuous charm of old cashmere as a
dress-fabric for women (E. and J. de Goncourt, " Diary," 1851-1895).

151

nose, especially in virtue of the mucous membranes by which odours
are perceived. The eye, in virtue of the magnetic currents, the percep-
tion of light, and the chemical activity of the retina. But even the
cheeks and the ears. Let some one you are fond of whisper something
into your ear — notice the emotional wave you will feel, and observe
how from the ear there are paths of conduction to the sexual cells [!].
Above all, however, naturally the mouth. We speak of the labia of
the female genital organs, and therewith already we indicate the
relationship to the lips of the mouth. We can, in fact, prove the
existence, not only of a parallelism in the structure of the mouth and
that of the sexual organs, in man just as in woman. We can go even
further : we can regard the sacral region as the forehead, the anal
region as the nose, the pudendal region as the mouth, and the gluteal
region as the cheeks [!].

" If we regard the sexual differentiation of the features of the face
as established, from this standpoint we gain an interesting light upon
the deeper lying causes of the wearing of clothes. Civilized mankind
conceals the sexual organs of the first degree ; the sexual organs of the
third degree — that is, the features of the face — are left naked ; in fact,
on account of the thorough way in which the parts of the body adjacent
to the face are covered, stress is actually laid upon the nakedness of
the face as bearing sexual organs of the third degree — now we recognize
the rdle played by the hat — and by means of that which we call
coquetry, we see mirrored in the features the proper sexual organs, or
we have our attention drawn to the sexual organs by means of the
features, and by the latter we are made aware of certain peculiarities
of the former. In this connexion, let us remember certain facial adorn-
ments which serve to limit still more the naked area of the face, and
to clothe a larger portion of that region, such as the locks of hair
covering the ears which the dancer C16o de Merode introduced, ringlets
such as were worn in youth by our grandmothers, or the chin-band
drawn across the middle of the chin. Perhaps even other ornaments
of the face (neck-band, ear-rings, and even eyeglasses and lorgnette [!])
also play a certain part in this connexion. Think, above all, of the
stand-up collar and all other varieties of high collar by which the
clothing is carried up as high as the chin. But those parts of the face
which remain naked must now be as naked as possible ; for this
reason hairs, unless they belong to the beard as sexual organs of the
second degree, must be removed, and society determinedly insists that
faces shall be clean-shaven."1

The relation of the face to the clothing already makes clear to
us the idea of " costume " as an extension of clothing beyond the
mere covering of the body. All which surrounds man, which has
a relation to his appearance, is costume in the widest sense of
the word ; thus, sitting-room, workshop, study, dressing-room,
park, library, etc.

" We take pains regarding all that we have nearest to us and round
about us, our toilet, because therein we are at homo, therein we suffer
and we rejoice. Where we feel ourselves at home, we shall endeavour

^H. Pudor, " Nackt-Kultur," vol. ii., pp. 4-6.

152

so to arrange matters that everything is comfortable to us, down to
the furthest manifestations of our existence, so that our sitting-room,
our bedroom, our house and our garden, constitute a prolongation,
an extension of our clothing " (A. von Eye).1

Thus it happens that fashion is concerned, not merely with
clothing, but also with an abundance of customary details of
environment. The arrangement and furnishing of rooms, artistic
objects, bodily exercises, social intercourse, sports, etc., are
subject to the caprices of fashion. On this extended idea of
fashion is based Fr. Th. Vischer's definition : " Fashion is a general
term to denote a complex of temporary current forms of
civilization."

The theory of fashion has been elaborated especially by
Sombart2 and Simmel.8 In the work of W. Fred,4 also, we find
some thoughtful observations.

According to Simmel, fashion fulfils a double task. On the
one hand, it is the imitation of a given example, and thus
satisfies the need for social dependence ; it leads the individual
along the path on which all are going. But, on the other
hand, it satisfies also the need for difference, the tendency
to differentiation, to variation, to self-assertion. This fashion
effects by means of frequent changes, and by the fact that first
of all it is always a class fashion. The fashions of the upper
classes are distinguished from those of the lower classes, and are
instantly abandoned when the lower classes adopt them. Thus,
according to Simmel's definition, fashion is nothing else than a
peculiar form among many forms of life, by means of which the
tendency towards social equalization is connected with the ten-
dency towards individual differentiation and variation to constitute
a unitary activity.

In Paris, the centre of fashion, the associated work of these
two tendencies may be studied most accurately and purely.
We can there observe how at first always a portion only of
society adopts the fashion, whilst the commonalty are still only
on the way towards its adoption. If the fashion has become
entirely general, if it is followed without exception, it is already
over, it is no longer " fashionable," because this class difference
has ceased to exist.

1 Ernst Kapp, " Elements of a Philosophy of Technique," pp. 269, 270
(Brunswick, 1877).

2 W. Sombart, " Domestic Economy and Fashion " (Wiesbaden, 1902).

3 G. Simmel, " The Psychology of Fashion," published in Die Zeit, October 12,
1895 : " The Philosophy of Fashion " (Berlin, 1906).

4 W Fred, " The Psychology of Fashion " (Berlin, 1905).

153

" By means of this interplay — between its tendency to general
diffusion on the one hand, and, on the other, the annihilation of its
significance which this very diffusion brings about — fashion exercises
the peculiar charm of the border-line, the charm of simultaneous
beginning and ending, the charm of .that which is at the same time
new and obsolete " (Simmel).

In connexion with this fact we find that from the earliest times
the " demi-monde " has always given the impulse to new fashions.
Owing to the peculiarly uncertain position occupied by this
class, everything conventional, everything long in use, is detested
by its members ; only newness and change are agreeable.

" In the continuous endeavour to find new, hitherto unheard-of
fashions, in the heedlessness with which precisely that which is opposed
to what has gone before is passionately grasped, there lies an aesthetic
form of the destructive impulse, which all pariah existences appear to
possess, so long, at any rate, as they are not completely enslaved "
(Simmel).

On the other hand, the equalizing tendency of fashion serves
delicate, sensitive natures as a kind of protection of their person-
ality, as Simmel has shown in a masterly manner. To such
persons fashion plays the part, as it were, of a mask.

" Thus it is a delicate shame and shyness, lest by a peculiarity in
outward aspect, some peculiarity of the subjective character might
perhaps be betrayed, that leads many natures to seek with eagerness
the concealing equalization of fashion. ... It gives a veil and a pro-
tection to all that lies within, and that thereby becomes more perfectly
free."

That modern fashion is, for the most part, a child of the nine-
teenth century, and is most intimately dependent upon the
nature of capitalism, has been directly proved by W. Sombart.
He indicates as a decisive fact in the process of the formation of
fashion the perception that the participation of the consumer is
thereby reduced to a minimum, that, on the contrary, the
driving force in the creation of modern fashion is the capitalistic
entrepreneur. If, for example, a Parisian cocotte discovers a
new style of dress, or if, as the newspapers recently reported,
the King of England introduces the fashion of a white hat or
white shoes for men, these actions have, according to Sombart, the
character only of intermediate assistance. The true driving agent
for the rapid general diffusion of fashion, and for the frequent
changes of fashion, remains the capitalistic entrepreneur, the
producer, or merchant. Sombart proves this convincingly by
striking examples. This economic aspect of fasliion must receive
no less consideration than the psychological.

154

If men's clothing, as we have already said, is, in the gross, far
less subject to the dominion of fashion than women's clothing,
still recently efforts have been apparent to simplify women's
clothing also, to make it independent of the caprices of fashion,
and, above all, to subordinate it to hygienic principles. It is
noteworthy that these efforts proceed more particularly from the
leaders of the modern woman's movement, an interesting proof of
the connexion already alluded to between personality and
clothing. The more differentiated and the more inwardly rich
the personality, the simpler and more monotonous is the clothing.
To this extent, therefore, the desire for simplification of feminine
clothing is an entirely logical postulate of the emancipation of
women. But this demand finds a justification also from the
point of view of hygiene. This fact has been discussed especially
by Paul Schultze-Naumburg in his book on " The Culture of the
Feminine Body as the Basis of Women's Clothing" (Leipzig, 1901).
He insists above all on the complete abandonment of the corset,
and of the " small waist," and on a return of women's clothing to
the free, simple outlines of the antique. He makes, also, very
noteworthy observations on the unhygienic footgear of both sexes.

The idea that woman's clothing should unconstrainedly
represent the form of her body has been admirably realized in
the different varieties of the so-called " reformed dress." Not
without influence on these deserving attempts has been the
recognition of the distinguished simplicity and hygienic purpose-
fulness of the Japanese women's clothing.

For the present, however, fashion, as of old, remains dominant,
and celebrates annually its triumph in respect of new discoveries
and refinements of the dress of women of the world, employing
for this purpose the familiar means of accentuation and disclosure,
and of coloured and ornamental stimuli. The " woman's move-
ment " has as yet had little ostensible and practical influence in
liberating women's dress from the all-powerful control of fashion.

Now that we have considered clothing and fashion in their
relations to the sexual life, and have learned to understand how
they combine in action as means of sexual stimulation of a
peculiar nature, we are in a position to grasp the relations between
the sense of shame and nudity, as it presents itself to us as a
problem of modern civilization.

While, as Simmel also maintains, and as we have thoroughly
explained above, clothing, through the intermediation of fashion,
gives rise to shamelessness as a group manifestation, or, as we
are accustomed to say at the present day, seriously impairs the

sense of shame in such a manner as would be repelled with
disgust if it were adopted by the personal choice of an isolated
individual,1 clothing has, on the other hand, led astray the natural
biological sense of shame, since it is the sole cause of the " exag-
gerated sense of shame " known as prudery. Prudery recognizes
the existence of clothed human beings only ; it will not recognize
the existence of naked man ; it refuses to admit the purely
moral-aesthetic influence of natural nudity — to prudery this is
something immoral and repulsive.

To prudery alone we must ascribe the fact that we modern
civilized human beings have completely lost the taste for natural
nudity, and also for the natural sense of shame, and thus we show
little understanding of the ennobling, civilizing influence of both.

Natural nudity, the state in which every human being is born
into this world, not artificial nudity, with its lascivious influence
dependent upon clothing, posture, and gesture, is purely an object
of simple contemplation for the human being of normal percep-
tions, who sees in the unclothed human body precisely the same
individual natural object as he sees in the bodies of other living
beings. People, in other respects extremely prudish, admit this
when they have the opportunity — at the present day certainly
very rare — of seeing completely naked human beings in natural
surroundings, as, for instance, when bathing.

It is only when we introduce intentionally a sensual or, speaking
generally, an artificial influence, that nudity has an effect of
lascivious stimulation. Prudery is. however, nothing more than
such a way of looking at nudity, with concealed lustful feelings.
The talented Schleiermacher already recognized this fact. He
unmasked prudery as a lack of the sense of shame, and very
clearly pointed out the sexual and lascivious element which it
conceals. In his " Vertrauten Brief en iiber die Lucinde "
(edition of K. Gutzkow, Hamburg, 1835, pp. 63-65) we find the
following beautiful passage :

" What, then, shall we think of those who pretend to be in a condition
of quiet thought and activity, and yet are so intolerably sensitive that
as a result of the most trivial and most remote impulse, passion arises
in them, and who believe themselves to be the more fully equipped with
the sense of shame the more readily they find in everything something
worthy of suspicion ? They do not really find what they pretend to
find in every occurrence ; it is their own crude lust which lies always
on the watch, and springs forward as soon as anything shows itself in

1 Simmel rightly points out that many women would foel very uncomfortable
if they had to appear in thoir private sitting-room, or before a single strange
man, in a dross so dicottetc. as that in which they readily appear, in society and
following the fashion, before thirty or a hundred.

156

the distance akin to themselves, and which therefore they find it
possible to condemn ; and they will quickly seize an opportunity for
blaming anything of wliich the motives were absolutely blameless.
Ordinarily, indeed, blamelessness appears to them a pretence. Youths
and maidens are represented as knowing nothing as yet of love, but
none the less as full of yearnings which every moment threaten to break
out, and which clutch the slightest opportunity in order to grasp the
forbidden fruit. But this is absurd. True youths and maidens are,
indeed, the ideals of this kind of modesty, but in them it takes another
form. Only that which has no other purpose than to arouse desire
and passion can do them any harm ; but why should they not be allowed
to learn love and to understand Nature, both of which they see every-
where round them ? Why should they not, without restraint, under-
stand and enjoy what is thought and said about these matters, since
in this way so much the less would passion be aroused in them ?
Such anxious and limited modesty as is at the present day charac-
teristic of society is based only upon the consciousness of a great and
widespread perversity, and upon a deep corruption. What will be
the end of all this ? If matters were left to themselves, they would
become worse and worse ; when we so persistently hunt out that which
in reality is not shameful, we shall at last succeed in finding something
immodest in every circle of ideas ; and finally all conversation and all
society must come to an end ; we must separate the sexes so that they
may not look at one another ; we must introduce monasticism, or even
something more severe. But this is not to be borne, and it will happen
to our society as it happened to our wives when morality confined
them ever more and more strictly, until at last it became improper for
them to show the tips of their fingers — and then in despair they
suddenly turned round, and they exposed their necks, their shoulders,
and their breasts to the rude winds and to lascivious eyes ; or, like the
caterpillars, they cast off their old skin by a predetermined movement.
Thus will it be ; when corruption has reached its climax, and the crude
impulses become so dominant that it is no longer possible to keep them
within bounds, all these false appearances will break down of them-
selves, and behind them we shall see youthful shamelessness which
has long intimately entwined itself round the body of society, so that
this has become the true skin in which society naturally and easily
moves. Complete corruption and completed culture, by way of which
we return to blamelessness — both of these make an end of prudery."

Fine words from a theologian ! This thoroughly just descrip-
tion of the nature of prudery and of its dangers should be laid
seriously to heart by our modern theological bigots and moral
fanatics. How truly Schleiermacher has depicted the nature of
prudery is shown by the observations of the alienist J. L. A. Koch,
that it is precisely the women who were formerly prudish and
" moral " when they become insane — for example, in mania — who
are much more shameless than women who in everyday life had
taken a more natural view of sexual relationships.

The eternal concealment of the most natural things is what
first makes them appear unnatural, first awakens desire, where

157

otherwise they would have been passed by quietly and harmlessly
without attention. At the present day the natural justifiable
sense of shame has been intensified to an unnatural degree, and
has been falsified to such an extent that this exaggeration of the
sense of shame, this unceasing objective suppression of natural
harmless activities and feelings, has really increased the hidden
desires to an immeasurable degree ; it is this, in fact, which heaps
fuel on the fire of fleshly lust.1

The genuine, natural, biological sense of shame sets bounds to
lust. To this shame we owe the ennobling and spiritualizing of
the crude sexual impulse ; it is the preliminary stage to the
individualization of that impulse. It is intimately related to
that voluntary, temporary, and relative continence which has so
great an importance for the individual life. The sense of shame
has civilized the sexual impulse without denying its essential basis.

Complete culture returns to complete innocence. It knows no
fig-leaves ; it does not go about, as did recently in the Dresden
Museum a clergyman affected with the psychosis of hyper-
prudery, knocking off the genital organs from naked statues ; nor
does it castrate the human spirit, as we find most biographers
do even now in the case of the great men whose lives they describe.
It recognizes the sexual as something noble and natural.

The sense of shame is an inalienable acquirement of civilization ;
it is self-respect. But, as Havelock Ellis rightly remarks, in
completely developed human beings self-respect keeps a tight rein
on any excess of the sense of shame. Knowledge and culture give
the death-blow to all false prudery. The cultured man looks the
natural in the face ; he recognizes its value and its necessity. To
him the sexual is the indispensable preliminary of life ; hence in
its essential nature it is something harmless, wholly compre-
hensible ; something that must not be underrated, but above all
must not be overrated, as our virtuous hypocrites and fanatics
of prudery invariably overrate it.

The true league against immorality is the league against
prudery. The apostles of the nude do more service to true
morality than the men of the " Lex-Heinze," than those who
hold conferences on morality, than the German Christian League
of Virtue. A natural conception of the nude — that is the watch-
word of the future. This is shown by all the hygienic, aesthetic,
and ethical endeavours of our time.

1 What serious dangers to health prudery may entail has recently been
shown by Karl Riiis in a valuable essay, " Prudery as the Cause of Bodily Dis-
orders " (published in the Reports of the German Society for the Suppression of
Venereal Diseases, 1906, vol. iv., pp. 113-121).

CHAPTER VIII

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT IN LOVE— THE INDIVIDUALIZATION

OF LOVE

" Above all, we must avoid the widely diffused error of regarding
love as a simple and single feeling. The exact opposite is the truth —
love consists of an entire group, and, indeed, of an extremely complex,
incessantly varying, group of feelings." — H. T. FINCK.

159

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VIII

The individualization of love a product of recent times — Finck's " romantic "
love too narrow a conception — Role of the idealization of the senses —
First beginnings of individual love — The Platonism of the Greeks and of
the Renascence — Distinction between the plastic and the romantic — The
love of the minnesinger — The connexion between the nature-sense and
love— The secret elements in love — Love and gallantry — The slavery of
love — The imaginative element in love — Predominance of tender feelings
in the days of chivalry — The development of the conventional in the re-
lationships of love — True and false gallantry — .Love as presented by
Shakespeare — Conventional life of pleasure in the days of Louis XIV.
and XV. — The belief in woman (" Manon Lescaut ") — Rousseau's " Julie ''
and Goethe's " Werthor " — The nature-sense and sentimentality in love —
Difference between " The New Heloise " and " Werthor " — The first be-
ginnings of Weltechmerz — Its physiological connexion with the vital
feelings of puberty — The vital energy in the Weltschmorz of Goethe and
Heine — The modern Weltschmerz — Nietzsche's connexion with this
matter — The love of the romantic period — A mirroring of the past —
Dreams and emotions — Moonshine reverie — Conflict with conventional
Philistine morality — Friedrich Schlegel's " Lucinde " — Apotheosis of
individual love — Individual love in relation to genius — Role of the
emotional in romantic love — Love mysticism — The modern renascence of
romanticism — The Dionysiac element in modern romantic love — Differ-
ence between romantic and classical love — Theodor Mundt on this subject
— Goethe's " Tasso " — Gretchen and Helena in " Faust " — Heine's " Ardin-
ghello," a combination of romantic and classical love — The prototype of
" young Germany " — Discussion of all modern love problems in young
German literature — Gutzkow's overwhelming importance — Among writers
of the nineteenth century, Gutzkow's knowledge of women is the most pro-
found— His characteristic girls and women — Brings for the first time the
problem of love upon the stage — The problem of personality in Gutzkow's
writings — The young German poetry of the flesh — Self-analysis and
reflection in love — French precursors — Replacement of the medieval
" sin " by self -reflection — Gutzkow's " Wally " and " Seraphine " — The
love of the emancipated woman — Kierkegaard's and Grillparzer's diaries —
" Free love " and " free marriage " in modern literature — Influence of the
Second Empire — The satanic and artistic elements in love — Pessimism.
— Grise bach's " New Tanhauser " — The affirmation of life in this work — A
glance at the present day.

160

CHAPTER VIII

THE individualization of love is principally a product of recent
times. A talented author, H. T. Finck, has dealt with this fact
in a comprehensive work in two volumes.1 This individual
love, containing the spiritual elements of all the successive
epochs of civilization, he denotes by the term " romantic "
love, whereas we ourselves generally understand by that
term a special variety of the more comprehensive individual
love.

Every one who is interested in the numerous " overtones " of
individual love will find in Finck's book a rich, though not very
well arranged, supply of material.

Independently of Finck, I shall endeavour in this chapter to
describe very briefly the most important elements and the develop-
mental phases of modern love.

First, however, let us consider the " idealization of the senses,"
this expression being used by Georg Hirth to denote the capacity
of the senses for self-government ; for independent feelings of
pleasure and pain ; for the development of peculiar imaginations,
ideas, and talents ; and for the utilization at will of other sensory
areas and foci of impulse — indeed, of the entire individual — for
the purposes of purely sensual self-command. The lower senses,
among which Hirth also reckons the sexual impulse, can only be
idealized in consequence of the centripetal spontaneous activity of
the higher senses.2

This artistic idealization of the senses and impulses also plays
an important part in the process of the individualization and
spiritualization of love. The sexual impulse becomes " the
source of rich joys and imaginative tragedy " by means of the
" veil of imagination," the " heaping up of emotions," and the
" helmet of reason " (Hirth). The libido sexualisalso takes part
in the idealization of all the human senses and impulses. This
is the indispensable preliminary and foundation of the trans-
formation of the sexual impulse into love.

The first important enrichment of the sexual inclinations by
means of a higher spiritual, individual element, which continues
to-day to form a constituent of modern love, is, I consider, the

1 H. T. Finck, " Romantic Love and Personal Beauty."
8 C/. G. Hirth, " Ways to Freedom," pp. 468-472 (Munich, 1903).

161 11

162

Platonism of Greek antiquity and of the Italian renascence. It
is a metaphysic of love resting upon the individual, aesthetic
contemplation of the beloved personality.1 For that is the true
sense of " Platonic love." It ennobles physical love to the
heavenly Eros, which is nothing else than the idea of beauty in
the highest sense of the word. Kuno Fischer, in his first published
writing, " Diotima " (Pforzheim, 1849), has erected a beautiful
monument in honour of this Platonic love. And did not the
immortal Darwin restate the thought of Plato, when he described
beauty as the testimony of love ? In Platonism, at any rate, is
to be found the first intimation of a higher individual significance
of love. In Dante's Beatrice, in Petrarch's Platonic lyrics, this
idea is reillumined after the long night of the middle ages, to
shine forth still more clearly at the time of the renascence in the
new Platonism and in the cult of the beautiful, thus attaining a
much more powerful individual colouring than it had among the
Greeks.

In the sphere of love, as elsewhere, the plastic genius of the
Greeks manifested itself in the form of peaceful aesthetic con-
templation ; romantic individualism, on the other hand, was
foreign to the Greek mind. The latter is a modern senti-
ment. Jean Paul, in his " Vorschule der Aesthetik " (Hamburg,
1804, vol. i., p. 139), has aptly characterized the difference
between antique and modern sensibility in the words : " The
plastic sun (of the ancients) illuminates universally, like waking ;
the romantic moon (of the moderns) gleams fitfully, like dreams."

These first traces of romantic-individual love may be detected
already in Christian medievalism, among the troubadours and
the minnesinger. The heartfelt song, " Thou art mine, I am
thine," gives the clearest expression to the individual, purely
personal nature of the love-relations between man and woman,
and discloses also the " romantic " sentiment, as in " Thou art
locked within my heart ; lost is the key : now must thou stay there
for ever," and discloses the intimate association peculiar to
romanticism between the nature-sense and the feeling of love.
It is the beloved who first fills for us the joy of summer ; her love
is like the rose. An enormous range is thus opened to the
subjectivity of this sentiment. The romanticism of the secret

1 G. Saint- Yves (" La Literature Amoureuse," Paris, 1887, p. 25) also sees
in the aesthetic contemplation of the beloved person the fundamental root of
individual love. It has gradually developed out of the ordinary aesthetic con-
templation of nature. An interesting proof of this connexion is the Song of
Solomon, in which the aesthetic stimuli of the beloved one are compared with
every possible animate and inanimate natural object.

163

element in love is first perceived at this time, and finds perception
in the words :

" No fire, no coal, can burn so hot
As secret love, of which no one knows anything."1

The age of chivalry now arrives, the epoch of minne2 (love) and
gallantry. What a new and remarkable change in the spiritual
physiognomy of love ! This also has left deep traces in the love
of modern civilized man ; this period represents an important
stage in the developmental history of individual eroticism.

In the middle ages the honour of the knight and the love of
woman, " the most beautiful radiance coming down to us from the
life of this wonderful period," as Wienberg says, belong together.
Since that time man's honour has been associated in a peculiar
manner with woman's love.

Boldly but aptly the far-sighted Herder has described the
knightly minne (love) as a reflex of the Gothic. The same
immeasurability of the imagination, the same indescribable
sentiment, constructed the huge cathedral, and disclosed the
unrivalled worth and beauty of the beloved — created minne and
its outward expression, gallantry.

In deifying supplication, the knightly spirit elevated the
beautiful sex to the heavens, raised woman far above man, and
placed man far beneath woman. The knight sacrificed himself
for the mistress of his heart, subjected himself to her judgment
before the coura d'amour (courts of love), and in the lists.
He became the slave of love and of the beloved woman ; he
wore her fetters, he obeyed her slightest nod, he endured chastise-
ment and pain for her sake. But was this all reality ? Was it
not rather pure imagination ? There was, indeed, as Johannes
Scherr says, a worm at the heart of all this romanticism. The
ideal deification of woman did not affect a corresponding elevation
in her true social position ; minne was but too often a mere

1 Cf. regarding the numerous variations of this ancient couplet, the interesting
account given by Arthur Kopp, " Old Proverbs and Popular Rhymes for Loving
Hearts," published in the Zeitschrift des Vereins fiir Volkskunde, Heft i., pp. 8, 9
(Berlin, 1902).

2 Minne is an old German word (now obsolete) for love, " the love of fair
women." The minnesinger were love-singers who sang their own compositions
to the accompaniment of the music of harp or viol — in fact, they were lyric
poets. The most flourishing years of this art were from about 1170 to 1260 ;
thus the minnesinger were contemporary with and closely akin to the Provencal
troubadours. But the German development was essentially native, and the
minnesinger's treatment of love was characterized by a more ideal note than
was usually attained by the troubadours. A good, though brief, account (with
a list of authorities) is given of the minnesinger in " Chambers's Encyclopaedia "
— TRANSLATOR.

11—2

164

" pose," and was often associated with unbridled sexual licence
in relation to women of lower degrees.

The domination of the imaginative element characterized the
aberrations of minne, debasing itself for the honour of the
beloved. The masochistic element concealed in all love was here
for the first time elevated into a system. We shall return to this
subject in the chapter on " Masochism. "

And yet there is another side to the matter, and by the spirit
of chivalry there was aroused a nobler view of woman's nature.

" The cause and the secret of this dominance (of women) is this,
that woman, with her complete, noble womanliness, entered wholly
and fully into life ; that she controlled a kingdom which was hers by
right, the world of feeling and emotion, but controlled this kingdom
and no more. As mistress of feeling, as guardian of feeling, she
brought poetry into life ; and into art she brought that lofty impetus,
the above-described fanciful ideal or feminine tendency, which, when
observed and perceived, reacts on the emotional mood of the
observer."1

To this time also belongs the development of the conventional
in the amatory relations of the sexes, which came to be governed
by definite rules ; since that time, for example, it has been
regarded as improper and scandalous for an unmarried woman to
remain for any considerable time alone with a man, a view which
has persisted to the present day. The social intercourse of the
sexes was based upon " gallantry " or " courtesy," upon a refined
behaviour towards " ladies," regulated by the laws of beauty,
propriety, and social tact. In the sequel there developed out
of this that exaggerated modern gallantry, characterized by little
real delicacy of feeling, because it exhibits an undertone
of contempt which makes woman feel only too clearly that she
is the representative of a " weaker," inferior sex, and is in no way
the possessor of any proper individual, personal value. Intelli-
gent, eminent women have always protested against this modern
gallantry. Mantegazza, in his " Physiology of Woman," p. 442
(Jena, 1893), ably describes the hypocrisy underlying this evil
form of gallantry.

The first intimation of modern individual love is to be found in
Shakespeare, to whom love was in general, indeed, only a " super-
human " passion, something lying beyond good and evil, which
seized hold of man against his will ; but none the less he embodies
in his work the romantic ideal life of his time in feminine
characters possessing the fullest individuality — as, for example,

1 Jacob Falko, " The Society of Knighthood in the Epoch of the Cult of
Women," p. 49.

165

Ophelia, Miranda, Juliet, Desdemona, Virginia, Imogen, and
Cordelia, whilst in Cleopatra he has described the dairnonic-
bacchantic traits of the love of woman. In Juliet, who sees in
" true love acted simple modesty," we observe the passionate
emotion of the primordial natural impulse, and the first awakening
of woman as a personality.

False gallantry, in association with conventional propriety,
both of which were developed to the fullest degree at the Courts
of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., subordinated love to rules, and
was very well compatible with the most frivolous and epicurean
sensual life. And this occurred at the expense of deeply-felt
natural sentiment, the place of which was taken by mere flirta-
tion and coquetry. Here, also, the contempt of woman clearly
shows itself. Especially in regard to this period, the opinion
has been maintained that the modern Frenchman has never
suspected, understood, recognized the divine in woman's nature.
Still, the general truth of this assertion is belied by the amatory
life of the celebrated heroines of the salons, such as Du Deffand,
Lespinasse, Du Chatelet, Quinault, and above all of the cele-
brated Ninon de 1'Enclos1 ; and the Abbe Prevost, in his immortal
" Manon Lescaut," proved that even in that period the in-
destructible belief in woman persisted, at least as an ideal.

It was, in fact, in France that the higher individual love under-
went a new spiritual enrichment ; Rousseau's " Julie " appeared
on the horizon of Love's heaven. And in the background was
disclosed the German " Werther," a book strangely influenced
by that of Rousseau. The nature-sense on the one hand,
sentimentality on the other, are the new elements in the love of
the period of H61oise and Werther.

In Rousseau's " New Heloise," passionate love and a complete
self-surrender were described without the artificiality, and also
without the coquetry and wantonness, of which the literature
of the time was full. It was love in a grander style than people
were then accustomed to see. For this reason, the book con-
stituted a turning-point in literature. That love is an earnest
thing, that it can become " la grande affaire de notre vie," has
perhaps never been more deeply and thoroughly depicted than
in the character of " Julie." In maintaining the essential purity of
the love relationship, when the voice of Nature is really expressed
therein, Rousseau speaks of the principal theme of his own life.

1 In her letters (" Letters of Ninon de 1'Enclos," with ten etchings by Karl
Walsor, Berlin, 1906), the deep spiritual relationships of love found a classical
representation.

166

" Is not true love," asks Julie, " the chastest of all bonds ? . . . Is
not love in itself the purest as well as the most magnificent impulse
of our nature ? Does it not despise low and crawling souls, in order
to inspire only grand and strong souls ? And does it not ennoble all
feeling, does it not double our being and elevate us above ourselves ?
In contrast to social inequalities, the love relationship points to a
higher law, before which all are equal."1

The love of Rousseau is, in fact, not social ; it is not a product
of civilization, but it is a creation of nature ; it is one with nature.
The nature-sense and the love-sense are here most intimately
associated. And he observes both, nature and love, with feeling.
The sensibility de Vdme finds in nature and in love objects of the
most glorious delight, of the sweetest pain, of the most burning
tears.

" Out of the perceptions of mingled pain and ecstasy which the
vision of nature, of beauty, or of a fine action, induced in him, he wove
the web of sensibility with which he enveloped the creatures of his
imagination. Incessantly thrust back into himself, his heart bleeding
from wounded friendship or from unrequited love, self-tormentingly
dissecting his own wishes and illusions, his own faculties and im-
possibilities, he became one of the first heralds of the Weltschmerz, of
the woes of Werther and Ren6, to which Byron and Heine had only
to add self -mockery."2

The sentimentality of the eighteenth century took its rise in
England, as I have explained at some length in my pseudony-
mous work, "The Sexual Life in England," vol. ii., pp. 95-107
(Berlin, 1903). In that country it found its most characteristic
expression in the romances of Richardson and Sterne, and in
landscape-gardening ; but it was by Rousseau and Goethe that
for the first time it was really brought into contact with the
realities of life.

For the history of Julie, the history of Werther — this was the
history of all happily or unhappily loving youths and maidens of
that day ; each maiden had her Saint Preux, each youth his Lotte.

The profound influence exercised by Rousseau, especially on
women, has been described by H. Buffenoir in a very careful
study.3 The significance which " Werther " had for the emo-
tional life of the time has been explained with the most cultivated
understanding by Erich Schmidt in a well-known monograph.4

He shows that the nature-sense and sentimentality are much
more deeply felt in Goethe's " Werther " than in Rousseau's

1 Of. Harald Hoffding, " Rousseau and his Philosophy," pp. 86, 89 (Stutt-
gart, 1897).

2 Emil Du Bois-Reymond, " Frederick II. and Jean Jacques Rousseau."

3 H. Buffenoir, " Jean Jacques Rousseau and Women " (Paris, 1891).

4 Erich Schmidt, " Richardson, Rousseau, and Goethe " (Jena, 1875).

167

" Nouvelle Heloi'se." Goethe himself says in " Wahrheit und
Dichtung," speaking of this poetical, rational, intimate, and
loving absorption into nature :

" I endeavoured to separate myself inwardly from everything foreign
to me, to regard the outward world lovingly, and to allow all beings,
from the human onwards, to influence me, each in its kind, as deeply
as was possible. Thus arose a wonderful alliance with the individual
objects of nature, and an inward harmony, a harmony with the
whole ; so that every change, whether of places and of regions, or of
days and seasons, or of any possible kind, moved me to my inmost
soul. The painter's view became associated with that of the poet ;
the beautiful country landscape through which the friendly river
was wandering, increased my inclination to solitude, and favoured my
quiet attitude of contemplation extending itself in every direction."

Werther's feeling for nature is intimately related to his love
passion. The two harmonize, and each exercises a reciprocal
influence upon the other. Nature is to Werther a second beloved.
The youth of nature, the spring of nature, are also the youth and
the spring of his love.

In the peculiar association of love with the nature-sense and
sentimentality, which is so characteristic of the time of Julie
and Werther, are to be found the first beginnings of the " Welt-
schmerz," with its erotically significant " ecstasy of sorrow." The
following words in Goethe's " Stella " appear to me to bind
Weltschmerz and eroticism in an extremely distinct relation-
ship. Stella says of men :

" They make us at once happy and miserable ! They fill our heart
with feelings of bliss ! What new, unknown feelings and hopes fill our
souls, when their stormful passion invades our nerves ! How often
has everything in me trembled and throbbed, when, in uncontrollable
tears, he has washed away the sorrows of a world on my breast ! I
begged him, for God's sake, to spare himself ! — to spare me ! — in
vain ! — into my inmost marrow he fanned the flames which were
devouring himself. And thus the girl, from head to foot, became all
heart, all sentiment."

Here we find clearly described the erotic element in mental
pain ; and we observe the remarkable increase of passion
by means of sorrow, tears, and a profound perception of the
evil of the world. This Weltschmerz fans the flames of eroticism,
increases love, and ultimately gives rise to a peculiar sense of
power ; it is, indeed, most frequently in the first bloom of love,
in the years of puberty, that its relations with sexuality are
most distinctly manifested. The celebrated alienist Mendel has
described this almost physiological Weltschmerz of the age of
puberty as " hypo-melancholia." An indefinite, passionate

1G3

longing, which seeks relief in tears, a by no means negligible
inclination to suicide — of which Werther is the classical exemplar
— characterizes this condition, which is connected with, the
complete revolutionizing of the spiritual and emotional life by
means of the sexual. The Weltschmerz of youth is a latent
sexual sense of power.

How the nature-sense and love combine to constitute a percep-
tion of Weltschmerz has been most beautifully expressed by
Byron and Heine in their poetry. With quite exceptional clear-
ness, Heine also describes it in a letter to Friedrich Merckel
(written at Nordeney on August 7, 1826), in which he described a
nightly recurring scene with a beautiful woman on the seashore :

" The sea no longer appeared so romantic as before — and yet on
its strand I had lived through the sweetest and most mystically dear
experience of my life which could ever inspire a poet. The moon
seemed to wish to show me that in this world happiness yet remained
for me. We did not speak — it was only a long, profound glance, the
moonlight supplied the music — as we walked to and fro, I took her
hand in mine, I felt the secret pressure — my soul trembled and
glowed — afterwards I wept."

How different were these tears from the floods of tears
in Miller's " Siegwart," and in other similar productions of the
Werther epoch, which, with their weakly sentimentality, their
emotionally happy " sensibility," had nothing whatever in
common with the much more natural Weltschmerz of Goethe and
Heine — more natural because based on a physiological foundation.

In modern love also, the Weltschmerz continues to live. The
only difference is that by means of the pessimistic philosophy it
has to some extent obtained a logical foundation. And
Nietzsche has shown us the force which lies hidden in this ecstasy
of sorrow. Precisely on account of the pains of the world, he
affirms joyfully life and love. Anyone who wishes to write the
history of Weltschmerz, from a psychological point of view so
profoundly interesting, must not overlook Nietzsche as a most
important turning-point in that history.

The passion inspired by genius, the excess of vital energy in
the " Sturm und Drang " epoch of German literature, was
admirably consistent with that genuine, primitive Weltschmerz.
Rousseau's more indeterminate sensibility had, on the other
hand, a more powerful influence upon the mode of feeling of
romanticism, and this movement appears more closely related
to him than to Goethe.

Romantic love combines the elements of feeling of the previous

169

epochs in an increased subjectivism. Not nature alone, but
history also, folk-tales, legends, poetry, and the wonderful
secrets of the primeval age — all these are reflected in romantic
love, and awaken singular dreams and emotions. The " mond-
beglanzte Zaubernacht " (" moon-illumined magic night ") is
much more than a mere feeling of nature ; it is the recognition
of a connexion with the past and with its secret, sweet, half-
forgotten stories. Fonqu6's " Undine " is the classical type of
all this. Romantic love delights in this wonder-mood of the
heart ; reality becomes, as it were, a dream. The obscure, the
problematical — these attract the romanticist. It is for this
reason that he loves the night and the night-mood of nature,
rather than the clear daylight. Moonshine reverie is a charac-
teristic trait of romantic love. Everything flows away into the
indeterminate, the cloudy, the boundless. This love knows no
limitation or narrowing, no fetters. It is the sworn enemy of
the conventional, narrow-hearted, philistine morality, and of all
limitations of personality. In Friedrich Schlegel's " Lucinde "
this most celebrated monument of romantic love, the campaign
against philistinism, as the greatest enemy of a free, noble
amatory life, is most energetically carried on. It is utterly
untrue to describe " Lucinde " as a romance in which there is
a cult of suggestive nudity — as the poetry of the flesh. It
certainly preaches the free natural conception and perception
of the nude and the sexual, and is a glorious protest against the
artificial and hypocritical separation of body and soul in love ;
but, on the other side, it unlocks in love the entire kingdom
of the emotional and spiritual life, and discloses its significance
for the individual man as a free personality.

More than Rousseau's " Julie " and Goethe's " Werther " is
Friedrich Schlegel's " Lucinde " the apotheosis of individual
love. Romantic love is the mirror of personality ; it is change-
able, filled with the highest spiritual content, and, above all, like
personality, is capable of development. In a masterly manner
Schlegel has represented the intimate connexion between true
love and all vital energy. The relations of love to genius have
never before been so admirably described.

" Here," says Karl Gutzkow, " there is no question of artificiality ;
we have to do rather with the yearning of a youth who loves, who sees
the one and only beloved in many different forms, in the metamor-
phoses of Ms own ego, which yearns to reconcile egoism and love."

Schleiermacher, in his " Confidential Letters regarding
Lucinde," Gutzkow in his preface to the new edition of this

170

work, and recently H. Meyer-Benfey,1 have supplied us with
conclusions regarding the true significance of " Lucinde," con-
clusions in harmony with our own view.

We must allude here to a new element in romantic love, which
since that time has played an important part in modern eroti-
cism. It is Vart pour Vart of love, the revelling in pure moods
and emotions as the means of enjoyment. The emotional
frequently grows luxuriantly and chokes the natural feeling of
love. Jean Paul, for example,

" regards eroticism purely as a method of cultivation. Human beings
are not to be actually loved, but are to be used to strike sparks from,
by which one's own inward life may be illuminated. ... He is the
exemplar of that artist-love which, vampire-like, drinks the souls of
those who become its prey. This love sees in the hearts offered to it
only the stuff for pictures ; and in their warm blood it finds only an
intoxicating, stimulating drink."2

This unqualified search for personal emotional experiences in
love, without regard to the love-partner, is especially repre-
sented in Jean Paul's " Titan."

Wackenroder, in his " Phantasien iiber die Kunst " (" Imagina-
tive Studies concerning Art "), has already warned us of the
dangers of this purely erotic-emotional love. Karl Joel has
recently described very vividly how the romanticists ultimately
reduced all vital relationships to the emotions of love.3 This
attempt must lead finally to mysticism, the poetical repre-
sentative of which is Novalis.

It is very interesting to find that all the diverse elements of
romantic love may also be detected in the latter-day renascence
of romanticism. In his admirable book on " Nietzsche and
Romanticism," Karl Joel has clearly shown the existence of this
romantic element in modern love, and, above all, has insisted
upon the intimate connexion which the philosophy of Nietzsche
has with the joy in battle and the vital energy of the romanticists.
Both are apostles of the Dionysiac, not of the Apollinian.4

This also is the difference by which " romantic " love is dis-
tinguished from " classical " love — a difference and a distinction

1 H. Meyer-Benfey, " Lucinde," published in Mtttterschutz — Zeitechrift zur
Reform der sexuellen Ethik, 1906, No. 5, pp. 173-192. Edited by Dr. Helene
Stocker.

2 Felix Poppenberg, " Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's Liebe und Ehestand,"
in " Bibelots," p. 214 (Leipzig, 1904).

3 Carl Joel, " Nietzsche und die Roman tik," pp. 13-16 (Jena and Leipzig,
1905).

4 Of. also Holene Stocker, " Nietzsche und die Romantik," in Kblnische
Zeitung, No. 1127, October 29, 1905.

171

which I find indicated for the first time in Theodor Mundt's
romance "Madelon oder die Romantiker in Paris" (Leipzig, 1832).
The relevant passage (pp. 9-12) runs as follows :

" I am therefore of opinion that there can be a romantic and a
classical poetry ; there are also romantic and classical love ; and it is
only by means of this twofold nature that it is possible to discover
and understand this contrast in poetry. . . .

" This wild and yet so sweet disturbance of the heart, in which love
subsists, this rejoicing and revelry of the aroused imagination which,
originated by the charm of the beloved, lead to an intoxication with
all the sensual dreams of a delightful, ethereal happiness ; and as in
the flower-bud in which a burning ray of sunshine has suddenly
awakened the impulse to bloom, give rise to the desire and longing of
sensual impulsion — all these tears and sighs of the lovers, pains and
joys, this love-happiness and love-misery at the same time, this star-
flaming night-side of passion, to which after a vagrant drunken frenzy,
an ice-cold, unwelcome morning follows — all this, my friend, is
romantic love. . . .

" And shall I now describe also classical love ? . . . Believe me,
there are faces which at the very first glance seem to us so trustworthy
and so near akin, they draw us to them, as if we had spent years with
them in sympathy, asking for love and receiving love. By the sight of
this girl's face there was induced in me so suddenly a sense of peace,
such as never before in my life had I experienced ; and this gentle
feeling which drew me towards her, I may call true love and true
happiness. In her loving eyes there glowed no seductive fire, no re-
pellent pride like that of our romantic Madelon ; in the simple beautiful
German girl, all is clear and true ; out of her gentle features speaks
her gentle soul ; and all for which I have longed in passionate, aberrant
hours of my life — a definite, unalloyed happiness in existence — seemed
to me, as I saw her for the very first time, to shine on me out of her
blue true eyes. My friend, is not that classical love ?"

It is the Apollinian-Platonic element of modern love which
Theodor Mundt here describes as " classical " love, and certainly
he wrongly places it before romantic love, which is the expression
of modern subjectivism and individualism. Such classical love
found in Goethe's " Tasso " its most complete representation.
Here love was conceived as " possession, which should give
peace " ; the beloved being influences after the manner of an
already understood picture. As Kuno Fischer remarks, in the
world of Goethe's " Tasso " the Platonic Eros is the fashion.
Love is here the pure, quiet contemplation of beauty in and with
the beloved.

Gretchen and Helena in " Faust " embody very clearly the
contrast between romantic and classical love. We find these
contrasts united in Wilhelm Heinse's celebrated " Ardinghello,"
a romance which even to us at the present day seems so modern.

172

In this work we find the Dionysiao-Faustian impulse of the
loving individual, and the Apollinian-artistic contemplation of
the loved one, described with equal mastery.

In regard to love, Heinse was the prototype of " Young
Germany." And we are young Germany.

For all the problems of amatory life which to-day occupy our
minds have already been made topics of public discussion by the
authors of young Germany. In young German love-philosophy,
the " Knights of the Spirit " as well as the " Knights of the
Flesh," come to their full rights. Only the ignorant can regard
the so-called " emancipation of the flesh," the apotheosis of las-
civious sensuality, as the sole characteristic of the efforts and
battles of our own time. No, he who wishes to understand
modern love, in all its spiritual manifestations and relationship,
let him read the writings of young Germany, especially the
works of Laube, Gutzkow, Mundt ; and also those of Heine,
who has a more intimate relationship to young Germany than
he has to romanticism.

More especially Gutzkow,1 who appears to me the greatest and
most comprehensive spirit of the young German literature—
indeed, of the more recent German literature in general — overlooks
no single riddle and problem of modern eroticism. Of all the
writers of the nineteenth century, he has the profoundest know-
ledge of women. How stimulating are his girl characters ; how
true, notwithstanding their manifoldness ! Wally, riding
proudly upon a white palfrey, outwardly an image of beauty, but,
like so many modern emancipated women, inwardly tormented by
the demon of doubt ; Seraphine the dreamer, uncertain about
herself and her love, of whom the poet himself later admitted that
her character was based on reality ; Idaline,2 full of majesty, the
ideal " bride of the waves," a typical figure of conventional high
life, who yet in sudden revolution against this conventionalism
gives her whole being to a chance love, a love of the moment,3

1 At the present time but few of my living contemporaries share this opinion
of Gutzkow, which I myself base upon the careful reading of all his works. I
may quote, however, with satisfaction the prophecy of the deceased dramatist
Theooor Wehl. He writes of Gutzkow : As a literary phenomenon he will
grow with time. After long, long years, out of the literature of our time two
characteristic heads will emerge — one laughing, and one glancing round him
earnestly and sorrowfully : the head of Heinrich Heine, and the head of Karl
Gutzkow" (F. Wehl, " Zeit und Menschen," " Tagebuch Aufzeichnungen aus den
Jahren von 1863 bis 1884," vol. i., p. 297 (Altona, 1889).

2 Karl Gutzkow, "Reminiscences of my Life," p. 18 (Berlin, 1875).

3 " The time of love is not age, it is not youth : the time of love is the moment,' '
says Beate, one of Gutzkow's characters, at the end of the tragedy " Ein Weisser
Blatt."

173

which alienates her from her betrothed and later husband, and
drives her to death ; then, again, all the brilliant feminine
characters in the great romances, " Die Hitter vom Geiste,"
Melanie, Helene, Selma, Pauline, Olga — all are characters
bearing the stamp of reality in their spiritual and emotional
life, so various and yet so true, and, above all, in their
manifold, differentiated relationships to men, genuinely modern
women.

Gutzkow was also the first to bring upon the stage the modern
woman and the problems of modern love, long before the French
dramatists and before Ibsen.

As Karl Frenzel pointed out as early as 1864, Gutzkow made
the stage the battlefield of modern ideas. The inward contrasts of
love, the psychological problem of the heart — he first ventured to
deal with these in the dramatic form.

" We all of us felt the wounds which ' the world ' inflicted on
Werner ; we all wandered from the quiet violet, Agathe, to the brilliant
rose, Sidonie ; as in Ottfried, so in ourselves, the love of the heart
battled with the love of the spirit. Who would admit himself to be
so miserably poor as never to have revelled, lived, and suffered, in
the play of these feelings ? What wife has not, at least in imagina-
tion, hesitated for a moment, like Ella Rose, between the lover and
the husband ? Such figures as these bear in themselves the essence of
truth, and do not lose their lofty value because, perhaps, their gar-
ments are not draped with sufficient harmony. They touch us,
because we recognize in them our own flesh and blood ; and they fulfil,
in so far as the form of the society drama allows, Shakespeare's canon
of dramatic art — they hold the mirror up to nature."

In his tragedies, "Werner," "Ottfried," " Ella Rose,"
Gutzkow presents in a masterly manner the inner life of the
time ; we see in them the pulsing wing-beats of the souls, which
in pain, as it must be in these days, soar upwards in the effort to
attain beauty and freedom."1

Of all the young German authors, Gutzkow has best grasped
the problem of problems in love — the problem of personality.
In the painful question asked of Helene d'Azimont, in " Die
Ritter vom Geiste "

" Is it, then, thy innermost need,
To be everything to others, nothing to thyself ?
Nothing to woman's highest glory, love,
Nothing, Helene, to the pang of renunciation ?"

1 K. Fronzel, " Karl Gutzkow," published in " Biisten und Bilder," pp. 177
and 178 (Hanover, 1864).

174

—this inalienable right to the safeguarding and development of
the individual personality, notwithstanding all the self-sacrifice
of passionate love, is most forcibly maintained. This is, indeed,
the true nucleus of all higher individual love between man and
woman.

Gutzkow has been accused, by those who had in mind only the
purely symbolic nudity scene in " Wally," of preaching the
" emancipation of the flesh " ; the same accusation has been
levelled against other young German authors, such as Lambe
(in " Jungen Europa "), Theodor Mundt (in the " Madonna "),
Wienbarg (in the " Aesthetische Feldziige "), Heine (in the
" Neue Gedichte "). The charge is unjust. It is only the
poetry of the flesh which they wish to bring to its rights. Not-
withstanding his enthusiastic hymn of praise to Casanova,
Theodor Mundt declares in his " Madonna " that the separation
of flesh and spirit is " the inexpiable suicide of the human
consciousness."

Much more important, the true characteristic of all the authors
of young Germany, appear to me the parts which self-analysis
and reflection here for the first time play in love, visible beneath
the influence of the offshoots of French romanticism, in which,
however, we also encounter the same phenomenon, as in George
Sand's " Lelia," in Alfred de Musset's " Confession d'un Enfant
du Siecle," in Balzac's " Femme de Trente Ans " — in which last
romance we find the following passage :

" Love assumes the colouring of every century. Now, in the year
1822, it is doctrinaire. Instead of, as formerly, proving it by deeds, it
is argued, it is discussed, it is brought upon the tribune in a speech."

Just as in the middle ages the idea of " sin " was the disturbing
principle of love, so for the modern civilized man, since the days
of young Germany, this cold self-reflection, this critical analysis
of one's peculiar passionate perceptions and feelings, is the
modern disturbing principle. This is the worm which gnaws
unceasingly at the root of our love, and destroys its most
beautiful blossoms. Gutzkow 's " Wally the Doubter " and
" Seraphine " are the classical literary documents for this
destructive ascendancy of pure thought in love. Very note-
worthy is it that in both these romances it is woman who destroys
life and love by reflection, whilst from earliest days this danger
has always lain in the path of man. It is the fate of the modern
woman, of individual personalities, which is here depicted ; this
fate makes its appearance from the moment when woman comes

175

to take a share in the spiritual life of man. The cold dialectic of
Seraphine, who, as Gutzkow makes one of her lovers say, reverses
the natural order of man and woman, is a necessary product of
the love of woman ripening in the direction of a free personality —
happily, however, it is only a transient phenomenon. The fully
developed personality will return to the primitiveness of feeling,
and will no longer endure within herself any kind of division or
laceration. The corresponding phenomena in man have been
described by Kierkegaard and Grillparzer in their diaries, which
are classical documents of " reflection-love."

The love of the present day contains within itself, and nourishes
itself upon, all the above-described spiritual elements of the
past. More especially at the present day is the question of the
so-called free love or free marriage, disregardant of the legally
binding forms of civil and ecclesiastical marriage, representative
of all the heartfelt needs of highly civilized mankind, hitherto
held back, oppressed, and fettered by the materialism of the time,
and still more by its conventionalism still active beneath its
covering of outlived forms. The problem of free love was first
formulated in " Lucinde," but found in the young German litera-
ture, especially in the writings of Laube, Mundt, and Dingelstedt,
its theoretical foundation ; and in the Bohemian life of the
Second Empire free love obtained its practical realization,
although the purely idyllic character of this Bohemian life, and
its limitation to the circle of the dolce far niente students and
artists, in truth makes it differ widely from the most intensely
personal free love, taking its part fully in the struggle for life, as
it presents itself in the ideal form to modern humanity.

The Second French Empire, whose significance for the spiritual
tendencies of our time was a very great one, allowed two elements
of love, to which we have earlier alluded, to appear with marked
predominance — elements still influential at the present day :
the satanic-diabolic element of eroticism, which found its most
incisive expression in the works of Barbey d'Aurevilly (strongly
influenced by the writings of de Sade), of Baudelaire, and more
particularly of the great Felicien Rops ; and the purely artistic
element, as it appears in the works of the authors just mentioned,
but more especially in the writings of Th^ophile Gautier. This
" Young France " (to use the name of a novel of Gau tier's) has
influenced the amatory life and the amatory theory of the present
day almost as strongly as young Germany.

At the same time, in the sixties of the nineteenth century
Schopenhauer's philosophy was dominant in Germany, and his

176

metaphysic of love, which considered the individual not at all, but
the species as all in all — this pessimistic conception of all love
found its poetic expression in Edward Grisebaoh's " New
Tanhauser," published in 1869. Here, also, it would be a grave
error to condemn these erotic poems of the day, on account of
their glowing sensuality, as mere glorifications of carnal lust.
The poet himself was the new Tanhauser. He wished, as he
often told me, to find expression in these poems for the life-denying
as well as for the life-affirming forces. He sang the pleasure
and the pain, the hopes and the disappointments of modern love.
For him love is indeed the rose with the thorns. For this reason
the motto of the poem is a saying of Meister Eckart : " The volup-
tuousness of the creature is intermingled with bitterness ; " and
this is the theme of the poets, though expressed in numerous
variations : " There is no pleasure without regret."

But for this reason Grisebaoh — and in this respect he resembles
Nietzsche — wished none the less joyfully to affirm this life, filled
as it is with pain, and in all its activity bringing with it regrets.
In this sense he is no exclusive pessimist, but an apostle of activity,
like the men of young Germany, in whose footsteps, and especially
in those of Heine, he follows. The beautiful saying of Laube, in
his " Liebesbriefen '* (Leipzig, 1835, p. 29), " He who has never
been shaken to the depths by any profound sorrow is also ignorant
of all deep rejoicing, he knows no single verse of that enthusiasm
which woos the denied heaven, he experiences no sort of religion,
he is capable of no sacrifice, of no greatness," is suited also to
the " new Tanhauser," which so powerfully influenced German
youth during the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth
century.

He who wishes to understand how the various love-problems
are represented in the literature of the present, strongly influenced
as it is by the problem-poems of Ibsen, by Zola's naturalism, and
by the French symbolism1 dependent on him, will find it described
later in a special chapter devoted to love in the literature of
to-day.

In the following chapter we have to consider one additional
influence which is especially apparent in the love and eroticism of
the present day, and possesses great importance for the indi-
vidualization of love. This is the artistic element in modern
love.

1 Heinrich Stiimcke refers to this connexion between naturalism and sym-
bolism in a very thoughtful essay (" Zwischen den Garben," p. 166 ; Leipzig,
1899).

CHAPTER IX
THE ARTISTIC ELEMENT IN MODERN LOVE

" / am of opinion that love bears within itself, more than any
other moral relationship, the sense of the beautiful, and when any-
where a heavy heart begins to move its wings and to strive towards
the ideal, it is in the time when it loves. Without doubt an (Aesthetic
perception always accompanies the eye of the lover, and in a greater
degree than it ever accompanies the dispassionate eye." — KUNO
FISCHER.

177 21

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IX

Ennoblement and reform of the amatory life as a demand of our time — The
battle with the elemental forces of the sexual impulse and of asceticism —
The artistic element in modern love — Erotic rhythmotropism — Sexuality
and aesthetics — The awakening of aesthetic sensibility at the time of puberty
— Importance of sensuality to life and to the poietic impulse — The example
of Annette von Droste-Hulshoff — Sensuality of great poets and artists —
Views of recent aesthetics regarding the relations between sexual love and
artistic perception — R61e of the erotic need for illusion in social life —
Emerson, Konrad Lange, and William Scherer, on the aesthetic eroticism
of social life — The liberating and vitalizing elements therein — Significance
of modern individual beauty — Misnamed " nervous " beauty — The English
" Pro -Raphaeli tes " and the ideal of beauty — Masculine beauty — Why
women love ugly men — Caroline Schlegel, Goethe, Eduard von Hartmann,
and Swedenborg, on this subject — The attractive force of the poietic and
the spiritual in man.

178

CHAPTER IX

AT the present day, notwithstanding all the adverse opinions and
jeremiads of infatuated apostles of morality, the epoch of our
amatory life through which we are passing is by no means one of
decadence. On the contrary, we are now actually engaged in its
re-constitution, reform, and ennoblement. All the tendencies of
the time proceed towards such a radical perfectionment of love,
towards its free, individual configuration, not by the unchaining
of sensuality, but by its idealization ; and when we have once
attained a natural view of sensuality, it loses all its terrors. We
fight at first against the elemental force of the wild impulse,
and against the elemental force of life-denying asceticism. In
this struggle the artistic element in modern love plays a notable
part. By this we do not signify " sugary " aestheticism, nor yet
the completely non-sensual Platonic Eros, but that aesthetic
tendency in human love, bringing about an intimate association
of the bodily and spiritual, which W. Bolsche denotes by the
term " rhythmotropism." It is " an impulsive, forced reaction
of the higher animal brain to rhythmical beauty," to which
art also owes its origin. This aesthetic natural impulse is of
great importance to love, as Darwin recognized many years ago.
It was he who expressed the great thought that beauty is love
become perceptible.

The sexual is in no way hostile to aesthetic contemplation, as
the unhappy Weininger quite erroneously maintained in the
confused chapter " Erotism and ^Esthetics "of his book. He
curtly denies that sexuality has any aesthetic value whatever,
yet Plato himself deduced from the physical Eros the highest
aesthetic contemplation of a spiritual nature. In the world of
the senses he discovered the reflection of the Divine.

The well-known fact that with the awakening of the sexual
life, spiritual creative activity also awakens, and an artistic
tendency becomes kinetic, that at the time of puberty every
youth is a poet, confirms the suggested existence of this intimate
relationship between sexual and aesthetic perception.

" There appears to me to. be no doubt," says J. Volkelt in his
" .Esthetics A (vol. i., p. 523; Munich, 1905), " that in the youth or
the maiden the awakening of sexuality induces an individualization
and invigoration of artistic perception. Hand in hand with the first
love of youth, somewhere about the sixteenth or seventeenth year, the

179 12—2

180

sense of grace and beauty in the landscape, the appreciation of the
charm of poetry, painting, and music, are strengthened and refined
to such a degree, that in comparison with what is now felt, all earlier
experiences and enjoyments seem to be as nothing."

Sensuality first gives life colour, brings out the nuances and
the finer tones of feeling, without which life would be tinted a
uniform grey, would be a monotonous waste, and lacking which
the joy of existence and creative activity would be annihilated,
or, at least, would be reduced to a minimum. Even the most
ideal love must be nourished upon sensuality, if it is to remain
poietic and full of vitality. Of this Annette von Droste-Hulshoff
is an interesting example — a woman and poet in whom in other
respects sexual influences can have played only a very modest
part. But she lost on the instant all poetic capacity, all artistic
creative power, when her lover, Lewin Schiicking, became en-
gaged to Louise von Gall. The mere idea of the possibility of
physical possession was to her a spur to poetic activity without
its being necessary for this possibility to be translated into reality.
But when the possibility was for ever removed, her muse at once
became dumb.

An absolutely convincing proof of the intimate connexion
between sexuality and aesthetics is the fact that great artists and
poets have, in the majority of cases, possessed thoroughly sensual
natures. The previously described relationship between the
sexual impulse and the poietic impulse, comprised in the " func-
tion impulse " of Santlus, is especially manifest in the case of
artists. In these artistic natures the perceptive aesthetic power
is associated with an ardent sensuality, which derives its most
powerful impulse directly from the beautiful. We agree with
von Krafift-Ebing when he denies the possibility of genius, art,
and poetry except upon a sexual foundation. We do not believe
in a so-called purely aesthetic contemplation and perception
without any sexual admixture. Even Volkelt, who is inclined
to sever art and the sexual impulse each from the other, is unable
to deny the genetic connexion between the two. Oskar Bie
makes the interesting observation that " in aesthetic relationships
the cord of the will does not become thinner to the breaking
point, but stronger, until it becomes blind passion " (Neue
Deutsche Rundschau, 1894, p. 479). Nietzsche and Guyau have
also declared themselves opposed to Schopenhauer's theory
regarding the absence of a will-element in aesthetic perception.
Nietzsche speaks even of an " aesthetic of the sexual impulse."
Guyau bases his aesthetic upon the love of life and upon sexual

181

love (" Les Problemes de 1'Esthetique Contemporaine," Paris,
1897). Magnus Hirschfeld alludes in his " Wesen der Liebe "
("The Nature of Love"), p. 48, to a work by G-. Santayana
entitled " The Sense of Beauty," in which the theory is propounded
that " for human beings the whole of nature is an object of sexual
perception, and it is chiefly in this way that the beauty of nature
is to be explained." Finally, Gustav Naumann (" Sex and Art :
Prolegomena to Physiological ^Esthetics," Leipzig, 1899) says
most convincingly that the sexual is the root of all art, of all
aesthetics.

But whatever view may be held regarding the relationship
between sexuality and art, it is a quite incontestable fact that our
latter-day life is characterized by a need " for erotic illusion "
(to use the expression of Konrad Lange), that the slighter degree
of eroticism, as it exhibits itself in social intercourse between the
two sexes, is principally of an artistic nature. I do not speak
here merely of the dance as the artistic transfiguration of the
erotic phenomena of courtship, or of dress and fashion and the
whole milieu as aesthetic means of expression of the personality
(as they were described in earlier pages of this work), but I refer
above all to social intercourse as a whole, which to-day represents
a free and facile aesthetic element, in which modern love receives
its most manifold suggestions.

Emerson, in his essay on Love, has very beautifully described
the importance to our civilized life of these slight, imponderable
influences of an erotic-aesthetic nature ; and Konrad Lange, in
his " Wesen der Kunst " (vol. ii., p. 23 ; Berlin, 1901), refers the
pleasure of social intercourse ultimately to the sexual impulse,
even though therein sensuality is mitigated by illusion and is
elevated to a purer sphere. Erotic enjoyment is modified into a
" love-play," sensuality is refined, spiritualized, dematerialized.
It is precisely this aesthetic eroticism which at the present day
becomes of increasing importance in the emotional life of civilized
humanity, in the life of those engaged in the hard struggle for
existence, to whom time and leisure are lacking for the " great "
love-passion. For such as these, these gentler suggestions con-
stitute the true charm of life, into the dreary monotony of which
they bring light and colour.

In his excellent " Remarks on Goethe's Stella," Wilhelm
Scherer has assigned its true value to this erotic sestheticism and
aesthetic eroticism of society and social intercourse. He speaks
of a charm of personal presence, which brings out all that is
best in two human beings. He speaks of an enthusiastic and

182

complete surrender of the spirit and the emotions, in which the
souls seem to enter into inseparable union — and yet only seem.
For in reality this surrender occurs for weeks, for days, for
minutes, for moments, and to various persons. These frequent,
individual, purely spiritual contacts between the two sexes
have completely the character of aesthetic joy ; they give rise
to a perception of freedom, of liberation from the power of the
senses. Who does not know the happy freedom of spirit which is
aroused by the glance of a beautiful girl, by the smile of a
sympathetic face ?

This aesthetic incitation by means of eroticism has, moreover,
in it something vitalizing, something which spurs on the will,
because its cause — eroticism itself — contains within it such an
element of action and vital energy. The modern love ideals of
the sexes have a peculiar impulsive force. Classical beauty taken
by itself, and without the individual, personal characteristic
element, is valueless. And woman herself also is no longer the
patient Gretchen of yore. She must have temperament, char-
acter, passion — she must be a personality.

More than by the beautiful are we allured by the characteristic,
by the developed personality, by the passionate, the subjective
in woman — by that which, in pursuance of a false connotation,
is often now termed " nervous " beauty. The pale Josepha of
the days of Heine's boyhood is an example of this type.

In her " Buch der Frauen " (" Book of Women ") (Paris and
Leipzig, 1895), Laura Marholm has described in the figures of
Marie Bashkirtzeff, Anna Charlotte Loeffler, Eleonore Duse,
George Egerton, Amalie Skram, and Sonja Kowalewska, well-
marked and characteristic types of modern woman as a person-
ality.

This attraction to the characteristic, to the personal, in the
aspect of woman conflicts to some extent with the preference
arising under the influence of the English " Pre-Raphaelites,"
of Burne-Jones and Rossetti, for straight lines, for slender,
ethereal, unduly spiritual, supersensual forms, which no longer
express the free personality of the mature, complete woman,
but approximate rather to the infantile, asexual habitus. In
this case, however, we have to do with a mere transient fashion,
which cannot countervail the above characterized general ten-
dency towards the personal.

This personal, individual has in man even greater importance
than actual beauty. It is a distinctive fact that, throughout
the history of civilization, men have always had a clearer under-

183

standing of " masculine beauty " than women. Women have
preferred power, intelligence, energy of will, and marked indi-
viduality. Caroline Schlegel, in a letter to Luise Gotter,
writes of Mirabeau : " Hideous he may have been — he says so
himself frequently in his letters — but Sophie loved him, for what
women love in men is certainly not beauty " (" Letters of Caroline
Schlegel," vol. i., p. 93 ; edited by G. Waitz, Leipzig, 1871). This
conception also elucidates the words in the second part of Goethe's
" Faust " :

" Women, accustomed to man's love,
Fastidious are they not,
But cognoscenti ;

And equally with golden-haired swains
Shall we see black-bristly fauns,
As opportunity may serve,
Over their rounded limbs
Attain rights of possession."

It explains, too, the opinion of Eduard von Hartmann (" Philo-
sophic des Unbewussten " — " Philosophy of the Unconscious,"
p. 205; Berlin, 1874), that the most powerful passions are not
aroused by the most beautiful, but, on the contrary, by the
ugliest, individuals. The influence of powerfully developed in-
dividuality is, in fact, notably greater than that of physical
beauty. The mystic Swedenborg long ago declared that in man
woman desired truth, spiritual significance, not beauty alone.1
Herein we see a suggestion of the fact that true beauty is ulti-
mately spiritual beauty, the expression of the force of will, of
poietic activity, and of free personality.

1 " It is by no means rare," says Lermontoff in " Ein Hold unsrer Zeit "
(" A Hero of our own Time "), " for women to love such men to distraction, and
to be unwilling to exchange their hideousness for the beauty of an Endymion."

CHAPTER X

THE SOCIAL FORMS OF THE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP-
MARRIAGE

" The individualistic tendency, in the most decisive and charac-
teristic form peculiar to our system of civilization, is most happily
represented in the monogamic form of marriage ; for here, on the
woman's side also, the development of individuality is gently and
imperceptibly accomplished." — LUDWIG STEIN.

185

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER X

The disputed question of sexual promiscuity — The fact of its existence —
Westermarck's defective criticism of the doctrine of promiscuity — Per-
sistence of promiscuity until the present day — Ethnological proofs of this
fact — The researches of Friedrich S. Krauss — Marriage an artificial pro-
duct— Group-marriage — A form of limited promiscuity — Diffusion of
group-marriage — Connexion of polygamy and group-marriage — The loan
and the exchange of wives — Matriarchy and patriarchy — Progress from
lower to higher social forms of sexual relationship — Transition from matri-
archy to patriarchy — Formation of the patriarchal family — Marriage by
capture and marriage by purchase — The bright side of patriarchy —
Patriarchal forms of marriage — Polygamy and the patriarchal family —
Levitical marriage — Monogamic marriage — Coexistence with mono-
gamic marriage of a facultative polygamy — The conventional lie of marriage
— Hegel's definition of marriage — Criticism of this definition — Combination
of the matriarchal and the patriarchal forms of the sexual relationship —
Revival of the idea of matriarchy — Transformation of the ancient
patriarchal form of marriage to freer forms — Introduction of civil marriage
and divorce — Chief grounds for marriage reform — Duplex sexual morality
— Its origin — Criticism thereof — Relationship between prostitution and
the conventional coercive marriage — Necessity of, and justification for,
freer forms of marriage — Lecky's views on this subject — Roman concu-
binage, and the morganatic marriage — Significance of the sacramental
character of marriage — Sanction by the State of a freer form of marriage
(civil marriage, mixed marriage, divorce) — Psychology of love in the mar-
riage problem — Inconstancy of human love — The eternity lie — Transient
character of youthful love — Gutzkow, Kierkegaard, and Retif de la Bretonne
on this subject — The poetical character of the first stages of every love —
The sexual need for variety as an an thropologico -biological phenomenon —
This simply an explanatory principle, not an ideal — Rarity of the " only "
love — The psychologist Stiedenroth on this subject — The possibility of
love felt simultaneously for several persons — Explanation of this fact —
Examples — Difficulty of complete harmony between man and wife — The
ideal of the " one " love — Schleiermacher on the necessity for experiments in
love — The examples of Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient and Caroline Schel-
ling — The need for love unaffected by disillusion — Dangers of habituation
—The double role of habituation in marriage — Danger of intimate life in
common — The common bedroom — Unfavourable conditions with regard
to the relative ages of husband and wife — Increase in premature marriages
— Connexion of this phenomenon with the premature awakening of sexu-
ality— Too great a difference in age between husband and wife — Consequent
physiological disharmony — Postponement of marriage in consequence of
civilization — Diminution of marriages in various European countries —
Economical factors — Mercenary marriage a vestige of earlier times —

186

187

Disappearance of the economic background to marriage with the further
advance of civilization — Marriage and the price of corn — Part played by
mercenary marriage in various classes — Importance of economic factors
in marriage — Summary of the causes of the diminution of the " marriage
impulse " — " Conjugal rights " — Justification and misuse of these —
Boredom in married life — Marriage and disease — Opinion of an alienist
on the calamities of marriage — Statements of a wife — Schiller and Byron
upon love and marriage — A dictum of Socrates — Growing disinclination
to the coercive character of the marriage bond — Great increase in the
number of divorces in recent years — § 1568 of the Civil Code — Legal possi-
bility of several successive divorces on the part of the same individual —
A kind of civil sanction of free love — Dependence of the consciousness of
duty upon freedom — Grounds for divorce — Marriage reform in France —
Composition and programme of the French committee for marriage reform
— The idea of sexual responsibility.

Appendix : Report of one hundred typical marriages, and twelve charac-
teristic more detailed pictures of married life, after Gross-Hoffinger.

CHAPTER X

SINCE the subject first engaged my close attention, it has always
seemed to me incomprehensible that a dispute should ever have
arisen among anthropologists, ethnologists, and historians of
civilization as to whether, among the primitive forms of the
sexual relationship, marriage was the first, or whether it was
preceded by a state of sexual promiscuity.

Whoever knows the nature of the sexual impulse, whoever has
arrived at a clear understanding regarding the course of human
evolution, and, finally, whoever has studied the conditions that
even now prevail, alike among primitive peoples and among
modern civilized races, in the matter of sexual relations, can have
no doubt whatever that in the beginnings of human development
a state of sexual promiscuity did actually prevail.1

" The ideal goal," says Heinrich Schurtz, " towards which, more
or less consciously, civilized humanity is undoubtedly advancing, in-
voluntarily also becomes the standard by which the past is judged,
and sentiment and mood take the place of a single-minded endeavour
to arrive at truth."

Thus it has happened that the ideal of permanent marriage
between a single man and a single woman, which, in fact, as we
sliall proceed to explain, must persist as an ideal of civilization
never to be lost, has been employed as a standard for the judgment
of bygone conditions. This error is one into which Westermarck
more especially has fallen in his " History of Human Marriage "
(Jena, 1893) — a work of considerable value from its richness in
ethnological detail. Hence Westermarck's criticism of the

1 P. Nacke, one of the most trustworthy authorities on sexual anthropology,
writes as follows : " That in ancient times, before monogamy, there was poly-
gamy, or even a state resembling promiscuity, is very probable (Westermarck
notwithstanding), and can, in fact, be assumed a priori " (" Einiges zur Frauen-
frage und zur sexuellen Abstinenz " — " A Contribution to the Woman's Question
and to the Problem of Sexual Abstinence "), published in the Archiv /. Kriminal-
anthropologie, vol. xiv., p. 52 (Hans Gross, 1903). Cf. also Lohsing's " Zustim-
mung zur Annahme einer urspriinglichen Promiscuitat," ibid., vol. xvi., p. 332.

The question of sexual promiscuity has recently been further considered by
P. Nacke (" Earliest Beginnings of Human Society, in Die Umschan of August 17,
1907). He believes that the state of pure promiscuity lasted a short time only,
and gave place to certain nuclei of family structure, a kind of semi-promiscuity,
which, prior to the complete development of the family union, lasted much
longer than the state of pure promiscuity. Still, these earliest families were
merely temporary, and only later became fixed and permanent. This assump-
tion, however, does not affect the fact of a primordial pure promiscuity. Nacke
himself also recognizes promiscuity as the natural state of primitive man.

188

189

doctrine of promiscuity, based as it is upon false premises, " has
ultimately remained barren," as Heinrich Schurtz has proved.1
Westermarck, for example, simply ignores the fact that within
the group-marriage of sexual associates, within the totem,
promiscuity undoubtedly existed.

Since, as we shall see, among the tribes and races living in
social unions, sexual promiscuity can be proved to have existed
side by side with, and commonly in advance of, the development
of marriage, it is indubitable that primitive man, in whom the
sexual impulse was still purely instinctive, had simply no know-
ledge of " marriage " in the modern sense of the term. Other-
wise, indeed, the " mother-right " would not have been necessary,
for matriarchy was the typical expression of the uncertainty
of paternity which resulted from sexual promiscuity.

The great freedom of sexual intercourse in primitive times is
denoted by various investigators by many different terms ; some-
times it is called " promiscuity," sometimes " free-love," some-
times "group-marriage," "polyandry," "polygamy," "religious
and sexual prostitution," etc. The classical works of Bachofen,
Bastian, Giraud-Teulon, von Hellwald, Kohler, Friedrich S.
Krauss, Lubbock, MacLennan, Morgan, Friedrich Muller, Post,
H. Schurtz, Wilcken, and others, have proved beyond question
the existence of this primordial hetairism.

When modern critics at length find it convenient to admit the
overwhelming force of the enormous mass of evidence that has
been collected concerning this subject, they still exhibit a great
dislike to the conception and the term sexual " promiscuity,"
whereby is understood the boundless and indiscriminate inter-
mingling of the sexes. They admit the possibility of group-
marriage, although this is merely a socially limited form of pro-
miscuity ; they admit even the existence of polyandry and
polygamy, and of indiscriminate religious prostitution ; but they
refuse to believe in the existence of genuine promiscuity.

And yet, if they only chose to make use of their eyes, they
could observe sexual promiscuity at the present day among the
modern civilized nations. In certain strata and classes of the
population, such an indiscriminate and unregulated sexual inter-
course, in no way leading to the formation of enduring relation-
ships, can be observed to-day. Ask a young man, even of the
better classes, with how many women he has had connexion during

1 H. Schurtz, " Altersklassen und Mannerbiinde : eine Darstellung der Grund-
formen der Gesellschaft " — " Classes in Antiquity and Associations of Men :
a Demonstration of the Fundamental Forms of Society," p. 176 (Berlin, 1902).

190

a single year — not one of these need have been a prostitute —
and, if he speaks the truth, you will be astounded at the number
of the " objects of lust " ! This last expression is suitable enough,
because hi most cases there is no individual relationship between
such casual partners. Ask certain girls also — maidservants, for
example, or girls engaged in the manufacture of ready-made
clothing — and you will obtain analogous information regarding the
number of their annual lovers. Phillip Frey (" Der Kampf der
Geschlechter "— " The Battle of the Sexes," p. 51 ; Vienna, 1904)
bases on similar grounds the assumption of a primitive sexual
promiscuity ; he refers especially to the condition of the seaports :

" Ports in which ocean-going vessels come to harbour are familiar
with the sexual impulse in its most completely animal form, and
devoid of every refinement and concealment. We find ourselves
transported into the depths of an urgent primitiveness and savagery,
which gives the lie to the advance in civilization, and this will enable
us to form a clearer idea of the bestial indifference in sexual matters
that must have obtained amongst the herds of primitive man. Inter-
course between man and woman promoted by the lust of the moment,
dependent solely upon reciprocal animal desire, the various male and
female individuals of the human herd differing too little each from the
other to make it worth while to strive for permanent rights of pos-
session, the absence of any ownership of land amongst those wandering
to and fro through the primeval forest, the common ownership of
children by the herd or tribe — that such was the primitive, ape-like
condition of the human race, one actually inferior to that of many
other mammals, is a belief amply justified by the polygamous and
polyandrous instincts of homo sapiens, recurring again and again in
all the stages of civilization."

Fortunately, ethnology furnishes us with incontrovertible
proofs of genuine promiscuity.

Of the Nasomoni in Africa, Herodotus (iv. 172) reports :

" When a Nasomonian man takes his first wife, it is the custom that
on the first night the bride should be visited by each of the guests in
turn, and each one, as he leaves, gives her a present which he had
brought with him to the house."

Diodorus Siculus makes a similar report regarding the inhabi-
tants of the Balearic Islands (v. 18). Have we not here an echo
of primeval custom, of sexual promiscuity prior to marriage ?

Very interesting are the accounts recently given by Melnikow
regarding the free sexual relationships customary among the
Siberian Buryats. There before marriage unregulated sexual
intercourse between men and girls prevails. This is especially
to be observed at festival seasons. Such festivals occur usually
late in the evening, and can rightly be called " nights of love."

191

Near the villages bonfires are lighted, round which the men and
women dance monotonous dances termed "nadan." From time
to time pairs separate from the thousands of dancers, and dis-
appear into the darkness ; soon they return and resume their place
in the dance, to disappear again by and by into the obscurity ;
but they are not the same couples that disappear each time, for
they continually change partners.1

Is this not promiscuity ? In a mitigated form we can see the
same among ourselves. A case recently came under my notice
in which two friends made an exchange of their " intimates " ;
moreover, the " intimacy " in each case had been of very brief
duration. This, indeed, happened in the full light of day ; while
among the Buryats the darkness concealed a completely indis-
criminate promiscuity.

Marco Polo reports as a remarkable custom of the inhabitants
of Thibet, that there a man would in no circumstances marry a
girl who was a virgin, for they say a wife is worth nothing if she
has not had intercourse with men. Girls were offered to the
traveller, and he was expected to reward the courtesy with a ring
or some other trifle, which the girl, when she wished to marry,
would show as one of her " love-tokens." The more such tokens
she possessed, the more she was in request as a wife.2

From New Holland we receive similar reports.

Of especial importance, as proving the existence of sexual
promiscuity, are the investigations of the student of folk-lore,
Friedrich S. Krauss, regarding the sexual life of the Southern
Slavs. Krauss has, indeed, rendered most valuable aids to the
scientific study and anthropological foundation of the human
sexual life ; a place of honour among the founders of " anthropo-
logia sexualis " must be given to Krauss, and also to Bastian,
Post, Kohler, Mantegazza, and Ploss-Bartels.

Dr. Krauss first published his pioneer investigations in
" Kryptadia," vols. vi. and vii. (Paris, 1899 and 1901) ; but later
he founded an annual for the record of researches into the folk-
lore and ethnology of the sexual life, entitled " Anthopophyteia :
Jahrbuch fiir folkloristische Erhebungen und Forschungen zur
Entwicklungsgeschichte der geschlectlichen Moral " — " Anthro-
pophyteia : Annual for Folk-lorist Investigations and Researches
in the History of the Evolution of Sexual Morality." This has
been published now for four years, 1904-1907, Krauss having the

1 N. Melnikow, " The Buryate of the District of Irkutsk," published in the
Transactions of the Berlin Society of Anthropology, Ethnology, and Primeval
History," p. 440(1899).

3 Marco Polo, translated by Vulo, 2nd edition, vol. ii., pp. 38, 39 (London; 1875).

192

co-operation of anthropologists, ethnologists, folk-lorists, and
medical men, such as Thomas Achelis, Iwan Bloch, Franz Boas,
Albert Eulenburg, Anton Herrmann, Bernhard Obst, Giuseppe
Pitr6, Isak Robinsohn, and Karl von dem Steinen. It constitutes
a most important addition to the hitherto very scanty works for
the scientific study of sexual problems. Later, I shall have
occasion to refer again to this important undertaking. Krauss,
who, as he himself says, is insensitive to the romantic appeal of
folk-lore, but has an open mind for the realities and possibilities
of human history, has proved in this publication the unquestion-
able existence of sexual promiscuity among the Southern Slavs.
As he himself declares, such an abundance of trustworthy proofs,
obtained by a professional folk-lorist, regarding the existence of a
form of sexual promiscuity within the narrow sphere of a single
geographical province of research, has not hitherto been
available.

It is, moreover, perfectly clear that the human need for sexual
variety, which is an established anthropological phenomenon,1
must in primitive times have been much stronger and more
unbridled, in proportion as the whole of life had not hitherto
risen above the needs of purely physical requirements. Since
even in our own time, in a state of the most advanced civilization,
after the development of a sexual morality penetrating and
influencing our entire social life, this natural need for variety
continues to manifest itself in almost undiminished strength, we
can hardly regard it as necessary to prove that in primitive con-
ditions sexual promiscuity was a more original, and, indeed, a
more natural, state than marriage.

\ J For from the purely anthropological standpoint — only from this
standpoint, since with questions of morality, society, and civiliza-
tion we are not now concerned — permanent marriage appears a
thoroughly artificial institution, which even to-day fails to do
justice to the human need for sexual variety, since, indeed, vast
numbers of men live de jure monogamously, but de facto poly-
gamously — a fact pointed out by Schopenhauer. This criticism
is, of course, based upon purely physical sensual considerations ;
it does not touch marriage as an ideal of civilization possessing a
spiritual and moral content.

The other social forms of sexual intercourse, forms whose exist-
ence is admitted even by the critics of promiscuity, are character-
ized by frequent changes in sexual relationships. This is

1 <7/. my " Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. i.,
pp. 165-169.

193

especially true of the oldest form of marriage, the so-called
" group-marriage."1

Group-marriage is not a union in marriage of isolated indi-
viduals, but such a union between two tribal groups, composed
respectively of male and female individuals, a union between
the so-called totems.

The social instinct, the impulse towards companionship, upon
which even to-day the State and the family depend, united man-
kind at one time into tribes of a peculiar kind, which felt themselves
to constitute single individuals, and believed themselves to be
inspired by an animal spirit, their protective spirit. Their union
was known as the totem.

Group-marriage is the marriage of one totem with another—
that is, the men of one totem-group marry the women of another,
and vice versa. But no individual man has any particular wife.
On the contrary, if, for example, twenty men of the first totem
espoused twenty women of the second totem, then each one of
the twenty men had an equivalent share of each one of the
twenty women, and vice versa. This was indeed an advance over
unrestricted sexual promiscuity, limited by no social forms ;
but it afforded no possibility of any individual relationships of
love, it remained promiscuity within narrow bounds. Group-
marriages exist at the present day in Australia in a well-developed
form among certain tribes ; whilst, as an occasional custom, in
the form of an exchange of wives among friends, guests, and
relatives, it appears to be almost universally diffused throughout
Australia. Schurtz regards Australian group-marriage as a
kind of partial taming of the wild sexual impulse.

Well known is the description of group-marriage in ancient
Britain given by Julius Caesar : " The husbands possess their
wives to the number of ten or twelve in common, and more especi-
ally brothers with brothers, or parents with children." Here we
have a special variety of group-marriage.

According to Bernhoft, polyandry is also to be regarded as the

1 C/., regarding group-marriage, the writings of Joseph Kehler, more par-
ticularly " Zur Urgeschichte der Ehe " — " The Primitive History of Marriage "
(Stuttgart, 1897) ; " Rechtephilosophie und Naturrecht " — " The Philosophy of
Law and Natural Right," published in Holtzendorff-Kohler's " Enoyklopadie
der Rechtewissenschaft," pp. 27-36 (Leipzig, 1902) ; " Die Gruppenehe "-
" Group-Marriage," in " Aus Kultur und Leben," pp. 22-29 (Berlin, 1904) ;
finally the chapter on " Group-Marriage " by Schurtz (op. cit). [A quite
modorn instance of group -marriage was the Oneida community, "a league of
two hundred persons to regard their children as 'common.' " For an account
of the Oneida experiment see Noyos, "A History of American Socialisms." —
TRANSLATOR.]

194

vestige of a primitive form of group-marriage, arising from a
deficiency of women in a totem, so that one woman was left as
the representative of the totem married to several husbands.
Marshall has, in fact, amongst the polyandrous Toda in Southern
India, actually observed group-marriage side by side with
polyandry.

Among certain Indian tribes we find even at the present day
indications of group-marriage. For example, the husband will
have a claim on the sisters of his wife, or even on her cousins or
her aunts, and gradually he may marry them. In this case we
see that polygyny has developed out of the group-marriage.

The widely diffused practice of wife-lending and wife-exchange
is also connected with the conditions of group marriage. In
Hawaii, in Australia, among the Massai and the Herero in South
Africa, we encounter this custom, but more especially in Angola
and at the mouth of the Congo, also in North-Eastern Asia, and
among many tribes of North American Indians.

Schurtz points out that similar conditions may arise among
European proletariat in consequence of inadequate housing
accommodation.

In this state of a somewhat limited promiscuity the only
natural tie was that between mother and child. The child
belonged exclusively to the mother, and therefore, in the wider
sense, belonged to his mother's totem. As Bachofen proved in
his celebrated work,1 in primeval times, and among many primi-
tive tribes even at the present day, the " mother-right " (matri-
archy), founded upon purely sensual, non-individual relations,
was predominant ; and only with the appearance of freer, more
spiritual, more individual relations between the sexes (though this
did not necessarily involve the development of monogamy) was
" mother-right " first superseded by " father-right " (patriarchy).

These recent ethnological researches have proved the untena-
bility of Westermarck's criticism of the doctrine of promiscuity ;
it is no longer possible to doubt the fact of a primitive sex-
companionship, taking the form of a more or less limited pro-
miscuity of sexual intercourse. Ludwig Stein also lays stress on
this view.2 The sexual relationships of the primeval hordes were
either quite unregulated, or regulated only to a very small extent.

In this view of the matter there is nothing in any sense degrad-
ing to the human race ; on the contrary, in the development of

1 J. J. Bachofen, " Das Mutterrecht "— " Matriarchy" (Stuttgart, 1861).

2 Ludwig Stein, " Die Anfange der Kultur " — " The Beginnings of Civiliza-
tion "—pp. 106, 107.

195

individual, enduring relationships between man and woman out
of a condition of primitive promiscuity, we see manifested a con-
tinuous progression from lower to higher social forms of the
sexual relationships, a gradual improvement and ennoblement of
these relationships, until the development of monogamic mar-
riage (which even to-day is merely an ideal state, since the
reality does not correspond to it, or the original pure idea has been
falsified and obscured).

The transition from matriarchy, resting on a purely natural
basis, in which women assumed a leading social position, and
often also a leading political position, to patriarchy, in which
the spiritual and the individual relationships were brought into
the foreground, signified a great step forward in the develop-
mental history of marriage. Bachofen was the first to recognize
the profound importance in the history of civilization and for
the spiritual and social life of humanity of this transition of the
mother-right to the father-right, from matriarchy to patriarchy.
Schurtz found the following formula to express the change :

" Woman is the central point of the natural groups arising from
sexual intercourse and reproduction ; man, on the other hand, is the
creator of free forms of society based upon the sympathy of like
kinds."

The development of the individual personal marriage is most
intimately dependent upon patriarchy. In this sense, but only
in this sense, Eduard von Mayer is right when he points to man
as the true creator of the family. For under the matriarchal
system the " family " was incomplete : it consisted only of mother
and child. Only with the development of patriarchy could the
family become a complete whole. This patriarchal family, which
is also our modern family, is thus " the masculine form of the
human tendency to social aggregation."1

The father-right consisted in the right of the father over the
wife and her children ; it was a right of domination acquired by
a severe struggle. The rape of women and marriage by capture
belong to the beginnings of patriarchy ; later, when woman,
completely enslaved, had fallen to the position of a mere chattel,
marriage by purchase was introduced. The debased position
of women under the domination of the primitive father-right can
be best studied among the Greeks, where free sexual relationships
were possible only in connexion with hetairae and the love of boys.
To the Greeks of classical antiquity the love of boys was precisely

1 Eduard von Mayor, " Die Lebensgesetzo dor Kultur "• " The Vital Laws of
Civilization "—p. 210.

13—2

196

that which to the modern civilized man hetero-sexual love is,
resting upon the most personal, most individual, most spiritual
contact and understanding.

Kohler has beautifully described the bright side of the com-
plete and unrestricted father-right :

" Now for the first time the man founds his home ; he is the master
of the domestic herd, he is the priest of sacrifice at the domestic altar ;
his ancestors are present in the spirit ; he honours them ; the house
is permeated by them. In his house nothing unclean shall exist ;
he teaches the children propriety and dependence on the family ; and
the wife, at the moment when, as a bride, she crosses the threshold of
her husband's house, or is carried across it, gives up her household
gods ; his home is now her home. Now, at the domestic hearth, the
virtues flourish — those virtues which become the preliminaries of
national greatness. In the bosom of his family the man gains power,
which fits him for the most important functions, whether in the life
of the State or in the life of science ; and a township or an agri-
cultural community based upon such conditions constitutes the
necessary foundation upon which to erect the structure of ethical,
scientific, and political life. The wife passes into the background,
but in the house she develops new virtues ; self-sacrifice to the family,
a domestic sense, joy in the home, amiability in narrower circles, are
the bright sides of her influence, for the wife knows how to develop
everywhere beautiful traits of character, so long as her lot is not cast
amidst rude or degenerating conditions."

The most ancient form of marriage under the father-right was
polygamy, as, for example, we find it described in the Old
Testament. Here we have a typical picture of the patriarchal
order of family. The head of the house and of the family has
a principal wife for the procreation of legitimate issue, but, in
addition, numerous concubines. Among the Jews, the great
stress laid upon father-right gave rise to the so-called " Levi-
ratsehe " — that is to say, a widowed wife was compelled to marry
the brother of her deceased husband, in order that the race of
the dead man should be continued. Out of this patriarchal
polygamy there gradually arose monogamic marriage, which
down to the present time — let us insist on the matter once
for all — has remained an ideal, never in reality attained, either
by the Greeks or Romans or in the modern civilized world. For
the modern civilized marriage is mainly a production of the
father-right, and stands under the dominion of " man-made "
morality, which, beside monogamy, legally established and
assumed to be binding, tolerates " facultative polygamy " ;
hence there is here concealed an element of lying and hypocrisy
which has rightly brought into discredit the modern patriarchal
marriage as a conventional form among those who regard as the

197

true ideal of marriage in the future the enduring life in common
of two free personalities endowed with equal rights.

Hegel, in his celebrated definition of marriage,1 which he
regards as the embodiment of the reality of the species and as the
spiritual unity of the natural sexes brought about by self-con-
scious love, as legal-moral love, has not done justice to the
recognition and development of the individuality of both parties.
The " unity," the " one body and one soul," corresponds indeed
to the patriarchal conception, according to which the woman is
completely absorbed into the man ; it does not correspond,
however, to the modern idea of individual marriage, in which
both man and woman are united as free personalities. This, as
we shall see later, is the meaning of the struggle for " free-love,"
which must not be confused, as, for example, it is confused by
Ludwig Stein ("Beginnings of Civilization," p. 110), with the
free-love, the hetairism, of ancient times, or with the simple
extra-conjugal intercourse of the present day.

Neither the mother-right alone, nor the father-right alone, is
competent to satisfy the ideals of modern civilized human beings,
in respect of the configuration of the social forms of the amatory
life. This is only possible when both forms of right are united
in a new form, by equal rights given to both sexes.2

Hence, in association with the endeavour for the free individual
development of the feminine nature, we find also the tendency
to reintroduce into public life, into true valuation and honour,
the ancient conception of the mother-right.

" Slowly and gradually," says Kohler, " has the reawakened idea
of the mother-right been gnawing with a sharp tooth, now in one way,
now in another, at the rigid fetters of this system, and has loosened
them. . . . That in this manner woman will attain a worthier position
is certain. But the unitary family-sense has long ceased among us
to be the powerful incentive to action that it is among the purely
agnate (patriarchal) peoples. . . . Our own conditions render it pos-
sible that the institutions of civilization will continue to thrive, even
though the family tie is no longer tense and exclusive."

The modern civilized man can quietly accustom himself to the
idea that the old patriarchal family under the dominion of the
father-right will gradually disappear ; and that at the same time
the patriarchal conventional marriage of ancient times, still to

1 G. F. W. Hegel, " Fundamental Outlines of the Philosophy of Law, or
Natural Rights and Political Science in Outline," edited by Eduard Cans, second
edition, p. 218 (Berlin, 1840).

2 That is to say, it is not sufficient to replace the father-right by the mother-
right, as, for example, Ruth Bre demands (" The (Children of the State, or tho
Mother-Right ?" Leipzig, 1904).

198

all appearance so firmly established, will be replaced by other,
freer forms. The idea of marriage, and its value as a form of
social life, remains meanwhile unaffected. It is possible to be a
critic of the old, outlived form of marriage, without therefore
being exposed to the suspicion of wishing to dispense with the
idea of " marriage " altogether. The one-sided, juristic, political,
sacramental, and ecclesiastical conception of the past does justice
neither to the social nor to the individual significance of marriage.
He who, like Westermarck, regards monogamic marriage as
something primitively ordained, as if it were a biological fact, and
denies completely the development of that institution out of
lower forms, denies also the possibility of any extensive trans-
formation of the existing forms of marriage. The common
mistake is, to place on the one hand monogamy in its most ideal
form, that of life-long marriage, and on the other hand, the so-
called " free love," understanding by free love completely unregu-
lated extra-conjugal sexual intercourse. It is not a matter for
surprise that, in respect of both of these extreme forms of sexual
relationship, a pessimistic view should easily gain ground. Accord-
ing to the point of view, one party will insist on the intolerable
character, in relation to the need for individual freedom and as
regards the development of personality, of a lifelong marriage
of duty ; whilst the other party will lay stress upon the equally
great, if not greater, dangers of the unrestrained practice of extra-
conjugal sexual intercourse.

With regard to recent views on the marriage problem, the
reader will do well to consult the thoughtful pamphlet of Gabriele
Reuter, " The Problem of Marriage " (Berlin, 1907). The author
points out that there is a " deep-lying dissatisfaction with the
existing marriage conditions, a yearning and restless need for
improvement." In marriage, she holds, the bodily and spiritual
process of human development is completed in the most concen-
trated manner. As a cause of the numerous unhappy marriages
of our time, she points to the divergencies, so widely manifest at
the present day, between modes of thought and views of life
among members of the same strata of society and among those
of the same degree of education, more especially in religious
matters, and she refers also to experiments made in respect of
new modes of life, such as the woman's movement. According
to Gabriele Reuter, the child will become the regulator of all the
changes in the married state which we have to expect in the
future. As " marriage," she defines that earnest union between
man and woman which is formed for the purpose of a life in

199

common, and with the intention of procreating and bringing up
children, and she regards it as altogether beside the question
whether that union has been affected with or without civil or
ecclesiastical sanction. In contrast with this idea of " marriage,"
there would be other fugitive or more enduring unions, serving
only for excitement and sensual enjoyment. It is interesting to
note that the author recommends to the modern woman " good-
humoured and motherly forbearance " in respect of marital
infidelity. For a woman's own good and for that of her children,
it is more important that her husband should show her love,
respect, and friendship, than that he should preserve unconditional
physical faithfulness. But the author here ignores the possi-
bility of venereal infection as a result of occasional unfaithfulness,
which very seriously threatens the well-being of the wife and the
children ! Very wisely she advises a facilitation of divorce. This
would not make husband and wife careless in their relations one
to the other ; on the contrary, it would make both more careful
and thoughtful in the avoidance of anything causing pain to one
another. The children should always remain with the mother
up to the age of fourteen years. A detailed and valuable account
of the problems of modern marriage will be found also in the
work " Regarding Married Happiness : the Experiences, Reflec-
tions, and Advice of a Physician " (Wiesbaden, 1906).

Fortunately, by the legal introduction of civil marriage and
of divorce the necessity has now been recognized by the State
of leaving open for many persons a middle course — one which lies
between lifelong marriage (whose sacramental character is thus
abandoned) and free extra-conjugal sexual intercourse, and yet
maintains the tendency towards the ideal of monogamic marriage.

The principle of divorce forms the most important foundation
at once for a future reformation of marriage, and for a rational
view, one doing equal justice to the interests of society and those
of the individual, of the relations between man and wife. By the
introduction of divorce, the State itself has recognized the purely
personal character of conjugal relations, and has admitted that
circumstances arise in which the marriage ceases to fulfil its aims
and becomes injurious to both parties. Thus the State has pro-
claimed the rights of the individual personality in the married
state.

In the marriage problem, the so-called " duplex sexual
morality " also plays an important part — that is to say, the idea
that man is by nature inclined to polygamy, but woman to
monogamy. Herein, indeed, the thoroughly correct idea was

200

dominant that the cohabitation of one woman with several men —
be it understood we refer to simultaneous cohabitation — is harmful
to the offspring. From this, however, the only permissible
inference is that for the purposes of the procreation of children
and of racial hygiene " monogamy " can be demanded of woman
on rationalistic grounds — that is to say, the intercourse of woman
should be restricted to a single man during such a time and for
such a purpose. But it is not legitimate from these considerations
to deduce the necessity of permanent " monandry " for woman.

I will consider this question somewhat more exactly, and in
doing so will refer to the interesting essay of Rudolph Eberstadt
on " The Economic Importance of Sanitary Conditions " in
relation to marriage, being the concluding chapter of " Health
and Disease in Relation to Marriage and the Married State,"
by Senator and Kaminer (Rebman, 1906), because here we find
a very clear recognition of the confusion between monogamy and
monandry.

According to Eberstadt, there are above all two things charac-
teristic of modern civilized marriage — in the first place, the
higher rank allotted to the husband in the married state, and, in
the second place, the increased demand for prenuptial purity
and for conjugal fidelity on the part of the wife. The husband
demands from his wife, in addition to his own mastership in the
married state, also sexual continence before marriage and uncon-
ditional fidelity during marriage. But the husband does not
recognize that corresponding duties are imposed on himself.

This difference of judgment regarding extra-conjugal sexual
intercourse on the part of husband and wife respectively, depends
entirely upon the perfectly sound experience that simultaneous
cohabitation on the part of a woman with several men obscures
paternity, and therewith the foundations of the family, quite
apart from a not uncommon physical injury to the child. This
natural difference between man and woman, in respect of sexual
intercourse and its consequences, will always endure. A man
can simultaneously cohabit with two women without thereby
interfering with the formation of a family ; but a woman cannot
with similar impunity cohabit with two men. It is possible that
the demand for the virgin intactness of the wife at the time of
marriage is based upon the old experience that by sexual inter-
course, and still more by the first conception, certain far-reaching
specific changes are induced in the feminine organism, so that the
first man impregnates the feminine being for ever in his own
sense, and even transmits his influence to children of a second

201

male progenitor. (Cf. in this connexion G. Lomer, " Love and
Psychosis," p. 37.)

"It is not the brutality of man," says Eberstadt, " which has im-
posed a higher responsibility upon woman ; Nature herself has done
this. Nature has endowed man and woman differently in respect of
the consequences of sexual intercourse. The fruit of intercourse is
entrusted to the woman alone. Now, one who has special responsi-
bilities has also special duties. Certain breaches of conjugal respon-
sibility are more sternly condemned when committed by the man ;
certain others — especially such as concern care for the offspring
— are more severely judged in the wife. The relative positions
in respect of sexual intercourse are different in man and in woman,
for reasons which are physical and inalterable. Seduction, ill-treat-
ment, abandonment of a wife, and adultery, are punished in the hus-
band by law and custom. The wife, on the other hand, loses her
honour simply on account of promiscuous and unregulated inter-
course, because Nature herself forbids this intercourse if the material
and spiritual tie between mother, father, and child is to persist."

In accordance with these considerations, Eberstadt holds fast
to the demand for " monandry " on the part of the wife ; he
rejects on principle the idea of sexual equality between man and
wife, and relegates the progressive development of marriage
exclusively to the spiritual and moral provinces.

Although we recognize the general accuracy of this view, and
admit that it is based upon conditions imposed once for all by
Nature herself, still we are compelled to regard it as too narrow
and one-sided, for it completely overlooks the fact that this
demand for monandric love on the part of woman can be fulfilled
in association with a freer moulding of woman's amatory life.
We need merely think of the often happy marriages of one woman
to several men — nota bene in temporal succession — in which
marriages perfectly healthy children have been born to different
fathers, in order to see that for the woman of the future a freer
moulding of the amatory life is also possible, though admittedly
within narrower limits than in the case of man. Just as the
mastership of the husband must give place to an equality of
authority on the part of husband and wife, considered as two free
personalities, so also must the " duplex morality " undergo a
revision in the sense above indicated.

In passing, let us remark that all those who proscribe any
kind of extra-conjugal intercourse on the part of woman, and
who love to brand as an " outcast " any woman who indulges in
it, should have their attention directed for a moment to the
tremendous fact of politically tolerated, and even legalized,
prostitution, which, like a haunting shadow, accompanies the

202

so-called conventional marriage — a shadow growing ever larger
the more strictly, exclusively, and narrowly the idea of this
" marriage " is conceived.1

The civilized ideal of marriage is the lifelong duration of the
marriage between two free, independent, mature personalities,
who share fully love and life, and by a common life-work further
their own advantage and the well-being of their children. But
this rarely attained ideal of civilization in no way excludes other
forms of marriage, which have a more transient and temporary
character, without thereby doing any harm either to the
individual or to society.

More than forty years ago Lecky, the English historian of
civilization, an investigator whom no one can blame, in respect
of the tendency of his writings, for advancing lax ideas regarding
sexual morality or for advising libertinage, expressed himself
admirably on this subject. In his " History of European Morals "
he wrote :

" In these considerations, we have ample grounds for maintaining
that the lifelong union of one man and of one woman should be the
normal or dominant type of intercourse between the sexes. We can
prove that it is on the whole most conducive to the happiness, and
also to the moral elevation, of all parties. But beyond this point it
would, I conceive, be impossible to advance, except by the assistance
of a special revelation ! It by no means follows that because this
should be the dominant type, it should be the only one, or that the
interests of society demand that all connexions should be forced into
the same die. Connexions, which were confessedly only for a few
years, have always subsisted side by side with permanent marriages ;
and in periods when public opinion, acquiescing in their propriety,
inflicts no excommunication on one or both of the parties, when these
partners are not living the demoralizing and degrading life which
accompanies the consciousness of guilt, and when proper provision is
made for the children who are born, it would be, I believe, impossible
to prove, by the light of simple and unassisted reason, that such con-
nexions should be invariably condemned. It is extremely important,
both for the happiness and for the moral well-being of men, that life-
long unions should not be effected simply under the imperious prompt-
ing of a blind appetite. There are always multitudes who, in the
period of their lives when their passions are most strong, are incapable
of supporting children in their own social rank, and who would there-
fore injure society by marrying in it, but are nevertheless perfectly
capable of securing an honourable career for their illegitimate chil-

1 There is & most apposite remark in one of George Meredith's novels. He
imagines that an Oriental vizier (from a Mohammedan country) is visiting our
" Christian " capital, and late one evening, after a dinner-party at a distinguished
house, walks homeward by way of Piccadilly. He asks, and is told, who are the
numerous ladies walking the streets at that late hour. " / perceive," said
the vizier, " that monogamic society has a decent visage and a hideous rear."-
TBANSLATOB.

203

dren in the lower social sphere to which these would naturally belong (!).
Under the conditions I have mentioned these connexions are not
injurious, but beneficial, to the weaker partner ; they soften the differ-
ences of rank, they stimulate social habits, and they do not produce
upon character the degrading effect of promiscuous intercourse, or
upon society the injurious effects of imprudent marriages, one or
other of which will multiply in their absence. In the immense variety
of circumstances and characters, cases will always appear in which,
on utilitarian grounds, they might seem advisable."

In ancient Rome these laxer unions were recognized by law as
a form of marriage, and this legal recognition protected them,
notwithstanding the unlimited freedom of divorce, from social
contempt and stigmatization. " Concubinage " was such a
second kind of marriage, which was thoroughly recognized
and thoroughly honourable. The arnica convictrix or uxor
gratuita was neither a legitimate wife nor simply a mistress ;
she had rather the position of women in our own day who have
contracted a " morganatic " marriage, a " left-handed marriage."
The only difference was that these ancient unions were more
readily dissoluble.

It was the Christian dogma and the sacramental and lifelong
character of marriage which first caused the stamp of infamy
to be impressed upon all other varieties of sexual intercourse.
The religious marriage was in its very nature indissoluble ;
indeed, by forbidding mixed marriages (marriages between
Christian and pagan) individual freedom was entirely prohibited.

In contrast with this ancient religious view, the State, by the
introduction of civil marriage, of mixed marriage (vide supra),
and of divorce, has been compelled to make continually greater
concessions to modern ideas, and has already recognized in
principle that marriages limited in duration harmonize exceed-
ingly well with the demands of civilization ; that in general, as
Lecky maintained, the recent changes in economic conditions have
a much greater influence upon marriage and the forms of marriage
than the ecclesiastical and mystical conception of the institution.

Anyone who wishes to gain an insight into this very difficult
problem of modern marriage must first obtain clear views in
respect of certain peculiarities of individual human love, regarding
the intimate connexion of which with the whole process of mental
evolution we have already dealt in earlier chapters.

Max Nordau has written a celebrated chapter on " The Lie of
Marriage,"1 and in the light of reality marriage is, in fact, often

1 M. Nordau, " The Conventional Lies of our Civilization," pp. 263-317
(Leipzig, 1884).

204

such a lie as he describes, especially in view of the fact that not
less than 75 per cent, of modern marriages are so-called
" marriages of convenience," and in no sense are properly love-
marriages.1

But it is a well-known fact that these marriages of reason are
often more enduring than love-marriages. This depends upon
the nature of human love, which is by no means inalterable, but
changes in accordance with the various developmental phases of
the individual, needs new incitements and new individual
relationships.

In No. 14,919 of the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, March 6, 1906,
there appeared among the advertisements a remarkable question,
which was probably directed by a betrayed or deceived lover to his
beloved :

" Ewige Liebe — ewige Luge ?"

" Eternal Love— Eternal Lie ?"

Love also, personal love, is transitory, like man himself, like
the isolated individual. It differs in the different ages of life ;
it differs, too, according to its object for the time being. Eduard
von Hartmann calls love a thunderstorm, which does not discharge
in a single flash of lightning, but gradually discharges the electrical
energy in several successive flashes, and after the discharge
" there comes the cool wind, the heaven of consciousness clears
once more, and we look round astonished at the fertilizing rain
falling on the ground, and at the clouds fleeing towards the
distant horizon."

All those who are well acquainted with humanity, all poets and
psychologists, are in agreement respecting the fugitive character
of youthful love. For this reason, they advise against marriage
concluded during the passion of early youth. This poetry of
love at first sight is, according to Gutzkow, the eternal game of
chance of our young people, in which their health, their life, and
their future go to wreck.

Another keen observer, Kierkegaard, in his " Diary of a
Seducer," says :

" Love has many mysteries, and this first love is also a mystery, if
not the greatest. Most men in their ardent passion are as if insane ;
they become engaged or commit some other stupidity, and in a moment
it is all over, and they know once more what it has cost them, what
they have lost."

1 Georg Hirth estimates the percentage of marriages of convenience as even
higher— viz., 90 per cent. Cf. his " Ways to Love," p. 607.

205

And, finally, a third eminent writer on eroticism, Retif de la
Bretonne, says :

" It is a folly of the same kind to trust the constancy of a young
man of twenty years of age. At this age it is less a woman that one
loves than women ; one is intoxicated rather by sensual phenomena
than by the individual, however lovable that individual may be."

But to youth love is almost always no more than a beautiful
memory, a vanishing paradise. There clings to it something
imperishable, which has, however, no binding force.

And just as to every man the love of youth appears ideal in
character, precisely because it is not subjected to the rude con-
siderations of reality, so also in every subsequent love it is almost
always the first beginnings only in which true beauty and deep
perception are experienced.

" A thousand years of tears and pains," Goethe makes his Stella
say, " could not counterpoise the happiness of the first glance, the
trembling, the stammering, the approach and the withdrawal, the
self-forgetfulness, the first fugitive ardent kiss, and the first gently
breathing embrace."

The eternal duration of such feelings is contradicted by an
anthropologico-biological phenomenon of human sexuality, which
I have described as " the need for sexual variety."1 Human love,
as a whole and in its individual manifestations, is dominated
and influenced by the need for change and variety. Schopen-
hauer drew attention to this primordial and fundamental pheno-
menon of human love ; he was wrong, however, in limiting it
to the male sex.2 As I have already insisted, this general human
need for variety in sexual relationships is to be regarded rather
as a general principle of explanation of admitted facts, than as a
desirable ideal. On the contrary, in my opinion, faithfulness,
constancy, and durability in love, bring under control and
diminish this need for sexual variety, through the recognition
of the eminent advances in civilization by means of which the
human amatory life will be further developed and perfected in
a higher sense. But the facts of daily observation are not to be
shuffled out of existence by any kind of hypocrisy or prudery.
They must be faced and dealt with.

First, it is an incontestable fact that the so-called " only "
love is one of the greatest rarities ; that, on the contrary, in the

1 Cf. my " Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. i.,
pp. 165-174 ; vol. ii., pp. 190, 191, 208, 209, 363, 364.

2 Schopenhauer's Collected Works, edited by E. Grisebach, vol. ii., p. 1337
(Liepzig, 1905).

206

life of the majority of men and women a frequent repetition and
renewal of love-sentiments and love-relationships occurs. For
the most part these loves occur at successive intervals. Stieden-
roth, in his admirable " Psychology," makes the following
remarks regarding these successive outbursts of passion and the
transitory character of the feeling of love :

" Since no two human beings are precisely alike, one will at one
time love passionately one only ; in succession, however, several can
be loved, and the opinion that one person only can be loved in a life-
time originates in rare dreams regarding the ideal, of which a quite
false representation is made. An object can indeed appear which
transcends the ideal hitherto conceived ; but passion does not need
a fully developed ideal for its first foundation ; it needs merely that
which in the theory of the feelings has been found to be a necessary
condition of love. That every love gladly thinks itself immortal,
lies in the nature of the case, for on account of the overwhelming
character of the sensations of love, it is impossible to understand how
they can ever come to an end. Experience, however, teaches us the
contrary, and insight enables us to recognize the reason."1

Regarding the frequent occurrence of several love-passions
on the part of the same person, there can be two opinions ; but
is it possible that anyone can simultaneously be in love with
several individuals ? I answer this question with an uncon-
ditional " Yes," and I agree fully with Max Nordau when he
explains that it is possible to love at the same time several
individuals with almost identical tenderness, and that it is not
necessarily lying when ardent passion for each of them is ex-
pressed.2

It is precisely the extraordinarily manifold spiritual differ-
entiation of modern civilized humanity that gives rise to the
possibility of such a simultaneous love for two individuals. Our
spiritual nature exhibits the most varied colouring. It is difficult
always to find the corresponding complements in one single
individual.

I ask those who are well acquainted with modern society if
they have not met men, and women also, who had advanced so
far in the adaptation of their love-needs to the anatomical
analysis of their psychical life, that for the romantic, realistical,
aesthetic traits of their nature, for the lyrical or dramatic moods
of their heart, they demanded correspondingly different lovers ;
and if these several lovers should encounter each other, and be
angry with one another, the one who loved them both (or all)

1 Ernest Stiedenroth, " Psychologic zur Erklarung der Seelenerscheinungen,"
pp. 224, 225 (Berlin, 1826).

2 Max Nordau, " Conventional Lies," p. 305.

207

would be inclined to cry out in naive astonishment, like the
heroine in Gutzkow's " Seraphine," " Love one another ! love
one another ! You are all one, one — in me !"

In the romance " Leonide," by Emerentius Scavola, the heroine
is at the same time the wife of two husbands. Reality also is
familiar with double love of this kind — for example, in the
relationship of the Princess Melanie Metternich to her husband,
the celebrated statesman, and to her previous bridegroom, Baron
Hugel.1 Especially frequent is the gratification of higher ideal
needs and of the simple natural impulse, by means of two different
persons. A man can love at the same time a woman of genius
and a simple child of Nature. In the novel " Double Love "
(1901), Elisar von Kupffer describes the simultaneous love of
a learned man for his extremely intelligent wife and for a buxom
servant-girl. A well-known example is also the double love of
Wieland — the ideal love for Sophie Laroche, the frankly sensual
love for Christine Hagel. But not only do differences of culture,
of position, of character, play a part in such multiple love ; the
simple difference also of bodily appearance may lead to such
simultaneous attractions ; for example, a man may love at the
same time a brunette and a blonde, an elegant little sylph and a
distinguished presence. This is, however, on the whole, much rarer
than simultaneous attraction to two different spiritual varieties.

Such facts as these are not to be employed so much in advocacy
of the multiplication of love-relationships as for the illustration
of the enormous difficulty in obtaining complete harmony between
human beings, between one man and one woman. There remains
always a balance of yearning, which the other does not fulfil ;
always a balance of striving, which the other is unable to under-
stand. This cannot, however, affect in the slightest degree the
ideal of the single love ; on the contrary, it makes it stand out all
the more brilliantly before our spiritual vision. It is rare, like
every ideal, and attainable only by few. This rarity of complete
love between a man and a woman is dwelt on also by Henry
Laube in his novel " Die Maske," in which he describes love in all
its manifoldness and modern distraction.

1 Cf. in this connexion the feuilleton of the Voasiche Zeitung, No. 286, June 17,
1904. Jean Paul, also, was an enthusiast in theory and practice for such double
love. He called it " simultaneous love." The idea of simultaneous love has
also been employed in a recently published French novel, " A la Merci de 1'Heure,"
by Jean Tarbel (Paris, 1907). The heroine has need of two lovers — a celebrated
literary professor for head and heart, and in addition, a young physician for the
gratification of her sensual needs. Contrariwise, Knut Hamsun, in " Pan,"
and Guy do Maupassant in " Notre Cceur," describe the double love of a man
for a woman of the world and for a child of Nature.

208

Schleiermacher described very strikingly the necessity that
exists for the repetition and manifoldness of love-perceptions :

" Why," says he, " should it be different with love from what it is
in every other matter ? Is it possible that that which is the highest
in mankind should be brought at the first time, by the most elementary
activity, to a perfect conclusion in a single deed ? Should we expect
it to be easier than the simple art of eating and drinking, which the
child first attempts, and attempts again and again, with unsuitable
objects and rude experimentation, and with results which, contrary
to his deserts, are not always unfortunate ? In love, also, there is
need for preliminary experiments, leading to no permanent result,
from which, however, every one carries away something, in order to make
the feeling more definite and the prospect of love greater and grander."1

Georg Hirth also shows that true mastery of love only becomes
possible by means of repetition. There are ideal masculine and
feminine Don Juan natures, which are always searching for the
genuine, eternal, only love ; as, for example, Wilhelmine Schroder-
Devrient, wandering perpetually from man to man ; or a similar
figure, the titular heroine of the romance " Faustine," by the
Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn. Many, most indeed, of such never
learn to know true love, because they never find the proper
object of love ; and they die, as Rousseau, in his " Confessions,"
says so strikingly, without ever having loved, eternally torn by
the need for love, without ever having been able perfectly to
satisfy that need. Happy indeed are those like Karoline, who
in Schelling found at length the man whose powerful personality
fully corresponded to her idea of love.

The need for such a great and true love remains fixed, not-
withstanding all deceptions, bitternesses, and the sorrows of
unsatisfied longing. Love is, in fact, the human being himself ;
like the human being, love has its development, its impulse to-
wards higher things, towards that which is better. No painful
experience can completely annihilate love, and the need for love.
In a beautiful stanza a French poet of the eighteenth century,
the Chevalier de Bonnard, has described this essential permanency
of love :

" H61as ! pourquoi le souvenir

De ces erreurs de mon aurore

Me fait-il pousser un soupir !

Je dois peut-etre aimer encore,

Ah ! si j'aime encore, je sens bien

Que je serai toujours le meme ;

Le temps au coeur ne change rien :

Eh ! n'est-ce pas ainsi qu'on aime ?"

1 Priederich Schleiermacher, " Philosophic and Other Writings," vol. i.,
p. 473 (Berlin, 1846).

209

True love is the product of the ripest development ; it is therefore
rare, and comes late. For this reason, as Nietzsche points out,
the time for marriage comes much earlier than the time for
love. It is by means of spiritual relationships that love first
becomes enduring. Its prolongation is almost always effected
only by an enlargement and variation of psychical relationships.
Physical relationships alone soon lose through habituation the
stimulus of novelty ; whence we explain the fact that so many
husbands, notwithstanding the physical beauty of their wives,
become unfaithful to them, often in favour of much uglier women,
of girls of the lower classes, or even of prostitutes. The de Gon-
courts remark in their " Diary " that the beauty which in a
cocotte a man will reward with 100,000 francs, will not in his own
wife seem worth 10,000 francs — in the wife whom he has married,
and who, with her dowry, has brought him this magnificent
beauty into the bargain. For this reason, a priest, when a wife
complained to him that her husband had begun to get somewhat
cold in his manner to her, gave the following by no means bad
advice : " My dear child, the most honourable wife must have
in her just a suspicion of the demi-mondaine."

The greatest danger for love, a danger which therefore makes
its appearance above all in married life, is the danger of
habituation. This has a double effect. On the one hand, by
the mere monotony of eternal repetition, love may become
blunted.

" It is worth remarking," says Goethe, " that custom is capable of
completely replacing passionate love ; it demands not so much a
charming, as a comfortable object ; given that, it is invincible."

In the second place, however, custom contradicts the already
mentioned need for variety, the eternal uniformity of daily
companionship puts love to sleep, damps its ardour, and even
gives rise to a sense of latent or open hatred between a married
pair. This hatred is observed most frequently in love-matches,1
precisely because here the ideal is all the more cruelly disturbed
by the rude grasp of realities ; especially if the intimate life in
common enfolds a human, all-too-human, element, and tears away
the last ideal veil. With justice the common bedroom of a
married couple has been called " the slaughter of love."

1 Cf. Eduard von Hartmann, " Philosophic dos Unbewuasten," p. 205. In
a French collection — " L' Amour par lea Grands Ecrivains," by Julien Lemer,
p. 14 (Paris, 1861) — we find the saying, " Ordinairement, lorequ on se marie par
amour, il vient ensuite de la haine ; c'est que j'ai vu de mes yeux " (" Ordinarily,
when one marries for love, hate takes its place. I have seen it with my own
eyes ").

210

A further cause of unhappy marriages is to be found in
unfavourable age-relations of the married couple. The most
serious is the premature entrance upon marriage.

Before the introduction of the Civil Code, the age of nubility
in the German Empire was attained, in the male sex, with the
completion of the twentieth, in the female sex with the completion
of the sixteenth year of life. In Prussia a Minister of Justice
could give permission to marry at an even earlier age. According
to the Civil Code, men could not marry until they were of full age
(twenty-one), and women, as before, not until they were sixteen
years of age. Women are able to obtain remission from this
restriction, but not men. In special cases, however, a man is
enabled to marry before the age of twenty-one years if the Court
of Wardship (c/. the English Court of Chancery) declares him
to be of full age, which the Court has power to do at any time
after he is eighteen years of age.

Whilst, before the year 1900, on the average, there were not as
many as 300 men under twenty years who annually contracted
marriage with the permission of the Minister of Justice — already
a matter for serious consideration — since the introduction of the
new Code, by which the ordinary age of nubility for man is raised
by one year, the number of persons prematurely contracting
marriage has exhibited a notable increase. In the year 1900 there
were 1,546, and in the year 1901 actually 1,848 young men
married before the age of twenty-one years. These very early
marriages were distributed among all professions, and almost all
classes of the population.

This increase in premature marriages is, speaking generally, a
symptom indicative of the premature awakening of sexuality in
our own time, a phenomenon which we shall discuss more fully
later. Such an occurrence as the elopement of a girl aged fourteen
with a boy aged fifteen, the pair having already for some time
been engaged in an intimate love-relationship, and having finally
come to the conclusion that they could no longer live apart, is by
no means a great rarity.1 No detailed argument is needed to
show that persons completely wanting mental and moral maturity
are not suited for marriage, which can only be regarded as offering
some security for endurance and life happiness, when it is the
union of two fully-developed personalities. In this respect it
seems to me that the regulations of the Civil Code are not at
present sufficiently strict.

A second notable factor in the causation of unhappy marriages

1 B. Z. am Mittag, No. 210, September 7, 1906.

211

is an excessive difference between the ages of husband and wife,
and in this respect it is quite an old experience, that a marked
excess of age on the part of the husband has a less unfavourable
influence than a similar excess on the part of the wife. This obser-
vation harmonizes with the fact that men can preserve sexual
potency up to the most advanced age — even in a centenarian
active spermatozoa have been found1 — that such old men can
have complete sexual intercourse, and can procreate children ;
whereas in women, at the age of forty-five to fifty years, with the
cessation of menstruation the procreative capacity is extinguished,
though not, indeed, the capacity for sexual intercourse and for
voluptuous sensation. Naturally, in this connexion we are not
alluding to quite abnormal cases, such as a premature impotence
in the husband, or other morbid conditions in either husband or
wife. We are considering merely the normal physical difference
in age. Metchnikoff lays great stress upon this physical dis-
harmony between husband and wife. He insists upon the fact
that in the man sexual excitability generally begins much earlier
than in woman, and that at a time when the woman stands at the
acme of her needs the sexual activity in the man has already begun
to decline ; but this is only the case when the husband was
notably older than the wife when the marriage was contracted.
A difference of five or ten years in this respect is a small matter ;
but a difference of ten or twenty years may be of serious signifi-
cance. Generally speaking, in the case of marriages which are
intended to be of lifelong duration, the difference of age should
never exceed ten years.

With increasing civilization, the average age at marriage has
continually advanced (hi Western Europe the average age at
marriage is for men twenty-eight to thirty-one years, and for
women twenty- three to twenty-eight years), whilst the number of
persons who do not marry until late in life, and of those who do not
marry at all, is continually increasing. This is partly the result
of spiritual differentiation and of the ever-increasing difficulty in
finding a suitable life-partner, and partly it is the result of the
increasing economic difficulty in providing for the support of a
household.

Schmoller has calculated that under normal conditions
about 50 per cent. — one-half, that is to say — of the population
of the country must be either married or widowed. In
Europe, however, a much smaller proportion is in this condition.
Thus, taking only persons over fifty years of age, in Hungary

1 " Annales cT Hygiene Publique," 1900, p. 340.

14—2

212

3 per cent., in Germany 9 per cent., in England 10 per cent.,
in Austria 13 per cent., in Switzerland 17 per cent., were un-
married.

The number of married and widowed persons among those over
fifty years of age varies in the different countries between 56 per
cent, (in Belgium) and 76 per cent, (in Hungary). In England, in
the years 1886 to 1890, the number was 60 per cent., in Germany
61 per cent., in the United States 62 per cent., in France 64 per
cent. If we enumerate the married only, excluding the widowed,
we find 8 or 10 per cent, fewer. When we compare the number
of married with the entire population, we find, instead of the
above-mentioned 50 per cent., no more than 37 to 39 per cent.
And this percentage appears likely to undergo a continual further
decline. We must, at any rate, in the future reckon with this fact,
although, of course, isolated oscillations in the marriage frequency
may continue to occur. In these oscillations economic and
domestic factors play a great part.

It is, however, quite erroneous to regard our own time as one
especially characterized by " mercenary marriages," one in which
the union between man and wife has become a simple affair of
commerce. There are not wanting reformers who attribute to
mammonism all the blame for the disordered love-life of the
present day, and who describe very vividly and dramatically
Amor's dance round the golden calf.

The facts of the history of civilization and folk-lore completely
contradict the view that this mammonistic character of marriage
is a product of our modern civilization. It is, on the contrary,
a vestige of early primitive civilization, in which economic factors
always had a far greater importance for marriage than spiritual
sympathies. Thus, Heinrich Schurtz proves that among the
majority of savage races marriage is rather an affair of business
than of inclination. And where are money marriages more fre-
quent than they are among our sturdy German peasants,
with whom everything conventional has the freest possible
play ?J

It is first the higher, refined spiritual civilization which brings
with it a higher conception of marriage as the realization of the
ideal, individual only-love. As Ludwig Stein justly remarks :

" It was not in our own time that marriage first began to degenerate
to the level of an economic idea. The converse, indeed, is true ; the
economic background of marriage, as it so clearly manifests itself
among savage races, first began to disappear in the course of the

1 Elard H. Meyer, " Deutsche Volkskunde," p. 166 (Strasburg, 1898).

213

development of our own system of civilization, and therewith
began also the liberation of mankind from the burden of metallic
shackles."1

At the same time, it cannot be denied that even at the present
day the economic factor plays a very extensive part in the deter-
mination of marriage, although certainly not to the degree main-
tained by Buckle, who held that there was a fixed and definite
relationship between the number of marriages and the price of
corn.2 Beyond question, economic considerations have a great
influence upon the frequency of marriage. Many marriages, even
to-day, are purely mercenary marriages ; but still at the present
time the qualities of intellect and emotion, quite apart from
physical characteristics, have at least an equal share in the
production of marriage. Only among the classes who feel it
their duty to keep up a particular kind of appearance, among the
upper-middle classes, the aristocracy, and among officers in the
army, is the economic question the main determining influence in
marriage. Well known, also, is the predominance of mercenary
marriages among the Jews.

One may be an enemy of mammonism, and still see the
necessity for an economic regulation of conjugal relations in view
of the expected offspring, of the altered conditions of life, of the
increase in the household, and of the necessity for safeguarding
personal independence and free development. Such economic
considerations can harmonize perfectly with the demand for
personal sympathy, and with the most intimate physical and
spiritual harmony between husband and wife.

Schmoller rightly places the most important advance of the
modern family in this, that it becomes more and more transformed
from a productive and business institute into an institute of
moral life in common ; that by the limitation of its economic
purposes the nobler ideal must become more predominant, and
the family become a richer soil for the cultivation of sympathetic
sentiments.3

More especially among the upper classes of modern European
and American society is there apparent an increasing disinclina-
tion to marriage, or, to employ a phrase of the moral statistician
Drobisch, there is a decline in the intensity of the marriage
impulse. Although the often burning money question no doubt

1 Ludwig Stein, " Der Sinn des Daseins " — " The Sense of Existence,"
p. 235 (Tubingen and Leipzig, 1904).

2 H. Th. Buckle, " History of Civilization in England."

3 G. Schmollor, " Elements of General Political Economy," vol. i., p. 250
(Leipzig, 1901).

214

plays its part, that part is, on the whole, much smaller than the
part played by the ever-increasing difficulties of individual
spiritual harmony, difficulties dependent on differences in age,
character, education, views of life, and individual development
during marriage. This disinclination to marry is nourished by
certain tendencies of the time to be subsequently described, and
by certain changes in the relations between the sexes.

To many also the idea of " conjugal rights," as established by
law, appears a horrible compulsion, an assignment to physical and
spiritual prostitution. The modern consciousness of free person-
ality, in fact, no longer harmonizes with that stoical conception
of duty in marriage such as, for example, is described by
B. Chateaubriand in his memoirs, although, of course, every one
who enters on marriage ought to be aware that by doing so he
assigns to the other party certain rights, the non-fulfilment of
which actually destroys the character and the idea of marriage.
Thus, the conduct of a schoolmistress of Berlin, who persistently
refused physical surrender to her husband, on the ground that she
had wished merely to contract an " ideal " marriage (of the same
kind as the mystical " reformed marriage " of the American
woman Alice Stockham), demands emphatic condemnation.
But an abominable misuse of " conjugal rights " is unquestionably
made by inconsiderate husbands, who demand from their wives
unlimited, excessively frequent, gratification of their sexual
desire, without any regard to the wife's physical and spiritual
condition at the time. That in this respect the idea of " conjugal
rights " is greatly in need of revision has been convincingly proved
by Dorothee Goebeler in an essay entitled " Conjugal Rights,"
published in the Welt am Montag of August 6, 1906.

Too frequently, also, it happens that the husband simply
transfers into his married life previous customs of extra-conjugal
sexual intercourse, and makes use in marriage of the experience
he has gained in intercourse with prostitutes or with priestesses
of the love of the moment ; he treats his wife as an object of sensual
lust, without paying any regard to her individuality and to her
more delicate erotic needs.

This physical dissonance is not even the worst. Too often it is
simply boredom which kills love in married life. Like Nora
in " A Dolls' House," one waits for the " wonderful," and the
wonderful does not happen. Instead of this the years pass by ;
sexual passion, greatly influenced as it is by the spiritual environ-
ment, gradually disappears, and with it disappears also the last
possibility of spiritual sympathy. Thus, the character of most

215

marriages is solitude. They represent the tragedy of desolation,
of the eternal self-seeking of husband and wife.

What disastrous consequences, finally, may result from the
part played in marriage by disease, what tragic conflicts may here
rise, can be studied in the great book " Health and Disease in
Relation to Marriage and the Married State " (Rebman, 1906),
an encyclopaedic work edited by H. Senator and S. Kaminer,
discussing in detail the relation between disorders of health and
the married state.

The calamities of modern marriage are strikingly illuminated
in the following psychologically interesting account given by
the alienist Heinrich Laehr (" Concerning Insanity and Lunatic
Asylums," p. 44 et seq. ; Halle, 1852) :

" How, as a matter of fact, do marriages come about ? In heaven
certainly a very small number indeed, if by that phrase we under-
stand marriages undertaken with the full understanding of the nature
of the sacrifice involved, under the impulsion of an inner necessity,
and based upon deep mutual inclination founded upon self-respect
and respect for each other ; in social circles, and not in heaven, on the
other hand, the majority of marriages are made. The question upon
which ultimately so many marriages depend is, what each will gain
by it, whilst inner sensations and mutual liking are regarded as sub-
ordinate matters. ... A man is fully informed about such matters
in early years ; a woman is full of dark perceptions, uncertain as to
what she is to receive and what she is to give. She is naturally im-
pelled by her sense of inward weakness to yield to anyone more powerful
than herself, and, in the intoxication of sensual excitement, under
conditions in which both, in order to please, tend to show the best
side only to each other, she is far less able than man to weigh before-
hand the significance of such a step. Later, indeed, when, in the
trodden path of marriage, the current of love runs more slowly, her
eyes are opened, naked reality takes the place of the pictures of
imagination, which formerly caused self-deception, and what appeared
to be love, but was not love, takes flight for ever. What has not
been hidden under the name of love ! It conceals the pretence of
egoistic impulses, vanity it may be, the life of pleasure, avarice, indo-
lence ; and what a number of marriages are entered into on the part
of the woman in order to escape from the oppression of repugnant
domestic conditions, because the imagined future appears to them more
pleasant in contrast with the actual present.

" There are in the course of marriage so many periods of misunder-
stood depression, sadness, trouble ; and mankind so readily forgets
the golden rule, that these periods have to be got through by means
of mutual aid, and that in married life husband and wife should do
all that is possible to help one another onwards, and not to thrust
one another back — so easily is this forgotten, that only too readily
the mirth and gladness with which married life was begun vanish
away. The intense pain which attacks us with violence, but only
at long intervals, has a far less depressing influence on our organism

216

than much less severe, but frequently repeated, emotional disturbances,
especially such as arise out of the wretchedness of life. They give rise
in us to irritability of the nervous system, by which sensitiveness is
increased ; and repeated misunderstandings in married life soon make
both husband and wife feel that marriage is rather a burden than a joy."

That women as well as men recognize the danger to love
entailed by marriage is shown by Frieda von Biilow in " Einsame
Frauen," pp. 93, 94 (1897) :

" During this period I have often considered the question of such
continued life in common. Is it not inevitable that this unceas-
ing, intimate association must always give rise to mutual hatred ?
Husband and wife learn to know one another through and through.
The veil of white lies which plays so important a part in ordinary
social intercourse is here impossible. The characters are seen naked
in all their weakness, all their incapacity for love, all their vanity, all
their egoism. In such circumstances, phrases intended to conceal
appear simply untruths, and instead of producing illusion they repel.
Just as in the first awakening of love, all the powers of the soul are
directed towards the discovery of the excellences of the beloved one,
so here the soul is for ever upon a voyage of discovery seeking for faults.
In both cases alike, a sufficiency of that which one seeks is found."

The poets also give us an insight into the depths of the eternal
contradiction between love and marriage. Who does not know
the saying of the idealistic and optimistic Schiller : " Mit dem
Giirtel, mit dem Schleier reisst der schone Wahn entzwei " —
" With the girdle, with the veil (of marriage), the beautiful
illusion is torn to pieces " ? Consider, also, the horribly clear
characterization of the pessimistic Byron (in " Don Juan,"
canto iii., stanzas 5-8) :

' "Tis melancholy, and a fearful sign
Of human frailty, folly, also crime,
That love and marriage rarely can combine,

Although they both are born in the same clime.
Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine —

A sad, sour, sober beverage — by time
Is sharpen'd from its high, celestial flavour,
Down to a very homely household savour.

VI.

" There's something of antipathy, as 'twere,
Between their present and their future state ;

A kind of flattery that's hardly fair

Is used until the truth arrives too late —

Yet what can people do, except despair ?

The same things change their names at such a rate ;

For instance — passion in a lover's glorious,

But in a husband is pronounced uxorious.

217

vn.

" Men grow ashamed of being so very fond ;

They sometimes also get a little tired
(But that, of course, is rare), and then despond ;

The same things cannot always be admired,
Yet 'tis " so nominated in the bond,"

That both are tied till one shall have expired.
Sad thought ! to lose the spouse that was adorning
Our days, and put one's servants into mourning.

vni.

" There's doubtless something in domestic doings,
Which forms, in fact, true love's antithesis ;

Romances paint at full length people's wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages ;

For no one cares for matrimonial cooings,
There's nothing wrong in a connubial kiss.

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife,

He would have written sonnets all his life ?"

It is significant that those who most praise marriage are
young people who do not know marriage from experience, but
have failed to find true happiness in celibacy. We think of the
words of Socrates, that it is a matter of indifference whether a
man marries or does not many, for in either case he will regret it.

Our own time is certainly characterized by hostility to mar-
riage. It is the form of modern marriage which frightens most
people ; the compulsion which has actually been rendered more
stringent by the new Civil Code of 1900. Modern individualism
draws back from the undeniable loss of freedom which legal
marriage entails. The shadow which, according to a saying of
E. Diihring, indissoluble marriage has thrown upon love and upon
the nobler aspects of the sexual life, is darker to-day than ever
before.

Hence the growing disinclination to marry, which, significantly
enough, is increasingly manifest upon the part of women ; hence,
above all, the extraordinary increase in divorce.

According to a statement in the Vossiche Zeitung (No. 137,
March 22, 1906), the number of divorces in Germany underwent
a marked increase in the year 1904. In that year there were
10,882 divorces ; in 1903, 9,932 ; in 1902, 9,074 ; thus in the year
1904 there was an increase of 590, or 9-6 per cent.

In the closing years of the nineteenth century, a marked
increase in the number of divorces was already discernible.
For instance, in the years 1894-1899 the number rose from

218

7,502 to 9,433. It was at that time believed that the increase
depended upon the fact that in most of the countries of the
German Confederation the new Civil Code made divorce more diffi-
cult, and that for this reason as many people as possible were
seeking divorce before the new Code came into action. It is true
that the number of divorces diminished after the Civil Code
passed into operation. In the year 1900 the divorces numbered
7,922, and in the year 1901, 7,892. Since then, however, there
has once more been a marked increase, so that the figure for
the year 1904 is 2,990 in excess of that for the year 1901, an
increase of 38 per cent. This increase is principally to be referred
to the fact that the so-called relative grounds for divorce, enumer-
ated in § 1568 of the Civil Code,1 appear to have justified
a great number of demands for divorce. The marked extensi-
bility of the sections of this paragraph leaves the judge very wide
discretion in its application.

To what an extent the increase in the number of divorces
influences the existing marriages is seen as soon as we compare
the number of divorces with the number of marriages. It appears
that in the years 1900 and 1901, for every 10,000 marriages,
there were 8-1 divorces ; in 1902, 9-3 divorces ; in 1903, 10-1
divorces ; and in 1904, 11-1 divorces. Thus in the year 1904,
there were 3 more divorces per 10,000 marriages than in the
year 1901.

I have already referred to the enormous importance of divorce
in relation to the recognition on the part of the State of the
temporary character of every marriage, whereby, in principle,
free love, which is no more than a temporary marriage, receives
a civil justification, and is legitimized. This fact stands out
still more clearly when we recognize the legal possibility of
repeated divorces on the part of one and the same person. Nu-
merous actual examples of this can be given. Thus a well-known
author was divorced no less than four times, and of his four wives
one, on her side, had been divorced by other men. Two divorces
on both sides are by no means rare. If we consider the matter
openly and unemotionally, it must be admitted that this is nothing
else than the much-opposed " free love," the bugbear of all

1 § 1568 runs : " A husband or wife can sue for divorce when the wife or hus-
band by serious disregard of the duties entailed by marriage, or by dishonour-
able or immoral conduct, has brought about so profound a disorder of the con-
jugal relationship that to the offended party the continuation of the marriage
appears impossible. Gross ill-treatment is also to be regarded as a serious
infringement of these duties." It is clear that the emphasized passage is capable
of manifold interpretations, and it thus compensates for the abolition of the
earlier grounds for divorce based upon incompatibility of temper.

219

honest Philistines, a free love which has already received the
official sanction of the State.

When four or five divorces are possible to the same individual
by official decree, when, that is to say, this procedure has received
civil sanction, the number may for theoretical purposes be multi-
plied at discretion.

He who knows human nature, he who knows that the con-
sciousness of freedom in mature human beings — and only such
should enter upon marriage — strengthens and confirms the
consciousness of duty — such a one need not fear the introduction
of free marriage. On the contrary, it may be assumed that
divorces would be far less common than they are in the case of
coercive marriage.

According to the Civil Code, divorces are obtainable on the
ground of adultery, hazard to life, malicious abandonment,
ill-treatment, mental disorder, legally punishable offences, dis-
honourable and immoral conduct, serious disregard of conjugal
duties. As we saw, the last clause empowered the judge in
difficult cases, by a humane, reasonable interpretation of the
idea " disregard of conjugal duties," to pronounce a divorce.
It is obvious that in every divorce the interests of the children
of the marriage (if any) must be especially safeguarded.

Marriage in France, to which hitherto the clauses of the Code
Napoleon, analogous to those of our Civil Code, have been appli-
cable, is said to have recently undergone reform, both in respect
of moral and of legal rights. In Paris there has been constituted
a standing " Committee of Marriage Reform," composed of well-
known authors, jurists, and women, among the number being
Pierre Louys, Marcel Prevost, Judge Magnaud, Octave Mirbeau,
Maeterlinck, Henri Bataille, Henri Coulon, and Poincar6.

In an address to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate by
the President of this Committee, Henri Coulon, in which he
gives the reasons for desiring a change in the present marriage
laws,1 he says :

" It would be childish to disguise the fact that the institution of
marriage has entered upon a critical phase ; philosophers and novelists
lay odds on the complete disappearance of the institution. In this,
perhaps, they go too far. But it is none the less true that it is a matter
of profound interest and importance to reform the institution of
marriage. Granted this, how shall we begin ?

" The entrance into marriage must be made as easy as possible ;
in this way the number of marriages which are based upon love will
rapidly increase. Then, the married pair must have equal rights,

1 Taken from the newspaper Le Jour, No. 337, July 6, 1906.

220

equal duties, and equal responsibilities ; in this way marriage will become
more practical and less immoral than it is at present. Finally — and
tliis is the most important of all — it is necessary to facilitate divorce.
Divorce will then become the worthy separation of two thinking
beings, and will no longer be the disgusting comedy that it is at the
present day.

" For those determined to live apart, for those whose morals are
loose, indissoluble marriage itself is no longer a bond. Absolute
freedom is no hindrance to conjugal fidelity and constancy ; on the
contrary, freedom is the cause of constancy.

Divorce is not happiness, but it is a help towards happiness. For
two human beings who hate one another to continue to live together
is a much greater evil than divorce. Certainly it would be preferable
if husband and wife could continue to love one another as they did
during the first days of their married life ; that they should love their
children and be honoured by them. But since humanity is not free
from faults and vices, this does not always happen. Divorce, as we
wish for it, makes marriage worthier and more profound. Such mar-
riages will be better suited to the new social movements and to the
modern spirit.

•• The civil equality of the two sexes must be a fundamental principle
of modern law. The French Civil Code already recognizes for both
sexes equal rights in some respects ; but the wife still loses a certain
portion of her rights in the moment that she marries. She is in
fact rendered incapable of business. The contrast between the
incapacity for business of the married woman and the capacity for
business of the unmarried is one of the characteristic traits of our
legislation.

" Divorce, as it now exists, contradicts the indissolubility of the
marriage bond demanded by the Church. Adultery should only be
regarded as a ground for divorce, and should not exonerate the mur-
derer who kills his adulterous wife or her accomplice.

" We demand the abolition of the punishment for adultery, because
prosecutions of this character arise either from revengeful feelings or
from litigiousness."

Justice demands that with this facilitation of divorce, as
advocated in the French scheme of marriage reform, there
should be associated increased security for the care of the depen-
dent wife and children after divorce. In this connexion, conjugal
responsibility is merely a part of sexual responsibility in general.
If two independent, free individuals have sexual relations one
with the other, in or out of marriage, they thereby both under-
take in respect of their own persons and of all possible offspring,
the duty and the responsibility which are the outcome of a
natural instinctive feeling, namely, " the sense of sexual responsi-
bility." This must dominate the entire sexual life of every
human being, as a categorical imperative. In this is to be found
the necessary ethical counterpoise to the activity of boundless
sexual egoism.

221

For the love of the future and its social regulation, the three
following conditions appear to me to be determinative ; they form
a part also of the French programme of marriage reform :

1. Equal rights, equal duties, equal responsibilities on the part
of husband and wife.

2. Facilitation of divorce.

3. Individual freedom to be regarded as preferable to coercion.
Freedom best promotes constancy in love.1

If these principles were strictly carried out in practical life,
without doubt, and as a matter of absolute certainty, the number
of divorces would not increase, but would diminish, and we should
sooner witness the realization of the ideal of true marriage, as the
lifelong union of two free personalities, fully conscious of their
duties and their rights.

The high ethical and social significance of family life will ever
continue, even under the freest love, by which, as I must again
and again insist, I do not understand unrestricted and continually
changing extra-conjugal sexual intercourse. Against this the
gravest considerations must be urged. What " free love " is, is
already apparent from the preceding exposition, but in the next
chapter the subject will be more thoroughly discussed.

APPENDIX

ONE HUNDRED TYPICAL MARRIAGES AND SOME CHARAC-
TERISTIC PICTURES OF THE MARRIED STATE, AFTER
GROSS-HOFFINGER

IN a long-forgotten, but very interesting, book by Dr. Anton J.
Gross-Hoffinger, entitled " The Fate of Women, and Prostitution
in Relation to the Principle of the Indissolubility of Catholic
Marriage, and especially in Relation to the Laws of Austria
and the Philosophy of our Time,"2 we find a collection, equally
interesting to psychologists and to students of human character,
to the physician, the jurist, and the sociologist, of a hundred
typical marriages, and also a more detailed description of the
course of a few marriages. These sketches deserve to be preserved

1 Compare Browning's lines, in " James Lee's Wife ":

" How the light, light love, ho has wings to fly
At suspicion of a bond." — TRANSLATOR.

2 " Die Schicksalo dor Frauon und die Prostitution im Zusammonhange mit
dom Prinzip der Unauflosbarkeit der katholischen Eho und bosonders dor oster-
reicheischen Gosetzgobung und der Philosophic des Zeitalters " (Leipzig, 1847).

from oblivion, because they will serve equally well as an example
of marriages of our time.

In the first place, the author discusses the principal difficulties
of marriage. He then asks whether, in view of the smallness of
the number of those comparatively happy persons who have found
it possible to live a legal and at the same time a natural family life,
the existing marriage laws, religious ideas, and social customs
have attained their aim, whether they give rise, as a general rule,
to happy and fruitful, honourable and blessed unions. The
author hesitated long before presenting for the first time " to the
Catholic world the picture of the actual state of marriages in
that world, a picture based upon numerous experiences and
observations . " He investigated one hundred marriages of persons
belonging to the most diverse classes, without selection, as they
came under his observation by chance ; then, again, another
hundred, and once again a third hundred. Always the results
were equally sad ; always the ratio between happy and unhappy
marriages was the same. The result of his investigations was, he
states :

" Although I have earnestly sought for happy marriages, my search
has to this extent been vain, that I have never been able to satisfy
myself that happy marriages are anything but extremely isolated
exceptions to the general rule."

In his view this is not the unhappy result of erroneous observa-
tion, but depends upon exact observation during a long series of
years, and in conditions which brought him into intimate relation-
ship with numbers of persons in all classes of society.

Thus, after a long, difficult, and careful investigation into a
hundred marriages among persons of different classes, he obtained
the following results, here briefly summarized :

Upper Classes.

1. The marriage not unhappy, wife suffering from disorder arousing
suspicion of syphilis ; conjugal fidelity of the husband prior to the
occurrence of this illness doubtful. Children sickly.

2. Both parties to the marriage happy in advanced age, after the
husband had lived freely.

3. Both parties happy in advanced age — childless.

4. Husband impotent, wife unhappy.

5. Husband an old man, wife unfaithful.

6. Husband and wife apparently happy — cliildren scrofulous.

7. The husband removed from home by circumstances, wife un-
faithful.

8. Both parties unhappy, the husband a libertine.

223

9. Both parties apparently content in advanced age.

10. Husband a dissolute old libertine, wife unhappy, but resigned —
no children.

11. Condition precisely similar to No. 10.

12. A happy mesalliance.

13. The husband phlegmatically happy, wife dissolute, children
ill, mother sickly.

14. Husband dissipated, wife resigned. Husband and wife have
come to an understanding.

15. Husband a libertine, wife a Messalina. Both parties syphilitic.
Children sickly.

16. Both parties unhealthy and miserable. Husband dissipated,
coarse. Wife ill, in a decline.

17. Husband a coarse libertine, wife separated from him and
unhappy.

Upper-Middle Classes.

18. Both parties unhappy. Husband impotent. Wife, who is
elderly, a Messalina. Marriage childless and unceasingly stormy.

19. Both parties tolerably happy, owing to gentleness and good-
heartedness. Husband a sensualist and unfaithful. Wife faithful, ailing.

20. Both parties unhappy. Incessant domestic warfare in the
house.

21. Phlegmatic rich husband, poor suffering wife — marriage child-
less— happily, as it seems.

22. Both parties in very advanced age, apparently happy. Their
past doubtful. Scrofulous children.

23. Childless marriage between a former high-class mistress and a
dissolute man.

24. An apparently happy marriage between a still young husband
and an elderly wife. The former compensates himself secretly.

25. Unhappy marriage. Both parties unsatisfied. Husband dis-
solute. Wife resigned.

26. Happy marriage.

27. Doubtfully happy marriage.

28. Extremely unhappy marriage. Husband a libertine, un-
principled ; wife half insane ; children syphilitic.

29. Unhappy marriage, the husband formerly somewhat fickle, the
wife unforgiving.

30. Happy marriage. Both parties immoral, dissolute ; the wife
carries on secret prostitution with the knowledge of the husband,
who on his side keeps several mistresses. They take matters philo-
sophically !

31. The husband a libertine and seducer by profession, the wife
separated from him.

32. Happy marriage. The husband inclined to gallantry, without
being absolutely dissolute. Wife gentle, patient, fond of her husband,
and faithful.

33. The husband ill as the result of dissipation, the wife frivolous.
Indifferent marriage.

34. The husband made happy by means of his wife's money, but
neglects her ; she is very ill, wasting away. Childless marriage.

224

35. Husband impotent. Wife, with knowledge of her husband, on
intimate terms with a friend of the family. In its way a happy
marriage.

36. Dissolute husband, dissolute wife, both shameless and free-
thinking — in mutual indifference they seem fairly happy.

37. Husband old and sickly, a worn-out libertine. The wife on
intimate terms with a friend of the house. Happy marriage !

38. Unhappy marriage. Husband phlegmatic, wife extremely
passionate and voluptuous.

39. Unhappy marriage. A worthless speculator who led astray
the wife of a wealthy man and then deserted her. Childless.

40. Husband debilitated by excesses ; wife immoral. Happy
marriage !

41. Husband debilitated by excesses ; wife patient. Happy
marriage !

42. A similar state of affairs.

43. Happy marriage. Both parties still very young, untried.

44. Happy marriage. Husband phlegmatic — wife faithful.

45. Husband debilitated by excesses, wife rich. At the moment, a
happy marriage.

Professional and Trading Classes.

46. Happy marriage. The husband phlegmatic and seldom un-
faitliful ; wife forbearing, good, and faithful.

47. Happy marriage. Both parties rich and young. Husband,
without his wife's knowledge, loves the joys of Venus.

48. Unhappy marriage. An enforced marriage of prudence. The
husband lives with a concubine, wife separated from him.

49. Unhappy marriage. Poverty, jealousy, and childlessness.

50. Happy marriage, owing to the forbearance and consideration
of the wife towards the sullen, irascible husband.

61. Unhappy marriage. Husband lives happily with a concubine,
the wife unhappily with a false friend.

52. Unhappy marriage. Phlegmatic husband, immoral wife, con-
tinuous quarrelling.

53. Unhappy marriage. The husband henpecked, impotent. The
wife masterful, quarrelsome, and ill-tempered.

54. Husband and wife have separated.

55. Happy marriage. The husband is good-humoured and de-
ceived ; the wife a sensual libertine ; children sickly ; wife incurably
ill.

56. Happy marriage. The husband a worn-out debauchee, the
wife a worn-out prostitute. Both incurably ill, for the same reason.

57. Happy marriage, happy from necessity and phlegm.

58. Happy marriage. The husband, a swindler, does everything
possible for those dependent on him. The wife, formerly a prostitute,
is happy in consequence of his care.

59. A happy, artistic marriage. Happy on account of mutual
laxity and accommodation.

60. Similar circumstances.

61. Happy marriage. The husband conceals his diversions with
success. Wife faithful and always gentle.

225

62. Unhappy marriage. Light conduct on both sides, with usual
results.

63. Happy marriage. The conjugal fidelity of the husband not
above suspicion.

fip/ iSimilar circumstances.

66. Unhappy marriage. A marriage of prudence. The husband
set himself up with his wife's money, but spends it on light women ;
the wife revenges herself by boundless ill-temper.

67. Unhappy marriage. Marriage of prudence. The young hus-
band settled in business on the money of his elderly wife ; she nags,
and he is drinking himself to death.

68. Marriage happy owing to avarice on both sides.

69. Marriage compulsorily happy owing to poverty on both sides.

70. Happy marriage ! Husband a drunkard. Wife avaricious.
Childless.

71. Husband and wife are separated ; the husband abandoned his
wife to poverty and prostitution.

72. Unhappy marriage. Husband impotent, wife lustful. Con-
tinued unhappiness.

73. Young married pair ; wife mistress of a wealthy Jew, who
supports the family.

74. Unhappy marriage. Husband dissolute, no longer cares for
his wife ; the latter incurably ill ; children syphilitic.

75. Unhappy marriage. Both parties sickly and poor.

76. A marriage of speculation. Husband has sold his wife three
times to different wealthy men ; in this way he makes his living.

77. Immoral marriage. The husband lives by a swindling industry.
The wife lives on a pension given by one whose mistress she formerly
was — children brought up to prostitution.

78. Easy-going marriage. Husband formerly a domestic servant,
now in business ; wife formerly a prostitute who had saved money.
Childless.

79. Happy marriage, between a fool and a clever woman.

80. Unhappy marriage. The husband dislikes his wife, is plagued
to death by her ; she brought the property into the house.

81. Dissipated husband, dissipated wife, separated from one another.
The children scrofulous.

82. Impotent husband, licentious wife, sickly children ; angry and
stormy scenes.

83. Worn-out libertine, young wife ; the parties are not unhappy,
owing to affluence and freedom from cares.

84. Artistic marriage. Wife the mistress of a great man. The
household goes on comfortably.

Lower Classes.

85. Dissolute husband. Formerly well-to-do, owing to his wife's
dowry, now reduced with her to beggary. Living by a trifling com-
mission business. Wife sickly. Children dead.

86. Marriage happy, in consequence of great poverty.

87. A procurer's family.

220

88. Happy marriage. Husband a thief, wife a prostitute.

89. The marriage unhappy in consequence of poverty.

90. Unhappy marriage. The husband a drinker, the wife working
amid trouble and poverty.

91. Unhappy marriage. Poverty, misunderstanding, jealousy, and
illness.

92. A family of servants. Wife and daughter at the disposal of
the master.

93. Unhappy marriage. Frequent brawls. Mutual mistrust, hatred,
and contempt .

94. Unhappy marriage. Upright husband deceived by his wife,
and, in consequence of great poverty, is unable to control her.

95. Unhappy marriage. Husband has run away.

96. Immoral marriage. Husband, wife, and children live on the
wages of unchastity.

97. |

98. J-Miserable marriages, which ended in the poor-house.

99. J

100. A happy pair, who had endured all the severe trials of life,
had forgiven each other everything, and never abandoned one another,
a virtuous marriage in the noblest sense.

Thus, among these hundred marriages there were :

Unhappy, about . . . . . . . . . . 48

Indifferent 36

Unquestionably happy . . . . . . 15

Virtuous . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Virtuous and orthodox

Further, among these hundred marriages there were :

Intentionally immoral .. .. .. .. ..14

Dissolute and libertine . . . . . . 51

Altogether above suspicion . . . . . . . . ?

Further :

Wives who were ill owing to the husband's fault . . 30

Wives who were ill not owing to the husband's fault 30
Wives who were unhappy, and had themselves to

blame for it . . . . . . . . 12

Among these hundred marriages only one was happy owing to
mutual faithfulness ; all the other slightly happy marriages, if
one may call them so, were so only because the wife did not
disturb herself with regard to the question of her husband's
faithfulness.

From these statistics Gross-Hoffinger draws the following
conclusions :

1. About one-half of all marriages are absolutely unhappy.

2. Much more than one-half of all marriages are obviously
demoralized.

227

3. The morality of the remaining smaller moiety is preserved
only by avoiding questions regarding the husband's faithfulness.

4. Fifteen per cent, of all marriages live on the earnings of
professional unchastity and procurement.

5. The number of orthodox marriages which are entirely above
every suspicion of marital infidelity (assuming the existence of
complete sexual potency) is in the eyes of every reasonable man,
who understands the demands which Nature makes, and the
violence of those demands, equivalent to nil. Hence the
ecclesiastical purpose of marriage is generally, fundamentally,
and completely evaded.

" No compulsion," thus concludes the author, " is more unnatural
than that of the Catholic (Protestant, Jewish, Greek Orthodox)
religion, by which is prescribed a compulsory continuance of marriage,
with its fantastic code and ridiculous conjugal duties and rights.

" First of all, this compulsion — this sacrament of marriage —
marriage which is nothing, can be nothing, according to nature should
be nothing, but a free union and a civil arrangement — results in the
avoidance of marriage.

" Secondly, it results that in marriage the purposes of marriage are
not and cannot be completely fulfilled.

" Thirdly, that marriage has ceased to be the natural marriage which
it should be, and has become merely a business, a speculation, or a
hospital for invalids."

In illustration of this proposition, Gross-Hoffmger finally
describes from life twenty-four marriages, some of which, being
especially interesting, we will here record.

Countess B., owing to unavoidable difficulties, was unable to con-
tract a suitable marriage, and attained the age of thirty whilst still
unmarried. The result of this was she gave herself to a servant,
consequently became infected, and died of syphilis some months after
she had, finally, married. Her husband was left with an unhappy
memorial of this brief marriage.

Count C., a man of high rank, lost his beloved wife through death.
Circumstances made it impossible for him to marry again. He was
afraid of acquiring venereal disorders, and therefore abstained from
natural connexion. Through lack of natural sexual gratification his
sexual impulse became perverse, and he took to the practice of Greek
love.

Prince D., young, impotent, concluded a marriage of convenience
with a beautiful, very passionate lady, who, on account of her hus-

15—2

228

band's impotence, compensated herself with domestic servants, mem-
bers of her retinue, and cavalry soldiers, and gave birth in these con-
ditions to several children, which inherited the title of the putative
father. In such circumstances the marriage has been very unhappy,
but necessity compels the husband to bear his fate with patience.

Count E., in other respects a man of fine character, made a marriage
of convenience with a lady of good family, who, however, was not in
a position to make him happy. From natural nobility of character,
he was unwilling to distress his unhappy wife by entering openly into
relations with a concubine, and therefore sought sexual gratification
with prostitutes. He became infected, and transmitted the illness to
his wife, who became seriously ill, and gave birth to diseased children.
Although the poor sufferer is unaware of the origin of her troubles,
and bears them with patience ; although her husband takes all possible
care of her, and does his best to bring about the restoration of her
health ; the marriage, owing to the uneasy conscience of the husband
and the physical suffering of the wife, is obviously a very unhappy
one.

Baron F., a man of wide influence, in youth a libertine — frivolous,
and of an emotional disposition, insusceptible to finer feelings, con-
tracted successively four marriages of convenience, which in all cases
terminated in the death of the wife. There is reason to believe that
the unceasing libertinism and unscrupulous conduct of the husband
had shortened the life of his wives — and this is all the more probable
because all the Baron's children are sickly and scrofulous.

Count G., dissipated libertine, wasted his property in wild ex-
travagance, and compelled his wife to live apart from him, whilst he
spent enormous sums on professional singers and dancers and common
prostitutes. Being ruined as completely financially as physically,
he was despised by persons of all classes, persecuted by his creditors,
and absolutely detested by his wife. Although his pleasures consist
chiefly in reminiscences, he still devotes enormous sums to them, the
money being obtained by a continued increase in his debts.

Count H. has been married for many years, but lives on the most
unpleasant terms with his wife, and devotes his spare time to the
society of prostitutes. The scum of the street form his favourite
associates ; but his voluptuous adventures carry him also into family
life, and no respectable middle-class wife or girl, however innocent, is
safe from his advances, which are all the more incredible because he
is quite an old man and completely impotent. H,e uses all possible
means to make the woman of his choice compliant — presents, promises,
threats.

Dr. S., husband of an immoral wife, public official, libertine, philo-
sopher, enjoying a small secured income. Lives with his wife on a
footing which permits both parties unlimited freedom. The worthy
couple devote their whole energies to earning money by their industry,
in part by secret prostitution on the part of the wife, in part by direct
and indirect procurement by the holding of piquant evening parties
for youthful members of the aristocracy. The family has an extra-
ordinary vogue. Persons of high position are engaged in confidential
intercourse with them ; young girls of the better classes gladly attend
their soirees, since there they meet the elite of the young aristocracy,
rich Jews, and officers. This interesting pair get through an almost
incredible amount of money ; they keep a magnificent carriage, they
have a country house, a valuable collection of pictures, etc. It is
only from their servants that both of them receive little respect,
since the male portion of the household subserve the lustful desires
of the wife, the female domestics those of the husband, and all must
be initiated into the secrets of the household industry.

Dr. U. was till recently an old bachelor, who had never wished to
share his property with a wife and children, and found it much cheaper
and more agreeable to impregnate servant-girls and other neglected
characters than to keep a mistress, or to seek his pleasures in the
street. Finally, becoming infirm at sixty-two years of age, and
needing nursing, on account of an occasional gouty swelling of the
leg, he discovered that it was not good for man to be alone. Having
rank and wealth, it would have been easy for him to find a young and
pretty girl who, under the title of wife, would have undertaken to play
the part of sick nurse. But the old practitioner knew too well the
value of what he had to offer to throw himself away on a poor girl.
He considered that it would be reasonable to choose such a partner
that he would not be obliged to divide his income, and to find some
one to take care of him in his old age who would cost him nothing at
all, but would rather provide for her own needs. He thought less,
therefore, of youth than of property, less of beauty than of thrifty
habits ; and finally found an old maid, a woman with some property,
who, on account of a somewhat unattractive exterior, had failed to
obtain a husband. Now one can see the prudent husband, who is
as faithful to his wife as the gout is faithful to him, walking from time
to time in the street on the arm of his life companion, whose aspect is
somewhat discontented. She still wears the same clothes which she
wore before her marriage, and which have a sufficiently shabby appear-
ance, but she endures her lot with patience, because she is now greeted
as "gnadige Frau," and people kiss her hand, as they did not do
formerly.

10.

Count J., a man of unblemished character, lived for some time a
happy married life. The increasing age of the wife, however, associ-
ated with the exceptional constitution of the Count, whose youth

230

seemed remarkably enduring, led to scenes of jealousy, which em-
bittered the life or both. We can hardly suppose that this jealousy
is altogether unfounded ; but surely it is a matter for regret that two
human beings of distinctly noble character should by marriage be
exposed to lifelong unhappiness.

11.

Herr von K., a young merchant in the wholesale trade, is married
to the daughter of a man of position, and the wife by a rich dowry
helped to found her husband's fortunes ; hence she enjoys the dis-
tinction over other wives that her husband pretends a great tenderness
for her, and conceals his indiscretions with the greatest possible care.
For this reason, she has always been devoted to him ; she regards him
as the example for all other husbands, as a true phenomenon
in the midst of an utterly depraved world of immoral men. And as
an actual fact, if one sees this man, how he lives in appearance only for
his business, with what delicate modesty he avoids any conversation
about loose women, if one hears him zealously preach against hus-
bands who deceive their wives, how inconceivable it is to him that a
man should find any pleasure in immoral women — one would be
willing to swear that he is everything that his wife enthusiastically
describes him to be. But some wags amongst his acquaintances, by
taking incredible pains, discovered that this honourable merchant had
no less than seven mistresses, two of whom belonged to the class of
prostitutes, two to the class of grisettes ; the remaining three had
been decent middle-class women. To these last he presented himself
under various names and in the most diverse forms — now as attache
to an embassy, now as an officer, now as a journeyman mechanic. To
all these latter mistresses he had promised marriage, and by a suc-
cession of presents, oaths, and lies, he had in each case attained his
end, and thereafter abandoned them without remorse to the con-
sequences of the adventure, whilst he himself set out to seek in a fresh
quarter of the town new sacrifices for the altar of his lusts. Since
he never had anything to do with known prostitutes and procuresses,
but by personal pains provided the materials for his pleasures, he
succeeded both as a merchant and as a husband in preserving the
reputation of a man free from illicit passion and deserving of all
confidence.

12.

Major W., a distinguished officer, a man of honour in every respect,
had in youth married a chambermaid, naturally, as one can imagine,
from pure inclination. But the marriage remained barren, because the
wife suffered from organic troubles ; and soon her sexual powers were
completely extinguished. Whilst the husband still remained virile,
the wife was already an old woman, suffering from spasmodic and
other affections, surrounded always by medicine-bottles and medical
appliances, always ill-humoured and nagging, a true torment for the
good-natured and amiable husband. The latter bears with Christian
patience and inexhaustible love the ill-humour of his wife ; but Nature
is less pliable than his kind heart : his conjugal tenderness diminishes,
and his ardent temperament seeks other outlets for the gratification

231

of his natural sexual desires. The sick wife notices this coolness, and
revenges herself by a refined cruelty. She knows that sulkiness on
her part makes him ill and miserable ; she therefore afflicts him with
coldness of manner, and by jealousy and ill-temper she makes his life
a hell. There occur horrible scenes of domestic brawling, which more
than once have led the husband to attempt to end his troubles by
suicide. He suffers in a threefold fashion : by the continued irritation
of his healthy natural impulse, by the illnesses he contracts in gratify-
ing that impulse, and by the sorrows of his really loved wife. He
imposes upon himself a voluntary celibacy in order that he may not
make her ill ; but this sacrifice does not suffice, it does not make his
wife gentler towards him. She demands from him, tacitly, all the
ardency of the bridegroom ; there is no rescue possible from this
inferno. The husband surrenders himself to a quiet despair. He is
faithful in his vocation ; he lives only for the wife, who torments him
continually. The neighbours see a very unedifying example of an
extremely unhappy marriage, originally contracted as a pure love
match, and none the less entailing martyrdom alike on husband
and wife.

NOTE. — That in Vienna the conjugal conditions so graphically
described in the above extracts are still much the same as formerly,
and that marriage needs and marriage lies are there exceptionally
painful is shown by the foundation in Vienna of a " Society for
Marriage Reform," which sent to the Assembly of German Jurists,
meeting at Kiel in the beginning of September, 1906, the tele-
graphic request that they would undertake a revision of Austrian
marriage law, since hitherto no cure had been found for unhappy
marriage in Austria, no divorce was possible, and those who had
obtained a judicial separation could, according to Canon Law,
sue one another on account of adultery (cf. Neue Freue Presse,
No. 15108, September 13, 1906). It is hardly credible, but,
according to a report in the Berlin Aerzte-Correspondenz, 1907,
No. 8, it is true, that the Medical Court of Honour for the town
of Berlin and the province of Brandenburg, in the year of our
Lord 1906, punished physicians on the ground of adultery !

CHAPTER XI
FREE LOVE

"' The transformation of coercive marriage into a free and equal
marriage, one more closely approaching perfection, both naturally
and morally, can only be effected in conjunction with social arrange-
ments providing for the complete economic independence of woman,
and giving security for her material means of subsistence. Unless
this indispensable preliminary is fulfilled, the highest ideal of free
morality will be debased to the level of a gross caricature."-

E. DiJHRING.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XI

Free lovo as a burning question of our time — Definition — Free love not equiva-
lent to extra-conjugal sexual intercourse — Defamation of free lovo and
sanction of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse by the coercivo-marriage-
morality — The immoral duplex morality for man and woman — Its momen-
tous influence upon the sexual corruption of the present day — Free love as
the only source of help — Actual realization of free love among the pro-
letariat— Strengthening of the sense of responsibility in consequence of
free lovo.

History of free love in the nineteenth century — William Godwin's fight
against coercive marriage — His free union with Mary Woolstonecraft —
Sholley's polemic against conventional sexual morality — John Ruskin on
free love — Goethe's marriage of conscience — His " Wahlverwandtschafton "
(" Elective Affinities ") — The remarkable proposal for a temporary marriage
in this romance — Perhaps based upon a Japanese custom — Malayan tem-
porary marriage — Influence of Schlogol's " Lucinde " — Karoline's marriage
wanderings — Free love in Jena and Berlin — Communistic-socialistic ideas
regarding free love — Retif do la Bretonne, Saint-Simon, Enfantin, and
Fourier — George Sand's " Jacques " — The " Es-geht-an-Idea " of the
Swedish author Almquist — Schopenhauer's fight against coercive marriage
— His one-sided standpoint — His description of the disastrous effects of
monogamic coercive marriage — His apology for concubinage — Criticism of
his view of the role of women in marriage reform — His theory of tetragamy
—First communication of a hitherto unpublished note of Schopen-
hauer's on tetragamy — Criticism of this theory.

Free love based upon only -love, the watchword of the future — Bohemian
love — Does not correspond to the ideal of free love — Importance of social
and economic factors in the sexual relationships of the present day —
Efforts for sexual reform — The literature of free love — Charles Albert's
communistic foundation of free love — Liberation of love from the dominion
of the state and of capital — Ladislaus Gumplowicz — Bebel's " Die
Frau und der Sozialismus " ("Woman and Socialism") — The psycho-
logico-mdividual foundation of free love — Eugen Duhring — Edward
Carpenter's " Love's Coming of Age " — His ideas regarding self-control
and spiritual procreation — Ellen Key's work, " Ueber Liebe und Ehe "
(" Love and Marriage ") — Detailed analysis of this work — Her critique of
nominal " monogamy " — Her idea of " spiritualized sensuality " — " Erotic
monism " — The unity of marriage and love — Sexual dualism owing to
coercive marriage and prostitution — General diffusion of erotic scepticism
— Recognition of love as the spiritual force of life — Importance of relative
asceticism — Love's choice — Medical certificates of fitness for marriage —
Immoral love — The right to motherhood — Preliminary conditions — Neces-
sity for free divorce — Unfortunate marriages — Importance of divorce to
children — New programme of the rights of children — Ellen Key's new

234

235

marriage law — Endowment of motherhood — Authorities for the protec-
tion of children — Division of the property of husband and wife — Dis-
continuance of the coercion to live together — Secret marriages — Conditions
under which marriage is to be contracted — Divorce — Council of Divorce —
Jury for the care of children — Sexual responsibility — " Marriages of con-
science " — Examples from Sweden — Public notification of " free " unions
— Legal recognition of " free " unions in Sweden — Increase in the number of
" marriage protestants " — Importance of free love to the vital advance of
humanity — General characterization of Ellen Key's book — Its import-
ance in connexion with sexual reform in Germany — Formation of
" The Association for the Protection of Mothers " — Directors and com-
mittee of this society — Preliminary appeal and programme of the associa-
tion— The periodical M utter sckutz — The formation of local groups — The
" Umwertungs-Gesellschaft " (Revaluation Society) of the United States —
Its characterization of modern marriage — The Berlin " Union for Sexual
Reform " — Helene Stocker's " Love and Woman " — Conception of the
sexual problem in the sense of Nietzsche — No revolution, but evolution
and reform — Deepening of woman's soul by means of the older love — The
affirmation of life of the new love — The economic and social grounds for
the necessity of social reform — Friedrich Naumann, Lily Braun, and
others, on this subject — Increase in enforced abstinence from marriage —
The " maintenance question " a crying scandal of our time — A charac-
teristic letter — The radical evil of conventional morality — Insurance of
motherhood — Homes for pregnant women and for infants — The rights of
the " illegitimate " child — Suggestions regarding a statistical inquiry re-
lating to free love and illegitimate offspring in the upper classes — Examples
of celebrated personalities.

Love

CHAPTER XI

THE problem of " free love " is the burning question of our time.
Upon its proper solution depends the future of civilization, and
our ultimate liberation from the ignominious conditions of the
amatory life of the present day, dependent as these are upon
coercive marriage. This is our firm conviction, our profound
belief, one which we share with many, and those not the worst
minds of our day.

Free love is neither, as malevolent opponents maintain, the
abolition of marriage, nor is it the organization of extra-conjugal
sexual intercourse. Free love and extra-conjugal sexual inter-
course have nothing whatever to do one with the other. Indeed,
I go so far as to maintain that true free love, as it must and will
prevail, will limit casual and unregulated extra-conjugal sexual
intercourse to a far greater extent than coercive marriage has ever
succeeded in doing. Above all, free love will ennoble sexual
intercourse.

For the longer, in existing economic conditions, we cling to the
antiquated " coercive marriage," which has so long been in need
of reform, the smaller is the number of those who desire to marry,
the more advanced becomes the age of marriage, the greater
becomes the general sexual wretchedness, the deeper shall we sink
into the mephitic slough of prostitution, towards which the
increasing promiscuity of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse
inevitably leads us.

For this is the peculiar, hypocritical, and absurd mode of
argument of those who uphold conventional marriage ; they
despise and brand with infamy every sexual relationship of two
adult independent persons based upon free love, and sanction
quite openly casual transitory extra-conjugal sexual intercourse,
devoid of all personal relationships, not only with prostitutes, but
also with respectable women.

" Bachelorhood," says Max Nordau, " is very far from being equiva-
lent to sexual continence. The bachelor receives from society the
tacit permission to indulge in the convenience of intercourse with
woman, when and where he can ; it calls his self-seeking pleasures
' successes,' and surrounds them with a kind of poetic glory ; and the
amiable vice of Don Juan arouses in society a feeling composed of
envy, sympathy, and secret admiration."1

1 M. Nordau, " The Conventional Lies of Our Civilization." See also P. Nacke,
" Einiges zur Frauenfrage und zur sexuellen Abstinenz " — " A Contribution

236

237

On the other hand, this same conventional coercive marriage
morality demands from the girl complete sexual continence and
intactness until the time of her marriage !

But every reasonable and just man must ask the question,
Where, then, are the unmarried men to gratify their sexual
impulse if at the same time the unmarried girls are condemned to
absolute chastity ?

It is merely necessary to place these two facts side by side in
order to expose the utter mendacity and shamelessness of the
coercive marriage morality, and to display the true cancer of our
sexual life, the sole cause of the increasing diffusion of prostitution,
of wild sexual promiscuity, and of venereal diseases.

When hereafter, before the judgment-seat of history, the
dreadful " j' 'accuse " is uttered against the sexual corruption of
our time, then there will be a good defence for those of us who,
under the device, " Away with prostitution ! away with the
brothels ! away with all ' wild ' love ! away with venereal
diseases !" were the first to indicate free love as the one and only
means of rescue from these miseries.

We are always told that men are not yet ready for the free,
independent management of their sexual life ; mankind is not yet
ripe for the necessary responsibility. Our opponents point
especially to the danger of such an opinion and such reforms for
the lower classes.

But human beings are better than the defenders of the obsolete
conventional morality would have us believe, and above all, it is
the members of the lower classes whom we may quietly allow to
follow the dictates of their own hearts. They, indeed, give us
the example that freedom is not equivalent to immorality and
pleasure-seeking ; that, on the contrary, it is freedom that awakens
and keeps active the consciousness of duty and the sense of
responsibility.

Alfred Blaschko rightly draws attention to the fact that among
the proletariat for a long time already the idea of free love has
been actually realized. In a large majority of cases men and
women of these classes have sexual intercourse with one another,
especially between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, without
marrying.1

to the Woman's Question and to the Question of Sexual Abstinence." Nacke
condemns this duplex morality, and demands for the woman in principle the same
sexual freedom that is granted to the man.

1 One of the most remarkable instances of free love as a popular institution
was the " island custom " of the (so-called) Isle of Portland. Here, until well
on into the nineteenth century, experimental cohabitation was universal, and

238

*4 Among the proletariat free love has never been regarded as
sinful. Where there is no property which is capable of being left to
a legitimate heir, where the appeal of the heart draws man and woman
together, from the very earliest times people have troubled themselves
little about the blessing of the priest ; and had it not been that at the
present day the civil form of marriage is so simple, whilst, on the
other hand, there are so many difficulties placed in the path of un-
married mothers and illegitimate children, who can tell if the modern
proletariat would not long ago, as far as they themselves are concerned,
have abolished marriage ?'"

Blaschko adduces proofs that in all places in which free love is
not possible prostitution takes its place.

This fact affords a striking proof of the necessity of free love.
For there can be no doubt as to the correct answer to the question
which is better, prostitution or free love.

Max Marcus and other physicians have recently discussed the
question whether the medical man is justified in recommending
extra-conjugal sexual intercourse. I myself, as a physician,
and as an ardent supporter of the efforts for the suppression
of venereal diseases, in view of the enormous increase of
professional prostitution (both public and private), and in view
also of the extraordinarily wide diffusion of venereal diseases, feel
compelled to answer this question, generally speaking, in the
negative. Yet I look to the introduction of free love, and in
association with free love of a new sexual morality, in accordance
with which man and woman are regarded as two free personalities,
with equal rights and also equal responsibilities, as the only

marriago did not take place until the woman became pregnant. But if, as a
result of this experimental cohabitation, " the woman does not prove with child,
after a competent time of courtship, they conclude they are not destined by
Providence for each other ; they therefore separate ; and as it is an established
maxim, which the Portland women observe with great strictness, never to admit
a plurality of lovers at one time, their honour is in no way tarnished. She just
as soon gets another suitor (after the affair is declared to be broken off) as if
she had been left a widow, or that nothing had ever happened, but that she
had remained an immaculate virgin " (Hutchins, " History and Antiquities of
the County of Dorset," vol. ii., p. 820, 1868). So faithfully was this " island
custom " observed that, on the one hand, during a long period no single bastard
was born on the " island," and, on the other, every marriage was fertile. But
when, for the further development of the Portland stone trade, workmen from
London, with the " wild love " habits of the large town, came to reside in Port-
land, these men took advantage of the " island custom," and then refused to
marry the girls with whom they had cohabited. Thus, in consequence of freer inter-
course with the " civilized " world, the " Portland custom " has gradually fallen
into desuetude. But the words I have emphasized in the quotation show how
fnit li I ii I ly the conditions of " free love," as defined in this work, were observed in
Portland. An account of Portland, with allusions to the local practice of " free
love," will be found in Thomas Hardy's novel, " The Well Beloved." — TRANSLATOR.
1 A. Blaschko, " Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century," P- 12 (Berlin,
1902).

239

possible rescue from the misery of prostitution and of venereal
disease.

Place the free woman beside the free man, inspire both with the
profound sense of responsibility which will result from the activity
of the love of two free personalities, and you will see that to them
and to their children such love will bring true happiness.

Before going further into this problem of free love, I will give a
brief account of the history of the question during the nineteenth
century. We shall see that quite a number of leading spirits,
morally lofty natures, were occupied with the question, because
they were deeply impressed with the intolerable character of
existing conditions in the sexual sphere, and were convinced that
help was only to be found in a relaxation of those conditions in
the sense of a freer conception of sexual relationships.

In addition to the romanticists (vide supra, pp. 169 and 175) in
the beginning of the nineteenth century in England, William
Godwin, the lover and husband of Mary Wollstonecraft (the
celebrated advocate of woman's rights), in his " Political Justice,"
declared the conventional coercive marriage to be an obsolete
institution, by which the freedom of the individual was seriously
curtailed. Marriage is a question of property, and one person ought
not to become the property of another. Godwin maintained that
the abolition of marriage would have no evil consequences.
The free love and subsequent marriage of Godwin and Mary
Wollstonecraft deserves a short description. Godwin was of
opinion that the members of a family should not see too much of
one another. He also believed that they would interfere with one
another's work if they lived in the same house. For this reason
he furnished some rooms for himself at a little distance from Mary
Wollstonecraft's dwelling, and often first appeared at her house
at a late lunch ; the intervening hours were spent by both in
literary work. They exchanged letters also during the day.1

Doubtless under the influence of the views of Godwin, Shelley,
in the notes to " Queen Mab," writes a violent polemic against
coercive marriage. He says :

"Love withers under constraint ; its very essence is liberty ; it is
compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear ; it is there
most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its votaries live in confi-
dence, equality, and unreserve. How long, then, ought the sexual
connexion to last ? What law ought to specify the extent of the
grievances which should limit its duration ? A husband and wife

1 Cf. Helen Zimmern, " Mary Wollstonecraft " in Dentsche Rundschau,
1889, vol. xv., Heft 11, pp. 259-263. Consult also C. Kegan Paul, " William
Godwin : His Friends ana Contemporaries," 2 vols. (London, 1876).

240

ought to continue so long united as they love each other ; any law
which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the
decay of their affection would be a most intolerable tyranny." l

He then proceeds to attack the conventional morality so
intimately associated with coercive marriage, and concludes with
the words :

" Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe
to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality ; it strikes
at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half
of the human race to misery, that some few may monopolize according
to law. A system could not well have been devised more studiously
hostile to human happiness than marriage. I conceive that from the
abolition of marriage, the fit and natural arrangement of sexual con-
nexion would result. I by no means assert that the intercourse would
be promiscuous ; on the contrary, it appears, from the relation of
parent to child, that this union is generally of long duration, and
marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion."8

Here, also, we find the expression of the firm conviction that
in the freedom of love is to be found an assured guarantee for its
durability !

Later, also, the English Pre-Raphaelites, especially John
Ruskin, advocated free love, and maintained that the sacredness
of these natural bonds lay in their very essence. It is love which
first makes marriage legal, not marriage which legalizes love
(cf. Charlotte Broicher, " John Ruskin and his Work," vol. i.,
pp. 104-106; Leipzig, 1902).

In Germany, at the commencement of the nineteenth century,
a lively discussion of the problems of love and marriage ensued
upon the publication of Friedrich Schlegel's " Lucinde " and
Goethe's " Wahlverwandtschaften " — " Elective Affinities "
(1809).

Goethe, in his very rich amatory life, especially in his relation-
ship to Charlotte von Stein and to Christiane Vulpius, with the
latter of whom he lived for eighteen years in a free " marriage of
conscience,"3 and whose son, August, the offspring of this union,
he adopted long before the marriage was legitimized, realized the
ideal of free love more than once. Although in his book
" Wahlverwandtschaften " (" Elective Affinities ") he at length
gave the victory to the moral conception of monogamic marriage,

1 " Shelley's Poetical Works," edited by Edward Dowden, p. 42 (Macmillan,
1891).

2 Ibid., p. 44.

3 Cf. the admirable critical investigation by Georg Hirth, " Goethe's Chris-
tiane," published in " Ways to Love," pp. 323-366, containing new and valuable
aids to our judgment of this relationship.

241

and propounded it as an illuminating ideal for civilization (which
" ideal standpoint " we ourselves, as we have shown in the
previous chapters, fully share), yet in this novel he has represented
conjugal struggles, from which it appears how profoundly he was
impressed by the importance of a transformation of amatory life
in the direction of freedom. It is especially by the mouth of the
Count in this work that he gives utterance to such ideas. The
latter records the advice of one of his friends that every marriage
should be contracted for the term of five years only.

" This number," he said, " is a beautiful, sacred, odd number, and
such a period of time would be sufficient for the married pair to learn
to know one another, for them to bring a few children into the world,
to separate, and, what would be most beautiful of all, to come together
again."

Often he would exclaim :

" How happily would the first portion of the time pass ! Two or
three years at least would pass very happily. Then very likely one
member of the pair would wish that the union should be prolonged ;
and this desire would increase the more nearly the terminus of the
marriage approached. An indifferent, even an unsatisfied, member
of such a union would be pleased by such a demeanour on the part of
the other. One is apt to forget how in good society the passing of
time is unnoticed ; one finds with agreeable surprise, when the allotted
time has passed away, that it has been tacitly prolonged. It is pre-
cisely this voluntary, tacit prolongation of sexual relationship, freely
undertaken by both parties without any extraneous compulsion, to
which Goethe ascribes a profound moral significance."

I should like to draw the attention of students of Goethe to
the fact that this recommendation of a temporary marriage for
the term of five years, with tacit prolongation of the term, is a
very ancient Japanese custom, or, at any rate, was so thirty
years ago.

Wernich, who for several years was Professor of Medicine at
the Imperial University of Japan, remarks :

" Marriages were concluded for a term only : in the case of per-
sons of standing for five years ; among the lower classes for a shorter
term. It was very rare, however, only in cases in which the marriage
was manifestly unhappy, for a separation to take place when the term
expired. If there were healthy living children such a separation
hardly ever occurred — most of these temporary marriages were, in
fact, extremely happy, and the same is true of Jewish marriages, in
which divorce is easily effected by a very simple ceremonial, closely
resembling that of the Japanese."5

1 A. Wernich, " Geographical and Medical Studies, based upon Experiences
obtained in a Journey Round the World," p. 137 (Berlin, 1878). Among the
Malays of the Dutch Indies divorce is very easy ; it coste only a few guidon, and

242

In view of the remarkable coincidence between the proposal in
Goethe's " Elective Affinities " and the Japanese custom, we are
probably justified in assuming that Goethe was acquainted with
the latter.

" Lucinde " gave expression to the feelings and moods of the
time in respect of love and marriage on behalf of a circle far
wider than that of the romanticists. At no time were the ideals
of free love so deeply felt, so enthusiastically presented, as then ;
above all, by the beautiful Karoline, who, after long " marriage
wanderings," especially with A. W. Schegel, finally found the
happiness of her life in a free marriage with Schelling, which
subsequently became a legally recognized union.

" In her letters," says Kuno Fischer, " she praises again and again
the man of her choice and of her heart, in whose love she had really
attained the goal which she had longed and sought in labyrinthine
wanderings. . . . And that Schelling was the man who was able com-
pletely to master the heart of this woman and to make her his own,
gives to his features also an expression which beautifies them."1

Rahel, Dorothea Schlegel, and Henriette Herz, extolled,
under the influence of " Lucinde," the happiness of free love.
For this period of genius in Jena and Berlin, as Rudolph von
Gottschall calls it, the free-love relationship of Prince Louis
Ferdinand of Prussia and Frau Pauline Wiesel was typical.
This relationship is more intimately known to us from the letters
exchanged between the two, published by Alexander Biichner
in 1865. In these letters, to quote a saying of Ludmilla Assing,
we find " the most passionate expression of all that it is possible
to express in writing."

In France the discussion of the question of free love was to an
important extent associated with the communistic-socialistic
ideas of Saint Simon, Enfantin, and Fourier. Before this, R6tif
de la Bretonne, in his " De"couverte Australe " (a work which
exercised a great influence upon Charles Fourier),2 demanded that
the duration of marriage should be in the first instance two years,
with which period the contract should spontaneously terminate.
Saint Simon and Barrault proclaimed the " free wife," Pere

is often carried out " very much to the advantage of husband and wife who are
not held together by love. But it is by no means rare for a divorced couple to
remarry after a certain time " (Ernst Haeckel, " Aus Insulinde, Malayische
Reisebriefe " — " From the Indian Archipelago, Malay Letters of Travel "),
p. 242;(Bonn, 1901).

1 Kuno Fischer, " History of Recent Philosophy," vol. vii., p. 135 (Heidelberg,
1898). {'• '

2 Cf. in this connexion my pseudonymous work, " Retif de la Bretonne : the
Man, the^Author, and the Reformer," p. 500 (Berlin, 1906).

243

Enfantin proclaimed the " free union," and Fourier proclaimed
" free love " in the phalanstery.

A reflection of this idea is to be found in the novels of George
Sand, especially " Lelia " and " Jacques," these tragedies of
marriage ; in " Jacques," for example, we find the following
passage :

" I continue to believe that marriage is one of the most hateful of
institutions. I have no doubt whatever that when the human race
has advanced further towards rationality and the love of justice,
marriage will be abolished. A human and not less sacred union
would then replace it, and the existence of the children would be not
less cared for and secured, without therefore binding in eternal fetters
the freedom of the parents."

We must mention Hortense Allart de Meritens (1801-1879) as
a contemporary of the much-loving George Sand, and, like her,
a theoretical and practical advocate of free love. She was
cousin to the well-known authoress Delphine Gay, and herself
wrote a roman a clef, published in 1872, " Les Enchantements de
Prudence," in which she records the history of her own life,
devoted to free love. First the beloved of a nobleman, she ran
away when she discovered she was pregnant, and then lived
successively with the Italian statesman Gino Capponi (1826-
1829) ; with the celebrated French author Chateaubriand (1829-
1831) ; with the English novelist and poet Bulwer (1831-1836) ;
the Italian Mazzini (1837-1840) ; the critic Sainte-Beuve (1840-
1841) ; these being all free unions. From 1843 to 1845 she was the
perfectly legitimate and extremely unhappy wife of an architect
named Napoleon de Meritens, whereas with her earlier lovers
she had lived most happily. L6on Sech6, in the Revue de Paris
of July 1, 1907, has recently described the life of this notable
priestess of free love, to whose above-mentioned romance George
Sand wrote a preface (cf. Literarisches Echo of August 1, 1907,
pp. 1612, 1613).

In Sweden at about the same time the celebrated poet C. J. L.
Almquist was a powerful advocate for free love. In the numbers
for July and August, 1900, of the monthly review, Die Insel,
Ellen Key has published a thoughtful essay, containing an
analysis of Almquist 's views on this subject.

la the novel " Es Geht An " Almquist advocates the thesis
that true love needs no consecration by a marriage ceremony.
On the contrary, a ceremony of this kind belies the very nature
of marriage, for it forms and cements false unions ; and any
relationship concluded on the lowest grounds, if it has only been

16—2

preceded by a marriage ceremony, is regarded as pure, whilst
a union based upon true love without marriage is regarded as
unchaste. In the sense of free love Lara Widbeck, in " Es Geht
An," arranges her own life and that of her husband Albert.
Both are to be masters of their respective persons and of their
respective property ; they are to live for themselves, the work
of each is to be pursued independently of the other, and in this
way it will be possible to preserve a lifelong love, instead of seeing
love transformed into lifelong indifference or hate.

Even at the present day in Sweden the idea of free love is
known, after this romance of Almquist's, as the " Es-geht-an
idea " and also as " briar-rose morality." It was, above all,
Ellen Key who revived Almquist's idea, and enlarged it to the
extensive programme of marriage reform in the direction of free
love, which we shall consider more fully below.

In his last writings Schopenhauer occupied himself at con-
siderable length with the problems of love, but entirely from
the standpoint of misogyny and of duplex sexual morality.
Still, he recognized the great dangers and disasters which the
traditional coercive marriage entails upon society, and rightly
regarded this formal marriage as the principal source of sexual
corruption.

In his essay "Concerning Women" ("Parerga and Parali-
pomena," vol. xi., pp. 657-659), ed. Grisebach, he writes :

" Whereas among the polygamist nations every woman is cared
for, among monogamic peoples the number of married women is
limited, and there remains an enormous number of unsupported super-
fluous women.1 Among the upper classes these vegetate as useless
old maids ; among the lower classes they are forced to earn their
living by immeasurably severe toil, or else they become prostitutes.
These latter lead a life equally devoid of pleasure and of honour ;
but in the circumstances they are indispensable for the gratification
of the male sex, and hence they constitute a publicly recognized pro-
fession, the especial purpose of which is to safeguard against seduction
those women more highly favoured by fortune, who have found hus-
bands, or may reasonably hope to do so. In London alone there are
80,000 such women. What else are these women than human sacrifices
on the altar of monogamy — sacrifices rendered inevitable by the very
nature of the monogaraic institution ? All the women to whom we
now allude — women in this miserable position — form the inevitable
counterpoise to the ladies of Europe, with their pretension and their
pride. For the female sex, regarded as a whole, polygamy is a real
benefit. On the other hand, from the rationalistic point of view, it is
impossible to see why a man whose wife is suffering from a chronic
disease, or remains unfruitful, or has gradually become too old for

1 Cf. George Gissing's powerful novel, " The Odd Women." — TRANSLATOR.

245

him, should not take a second wife. That which produces so many
converts to Mormonism appears to be the rejection by the Mormons of
the unnatural institution of monogamy. In addition, moreover, the
allotment to the wife of unnatural rights has imposed upon her un-
natural duties, whose neglect, nevertheless, makes her unhappy. To
many a man considerations of position, of property, make marriage
inadvisable, unless the conditions are exceptionally favourable. He
would then wish to obtain a wife of his own choice, under conditions
which would leave him free from obligations to her and her children.
However economical, reasonable, and suitable these conditions may
be, if she agrees to them, and does not insist upon the immoderate
rights which marriage alone secures to her, she will, because marriage
is the basis of every society, find herself compelled to lead an unhappy
life, one which, to a certain degree, is dishonourable ; because human
nature involves this, that we assign a quite immeasurable value to
the opinion of others. If, on the other hand, she does not comply,
she runs the danger either of being compelled to belong as a wife to a
man repulsive to her, or else of withering as an old maid, for the period
in which she can realize her value is very short. In relation to this
aspect of our monogamic arrangement, the profoundly learned treatise
of Thomasius, De Concubinatu, is of the greatest possible value, for we
learn from it that among all cultured people, and in all times, until
the date of the Lutheran Reformation, concubinage was permitted,
and even to a certain extent legally recognized, and was an institution
not involving any dishonour. From this position it was degraded
only by the Lutheran Reformation, for the degradation of concubinage
was regarded as a means by which the marriage of priests could be
justified ; and, on the other hand, after the Lutheran denunciation of
concubinage, the semi-official recognition of that institution by the
Roman Catholic Church was no longer possible.

" Regarding polygamy there need be no dispute, for it is a universally
existing fact, and the only question is regarding its regulation. Where
are the true monogamists ? We all live at least for a time, but most
of us continually, in a state of polygamy. Since, consequently, every
man makes use of many wives, nothing could be more just than to
leave him free, and even to compel him, to provide for many wives."

Just as are these views of Schopenhauer's regarding the neces-
sity of a freer conception and a freer configuration of sexual rela-
tions, and regarding the shamefulness of exposing to infamy the
unmarried mother and the illegitimate child, so much the more
dangerous is his view of the part to be played by women in this
reform of marriage. Woman as an inferior being, without freedom,
is once more to lose all her rights, instead of standing beside man
as a free personality with equal rights and equal duties. The
result of a rearrangement of amatory life on this basis would
inevitably be a new and a worse sexual slavery.

As Julius Frauenstadt records, Schopenhauer, in a separate
manuscript found amongst his papers, has described the evil
conditions of monogamy, and has recommended, as a step to

246

reform, the practice of " tetragamy." This peculiar and un-
questionably very interesting essay has not found its way into
the Royal Library of Berlin. With regard to the whereabouts
of the manuscript we are uncertain ; perhaps Frauenstadt
destroyed it.

However, we find a brief, hitherto unpublished, extract from
this essay in Schopenhauer's manuscript book, " Die Brieftasche,"
written in 1823, which is preserved in the Royal Library in
Berlin.1

I publish here, for the first time, the summary account of
tetragamy contained on pp. 70-77 of the aforesaid manuscript
book :

SKETCH OF SCHOPENHAUER'S "TETRAGAMY"
(HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED).

"Inasmuch as Nature makes the number of women nearly identical
with that of men, whilst women retain only about half as long as men
their capacity for procreation and their suitability for masculine
gratification, the human sexual relationship is disordered at the very
outset. By the equal numbers of the respective sexes, Nature appears
to point to monogamy ; on the other hand, a man has one wife for the
satisfaction of his procreative capacity only for half the time for which
that capacity endures ; he must, then, take a second wife when the
first begins to wither ; but for each man only one woman is available.
The tendency exhibited by woman in respect of the duration of her
sexual capacity is compensated, on the other hand, by the quantity
of that capacity : she is capable of gratifying two or three vigorous
men simultaneously, without suffering in any way. In monogamy,
woman employs only half of her sexual capacity, and satisfies only
half of her desires.

" If, now, this relationship were arranged in accordance with purely
physical considerations (and we are concerned here with a physical,
extremely urgent need, the satisfaction of which is the aim of marriage,
alike among the Jews and among the Christians), if matters were to be
equalized as completely as possible, it would be necessary for two
men always to have one wife in common : let them take her when
they are both young. After she has become faded, let them take
another young woman, who will then suffice for their needs until both
the men are old. Both women are cared for, and each man is re-
sponsible for the care of one only.

" In the monogamic state, the man has for a single occasion too
much, and for a permanency too little ; with the woman it is the other
way about.

" If the proposed institution were adopted in youth, a man, at the

1 A brief sketch of tetragamy is also given by Schopenhauer in the fragments of
his " Lecture on Philosophy " (" Schopenhauer's Legacy," ed. Grisebach, vol. iv.,
pp. 405, 406), also in the manuscript books, " Pandekta " and " Spicilegia "
(op. cit., pp. 418, 419).

247

time when his income is usually smallest, would have to provide only
for half a wife, and for few children, and those young. Later, when
he is richer, he would have to provide for one or two wives and for
numerous children.

" Since this institution has not been adopted — for half their life men
are whoremongers, and for the other half cuckolds ; and women must
be correspondingly classified as betrayed and betrayers — he who
marries young is tied later to an elderly wife ; he who marries late in
youth acquires venereal disease, and in age has to wear the horns.
Woman must either sacrifice the bloom of her youth to a man already
withered ; or else must discover that to a still vigorous man she is no
longer an object of desire. The institution we propose would cure
all these troubles ; the human race would lead happier lives. The
objections are the following :

"1. That a man would not know his own children. Answer :
This could, as a rule, be determined by likeness and other
considerations ; in existing conditions it is not always a
matter of certainty.

" 2. Such a menage d trois would give rise to brawls and jealousy.
Answer : Such things are already universal ; people must
learn to behave themselves.

" 3. What is to be done as regards property ? Answer : This
will have to be otherwise arranged ; absolute communio
bonorum will not occur. As we have already said, Nature
has arranged the affair badly. It will, therefore, be im-
possible to overcome all disadvantages.

"As matters are at present, Duty and Nature are continually in
conflict. For the man it is impossible from the beginning to the end
of his career to satisfy his sexual impulse in a legal manner. Imagine
his condition if he is widowed quite young. For the woman, to be
limited to a single man during the short period of her full bloom and
sexual capacity, is an unnatural condition. She has to preserve for
the use of one individual what he is unable to utilize, and what many
others eagerly desire from her ; and she herself, in thus refusing, must
curb her own desires. Just think of it !

" More especially we have to remember that always the number of
men competent for sexual intercourse is double the number of func-
tionally capable women, for which reason every woman must con-
tinually repel advances ; she prepares for defence immediately a man
comes near her."

When we consider this suggestion of tetragamy of Schopen-
hauer's from our own standpoint, we find an accurate exposition
of the evils arising from monogamic coercive marriage, and a
clear-sighted presentation of the physiological disharmonies of
the sexual life arising from the difference between man and
woman, upon which recently Metclmikoff also has laid so much
stress. In other respects Schopenhauer's views are for us
not open to discussion, for, as already pointed out, he regards
woman from the first simply as a chattel, and denies to her any

248

individuality or soul ; and, secondly, because he rejects the
principle of the only-love — a principle so intimately associated
with the idea of woman as individual. For the watchword of
the future must be : Free love, based upon the only-love ! and,
indeed, the only-love manifesting itself reciprocally in the full
struggle for existence.

For this reason, also, the characteristic free love of the
Bohemians of Paris during the second half of the nineteenth
century, and more especially during the period 1830 to 1860, can
only be regarded as a truly poetic love-idyll, when compared
with that grand and earnest love consecrated wholly to work,
and to the inward spiritual development which presents itself to
modern humanity as an ideal love, as the united conquest of
existence. Grisette love, which Sebastian Mercier described
with great force, and which found its classic representation in
Henry Murger's " Vie de Boheme," was characterized by the
enduring life-in-common of the loving couples, who belonged
for the most part to the circle of artists and students. Thus it
stood high as heaven above our modern " intimacy," which,
for the most part, has a quite transitory character ; and yet the
Bohemian free love corresponded in no way to the conception
and ideal of free love as a community of spirit and of life.

The development of modern civilization, in association with
the awakening of individualism, and with the economic revolu-
tion of our time, has created entirely new foundations for sexual
relationships, and has made continually more apparent the
injurious and destructive effects of our long outworn sexual
morality. These changes have taught us to understand that in
the so-called social question the sexual problem possesses as much
importance as the economic problem — perhaps more. They
have shown us the necessity for a new love of the future, for the
reason that to cling to the old, outlived forms would be equiva-
lent to a continuous increase in sexual corruption in the widest
sense of the word, combined with a general disease contamination
of civilized nations — as the threatening spread of prostitution,
and more especially of secret prostitution, and the increased
diffusion of venereal diseases, demonstrate before our eyes.

Almost at the same time, during recent years, among the
various civilized nations of Europe there have originated efforts
for a radical transformation of conventional sexual morality,
and for a reform, adapted to modern conditions, of marriage and
of the entire amatory life. In France, England, Sweden, and
Germany, writers have appeared, producing books, many of

249

which have been important, full of matter, and comprehensive,
entirely devoted to this object. Societies for marriage reform
and sexual reform have been founded in North America, France,
Austria, and Germany ; parliamentary commissions for the
investigation of these questions have been established. Several
newspapers have been founded for the reform of sexual ethics.
In short, a general interest has been aroused in this central
question of life, and theoretical and practical activity have been
directed towards its solution.

All at once, as if by general agreement, civilized humanity
asked itself the earnest and solemn question, How was it pos-
sible that to hundreds and thousands the simple right to love
was refused, so that they were condemned to a joyless existence,
in which all the beautiful blossoms of life withered away ; that
hundreds of thousands of others were condemned to the hideous
misery of prostitution ; that, finally, the community at large
was delivered up in ever-increasing degree to devastation by
venereal diseases and their consequences ?

How is it possible, asks Karl Federn, in the preface to his
translation of Carpenter's " Wenn die Menschen reif zur Liebe
werden " (" Love's Coming-of-Age ") — how is it possible that
we sing love-songs, and yet have an amatory life like that which
we lead to-day, and have a moral doctrine such as that which is
dominant to-day ?

All honour to the men and women who have dared to give an
answer to these questions, who have opposed conventional lies
with the truth of love, and who point out the new way along
which mankind will go — will go, because it must.

It is impossible here to mention by name all the writings
dealing with the reform of sexual relationships which have
appeared within recent years. Their name is legion. We must
content ourselves with an allusion to those books which most of
all deserve the name of epoch-making, which have aroused the
interest of the community, and which may probably be said to
have first stimulated the discussion of the problem, and to have
been principally effective in starting the flowing current of
reform.

In France, Charles Albert has treated the problem of free love
from the communistic standpoint.1 In the first two chapters of
his book, he describes the development of the primitive sexual

1 Charles Albert, " Free Love." — We may alj«> alludo to the more generally
philosophic work by Armand Charpentier, L'Kvangilo du Bonheur. Mariago.
Union Libre. Amour Libre " (Paris, 1898).

250

impulse, to become the most supreme individual love, and then
gives an interesting account of the struggle of middle-class society
against love, which to-day is endangered to an equal extent both
by the state and by capital.

" Capitalistic society represents one fact, love another. It suffices
to place them one beside the other in order to notice how sharp a con-
trast there is between them, an eternal state of war."

It is only money that dominates the thought and feeling of
modern humanity ; for love and its idealism there is no longer
any room ; social economy recognizes only a sexual relationship,
but not the higher feeling of love. Capital subjects the whole
of the sexual life to its laws. In prostitution this great social
crime finds its conclusion. The majority of marriages are nothing
more than " sexual bargains."

Free love is simply love liberated from the dominion of the
state and of capital. It can, therefore, be realized only by an
economic revolution, which will put an end to the economic
struggle for existence. Free love means the independence of the
sexual from the material life. Economic reform is the only way
to the higher love. This is the author's conviction. But he is
not subject to any deceptive delusion that with this all will be-
come beautiful and good ; with this all problems will be solved,
all incompleteness at an end.

" We do not," Albert continues, " regard the province of the sexual
life in the society of the future as an Eden, wherein those individauls
best suited one to the other will come together with mathematical
certainty, to lead a cloudless existence. Just as to-day, there will be
unrequited love, uncertain search and endeavour, errors and deceptions,
misunderstandings, satiety, aberrations, and sorrows. However great
the material prosperity may be which mankind in the future will
enjoy, the life of feeling will always remain the source of incalculable
disturbances, and love will not be the rarest cause of such disturb-
ances ; but still a large proportion of the existing causes of pain can
and must disappear."

The indispensable preliminary to free love is the complete
equality of man and woman. This, however, can only be attained
by means of communism — that is to say, by that ordering of
society in which property and wages cease to exist, in which not
only the means of production, but also all the articles of con-
sumption, are appropriated to the common use, and woman will
no longer possess a commercial value, as she does at the present
day.

251

Like Albert, Ladislaus Gumplowicz1 also believes that free
love can only be realized in a collectivist community.

However important it is to draw attention to the economic
point of view, as was done before Albert and Gumplowicz by
Bebel, in his celebrated " Woman and Socialism " (thirty-fourth
edition, Stuttgart, 1903), still, it appears to me that the com-
munistic solution is not the only possible solution, and that free
love can very well be associated with the preservation of private
property.2

While the progressive changes in the economic structure of
society powerfully influence sexual relationships and lay down
the rules for their existing forms, still, physiological individual
factors play a great part also in the matter. The first to insist
on this fact were the Englishman Carpenter and the Swedish
writer Ellen Key.8

Edward Carpenter,4 at one time a priest in the Anglican Church,
in his study of the question of free love, without ignoring the
economic factor, lays stress above all on the psychical factor, the
inward spiritual relationship between man and wife.

He writes (op. cit., p. 120) :

" It is in the very nature of Love that as it realizes its own aim it
should rivet always more and more towards a durable and distinct
relationship, nor rest till the permanent mate and equal is found. As
human beings progress, their relations to each other must become
much more definite and distinct, instead of less so — and there is no
likelihood of society in its onward march lapsing backwards, so to
speak, to formlessness again."

Above all, Carpenter has introduced into the discussion of free
love an element which to me appears of great importance from

1 L. Gumplowicz, " Marriage and Free Love " (Berlin, 1902, second edition).

3 In this connexion English readers will do well to consult Karl Pearson's
admirable " The Ethic of Freethought." In the third or sociological section
of that book there are numerous references to the subject of free love in
relation to the economic structure of society. One of these will, however, for
the present, suffice for quotation : " The economic independence of women will,
for the first time, render it possible for the highest human relationship to become
again a matter of pure affection, raised above every suspicion of restraint and
every taint of commercialism." It will be seen that Karl Pearson, like Albert,
Gumplowicz, Bebel, and Socialists in general, believes that collectivism and the
economic independence of women are indispensable preliminaries to a far-reach-
ing reform of our sex relationships in the direction of free love. — TRANSLATOR.

* I must here call attention to the fact that the celebrated philosopher Eugen
Diihring, in his notable work, " The Value of Life," pp. 156-158 (Leipzig, 1881,
third edition), made a violent attack on the coercive marriage system, and de-
manded on ethical grounds a transformation of our amatory life in the direction
of freedom and of personal love.

4 Edward Carpenter, " Love's Coming-of-Agc," third edition, London, 1902.

262

the medical standpoint : the question of relative asceticism, of
self-control. He rightly considers that the duty of the love of
the future does not subsist merely in the common physical union,
but also in spiritual procreation. From the intimate spiritual
contact between two differentiated personalities, the highest
spiritual values proceed. Only self-control leads us to this
highest love.

" It is a matter of common experience that the unrestrained outlet
of merely physical desire leaves the nature drained of its higher love-
forces. . . . Any one who has once realized how glorious a thing Love
is in its essence, and how indestructible, will hardly need to call any-
thing that leads to it a sacrifice " (op. cit., pp. 7, 8).

The indispensable prerequisites to the reform of love and
marriage are, according to Carpenter, the following (op. cit.,
p. 100) :

(1) The furtherance of the freedom and self-dependence of women.
(2) The provision of some rational teaching, of heart and of head, for
both sexes during the period of youth. (3) The recognition in marriage
itself of a freer, more companionable, and less pettily exclusive rela-
tionship. (4) The abrogation or modification of the present odious
law which binds people together for life, without scruple, and in the
most artificial and ill-assorted unions.

Carpenter accepts Letourneau's view, that, in a more or less
distant future, the institution of marriage will undergo trans-
formation into monogamic unions, freely entered on, and
when necessary freely dissolved, by simple mutual consent,
as is already done in several European countries — in Canton
Geneva, in Belgium, in Roumania, as regards divorce ; and in
Italy as regards separation. State and society should take part
in the matter only so far as the safety of the children demands,
concerning whom more extensive duties should be expected from
the parents. Carpenter also points out, as was shown seventy
years ago by Gutzkow, that, as regards the development of the
children, it is better, in unhappy marriages, that their parents
should separate than that the children should grow up amid the
miseries of such marriages.

" Love " — thus Carpenter concludes his dissertation on marriage
in the future — " is doubtless the last and most difficult lesson that
humanity has to learn ; in a sense, it underlies all the others. Perhaps
the time has come for the modern nations when, ceasing to be children,
they may even try to learn it " (op. cit., p. 113).

253

A greater vogue even than Carpenter's book had was obtained
by the essays of the Swedish writer Ellen Key, " Love and Mar-
riage," which in 1894 appeared in a German translation,1 and had
an unusual success in the book-market. It is without exception
the most interesting and pregnant work on the sexual question
which has ever appeared. Written from the heart, and inspired
by the observations of a free and lofty spirit, it avoids none of
the numerous difficulties and by-paths in this department of
thought ; and the reproach of libertinism which has been cast at
the author must be emphatically rejected. Ellen Key is the
most outspoken realist of all the writers on the subject of free
love. She takes her arguments from actual life ; she associates
her ideas of reform always with the real ; she writes as an earnest
evolutionist. Thus, in her book, her first aim is to establish
" the course of the evolution of sexual morality " and the " evolu-
tion of love."

Ellen Key starts from the fact that no one has ever offered any
proof that monogamy is that form of the sexual life which is
indispensable to the vital force and civilization of the nations.
Even among the Christian nations it has never yet really existed,
and its legalization as the only permissible form of sexual morality
has hitherto been rather harmful than helpful to general morality.

The writer then develops the idea, no less beautiful than true,
that the genuine character of love can be proved only by the
lovers actually living together for a considerable time ; only
thus is it possible to demonstrate that it is moral for them to live
together, and that their union will have an elevating influence on
themselves and their generation. Consequently, of no conjugal
relationship can we beforehand affirm or deny its success. Every
new pair, whatever form they may have chosen for their common
life, must first of all prove for themselves that they are morally
justified in living together.

Ellen Key then proceeds to maintain a view, which I myself
also regard as an integral constituent of the programme of the
love of the future, and one which I have advanced in earlier
writings : that love is not merely, as Schopenhauer thought, an
affair of the species, but is, at least in equal degree, the concern
of the loving individuals. This is the result and the meaning of
civilization, which, as I have proved in earlier chapters, exhibits
a progressive individualization and an increasing spiritual enrich-
ment of love (the " spiritualized sensuality " of Ellen Key), and

1 Ellen Key, " Love and Marriage," translated into German by Francis Maro
(Berlin, 1904).

254

thus gives to love a thoroughly independent importance for each
individual.

" In view of the manner in which civilization has now developed
personal love, this latter has become so composite, so comprehensive
and far-reaching, that not only in and by itself — independently of the
species — does it constitute a great life-value, but it also increases or
diminishes all other values. In addition to its primitive importance,
it has gained a new significance : to carry the flame of life from sex to
sex. No one names that person immoral who, deceived in his love,
abstains in his married life from procreating the species ; that husband
and wife also we shall not call immoral, who continue their married
life rendered happy by love, although their marriage has proved child-
less. But in both cases these human beings follow their subjective
feelings at the expense of the future generations, and treat their love
as an independent aim. The right already recognized in these indi-
vidual cases, as belonging to the individual at the expense of the
species, will continue to undergo enlargement in proportion as the
importance of love continues to increase. On the other hand, the new
morality will demand from love an ever-increasing voluntary limita-
tion of rights at those times when the growth of a new life renders it
necessary. It will also demand a voluntary or enforced renunciation
of the right to procreate new life under conditions which would make
this new life deficient in value."

Ellen Key terms this new, modern love " erotic monism,"
because it comprehends the entire unitary personality, including
the spiritual being, not merely the body. George Sand gave the
first definition of this love as being of such a kind that " neither
had the soul betrayed the senses, nor had the senses betrayed
the soul."

This erotic monism proclaims as its indestructible foundation
the unity of marriage and love.

The idea of unity gives to the human being the right to arrange
his sexual life according to his personal wishes, subject to the
condition that he does not consciously injure the unity, and
therewith, mediately or immediately, the right, of possible
posterity.

Thus, according to Ellen Key, love « will continually become
to a greater extent a private affair of human beings, whilst children,
on the contrary, will become more and more a vital problem of
society." From this it follows that the two " most debased and
socially sanctioned manifestations of sexual subdivision (of
dualism), coercive marriage and prostitution, will gradually
become impossible, because, after the victory of the idea of
unity, they will cease to correspond to human needs."

Ellen Key rightly insists that among the young men of the
present day there is an increasing hostility to socially protected

255

immorality (both in the form of coercive marriage and in that of
prostitution) ; whilst they increasingly exhibit a monistic yearn-
ing for love. The general diffusion, which we shall describe at
length in a special chapter, of ascetic moods and of misogyny
among men and of misandry among women, is partly connected
with the feeling that the present social forms of the sexual
relationship limit to an equal extent the worth and the freedom
of mankind.

To-day the " purity fanatics and the frantic sensualists " meet
in common mistrust of the developmental possibilities of love,
because they do not believe in the possible ennoblement of the
blind natural impulse. In contrast to these, Ellen Key reminds
us of the fact of the " mystical yearning for perfection, which in
the course of evolution has raised impulse to become passion,
and passion to become love, and which is now striving to raise
love to an ever greater love."

We must recognize love as the spiritual force of life. Love,
like the artist, like the man of science, has a right to the peculiar,
original activity of its own poietic force, to the production of new
spiritual values. The more perfect race that is to come must, in
the fullest meaning of the words, be brought forth by love.

For this, however, the indispensable preliminary is the inward
freedom of love ; the free-love union is the watchword of the
future. Ellen Key also shows that among the lower classes free
love has long been customary, and that there the dangerous
utilization of prostitution is far more limited than among the
higher classes, with which view Blaschko's statistical data regard-
ing the far greater diffusion of venereal diseases among the higher
classes of society are in substantial agreement.

No less indispensable to free love, however, is the full, mature
development of the loving individual. For this reason, Ellen
Key demands self-control and sexual continence at least until
the age of twenty years. She regards the indiscriminate sexual
intercourse which is to-day an established custom among all
young men as the murder of love. But too early marriages are
no less dangerous. She demands for the woman at least an age
of twenty ; for the man, an age of twenty-five years ; and until
these respective ages are attained, sexual continence should be
observed as fully as possible by both sexes.

This self-command is good for the physical development,
" steels the will, gives the joy of power to the personality ; and
these qualities are later of importance in all other spheres of
activity."

256

With wonderful beauty, Ellen Key describes the happiness of
the power of waiting in love, and quotes in this connexion the
lovely phrases of the Swedish poet Karlfeldt :

" There is nothing on earth like the times of waiting,
The days of springtime, the days of blossoming ;
Not even May can diffuse a light
Like the clear light of April."

On the other hand, it is a demand of true morality that healthy
men and women between the ages of twenty and thirty years
should enjoy the possibility of marriage — of free marriage. This
possibility can, however, be secured only by economic reforms.

The author then considers the very important point of love's
choice, and demands above all the compulsory provision of a
medical certificate of health before entering on marriage.

" It is absolutely beyond question that the healthy self-seeking
which wishes to safeguard the personal ego, in conjunction with the
increasing valuation of a healthy posterity, will hinder the contraction
of many unsuitable marriages. In other cases, love might overcome
these considerations, as far as husband and wife are themselves con-
cerned ; but they must then renounce parentage. In those cases, on
the contrary, in which the law would distinctly forbid marriage, one
could naturally not prevent the sick persons from procreating inde-
pendently of marriage ; but the same is true of all laws : the best
do not need them, the worst do not obey them, but the majority are
guided by them in the formation and development of their ideas of
what is right."

As immoral, Ellen Key indicates :

" Parentage without love.

" Irresponsible parentage.

:' Parentage on the part of immature or degenerate human beings.

" Voluntary unfertility on the part of a married pair who are com-
petent to reproduce their kind.

" All manifestations of the sexual life resulting from force or
seduction, or from the disinclination or the incapacity for the proper
fulfilment of sexual intercourse."

It is interesting to note that Ellen Key prophesies as the result
of the progressive improvement of the species by love's selection,
the attainment of a state wherein every man and every woman
will be suited for the reproduction of the species. Then would
the ideal of monogamy, one husband for one wife, one wife for
one husband, be for the first time realized.

Very beautifully, and with a prudent insight into the actual
relationships, Ellen Key discusses the question of the " right to
motherhood," where she finds occasion to describe the new and

very various types of women which the evolution of modern life
has brought into being. She recognizes only with reservation
the general right to motherhood, but she does not regard it as a
desirable example to follow when a woman becomes a mother
without love, either in marriage or out of it. It is not right to
do what is generally done to-day by the man-haters — namely, to
demand from the majority of unmarried women that they should
produce a child without love. This should not even happen when
love exists, but a permanent life-in-common with the father of
the child is impossible. An unmarried woman who determines
on motherhood should be fully mature, and already have behind
her " the second springtime " of her life ; she must " not only be
pure as snow, pure as fire, but also must be possessed of the full
conviction that with the child of her love she will produce a
radiance in her own life and will endow humanity with new
wealth."

Such an unmarried woman really makes a present of her child
to humanity, and is quite different from the unmarried woman
who " has a child."

Indeed, for the majority, the ideal always remains that of the
ancient proverb, that man is only half a human being, woman
only half ; and only the father and the mother with their child
become a whole one !

With regard to divorce, Ellen Key demands that it should be
perfectly free, and should depend only upon the definite desire,
held for a certain lapse of time, of either or both parties. The
dissolution of marriage must be no less easy than the breaking off
of an engagement.

" Whatever drawbacks," she says, " free divorce may involve,
they can hardly be worse than those which marriage has entailed,
and still continues to entail. Marriage has been degraded to the
coarsest sexual customs, the most shameless practices, the most
distressing spiritual murders, the most cruel ill-treatment, and the
grossest impairment of personal freedom, that any province of modern
life has exhibited ! One need not go back to the history of civiliza-
tion ; one need simply turn to the physician and magistrate, in order
to learn for what purpose the ' sacrament of marriage ' is employed,
and frequently employed by the very same men and women who are
professed enthusiasts as to its moral value !"

Just as little as the relations between friends, between parents
and children, or between brothers and sisters, necessarily give
rise to lasting sentiments of affection, is it possible to expect this
of two lovers. The " marriage fetters," described with such
horrible truth by John Stuart Mill and Bjornstjerne Bjornsen,

268

are to-day felt to be intolerable. The love of the modern man
flourishes only in freedom.

" The delicate erotic sentiment of the present day shrinks from
becoming a fetter ; it shuns the possibility of becoming a hindrance."

Free divorce, in a case of unhappy marriage, is no less necessary
when there are children to the marriage. The duties of the
parents to the children remain in such cases unaltered, without,
however, thus rendering it necessary that the parents should
continue to live together. For the sorrows of such a union, and
the harm done thereby to the children, are greater than those
that would result from divorce.

Human love has its phases of development. It does not remain
for ever the same, but it alters pan passu with the evolution of
the individual. Lifelong love is an ideal, but it is not a duty.
Such a demand would as inevitably destroy personality as would
the demand for the unconditional belief in a doctrine, or for the
unconditional pursuit of a profession.

Very interesting is Ellen Key's description of the numerous
disillusions of love, which become still more perceptible in a co-
ercive marriage. There is a whole series of " typical unhappy
fates " in marriage, often with no blame properly attaching to
either party, dependent merely upon incompatibility of tempera-
ment, but also upon faults of one or both parties to the marriage.

Frequently a man or a woman of a thoroughly sympathetic
temperament lives with a woman or a man of such faultless
excellence that the home seems filled with icicles. One day the
husband or the wife runs away because the air has become so
thin as to be irrespirable. The general sentiment is one of com-
miseration for the — superlatively excellent man or woman !

In the case of earnest, mature human beings, free divorce will
not increase the number of dissolutions of marriage. On the
contrary, the obligations imposed by a free relationship are
greater than those of legal coercive marriage. The fear also that
with the granting of free divorce every one will enter upon
numerous free marriages one after another is groundless. It is
precisely those who are united in free love to whom such a separa-
tion, when it does become necessary, is so profoundly painful,
that life itself forbids the frequent repetition of such unhappi-
ness.

Very beautiful, and based upon lofty ethical conceptions, are
the writer's views regarding the necessity for divorce precisely
in view of the existence of children. She says :

259

" Men and women of earlier times went on patching up for ever and
ever. The psychologically developed generation of to-day is more
inclined to let the broken remain broken. For, except in those
cases in which objective misfortunes, or a retarded evolution, gave
rise to a rupture, patched-up marriage, like patched-up engage-
ments, seldom prove durable. Often it was owing to profound in-
stincts that the rupture became inevitable ; reconciliations fortify
these instincts, and sooner or later they once more find free vent.

" Thus it happens that even an exceptional nature is strained by
the burden it has to bear, and the children are not then witnesses of
their parents living together, but of their dying together.

" Neither religion nor law, neither society nor a family, can deter-
mine what it is that marriage is killing in a man, or what he finds it
possible to rescue in that state — he himself alone knows the one
and suspects the other. He alone can delineate the boundaries, can
decide whether he is satisfied to regard his own existence as closed,
and to remain contented in the life of his children ; whether he is able
so to endure the sorrows of a continued married life with such fortitude
as to make it increase his own powers and those of Ms children."

The conviction of the rights of love, and the consciousness of
the rights of the children, are to-day unmistakably on the in-
crease. There is no danger that the latter right, the right of the
children, will suffer in comparison with the rights of love. It is,
on the contrary, characteristic, that out of the very same feeling
by which the freer configuration of the amatory life is demanded,
there has also arisen a new programme of the rights of children.
This same Ellen Key who proclaims the inalienable rights of free
love, speaks also of the " century of the child," and devotes to
this subject an admirable book.

The most important point with regard to free divorce, in respect
to the children, is that the father and the mother must not
separate from one another in hatred, but in friendship, and that,
in the interest of the children, they should continue to meet one
another from time to time. Ellen Key here rightly condemns
the conduct of the good friends and relatives who simply lay
down the law that the separated pair must hate one another,
and must in every relationship torment and cheat one another.
It is precisely such " enmity " of the parents after divorce that
is so full of bad consequences in respect of the children.

We also have to consider this point of view, that sometimes the
new husband or the new wife has a better influence over the
children than their own parents, and that in this way divorce
may have brought the children greater happiness, may have
been for them a true blessing.

The closing chapter of her work is devoted by Ellen Key to
the formulation of practical recommendations regarding the new

17—2

marriage laws. She indicates as a starting-point of her disserta-
tion that the ideal form of marriage is the perfectly free union
between a man and a woman. But this ideal can in the mean-
while only be attained through transitional forms. In this the
opinion of society regarding the morality of the sexual relation-
ship must find expression, and thus remain as the support for
undeveloped personalities ; but at the same time, these transi-
tional forms must be sufficiently free to favour a progressive
development of the higher erotic consciousness of the present day.

There always remains, therefore, the necessity for laws, to some
extent limiting individual freedom ; but these laws must admit
of an advance towards perfection in respect of the freer gratifica-
tion of individual needs. The sense of solidarity demands a new
marriage law adapted to new modern erotic needs, since the
majority are not yet prepared for complete freedom. But it is
only the needs of modern civilized human beings, and not abstract
theories concerning the idea of the family or the " historic origin "
of marriage, that should be determinative in this matter.

In the marriage of the future, above all, the economic and legal
subordination of woman must be abolished. Woman must super-
vise her own property and arrange her own work, and she must
in the main care for herself in so far as this is compatible with
her maternal duties. She must, however, have this assurance —
that during the first years of the life of every child she shall be
cared for by society, and this under the following conditions :

She must be of full age.

She must have performed her feminine " military service " by
a one year's course of instruction in the care of children, in the
general care of health, and, whenever possible, in sick-nursing.

She must either care for her child herself or provide another
thoroughly competent nurse.

She must bring proof that she does not possess sufficient per-
sonal property, or sufficient income from her work, in order to
provide for her own support and half of her child's support, or
else that the care for her children compels her to discontinue her
professional occupation.

Only in exceptional cases should this support of motherhood
be provided for a longer time than during the three first and most
important years of the life of the child.

The funds for this most necessary of all kinds of insurance
must be provided in the form of a graduated income tax, graduated
so as to make the wealthier classes pay the most, and the un-
married should pay just as much as the married.

261

In every community the central authorities of this insurance
should consist of " boards for the care of children." The members
of these boards should be two-thirds women and one-third men ;
they should distribute the funds and supervise the care of the
infants and older children ; in cases in which the mother was not
properly fulfilling her duties to the child, they could cut off
supplies, or remove the child from the mother's care.

The mother should receive yearly the same sum, but, in addition,
she should receive for each child half of the cost of its support,
as long as the number of children is not exceeded which the
society has laid down as desirable. Children born in excess of
this number would be a private concern of the parents. Every
father must, from the time of birth until the child attains the
age of eighteen years, provide one-half of the money needed for
its support.

The existing immoral distinction between legitimate and ille-
gitimate children is practically equivalent to freeing unmarried
fathers from their natural responsibility, and drives unmarried
mothers to death, prostitution, or infanticide.

All this would be done away with by a law ensuring from the
State support for the mother during the first, most difficult years,
and ensuring the child a right to support from both parents, a
right also to the name of both, and to inheritance from both.

Legal expression is also demanded for the right of each member
of a married couple to possess his or her property ; those who
wish to make any other arrangement can do so by special con-
tract after a definite valuation of their property. And in respect
of the right of inheritance, the domestic work of the wife (house-
keeping and the care of the children) must receive due economic
consideration — a matter hitherto ignored. Not only in respect
of her property, but also in respect of all civil rights, and of the
right of control over her own person, the married woman must
be placed in the same position as the unmarried.

Ellen Key's remarks on the removal of the coercion exercised
at present on husband and wife in respect of living together are
very interesting. She writes :

" There are persons who would have continued to love one another
throughout the whole of their life had they not been compelled — day
after day, year after year — to adapt their customs, their volitions, and
their inclinations entirely according to one another's tastes. So
much unhappiness depends, indeed, upon matters of almost no im-
portance, difficulties which two human beings endowed with moral
courage and insight would easily have overcome, had it not been that
the instinct towards happiness was overpowered by regard for ordinary

262

opinion. The more personal freedom a woman (or man) has had
before marriage, the more does she (or he) suffer in a home in which
she does not possess an hour or a corner for her own undisturbed use.
And the more the modern human being gains an increase in his indi-
vidual freedom of movement, the more he feels the need for privacy
in other relations, the more also will man and wife need these things
in the married state. . . .

" But at present custom (and law) demand from the married pair
that they should lead a life in common, which often ends in a perma-
nent separation, merely because conventional considerations prevented
them from living apart !

" Also for those otherwise constituted, the narrow dependence,
the compulsory belonging each to the other, the daily adaptation, the
unceasing mutual consideration, may become oppressive. In con-
tinually increasing numbers people are beginning quietly to transform
conjugal customs, so that they may correspond to the new needs. For
instance, each goes for a journey by himself, when he feels the need
for privacy ; one of the pair seeks alone pleasures which the other
does not value ; in former times both would have ' enjoyed ' them
together, against the will of one, or both would have renounced what
one could have genuinely enjoyed. More and more married people
have separate bedrooms, and after a generation, it is probable that
separate dwelling-houses for husband and wife will be sufficiently
common to arouse no particular attention."

With regard to the question of personal freedom in marriage,
Ellen Key takes into account the possibility of marriage being
kept secret on urgent grounds ; also the introduction of new
forms of divorce, the present procedure giving rise to such detest-
able practices in the law-courts — for example, the detailed state-
ment of the grounds for divorce, or an account of the refusal or
the misuse of " conjugal rights," or an account of the malicious
desertion of one party by the other.

The author, therefore, makes proposals for a new marriage law
and a new divorce law.

As conditions preliminary to marriage, the new law should
insist —

That man and wife should be of full age ;

That neither should be more than twenty-five years older than
the other ;

That neither should be closely related or connected with the
other, as the present law already forbids. The new law must in
this respect be modified in the sense either of greater severity or
of relaxation, according as the scientific knowledge of the future
may direct.

Finally, neither party should simultaneously enter upon
another marriage. On both parties will be imposed the duty
of providing a medical certificate regarding the state of their

263

health ; a proposed marriage must be forbidden when either
party is suffering from a disease transmissible to the children
(also when suffering from a disease which would infect the other
party ?). With regard to other illnesses, the matter may be left
to the free judgment of those wishing to be married.

Marriage will take place before the marriage assessor of the
commune, and before four other witnesses, without any special
ceremony ; the contracting parties will enter their names in the
register, and their signatures will be witnessed by those present.
When for any reason the marriage is to be kept secret, the wit-
nesses will, of course, be bound to secrecy.

This civil marriage is all that the law will direct ; the religious
ceremony will be a voluntary affair, and will have no legal force.

In marriage, husband and wife will retain all the personal rights
which they had before marriage, over their bodies, their names,
their property, their work, their wages, also the right to choose
their own place of residence, and all other civil rights. For
common expenses and debts they will have a common responsi-
bility ; whilst each will be personally responsible for personal
expenditure and debts. In case of divorce, each will retain his
or her property. In the event of death, the widower or widow
will inherit half the property, the remainder going to the children.

For divorce, Ellen Key suggests there should be a " council of
divorce," consisting of four persons, men or women. The first
aim of this council will be, somewhat like that of a court of
honour before a duel, to attempt to reconcile the parties, to adjust
any cause of quarrel. If this attempt fails, the matter must go
before the marriage assessor of the commune ; but this cannot
take place until the expiration of six months from the time when
it was brought before the council of divorce. The council of
divorce must testify before the assessor that six months before
each party was fully informed regarding the wish of the other
that the marriage should be dissolved, and regarding the reasons
for that wish. If there are no children, if a division of the
property has been arranged, and if husband and wife have lived
completely apart for one year, the divorce will be effected one
year after the commencement of proceedings. When there are
children to the marriage, there will be needed a special " jury
for the care of children " to deal with the custody of the children.
If either party is found by the jury and the judge to be unworthy
for or incapable of the custody of the children, on the ground of
his (or her) morals or character, he (or she) loses his (or her)
rights. If either father or mother is deprived of the custody of

264

the children, a guardian must be appointed — a man to represent
the father, a woman to represent the mother — and this guardian
will supervise the education of the children in association with
the remaining parent. If both parents are found to be unfitted
for the custody of the children, the education of the latter must
be supervised by a guardian only. If both parents are equally
fitted and worthy for the custody of the children, the latter should
remain with the mother until the age of fifteen, and would then
have the right to choose between their parents.

Ellen Key demands severe laws against the seduction and
abandonment of girls under age, on the part of unconscientious
men ; and she considers that the witting transmission of any
infective disorder by means of sexual intercourse should be
punished by imprisonment for a minimum term of six months.
Speaking generally, the law should always come to the assistance
of the weaker party, above all, to the assistance of the children,
and in most cases to the assistance of the mother.

Although the new marriage law is to give to adult citizens
complete freedom to arrange their erotic relationships at their
own responsibility and risk, with or without marriage, it remains
necessary that double marriages (bigamy), sexual relationships
within forbidden degrees, or on the part of persons suffering from
transmissible disease, which the law has declared to be a hindrance
to marriage, and also intercourse with persons under eighteen
years of age, should be regarded as punishable offences. The
same is true of homosexual and other perverse manifestations.
The trial in such cases will be conducted by a judge, with the
assistance of a jury of physicians and crimino-psychologists.

The writer does not believe that marriage will be transformed
by legal changes in the way outlined above, but she is of opinion
that what will happen is that " men and women will refuse to
submit themselves to the unworthy forms of marriage, which
will remain established by law. and will form free unions, the
so-called ' marriage of conscience,' " such as those which the
Belgian sociologist Mesnil has recommended in his work, " Le
Libre Mariage."

It is, in fact, in Sweden, Ellen Key's fatherland, in which these
free marriages of conscience appear to have first obtained ad-
herents. She records the free union of the professor of national
economics at Lund, Knut Wicksell. Additional reports of free
marriages in Sweden are given by the Swedish physician Anton
Nystrom.1 He mentions among those who have formed free

1 Anton Nystrom, " The Sexual Life and its Laws," pp. 244-247 (Berlin, 1904).

265

unions, without legal or ecclesiastical ceremony, but simply by
public notification, in addition to the already mentioned univer-
sity professor, also the editor of a leading newspaper, a physician
and doctor of philosophy, and a candidate of philosophy. The
latter is engaged in study with his wife at the high school at
Goteborg. In February, 1904, they made a public announce-
ment in the newspaper that they were entering on a " marriage
of conscience," since they had a conscientious objection to the
ecclesiastical form of marriage. The principal of the college wrote
an address to the young couple, stating that, although this union
was not entered upon on immoral grounds, and therefore could
not be regarded as a punishable offence, still, such a free union,
unrecognized by the State, between man and woman, was not
compatible with the good order of society, that it was injurious
to the general ethical conception of the sacramental character of
marriage, and also constituted a dangerous example, which others
might be led to imitate. The principal therefore urged the young
people most earnestly " to place their union as soon as possible
on a legitimate footing." This exhortation, however, led to no
result.

Moreover, the University of Upsala was more free-thinking
than that of Goteborg, for the above-mentioned professor and
his wife were, for a long time after they had become united in
free love, matriculated students at the University of Upsala, and
the university authorities favoured them with no attention with
regard to this matter.

In recent years, the public declaration of " free marriages "
has also found observance in other European countries. Thus,
not long ago the author who writes under the pseudonym of
" Roda-Roda " announced in the newspapers his free union with
the Baroness von Zeppelin ; and in the Vossische Zeitung, No. 410,
September 2, 1906, we find the following announcement :

" Dr. Alfred Rahmer

Wilhelraine Ruth Rahmer

geb. Prinz-Flohr

Frei-Vermahlte "

(Free- Wedlock).

Similar public announcements are reported from Holland. More-
over, according to Nystrom, it has since 1734 been legally estab-
lished in Sweden, that in certain cases engagement is equivalent
to marriage — namely, when the engaged woman becomes preg-
nant. " When a man impregnates his fiancee, the engagement
becomes a marriage. ... If the man refuse to go through the

266

ceremony of marriage, and wishes to break off the engagement,
the woman is legally declared to be his wife, and enjoys full con-
jugal rights in his house." So runs this law.

We can predict with certainty that the adherents of free
marriage, the number of " marriage protestants," as Ellen Key
happily calls them, will continue to increase. To such will belong
all those who have an equal antipathy to coercive marriage, to
the debasing intercourse with prostitutes, and to the transient
casual love, such as is experienced in ordinary extra-conjugal
sexual intercourse, the true " wild " love.

" It is only a question of time " — thus Ellen Key concludes her
remarks on marriage reform — " when the respect felt by society for
the sexual union will not depend upon the form of the life in common,
by which two human beings become parents, but only on the worth
of the children which these two are producing as new links in the
chain of the generations. Men and women will then devote to their
spiritual and physical preparation for sexual intercourse the same
religious earnestness that the Christians devote to the welfare of their
souls. No longer will divine laws regarding the morality of sexual
relationships be considered the mainstay of morality ; in place of
these the desire to elevate the human race and a sense of personal
responsibility will be the safeguards of conduct. But the conviction
on the part of the parents that the purpose of life is also their own
proper life — that is, that they do not exist only for the sake of children —
should free them from certain other duties of conscience which at
present bind them in respect of children — above all, from the duty of
maintaining a union in which they themselves are perishing. The
home will perhaps become more than it is at present ; something at
unity with the mother, something which — far from excluding the
father— carries within itself the germ of a new and higher ' family
right.' . . .

" A greater and healthier will-to-live in respect of erotic feelings
and demands — this it is that our time needs ! Here from the feminine
side real dangers threaten ; and one of several ways in which these
dangers must be averted is by the construction of new forms of
marriage.

" Human material of ever higher worth and capable of higher evolu-
tion— it is this which in the first place we have to create. If we pre-
serve coercive forms of the sexual life, the possibility of doing this is
a diminishing one ; if we adopt free forms of the sexual life, the possi-
bility of doing it will increase. Not only because the present time
asks for more freedom are its demands full of promise, but because
those demands approximate ever more closely to the central point of
the problem — to the conviction that love is the principal condition
upon which depends the vital advance of the individual and of
humanity at large."

I have given such a lengthy analysis of Ellen Key's book
because, in the first place, in no other work do we find so lucid

an exposition of all the points needed for the consideration of the
question of free love — an exposition based upon the richest
experience of life and a really astonishing psychical knowledge
of mankind, combined with the finest understanding of the
subtle activities and sentiments of the loving soul ; and, in the
second place, because as an actual fact — at any rate, in Germany
— this book has formed the true starting-point of all endeavours
towards the reform of sexual morality. Ellen Key's " Ueber
Liebe und Ehe " (" Love and Marriage ") is a demonstration of
human rights in the matter of love ; it is the evangel for those
who have determined to harmonize love with all the changes and
advances attendant on the evolution of civilization, and have re-
solved not to allow the forcible retardation of progress by condi-
tions which were perhaps still tolerable one hundred or two
hundred years ago, but to-day are unconditionally hostile to
civilization.

In Germany these endeavours have been centralized in the
Bund fiir Mutterschutz (the Association for the Protection
of Mothers), founded in the beginning of 1905, whose purpose
it is to protect unmarried mothers and their children from
economic and moral dangers, to counteract the dominant con-
demnation of such mothers, and thereby also indirectly to bring
about the reform of the existing views on sexual morality.
Those who initiated this most important movement were indeed
high-minded women. I mention, among many, only the names
of Ruth Bre, Helene Stocker, Maria Lischnewska, Adele Schreiber,
Gabriele Reuter, and Henriette Furth.

By the preparatory committee to which Maria Lischnewska,
Dr. Borgius, Dr. Max Marcuse, Ruth Bre, and Dr. Helene Stocker
belonged, a committee meeting was called on January 5, 1905,
and the Association for the Protection of Mothers was founded,
its programme having already received the support of a
number of leading personalities from all parts of the German
Empire.

In addition to this committee, to which, besides the above-
named members of the preparatory committee, there belonged
Lily Braun, Georg Hirth, and Werner Sombart, a further com-
mittee was formed, the members of which were : Alfred Blaschko,
Iwan Bloch, Hugo Bottger, Lily Braun, Grafin Gertrud Bulow
von Dennewitz, M. G. Conrad, A. Damaschke, Hedwig Dohm,
Frieda Duensing, Chr. v. Ehrenfels, A. Erkelenz, W. Erb, A.
Eulenburg, Max Flesch, Flechsig, A. Forel, E. Francke, Hen-
riette Furth, Agnes Hacker, Hegar, Willy Hellpach, Clara Hirsch-

268

berg, Georg Hirth, Graf Paul von Hoensbroech, Bianca Israel,
Josef Kohler, Landmann, Hans Leuss, Maria Lisclmewska, R. von
Liszt, Lucas, Max Marcuse, Mensinga, Bruno Meyer, H. Meyer,
Metta Meinken, Klara Muche, Moesta, A. Moll, Muller, Friedrich
Naumann, A. Neisser, Franz Oppenheimer, Pelman, Alfred Ploetz,
Heinrich Potthoff, Lydia Rabinowitsch, Gabriele Reuter, Karl
Ries, Adele Schreiber, Heinrich Sohney, Werner Sombart, Helene
Stocker, Marie Stritt, Irma von Troll-Borostyani, Max Weber,
Bruno WiUe, L. Wilser, L. Woltmann.

In the programme which the newly founded Association
for the Protection of Mothers speedily published, we are
told:

One hundred and eighty thousand illegitimate children are born in
Germany every year, approximately one- tenth of all births. This
important source of our strength as a people, children who at the time
of birtli are usually endowed with powerful vitality (for their parents
are commonly in the bloom of youth and health), we allow to go
to ruin because a rigorous moral view bans unmarried mothers,
undermines their economic existence, and compels them to entrust
their children for payment to strange hands.

The momentous consequences of this state of affairs are shown by
the fact that the average number of still-births, in the case of illegiti-
mate children, amounts to 5 per cent., as compared with 3 per cent,
of still-births among the total number of births ; the mortality of
illegitimate children during the first year of life is 28'5 per cent., as
compared with 16'7 per cent, for the mortality of all children born.
And whilst only a diminishing percentage of illegitimate children ever
become fitted for military service, the world of criminals, prostitutes,
and vagabonds, is recruited to an alarming extent from their ranks.
Thus, by unfounded moral prejudices, we produce artificially an army
of enemies to society. At the same time the birth-rate of Germany
is relatively declining. In the year 1876 the number of births per
1,000 living was 41 ; in the year 1900 it was only 35$ !

To put an end to this robbery of the strength of our people is the
aim of the

ASSOCIATION FOB THE PROTECTION OF MOTHERS.

The attempt has already been made by means of creches, foundling
institutions, and the like, to deal with this matter. But the protec-
tion of children without the protection of mothers is, and must remain,
no more than patchwork ; for the mother is the principal source of
life for the child, and is indispensable to the child's prosperity. What-
ever ensures rest and care to the mother in her most difficult hours,
whatever secures her economic existence for the future, and protects
her from the contempt of her fellow-beings, by which her health is
endangered and her life embittered, will serve to provide a secure
foundation for the bodily and mental prosperity of the child, and
will simultaneously give the mother herself a stronger moral hold.
Therefore the Association for the Protection of Mothers will, above

269

all, make the mothers' position safe, by assisting them to the attain-
ment of

ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE

— especially such as are prepared to bring up their own children — by
the formation in country and in town of

HOMES FOR MOTHERS,

in which, in addition, arrangements will be made for the necessary
care and upbringing of the children, the granting of legal protection,
and the provision of medical aid. Experience has shown that such
provision also corresponds to the wish of many of the fathers, and
assists in retaining their help and interest for mother and child.

The Association will, however, above all, close the sources from
which the present poverty of unmarried mothers arises, and these are
more especially the moral prejudices which at the present day defame
them socially, and the legal regulations which burden them almost
exclusively with the economic care and responsibility for the child,
and which entail on the father not at all, or in a quite insufficient
degree, his contribution to the burden.

THE MORAL DEFAMATION

of unmarried mothers would, perhaps, be comprehensible if we lived
in economic and social conditions rendering it possible for every
one to marry soon after attaining sexual maturity, so that the in-
voluntary celibacy of adult persons was an abnormal state. In
such a time as ours, however, in which no less than 45 per cent, of all
women competent to bear children are unmarried, and those who
actually marry do so for the most part at a comparatively late age,
we must regard as untenable the view which considers the unmarried
woman giving birth to a child to be an outcast, thrusts her out of
society like the basest criminal, and gives her up to despair. Equally
untenable appears

THE PRESENT-DAY LEGAL VIEW,

which, when the actual father has not gone through the forms pre-
scribed by the State for a marriage, does not regard him as father in
the legal sense, ascribes to him no relationship with the child pro-
created by him, and imposes on him no responsibility for the child or
its mother, although in the majority of cases the mother is economically
the weaker, and he himself economically the stronger party. There
must, therefore, be a legal reform in the direction of equalizing as far
as possible the position of the illegitimate and the legitimate cliild
in relation to the father.

Finally, however, motherhood — legitimate and illegitimate alike —
is a factor of such profound importance to society, that it appears
urgently desirable not to leave it exclusively to private care, with all
the results that private care entails. In the interest of the community
it is desirable that there should be

A GENERAL INSURANCE OF MOTHERHOOD,

the cost of which should be defrayed by contributions from both
sexes, as well as supplemented by grants from public sources. This

270

assurance must not only suffice to provide for every woman sufficient
medical assistance and skilled care during pregnancy and delivery,
but should also furnish a provision for the education of the child until
it is of an age to earn its own living.

In order to propagate these views and endeavours methodically
and upon the widest possible foundation, the active assistance and
participation of every class in the population is indispensable. We
therefore urge on all those who share our views the pressing demand

TO JOIN THK ASSOCIATION FOE THE PROTECTION OF MOTHERS,

and thus to assist in securing and accelerating the attainment of
these ends.

As the official organ of the Association, was chosen the monthly
magazine, edited by Dr. Phil. Helene Stocker, Mutterschutz :
Zeitschrift zur Reform der Sexudlen Ethik (The Protection of
Mothers : a Journal for the Reform of Sexual Ethics) — hitherto
published in the year 1905 twelve numbers, in the year 1906
twelve numbers, and in the year 1907 three numbers.

The foundation of the Association was followed on February 26,
1905, by the holding of its first public meeting, in the Architek-
tenhaus, under the presidency of Helene Stocker ; and the meeting
was extensively attended by the general population of Berlin.
The aims and endeavours of the new union were explained, in
longer and shorter speeches, by Ruth Bre, Max Marcuse, Maria
Lischnewska, Justizrat Sello, Helene Stocker, Ellen Key, Lily
Braun, Adele Schreiber, Iwan Bloch, and Bruno Meyer ; and
from the standpoint of the advocates of woman's rights, of
jurists, of physicians, of sociologists, and of moralists, in equal
degree, a radical transformation and reform of the present
untenable conditions was demanded.1

Soon afterwards, the Association proceeded to form local groups.
The first was formed in Munich, where on March 28, 1905, the
first local meeting took place. Frau Schonfliess, Margarethe
Joachimsen-Bohm, Alfred Scheel, and Friedrich Bauer belonged
to this committee. Further local groups were founded in Berlin
(May 26, 1905 — members of this committee, as distinct from
the committee of the general Association : Finkelstein, Galli,
Agnes Hacker, Albert Kohn, Bruno Meyer, Adele Schreiber), and
in Hamburg (president, Regina Ruben).2

1 The speeches on this occasion were published by Helene Stocker in her
pamphlet, " The Association for the Protection of Mothers " (No. 4 of " Modern
Questions of the Day," edited by Dr. Hans Landsberg ; Berlin, 1906).

2 Unfortunately, Ruth Bre, who has played such a leading part in the history
of the movement for the protection of mothers and for sexual reform, has recently

271

The first general meeting (c/. Helene Stocker, " Our First
General Meeting," published in Mutterschutz, 1907, No. 2) took
place in Berlin, January 12 to 14. After speeches on the practical
protection of mothers (Maria Lischnewska), the present-day form
of marriage (Helene Stocker), prostitution and illegitimacy (Max
Flesch), limitation of marriages by economic conditions (Adele
Schreiber), limitation of marriage by hygienic factors (Max Mar-
cuse), the position of the illegitimate child (Bohmert and Ottmar
Spann), the insurance of motherhood (Mayet), there followed
animated discussions, and various important resolutions were
passed, dealing with the equality of husband and wife in married
life, the legal recognition of free marriages, and of the offspring
of such marriages, the necessity for the provision of certificates
of health before the conclusion of marriage, the means to be
employed in the care of illegitimate children, and the insurance
of motherhood. Especially noteworthy was the address of the
leading medical statistician, Professor Mayet, regarding the intro-
duction and management of the insurance of motherhood. At
his suggestion, proposals followed regarding the enrolling of
working-class members in the societies for insurance against illness
and for the insurance of motherhood, the necessity for contribu-
tions on the part of the State, the inclusion of the agricultural and
forest labourers, and of domestic servants of all kinds, in the
schemes of insurance against illness and the insurance of mother-
hood, the possibility of a voluntary insurance of all women, what
could be effected by the insurance of motherhood (free provision
of midwives and medical assistance, free lodging in case of need,
the provision of premiums for mothers suckling their own children,
the institution of places where advice could be given to mothers,
of homes for women during pregnancy and child-birth, and homes
for women and infants), and the further development of factory
legislation with regard to nursing mothers. The committee for
1907 was chosen : it consisted of Helene Stocker, Maria Lisch-
newska, Adele Schreiber, Wilhelm Brandt, Iwan Bloch, Max
Marcuse, Heinrich Finkelstein.

In the end of January, 1907, an Austrian Association for the
Protection of Mothers was founded in Vienna, under the presi-
dency of Dr. Hugo Klein. To the committee of this Society
there belong, Siegmund Freud, Rosa Mayreder, Marie Eugenie

gone her own way, and has founded an association of her own for the protection
of mothers, which we may hope will soon be reabsorbed into the general Associa-
tion. Above all, in such a province of reform as this, open as it is to attacks of
every kind, unity is essential.

272

delle Grazie, Professor Schauta, and about forty other well-known
persons, physicians, lawyers, schoolmasters, and many women.
In the meeting at which the Association was founded, Dr. Ofner
spoke regarding the legal rights of illegitimate mothers and
children, and Dr. Friedjung regarding the protection of nursing
infants.

In the United States also an Association for sexual reform has
been founded, the so-called " Umwertungsgesellschaft " (Re-
valuation Society), the principal aim of which is the complete
re-estimation of all values in the amatory life, and the introduc-
tion of a more ideal view of love. The President of this American
Association is Emil F. Ruedebusch ; the secretary, Mrs. Lina
Janssen ; the meeting-place of the society is Mayville, in the
State of Wisconsin. Regular evenings of discussion are fixed, on
which questions of especial interest are debated.

[In Holland also an Association for the Protection of Mothers
has been founded ; its name is " Vereeniging Onderlinge Vrouwen-
bescherming."]

In the newspaper Mutterschutz (1905, No. 9, pp. 375, 376), we
find a report of the meeting of the American Association held on
October 8, 1905, when the topic of discussion was :

What is the true nature of marriage ?

The answer ran as follows :

Is it the family (parental) relationship ? — No ; for a married couple
may have no children, may not desire to have children, and can,
none the less, be thoroughly married.

Is it the common home, domestic life ? — No ; for husband and wife
may live their whole life in a hotel, and, none the less, be thoroughly
married.

Is it the lifelong community of material interests ? — No ; for
man and wife can keep their property separate, if they wish to
do so.

Is it mutual assistance and a state of comradeship throughout
life ? — No. When a conjugal union is the exact opposite to this,
we speak of a bad husband and a bad wife ; they are, none the less,
man and wife.

Does it signify a contract for a lifelong exclusive love ? — Certainly
not ; if marriage signified that, all Christians would be opposed to this
institution. And yet these are the things which, according to the
common estimation, make up the nature of marriage, whenever the
question is discussed in a manner which is regarded as " respectable "
and " decent." — As a matter of fact, there is nothing respectable or
decent in this mystification.

What is it, then, in which the true nature of marriage is to be
found ? — It is the possession of a human being for lifelong exclusive
sexual service.

Very various views have prevailed on the question how many

273

human beings it is legitimate for one human being to employ for
his exclusive sexual gratification, and among different nations,
and at various times, the most widely divergent rules and regulations
have prevailed regarding the mode of sexual possession, and, on the
other hand, regarding the duties towards this sexual property ; but
wherever marriage has existed, it has signified a right of property in
respect of sexual utilization.

If we oppose marriage, we mean that we oppose that which
actually constitutes marriage according to morality, and according to
written law, that which even the most enthusiastic advocates of this
institution regard as so debasing that they are ashamed to name it
openly.

But, with the exception of the matters relating to sexual service,
we hold fast to and defend everything which is publicly considered as
marriage, and we expect that in this case we shall be " faithful,"
" constant," and " trustworthy " in all circumstances. For, according
to our view, these most important imponderabilia, and these intimate
associations of interest between husband and wife, are not the inevitable
result of the longing for physical enjoyment in common, but are the
much-to-be-desired result of a well-considered longing for any
one or all of the relations entering into the question. According to
our view, however, the duration of this union, and constancy
while it lasted, would not be dependent upon the activity of sexual
desires."

A special Association for Sexual Reform was founded in
Berlin in the year 1906, at the instance of the editor of the Die
Schonheit, Karl Vanselow. It is an Association of cultured men
and women who also have in view the formation of local groups,
and the delivery of artistic and scientific lectures in furtherance
of their movement for reform.

In the above-mentioned monthly magazine, Mutterschitiz,
edited by Helene Stocker, all the modern problems of love,
marriage, friendship, parentage, prostitution, and all the asso-
ciated problems of morality, and of the entire sexual life, are
discussed from their philosophical, historical, legal, medical, social,
and ethical aspects.

The editor herself, a talented disciple of Nietzsche, has since
the year 1893 been chiefly occupied in the study of the psycho-
logical and ethical aspects of the problems of higher love, and has
recently published her collected writings on this subject in a
single volume.1

It is an interesting literary physiognomy which is offered to
us in this book ; we encounter here a lofty, free, and pure con-
ception of the love of the future. After the first spiritual wan-

1 Heleno Stocker, " Die Liebe und die Frauen " — " Love and Women "
(Minden, 1906).

274

derings and confusions, which no one in emotional pursuit of the
ideal can escape, we see this courageous and undismayed advocate
of the eternal, inalienable rights of love, ultimately insisting on
the recognition of the lofty mission of love, in accordance with
the saying of Nietzsche, which she lovingly quotes : " Ye shall
not propagate onwards, hut upwards !" (" Nicht fort sollt Ihr
Euch pflanzen, sondern hinauf !"). She especially insists on the
duty and responsibility of individual love. No one can take a
more earnest view of love than is taken here. Helene Stocker
is throughout no radical revolutionist, but an evolutionist and
reformer. She sees quite clearly that to-day there is no panacea,
no unfailing solution of sexual problems. While she energetically
contests the old sexual morality, and demands its replacement
by a new freer conception of sexual relationships, she, none the
less, recognizes throughout the significance and the value of self-
command, of relative asceticism, the wonderful influence of which,
in the deepening of emotional life, she has most rightly empha-
sized. Especially the soul of woman, she believes, has by the
asceticism imposed on women by conventional morality, gained
in a high degree, depth, fulness, and comprehensiveness. The
inward development of woman will be greatly advantaged by the
newer valuation of love. This will be characterized, neither by
an arid renunciation and denial of life, nor by a coarse, egoistic
search for pleasure, but by a joyful affirmation of life and all its
healthy powers and impulses.

Whilst Helene Stocker has laid especial stress upon the psycho-
logical and ethical relationships of free love, its equal importance
from economical and social points of view has been discussed by
Friedrich Naumann,1 W. Borgius,2 Lily Braun,3 Maria Lisch-
newska,4 and Henriette Fiirth.5

Naumann rightly draws attention to the fact that our purely
monetary economic system is favourable to the production of
sterility, for the reason that in this system motherhood is equiva-
lent to loss of money, because the wife ceases to earn money in
a degree proportionate to the extent to which she becomes a
mother. The burden of the upbringing of children must be made

1 FT. Naumann, " Women in the New Economic Life," published in Mutter-
schutz, 1906, No. 4, pp. 133-149.

2 W. Borgius, " Mutterschafta-Rentenversicherung," ibid., pp. 149-154.

3 Lily Braun, " Die Mutterschaftaversicherung," ibid., 1906, Nos. 1-3, pp. 18-
24, 69-76, 110-124.

4 M. Lischnewska, " The Economic Reform of Marriage," ibid., No. 6, pp.
215-236. j.. tefr r .f '* ^ t

8 H. Fiirth, " Motherhood and Marriage," ibid., 1905, Nos 7, 10-12, pp. 165-
169, 389-395, 427-435, 483-489.

275

an affair of the community. At the present time, on the con-
trary, the producer of human beings is burdened upon all sides.
He who has children has more rent to pay, and increased school
expenses. Therefore, Naumann demands, as a first step to the
recognition of the fact that it is a public duty to educate children,
that school expenses shall no longer be demanded from the indi-
vidual parent. Above all, however, it must be made easier to
the wife to be a mother.

The wife as a personality demands her right to work, and her
right to motherhood. The fact of the compulsory celibacy of an
ever-increasing number of women competent to become mothers
is the problem which here demands solution. According to the
census of 1900, there were in Germany no less than 4,210,955
women between the ages of eighteen and forty years unmarried,
the total number of women of corresponding age being 9,568,659
— that is, 44 per cent, were unmarried. Among these there were
2,830,538 between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five years,
the period most suitable to child-bearing, the total number of
women of corresponding age being 3,593,644 — that is, no less
than 78 per cent. According to Lily Braun, there remain
from 2,000,000 to 2,500,000 German women permanently
unmarried ; and we may expect the number of female celibates
to increase. The economic conditions, the previously described
unhealthy conditions of coercive marriage, and the efforts of
women for emancipation, have a combined influence hostile to
marriage. On the other hand, law and conventional morality
co-operate in making We a martyrdom for the unmarried mother
and for the illegitimate child.1

The woman who becomes a mother, when united only in the
bonds of free love, is at the present day defamed, despised, a
being without rights. The question of " maintenance " is a
scandal of our time ! It is the proof of the degree to which most
men are devoid of conscience. An experienced lawyer has very
forcibly described the intolerable conditions which at present
obtain in this matter.2 He published the following characteristic
letter from a young master-butcher, which shows how meanly

1 The facts to which we have alluded throw a peculiar light upon the ever-
renewed attack, made by certain writers who will not see, against the emancipa-
tion of women, whilst at the same time they advocate motherhood ! A typical
example of this is the book written by the gynecologist Max Runge, " Woman
in her Sexual Individuality " (Berlin, 1896), the objectivity of which, in com-
parison with other hostile writings, must, however, bo expressly recognized.

8 " Office Consultations of a Solicitor," by Soverserenus, p. 70 et aeq.
(Hanover, 1902).

18—2

276

even a simple-minded man may endeavour to escape the duty
of maintenance. The letter runs :

" DEAR DORA,

" I wanted to come round to-day, and wished to deal with the
matter by word of mouth, but I can't do it, and so I must write to tell
you that we cannot marry, for, in fact, I have now less money even
than when I was a journeyman. The few hundred marks that I had
I have put into the business ; and, in fact, I really cannot marry ; if
I did, I couldn't exist at all. I should have to shut up the shop.
What should we do then ? I shouldn't be able to show my face in
H_ _ again ; besides, at best, the business is not worth very much.
So, my dear Dora, write to me now how we can settle matters ; you
mustn't draw the string too tight, or ask too much ; if you do, you
see, you will have to find your own way out of the trouble. Of course,
I shall be glad enough to do what's right, because I am as much to
blame as you are. If after a while I get on as well as my brothers
have done, I can do more for you. But just now I can't help you
much. Let's hope you may find some other man with whom you
may live more happily than you have lived with me. Dear Dora,
don't make such a fuss about it : there are plenty more in the same
case, up and down the world ; you are not the only one. Now, write
to me directly what you want to do ; let's get the matter settled
quietly ; that'll be better for you. Your mother won't leave you in
the lurch, and you will find it will all come right.

" Best love.

" FRITZ H.

" P.S.— Write soon."

Let us imagine the state of mind of the young woman who
receives this letter, characterized as it is by such crafty heart-
lessness ! And yet this heartlessness is no greater than that of
modern European society, which simultaneously makes fun of
the " old maid " and condemns the unmarried mother to infamy.
This double-faced, putrescent " morality " is profoundly immoral,
it is radically evil. It is moral and good to contest it with all
our energy, to enter the lists on behalf of the right to free love,
to " unmarried " motherhood. Let us make a clearance of this
medieval bugbear of coercive marriage morality, which is a dis-
grace in respect of our state of civilization and economical develop-
ment. Two million women in a condition of compulsory celibacy
and — coercive marriage morality. It is merely necessary to place
these two facts side by side, in order to display before our eyes
the complete ethical bankruptcy of our time in the province of
sexual morality.

In addition to this necessity for a radical alteration in sexual
morality, we must, in the second place, enunciate the demand for
a general insurance of motherhood, for the foundation of homes
for pregnant women, for women in child-birth, and for infants.

277

The fulfilment of these demands alone will bring us a great step
forward in the restoration to health of our sexual life, and in the
preparation of a more beautiful future.1

If it be true, as W. B. Stevenson reports,2 that King Charles IV.
decreed that all foundling children in Spanish America were to
be regarded as of noble birth, hi order that all professions might
be open to them, we cannot but consider that this mode of
thought and action, on the part of a ruler in the country of the
Inquisition, was a shining example for our own time.

" Society," says Eduard Reich, " as well as the Church, sins against
the laws of morality, as long as it stands in the way of the advance-
ment of illegitimate children, either by the maintenance of miserable
prejudices against these poor beings, or by positive decrees. We shall
never be able, even should the human race enter Paradise, to make
it impossible for extra-conjugal procreation to occur : love-children
will always exist. Since, then, it is not the fault of the latter that
their parents have brought them into the world ; and, further, since,
even if all men were married, one could not impute it to a man as a
moral transgression, if he, in the plenitude of his procreative powers,
had intercourse with a beautiful girl, instead of with his wife (suffering,
for example, from cancer, or some other serious disease) ; and since,
on the other hand, a wife still in the full bloom of youth could not
be blamed for unfaithfulness if, her elderly husband having been
impotent for several years, she now has intercourse with a vigorous
and healthy young man — for such reasons, let us throw the veil of
forgetfulness over all well-intentioned human weaknesses, and no
longer ask whether a citizen of the world has been engendered in the
marriage-bed, or has sprung from the well-spring of love. To the
reasonable being it is the man himself who is of value ; and only
blockheads, simpletons, and donkeys will inquire as to his origin."3

1 The question of unmarried motherhood, sociologically of such profound im-
portance, has recently been treated by Max Marcuse in an admirable mono-
graph, " Unmarried Mothers " (Berlin, 1907, vol. xxvii. of the " Documents of
Great Towns," edited by Hans Ostwald). Herein we find exact data regarding
the number, religion, position, profession, and characteristics of unmarried
mothers, also the social and psychological causes of unmarried motherhood, and
the existing and future means of caring for women in this position. The same
author, in the newspaper Soziale Medizin und Hygiene, 1906, vol. i., pp. 657-
667, discusses the important question of the adoption of illegitimate children.
Valuable monographs concerning illegitimate children are those of Hugo Neu-
mann, " The Illegitimate Children of Berlin," Jena, 1900 ; Ottomar Spann,
" Investigations Regarding the Illegitimate Population of Frankfurt-on-the-
Main," Dresden, 1906 ; Frieda Duensing, " The Legal Position of Illegitimate
Children," and Taubo, " Illegitimate Children," published in " The Book of the
Child," edited by Adelo Schroiber, vol. ii., div. 2, pp. 57-61, 62-69 (Leipzig,
1907); the practical work hitherto effected — already extensive, but still far less
than we could wish — by the Association for the Protection of Mothers has
been detailed by Maria Lischnownka, in her excellent pamphlet, " The Practical
Protection of Mothers " (Berlin, 1907).

2 W. B. Stevenson, " Travels in Arauco, Chile, Peru, and Columbia, in the
years 1804-1823," vol. i., p. ',174 (Weimar, 1826).

3 Eduard Reich, " Immorality and Excess, from tho Point of View of the Medical,
Hygienic, Political, and Moral Sciences," p. 127 (Nouwiod and Leipzig, 1866).

278

And yet one more question I will address in conclusion to the
adherents of coercive marriage morality. How many free-love
relationships, how many illegitimate children have there not been
at all times among the cultured classes, even among the pillars
of the throne and the altar, precisely among those who, on account
of their higher spiritual development, ought to possess a stronger
ethical sensibility (nota bene, from the standpoint of coercive
marriage morality). It would be an interesting task to collect
statistics relating to such free unions, and the resulting " illegiti-
mate " offspring, in the case of notable men and women ! The
marriage fanatics would be horrified ! Quite apart from the
innumerable secret relationships of this nature, and their conse-
quences, a short observation and enumeration of the illegitimate
loves and parentage of men and women of high standing, alike
spiritual and moral, would alone suffice to illuminate the actual
conditions, and would enable us to draw remarkable conclusions
regarding coercive marriage. It is my intention, as soon as
possible, to represent in a brief work the role of free love in the
history of civilization, and to adduce proofs that free love is very
well compatible with a moral life. Who would venture to re-
proach with immorality a Burger, a Jean Paul, a Gutzkow, a
Karoline Schlegel, a George Sand, or even a Goethe I1

It is a simple evolutionary necessity that free love, in associa-
tion with progressive differentiation and with the reshaping of
economic conditions, will find its moral justification also for those
who at present judge and condemn it from the point of view of
long outworn social conditions.

1 Apart from the study of the numerous free-love relationships of the poet
Goethe, it would be interesting to make an investigation regarding his illegitimate
children. Only a few years ago there died in Stiitzerbach one of the last illegiti-
mate grandchildren of Goethe, a wood-cutter, a man of tall stature and proud
gait, resembling in appearance and demeanour the beloved of all women. Cf.
A. Trinius, " From the Mountain-World of Goethe," published in the Berliner
Lolcnl-Anzeiqtr. No. 453, of September 6, 1906.

CHAPTER XII

SEDUCTION, THE SENSUAL LIFE (GENUSSLEBEN), AND
WILD LOVE (WILDE LIEBE)

" In the sensual life, imponderabilia play a leading part, and
many an effort towards improvement, many a reform, has been
shattered against them, simply because the ivould-be reformer has
overlooked the finer threads which connect the human soul with the
institutions and customs of the material world." — WILLY HELL-
PACH.

279

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XII

Difference between free love and wild love — The danger of wild love — Forms
the bridge to prostitution — Its connexion with the sensual life and with
seduction — The peculiarities of modern epicureanism — Restless character
of the sensual life — The life of " amusement " — The erotic aim of this life —
Sexual excesses of the present day — Heedlessness of wild love — Influence
of large towns on the sensual life — Nocturnal life — Character of the pleasures
of large towns — Increase of sexual tension — Pursuit of pleasure among the
common people — The increasing number of young embezzlers — Public
seduction — Professional seduction — History of the art of love — Its
gradual spiritualization — Seducer types — Don Juan and Casanova —
British Don-Juanism — The domineering erotic, and the erotic genius —
Kierkegaarde, "Diary of a Seducer" — Pseudo Don-Juanism — Printed
guide-books to the sensual life for the modern man of pleasure — Influence of
the mode of life upon the sexual life — Alcohol as the incorporation of evil
in this respect — Analysis of its influence on the vita sexualis — Its peculiar
duplex influence — Utilization of this influence by prostitutes and seducers
— Alcoholism and venereal diseases — Absinthe in France — Share of alcohol
in producing offences against morality — Encouragement of wild love by
alcohol — Connexion of illegitimate births with alcoholic excess — Increase
of wild love at the present day — " Intimacy " (" das Verhaltnis ") — Its
gradual degeneration — History of the origination of the " intimacy," and
psychological explanations thereof — Increasing similarity between the
nature of the " intimacy " and the conditions of prostitution — Causes —
Frequent changes of " intimates " — The diffusion of venereal diseases by
means of wild love — Role of lies, mistrust, and hatred therein — Produces
disbelief in love — Wild love and coercive marriage — Causes of sexual cor-
ruption— Need for the campaign against wild love and sexual libertinism —
Hellmann's book on sexual libertinism — Attitude of the medical man
towards " extra-conjugal " sexual intercourse — Increasing aversion to wild
love — The increase in free ideal love unions — Wild love as the transitional
stage to prostitution.

280

CHAPTER XII

IN the previous chapter we repeatedly drew attention to the fact
that free love is not identical with the sexual promiscuity indulged
in at the present day to such an alarming extent and with such
disastrous consequences — sexual promiscuity in the form of
extra-conjugal sexual intercourse, irregular in character, and
dependent almost entirely upon chance.

I am an ardent advocate of " free love," by which I understand
sexual union based upon intimate love, personal harmony, and
spiritual affinity, entered on by the free resolve of both parties,
involving the assumption of all the duties entailed by such free
unions, and with satisfactory mutual assurances regarding health.
But with corresponding emphasis I must condemn, from the
standpoint of the physician and from that of public hygiene, and
also on ethical grounds, the now so widely diffused " extra-
conjugal " sexual intercourse, for which, in order to distinguish
it from the entirely different extra conjugal "free" love, I
suggest the term " wild love."

This wild love is the true cancer of our society, for its chief
characteristic is that it constitutes an enduring connexion and
means of transition between hygienically and ethically unexcep-
tionable sexual intercourse and prostitution, and thus" involves
the unceasing risk of transferring to the former all the dangers
of the latter. In this sense, wild love can really be regarded as
a kind of irradiation of the whole nature of prostitution into the
entirety of sexual relations in general. Thus, it remains a power-
ful hindrance to all ennoblement and resanation of the amatory
life, and it is an invincible source of the moral and physical de-
generation and the infective contamination of the nation.

Wild love is intimately connected with the artificial sensual
life of our time, and with the manifold varieties of seduction1
arising from that life. Wild love, the sensual life, and seduction,
form, as it were, a triad, each member of which is the principal
predisposing condition of the others.

1 In the titular heading to this chapter, throughout the chapter, and in most
cases throughout the book, the Gorman word Virfiihruny has been translated as
seduction. Verfi.hrung means " leading astray," and one of the commonest
uses of the term is to denote sexual leading astray— the seduction of a woman by
a man. But in some cases Verfiihruny, like the English seduction, is used in its
more primitive and wider signification. The context will suffice to show the
sense in which the word is employed. — TRANSLATOR.

281

He who wishes to characterize in a few words the European
civilization of the present day may say that its nature consists in
epicureanism, mitigated by toil and the struggle for life ; but this
epicureanism is of a very peculiar kind. It is no longer the
unqualified sensual life of the eighteenth century, in which sensual
lusts and epicurean refinements were to many the whole object
of life, nor is it the comfortable enjoyment of " the good old
times "; it is a quite peculiar concentrated enjoyment of the
moment, in the midst of the hard work of life. The carpe diem
of Horace has to-day become carpe horam I

The forced labour which the fierce struggle for existence at
present entails upon the majority of men leaves no more time
for a simple undisturbed enjoyment of existence, for the inward
deep experience of reality, and for a quiet joy therein. No, our
sensual life of to-day bears in it the sting of pain, because the
will to live, which, according to Schopenhauer, continually strives
for an " increase of life," has now degenerated into a convulsive
search for the most violent sensations possible, into a wild hunt
after the strongest possible and most frequent enjoyments,
because the time is lacking for a peaceful, harmonious existence.
Each man asks himself anxiously whether he may not have
" missed " this or that possibility of objective pleasure ; and
forgets in doing so that the true happiness of life lies within
himself, and that the greatest possible sum of outward enjoy-
ments cannot procure him this happiness.

The signature of our time is " amuse oneself," a phrase which
conveys the idea of all our modern superficial pleasures, and of
our sensual and spiritual sensations, which must chase one
another in rapid succession in order to enable the modern civilized
man to feel that he " lives."

For the majority of those living in great towns, amusement is
equivalent to a continued succession of superficial sensual
pleasures, as preparatory stimuli for an equally fugitive and
debasing sexual act.

The frequently heard and favourite phrases "to go through
with it," "to live one's life," "to sow one's wild oats," etc.,
have all the same significance, in the sense of preparation for
sexual indulgence by means of such stimuli.

From beer-saloons and public-houses of all kinds, especially
those at which the attendants are women, from the cabarets and
variety theatres, the low-class music-halls and dancing-saloons,
also, however, from better-class balls, soirees, and luxurious
dinners, the road is open to the prostitute, or to the arms of a

283

girl excited by similar sensual stimuli to a similarly transitory
sexual desire.

A great physician has said : " We eat three times too much."
I might add, in amplification of this saying, Not only do we eat
three times too much, but we look for all other sensual pleasures
in excess, and for this reason we love also three times too much,
or rather, we indulge too often in sexual intercourse.

One of our most talented psychologists, Willy Hellpach, has
described these relationships with great insight :

" To the enormous majority of our young men sexual indulgence is
a matter of course, like their card-parties, their evenings at the club,
their glass of beer ; and of the few who live otherwise, a considerable
proportion do so simply from timidity, or from poverty of spirit (they
would like to, but they cannot screw their courage up). Another
portion is honourably continent, but does not dare to make any dis-
play of this adhesion to principle, and rather pretends not to be dis-
tinguished in any way from the majority ; and the very few young
men who openly set their faces against the custom may be counted
on the fingers of one hand. It is obvious that in this way the extra-
conjugal sexual act loses the distinction of the unaccustomed ; it is
effected continually in a more heedless, light-hearted, frivolous manner
— until, finally, the very idea of danger connected with indiscriminate
sexual indulgence is forgotten ; the preventive is thrown aside with
an easy " Nothing has ever happened to me." Indeed, many a man
goes to his fate in the shape of infection with his eyes open, and with
the most light-hearted confidence : if he is infected, there will be plenty
of time before his marriage to be thoroughly cured.

" This factor comes the more readily into play in proportion to the
degree in which the whole arrangement of the sensual life culminates
in the stimulation of erotic activities. Such a tendency is inevitably
associated with the development of the modern large town ; and there
ensues an imitation of the sensual life of large towns in smaller towns,
and even in country villages.1

" Every large town provides the means for a much more extensive
stimulation of the senses than country life ; and the alternate stimula-
tion and deadening of the senses, characteristic of town life, has in
the very large towns of our time reached an unheard-of degree of
intensity. The town is the typical habitat of that sensual and ner-
vous condition of irritability which historically characterizes our own
generation ; the townsman is the typical representative of " nervous-
ness " in its modern form. The verbal connexion between " senses "
and " sensuality " represents an actual transition ; and in ordinary
parlance, by the " sensual " we understand the " erotic." Where
the senses are more strongly stimulated, there erotic desire grows,
there it loses its periodical course in favour of a continuous wakeful-
ness, or, at any rate, in favour of a light slumber, which the slightest

1 Thus, at the present day, in quite small country towns, we find variety
theatres and low music-halls ; and with these, prostitutes are commonly intro-
duced into the town, so that the wild love, which was previously free from d/uiger,
now becomes a focus of venereal infection.

284

stimulus will disturb. And the townsman is more easily impelled
to the sexual act, not merely because the town offers him prostitutes,
" intimates," etc., in much greater numbers, but also because his over-
stimulated nervous system impels him much more powerfully to search
for these objects, and makes it much more difficult for him to safe-
guard himself against their allurements.

" And town life is nocturnal life ! The more so, the larger the town ;
and we see the extreme form of this in the great capitals of Europe.
The consequences in regard to the opportunities for and incitations to
sexual enjoyment are not lacking. First of all, nocturnal life gives
rise to a summation of stimuli, to an incredible variety of nervous
i it illat ii Hi. and this induces an increasing sensuality ; and once the
sensual life has become habitually nocturnal, now, by a vicious circle,
all enjoyment is unavoidably fettered to the town. Natural re-
cuperation has become a secondary consideration, and in place of the
relief of tension, we have apparent restoration by means of variety.
All, all, tends in favour of a sharpening of sensual stimuli, of arousing
the wish for erotic pleasures. And the town is untiring, inexhaustible,
in its discovery of means for the gratification of these instincts. Variety
theatres, gin-palaces, low music-halls, and all the amusements of
similar kind, are simply unthinkable without the sensual note ; and
even where they maintain themselves to be free from that note, it
will be unconsciously sought by the audience, will be easily found,
and if it were absent, its absence would be angrily resented. The
same is true, more or less, of entertainments of a higher aesthetic rank.
With very few exceptions, our theatres are compelled to take into
consideration the instincts of the public, and the instincts of the
population of our large towns are chiefly concerned with eroticism.
Even where sexual questions are elevated into the sphere of the
highest art, and by the artist himself the common is detested, the
audience will, after their kind, merely extract erotic stimulation ;
and that the opera and the stage are sought by many merely on
account of these accessory influences, is too well known to need proof
— not to say a word regarding the pantomime and the ballet.

" Perhaps the worst of all is yet to come. In his public dinners,
his parties, his clubs, his balls, etc., the man of the upper classes, and
also the man of the middle classes, does not find the much-to-be-
desired ethical counterpoise to this characteristic sensual life of our
young men ; but rather finds the prolongation of it in a somewhat
more masked and artificial form. From the outset, the relationship
between the sexes is of so suggestive, so purposive a character, that
this exercises a gentle, stimulating influence upon desire ; and a
man is thrown into a state of tension for which he often finds only one
outlet, sexual gratification — which he must either buy or obtain by
cunning — and thus he passes straightway from the influences of the
public sensual life, to become the customer of the prostitute, the
partner in the " intimacy," the seducer in the nocturnal life of the
great town. He then either runs the danger of infection with venereal
diseases, or he occupies himself with their dissemination ; for the man
suffering from venereal disease is not merely a victim : he is com-
monly also a focus of infection, one who finds new victims in the
shape of girls hitherto uninfected.

" To this evil a remarkable trait in the sensual life of the simpler

285

woman extends ready assistance — I mean that servility, that erotic
obsequiousness which finds expression already in the gossip, and in
the favourite reading of the lower classes, and which makes them feel
to some extent flattered if they are treated as means of enjoyment by
a man of good position. It is well known that the prostitute in her
talk gladly makes her lover a baron ; but, unfortunately, a similar
tendency characterizes the feminine half of the lower classes through-
out, and to our regret, this is more especially true of the German
people. Our commercial-traveller nature, to which, according to
Sombart, we owe a portion of our ascendancy in the markets of the
world, finds its most regrettable and disastrous seamy side in the
readiness with which the masses forget their pride and self-respect,
when it is a question of snatching a pleasure. This characteristic has,
in recent lustra, unfortunately become not better, but rather worse ;
the desire to look well at any cost, with which the simple girl so often
makes herself laughable, inspires also her longing to ' walk out ' with
a distinguished admirer." l

But not only does the simple girl of the people sacrifice her
life and health in this pursuit of pleasure ; the young men also
are not behindhand in the pursuit, which they regard as " gentle-
manlike," of enjoyment and of women. It is astonishing what
an increase in recent times there has been in the number of
youthful embezzlers, learners and clerks in merchants' offices,
whose offences have been committed simply in order to provide
funds for the gratification of their pothouse pleasures. Among
them one meets lads between the ages of fourteen and eighteen
years, a symptom of the earlier sexual maturity of the present
day. When, as usually happens, they are arrested after a few
days, it comes out in evidence that the embezzled money was
squandered in the society of prostitutes, but we learn that the
tendency to such excess had existed in the embezzler long before
he actually committed a crime. If the heads of businesses were
to keep themselves better informed regarding the mode of life
of their employees, many a disillusion and many a loss would be
spared them.

Sexual seduction is at the present time effected less by indi-
viduals than by the environment. The sensual life as such, the
entire stimulating sensual atmosphere of that life, plays to-day
a role which at an earlier time, when our social life and
pleasures were less fully developed, fell to the " seducer," the
galant homme and Don Juan of earlier days. Our young people
are subjected rather to the general influences of the pursuit of
amusement, which fascinates all circles, than to the allurements

1 Willy Hellpach, " Our Sensual Life and Venereal Diseases," published in the
" Reports of the Gorman Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases,"
1905, TO), iii., Nos. 5 and 6, pp. 103-105.

286

of the habitual seducer. To-day, the victims of public seduction,
by means of the sensual life characteristic of our time, are far
more numerous than those seduced by isolated individuals,
though such there have been, and will be, at all times.

Before I pass to the consideration of the individual influences
of the modern sensual life, those by which wild love is especially
favoured, and before I describe the general seduction of the
present day, I propose to touch upon the interesting question of
" professional seduction," to consider Don-Juanism and the
practice of the ars amandi.

It is remarkable how strongly the history of the art of seduc-
tion reflects the general tendency of the evolution of love from
purely physical impulses to spiritual love. This we learn simply
from the study of the numerous text-books of the art of love, the
so-called " ars amandi."

Whereas in the earlier text-books of this subject, from Ovid's
" Ars Amandi,"1 widely celebrated in antiquity, to the " Practica
Artis Amandi,"2 the "Morale Galante, ou TArt de Bien Aimer,"3 of
the seventeenth century, and Gentil Bernard's " L'Art d'Aimer,"4
of the eighteenth century, the principal stress was laid upon all
the possible sensual stimuli, and upon the superficial gallantry
associated with this ; in the modern text-books, in that of
Manso5 (still belonging to the eighteenth century), but espe-
cially in the more recent works by Stendhal,6 Paul Bourget,7
A. Silvestre,8 Catulle Mendes,9 Robert Hessen,10 and Hjalmar
Kjolenson,11 we find much more stress laid on all the spiritual
influences of the art of love. In this way it is possible to follow
in these works the whole course of the enrichment of the spiritual
and emotional life in love.12

The same process of development can be recognized also in the

1 Of this work there recently appeared an excellent German translation,
admirably modernized in blank verse by Karl Ettlinger, " Ovid's Art of Love :
a Modern Translation." (An English translation of Ovid's " Art of Love,"
revised by Charles W. Ryle, was published in 1907 by Sisley. — TRANSLATOR.)

2 Hilarii Drudonis, " Practica Artis Amandi " (Amsterdam, 1652).

3 Paris, 1659.

4 Paris, 1775.

5 J. F. C. Manso, " Die Kunst zu Lieben " (Berlin, 1794).

6 Henry Beyle (Stendhal), " On Love."

7 Paul Bourget, " Physiologic de 1'Amour Moderne."

8 Armand Silvestre, Le Petit Art d'Aimer" (Paris, 1897).

9 Catulle Mendes, " L'Art d'Aimer " (Paris).

10 Robert Hessen, "Das Gliick in der Liebe: Eine technische Studie" (Stutt-
gart, 1899).

1 Hjalmar Kjolenson, "Die Erschliessung des Liebesgliickes " (Leipzig, 1905).

2 An exhaustive study of the history and literature of the ars amandi, by the
author of the present work, is in course of preparation, and will appear shortly.

287

figure of Don Juan. His type has undergone gradual alteration,
always becoming more and more intellectual. The purely sensual
Don Juan, as Lord Chesterfield, for example, characterizes and
embodies him, is to-day quite out of date even among sensual
men of the ordinary type ; whereas though Kierkegaard's " Diary
of a Seducer " describes an extreme type, that of the purely
reflective libertine, yet in this extreme, the author has very
rightly recognized the general tendency of evolution.

Recently, Oscar A. H. Schmitz has published an extremely
original and thoughtful study of " Don Juan, Casanova, and
other Erotic Characters " (Stuttgart, 1906), in which he dis-
tinguishes very sharply the seducer type of a Casanova from the
seducer-type of a Don Juan. Don Juan is a deceitful, cunning
seducer, to whom the sense of possession associated with the
attainment of his aim, the danger, the activity of his desires for
power and dominance, are the principal matters, but who is in
himself unerotic ; whereas Casanova is pre-eminently the erotic,
also crafty and deceitful, not, however, for the gratification of
his need for power, but rather for the agreeable satisfaction of
his need for sensual love. Don Juan knows only " women ";
for Casanova each one is " the woman." Don Juan is demoniacal,
devilish he goes on to the complete destruction of the women
seduced by him, deliberately he ensures their unhappiness ;
Casanova is human, cares always for the happiness of the women
he loves, and devotes to them a tender reflection. Don Juan
despises women, he is of the type of the misogynist, of the satanic
woman-hater ; Casanova is the typical feminist, he possesses a
profound understanding of woman's soul, is not disappointed by
love, and needs for his life's happiness continuous contact with
feminine natures. Don Juan seduces by means of his own
elemental nature, by the attractive power of brutal wild force ;
Casanova does so by means of the sensual atmosphere which
surrounds him.

With an accurate psychological insight, Schmitz remarks :

" It seems as if the love of one, or, where possible, of several, women
inoculates the man, as it were, with a vital fluid, and gives his glance
a fire which at times makes him irresistible. Men of pleasure declare
that after the most fortunate nights, when, exhausted, they were
returning home to sleep, on the way the most eager and meaning
glances were cast upon them by the women whom they passed."

This distinction between the two types of seducer, which
Schmitz makes in his original book, containing excellent observa-
tions on the psychology of love, is indeed not new. Stendhal, in

288

the chapter " Werther and Don Juan "of his book, " Ueber die
Liebe," pp. 241-251 (German edition, Leipzig, 1903), points out
the same types. " The genuine Don Juans," he says, " ulti-
mately come to regard women as their enemies, and find actual
pleasure in their manifold unhappiness "; whereas Werther, the
equivalent of Casanova, regards all women as entrancing beings,
towards whom we are far too unjust. The love of Don Juan is
" a similar feeling to the love of the chase "; Werther 's love is
gentle, idealizes the reality, is full of tender and romantic impres-
sions. Don Juan is the conqueror ; Werther is the erotic.

I myself also, in my work on " Sexual Life in England," vol. ii.,
p. 159 (Berlin, 1903), have, earlier than Schmitz, clearly dis-
tinguished from one another these two seducer types, in a pas-
sage in which I depict the British Don Juan, in contrast to the
French and Italian Don Juan.

The passage runs :

" The principal characteristic of the British Don Juans, who are
completely distinct from the libertines of the Latin and of the other
Teutonic countries, is the cold, brazen quietude with which they
indulge in the sensual pleasures of life ; love is much less to them an
affair of passion than one of pride and of the gratification of their
consciousness of power. The French, the Italian Don Juan is driven
by ardent sensuality from conquest to conquest. This is the principal
motive of their actions and of their mode of life. The English Don
Juan seduces on principle, for the sake of experiment ; he pursues
love as a sport. Sensuality plays a part only in the second degree,
and in the midst of his sensual enjoyment the coldness of his heart is
still painfully apparent.

" This is the rake, the type of Lovelace, which Richardson, in his
' Clarissa Harlowe,' has described with incomparable mastery."

Taine, also, in his " History of English Literature," has de-
scribed this British Don-Juanism, which hates rather than loves.

Finally, we find these types also in Rosa Mayreder's book,
" Zur Kritik der Weiblicheit " (" Critique of Femininity," Leipzig,
1905), especially in the chapter, " A Few Words on the Powerful
Faust" (pp. 210-243). Her type of the "masterful erotic"
closely resembles the Don Juan type of Schmitz, and my own
British seducer type.

" Erotic excitement," says Rosa Mayreder, " gives rise in these
men to the lust of dominion ; to them the relationship with women
signifies a grasping possession, an enjoyment of power, and they are
unable to think of women except as subject and dependent. Only
in so far as woman adapts herself to them as a means do they know
her ; as a personality, with individual aims, she does not exist for
them."

289

This masterful eroticism exists among men of quite low social
position, just as much as among men of high position.1 Their
diametrical opposite is the love-perception of delicately sensitive;
erotical, highly differentiated men, whose highest type constitutes
the " erotic genius." Rosa Mayreder characterizes this latter
type in the following terms :

" The increasing differentiation of erotic perception brings with it
a new faculty, which extinguishes the consciousness of superiority
and transforms the need for contrast into the need for community,
for reciprocity — the capacity for devotion. Thus comes to pass the
most remarkable phenomenon in the masculine psyche, the great
miracle, which effects a complete transformation of the primitive
mode of perception, a transformation of the teleological sexual
nature.

"The erotic genius grasps the nature of the opposite sex with
intuitive understanding, and is capable of assimilating it completely.
The other sex is to him the primevally akin and primevally allied ;
his love-relationships are accompanied by ideas of enlargement,
fulfilment, liberation of his own essential nature, or even by the idea
of a mystical union. To him sexuality does not denote an annulment
or limitation of personality, but rather an enlargement and enrich-
ment by means of the individuals with which, in this way, his per-
sonality is associated."

As an erotic genius of such a kind, Rosa Mayreder points to
Richard Wagner, as he manifests himself in his letters to Mathilde
Wesendonk.

The sensibility and refinement of the modern woman, her
emergence as a personality, must continually repel the masterful
type of erotic — although doubtless that type will never be entirely
eliminated. I do not believe in a complete transformation of
the teleological sexual nature of man, which has always assigned
to him the active aggressive role. But it is true that the possi-
bilities of existence for the masterful erotic, the Don Juan type,
have become limited. He must, as Schmitz rightly insists, intel-
lectualize himself if he wishes to continue to exist. This psycho-
logical satanism of the modern Don Juan is wonderfully described
by Kierkegaard, in his " Diary of a Seducer."2

The hero of this book learns best from the girls themselves how
they can be betrayed ; he develops in them " spiritual eroticism,"
in order then suddenly to abandon them, but they themselves
must loosen the tie. Woman and love are not to him in them-
selves the principal need ; what is important to him is, as he says

1 Cf. regarding masterful erotics, also the exposition of Georg Hirth in " The
Ways to Love," p. 563.

a S. Kierkegaard, " Entweder— Oder. Bin Lebensfragment," pp. 221-311.
German translation by O. Gleib (Dresden and Leipzig, 1904).

:>90

at the conclusion, that he has been able to enrich himself with
numerous erotic perceptions. The modern Don Juan is, there-
fore, nothing more than a cold psychological experimenter. It is
in this way that, with prophetic insight, Choderlos de Laclos has
described him in the Vicomte de Valmont,the hero of his "Liaisons
Dangereuses."

Yet another interesting Don Juan type of our time has to be
considered, one which indeed is not a genuine Don Juan, but a
pseudo Don Juan, or rather a pseudo Casanova ; and this type
makes its appearance also in the female sex.

Like Retif de la Bretonne, it is the man or woman seeking
eternally for the ideal, for true love ; a type which only, in conse-
quence of the ever-repeated disillusions and errors, assumes a Don
Juanesque character. At the present day, we meet this type
very often. It is only the expression of the increasing difficulty
of the proper love choice, owing to the progressive differentiation
of our time ; and it is not originated by the desire for sensual lust,
but rather by the eternally disillusioned yearning for genuine
individual love.

But we must return after this excursion to the consideration
of the commonest type of public seduction by means of the sensual
life of our time. It is significant that this also possesses its
literary guides and course of instruction, in the form of the
numerous printed handbooks for the world of pleasure. Among
these we may mention, " Guides du Viveur," " Guides de Plaisir,"
" Fiihrer durch das Nachtliche Berlin " (" Guide to Berlin by
Night "), " New London Guide to the Night Houses," " Die
Geheimnisse der Berliner Passage " (" Secrets of the ' Passage '
of Berlin "), " Paris by Night," " The Swell's Night Guide
through the Metropolis," " Bruxelles la Nuit, Physiologic des
Etablissements Nocturnes de Bruxelles " (for Englishmen of
pleasure, published under the title of " Brussels by Gas-light "),
" Paris and Brussels after Dark," " The Gentleman's Night
Guide," " Hamburgs galante Hauser bei Nacht und Nebel "
(" Hamburg's Fast Houses by Night and Cloud "), " Das Galante
Berlin," " Naturgeschichte der galanten Frauen in Berlin "
(" Natural History of the Fast Women of Berlin "), " Paris
Intime et Mysterieux," " Guide des Plaisirs Mondains et des
Plaisirs Secrets a Paris." All these have appeared during the
last thirty years, some of them in several editions. For Vienna,
Buda-Pesth, St. Petersburg, Rome, Milan, Barcelona, Madrid,
Marseilles, Rotterdam, and New York, there also exist such
guides to all open and secret enjoyments.

291

In order to give an idea of the contents of such a guide to the
sensual life, I need merely enumerate the chapter headings of a
book published in 1905, and, as the Paris bookseller from whom
I obtained it informed me, immediately confiscated, but none
the less still openly sold in the bookshops of the Boulevards and
the Rue de Rivoli. It bears the title, "Pour s'Amuser. Guide
du Viveur a Paris, par Victor Leca " (Paris, 1905). In his versified
dedication, the compiler writes :

" Nous connaissons la Capitale,
Et nous 1'aimons aves ferveur ;
Ma science experimentale
A fait ce ' Guide du Viveur.' '

[" We know the Capital,

And we love it with fervour ;

My experimental science

Has made this Guide for the Man about Town."]

And he states in the preface that all the various pleasures of
Paris, for the eye, the ear, and the sense of taste, lead ultimately
to — woman, in complete agreement with the definition which
I gave above of the sensual life of our time. All these
pleasures concur in leading to sexual indulgence — that is the end,
the climax of every " amusement," the true punctum saliens of
the life of pleasure of our large towns. Thus Leca, in his com-
prehensive and elaborate guide for men of pleasure, lays the
principal stress on announcements regarding eroticism and on
opportunities for erotic adventures in the individual places of
pleasure. He enumerates these in series : the theatre, especially
the " theatres tres legers," the " cafeVconcerts," the dancing-
saloons, the hippodromes, and circuses, the cabarets of Mont-
martre, the Quartier Latin, the women's caf6s, the boulevards,
the halls of the central market, the brothels (with an exact indica-
tion of the streets, and with the numbers of the houses ! !), the
houses of accommodation (maisons de rendezvous], the likenesses
of a few " ladies of pleasure," the arcades, the parks and public
gardens, the popular festivals, the races, drives, public bathing
establishments, cemeteries, museums, and exhibitions — all, always,
in relation to the feminine element.

These handbooks of the art of enjoyment are existing proofs,
from the point of view of the history of civilization, of the fact
that the sexual impulse is, in every possible way, influenced,
increased, elaborated, and complicated, by the civilization of the
present day. Especially the life of great towns, where the
essence of modern civilization is found in its most concentrated

19—2

292

form, is a sexual stimulant in the highest degree, with its haste
and hunting, its " nocturnal life," l with its multiplicity of enjoy-
ments for all the senses, with its gastronomic and alcoholic ex-
cesses— in short, with its new device that after work comes
pleasure, and not repose.

In my " Sexual Life in England " (vol. ii., p. 261 et seq.) I
have described the momentous influence of the mode of life upon
sexuality, and have proved how both in the old England and in
the new the excessive consumption of meat and of alcoholic
beverages has unnaturally stimulated the sexual impulse, and
has conducted it into devious paths.

But of Germany also we may say that, apart from the times
of " meat famine," we eat too much meat and drink too much
alcohol, the former especially among the higher classes, the latter
among all classes of society.

The sexually stimulating influence of luxurious feeding, which,
for example, Gabriele d'Annunzio describes in the early part of
his romance " Lust," and which Tolstoi, in the " Kreutzer
Sonata," describes as the principal cause of incitation to lascivi-
ousness, is indeed a well-known fact of experience ; and the
later in the day these heavy meals are consumed, the more
dangerous are they in respect of their influence on the sexual
impulse. I am fully convinced that the good old German custom
of taking the principal meal of the day at noon is greatly pre-
ferable to the so-called " English dinner," when the principal
meal is deferred to four or six o'clock. Luxurious suppers, or
even midnight dinners, such as at the present day are quite
customary, must be definitely regarded as aphrodisiac.

A far more momentous role is played by alcohol in the modern
sensual life. A writer who is not himself a strict teetotaller may
yet feel it his duty to lay all possible stress on this fact. Indeed,
from the standpoint of medical experience and observation, I am
prepared to term alcohol the evil genius of the modern sexual
life, because in a malicious and underhand manner it delivers its
victim to sexual misleading and corruption, to venereal infection,
and to all the consequences of casual sexual intercourse.2

This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the drink
question, or for stating the reasons for my own opinion, that
complete abstinence is a Utopian idea, and that the moderate

1 " The sun," says Grillparzer in his " Diary," " is hostile to voluptuousness.
But the artificial sun of our nocturnal illumination in our large town, has the
opposite effect."

2 The old proverb says : " From the two V's, Vinum (wine) and Venus
woman), there arises a big W, Weh (woe or pain).

293

and careful use of alcohol, in quantities suited to the particular
individuality, and at suitable times, does no harm worth men-
tioning. Though this be so, I cannot fail to recognize the deeply
tragic role which the customary abuse of alcohol plays in the
sexual corruption of our time. As to the connexion between
alcohol and the sexual life, I must therefore speak at greater
length.1

The influence of alcohol upon the sexual life and upon the
psyche is a very peculiar one. Beer or wine, taken in very
moderate quantities, unquestionably give rise, in addition to their
general psychical stimulating influence, to sexual excitement of
greater or less degree. This sexual excitement, if more alcohol
is now taken, endures longer than the psychical excitement, which
soon gives place to psychical paralysis, to a discontinuance of
the inhibitory influences proceeding from the brain. It is in this
unequal influence exercised upon the purely sensual-sexual and
upon the psychical processes, that the peculiar danger of alcoholic
excesses appears to me to depend. The sexual stimulation pro-
duced by the first draught of alcohol continues at a time when
the man has already lost all control over reason and will, and
thus he becomes an easy prey to sexual seduction.

It is only in this way that we can explain the momentous influ-
ence of alcohol, for we know, generally speaking, it is not a means
for the increase of sexual power. On the contrary, it increases
voluptuousness and sexual desire, but almost always hinders
erection and delays the sexual orgasm.

Thus, a man under the influence of alcohol requires a longer
time for the completion of the act of sexual intercourse than a
sober man, and in this way the danger of venereal infection is
notably increased, for the contact with the infecting person is
considerably longer. I have inquired of many patients who were
infected during intercourse with prostitutes after alcoholic excess,
and was almost always informed that the act of intercourse,
owing to the well-known relative impotence produced by alcohol,
was exceptionally long in duration, and this naturally gave more

1 (?/., in addition to the great works on the subject of alcohol, the special
monograph by B. Laquer, " A Lecture on Alcohol and Sexual Hygiene," pub-
lished in the " Reports of the German Society for the Suppression of Venereal
Diseases," 1904, vol. ii., Nos. 3 and 4, pp. 56-63 ; W. Hellpach, op. cit., pp. 100-
102 ; Magnus Hirschfeld, " The Influence of Alcohol on the Sexual Life,' Berlin,
1905 ; Magnus Hirschfeld, " Alcohol and Family Life," Berlin-Charlottenburg,
1906 ; Otto Lang, " Alcohol and Crime," Basel ; Oscar Rosenthal, " Alcohol
and Prostitution, Berlin, 1906 ; G. Rosenfeld, " Alcohol and the Sexual Life,"
published in the Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1906, pp. 321-

294

opportunity for excessive contact, for mechanical injuries depen-
dent upon increased friction, etc., and thus brought about infec-
tion.

In medical literature, numerous cases are reported in which
two men have completed intercourse with an infected prostitute,
shortly after one another, and, remarkable to relate, one only
became infected, whilst the other remained healthy. More exact
inquiry would show without doubt in many such cases that the
uninfected man was sober, in comparison with the infected man,
who must have been under the influence of alcohol.

In the case of women, with regard to whom there can be no
question of any specific effect upon sexual " potency," the
influence of alcohol in exciting libido, in association with its
withdrawal of all psychical inhibitions, makes itself all the more
manifest. Thus, to woman, who, speaking generally, is far more
intolerant of the drug than man, very moderate enjoyment of
alcohol entails dangers.1

The seducer, the procuress, and the prostitute are all familiar
with the above-described peculiar influence of alcohol upon the
libido sexualis and upon the psyche, and it is precisely this dis-
criminative duplex influence which is utilized by them. Not
only in the so-called " Animierkneipen "—that is, the drinking-
saloons with women attendants — and in the brothels does
alcohol subserve this purpose, but the street-walkers also await
their victims by preference outside the doors of the great re-
staurants, or after festival dinners, and keep an eye especially
on drunken men, because in the case of these, in whom all self-
command has been lost, they have, in every respect, an easy prey.2

1 It has been established by Bonhoeffer, Hoppe, A. H. Hiibner, and others,
that chronic alcoholism constitutes an important cause of prostitution in the case
of the so-called " late prostitutes " — that is to say, in those women who do not
commence a life of professional prostitution at puberty, but usually after the age
of twenty-five years. Cf. Artur Hermann Hiibner, ' Prostitutes in Relation to
Criminal Jurisdiction," published in Monatsschr. fiir Kriminalpsychologie,
edited by G. Aschaffenburg, 1907, p. 5.

2 At the great public dinner which, in 1890, the town of Berlin gave in the
Rathaus to the members of the International Medical Congress, and at which
4,000 persons consumed 15,382 bottles of wine, 22 hectolitres (484 gallons) of
beer, and 300 bottles of brandy, there were witnessed in and outside the Rathaus
the most disgusting scenes of drunkenness. " As the blowflies gather round a piece
of carrion, so in the street in front of the Rathaus there had gathered a swarm
of prostitutes, who found a rich booty among the drunken, staggering guests "
(c/. Rosenfeld, op. cit., p. 325). — A striking example of the manner in which alcohol
sometimes completely annihilates every aesthetic perception is reported by
E. Kraepelin (" The Psychiatric Duties of the State," p. 6; Jena, 1900) : " A
number of students were infected by a prostitute, who from early youth had been
weak-minded, and who was suffering from both lupus of the nose and recent
syphilis."

295

A man under the influence of alcohol is as easily led and as
devoid of will-power as a child. He is not particular in his
choice : he generally fails to notice whether the prostitute who
accosts him is young or old, pretty or ugly, clean or dirty ; he
follows her blindly, and in most cases with results disastrous to
his pocket and to his health. The following case illustrates very
clearly this loss of will produced in a man by indulgence in
alcohol :

An officer of high rank, a married man, in general a man of
solid repute, left the officers' casino after a banquet late at night,
very tipsy, to seek his house. Suddenly he felt an arm thrust
into his ; it was a prostitute who had noticed his condition, and
she had turned it to her own advantage. Without reflection and
without exercise of will, he allowed her to lead him to her dwelling,
and there, still in a quite apathetic condition, had intercourse
with her, without taking any precautions whatever. It was not
until afterwards that he saw, being then somewhat sobered, that
he was in the company of an elderly prostitute of the lowest
class. His dread of venereal infection was justified a few days
later by the appearance of a urethral discharge. In great alarm
he consulted me. Microscopic examination of the urethral secre-
tion, and the cure which ensued hi a few days, showed me that
he was suffering from a simple urethral catarrh, and not from
gonorrhoaa.

Such cases as this, however, do not always end so fortunately.
It is notorious, and has been proved by the researches of leading
physicians and medical statisticians, that the majority of venereal
infections take place under the influence of alcohol.

For this reason, the continued increase in the consumption of
alcohol leads to a further diffusion of venereal diseases. While
our ancestors consumed alcoholic beverages to excess only on
Sundays and festival days, at the present time spirits are freely
consumed on weekdays — above all, during the evenings. Brandy
and beer have become everyday beverages, especially beer, whose
consumption increases year by year, so that in the year 1898 the
beer drunk in Germany was valued at £100,000,000 ! Striimpell
showed that labourers earning three marks a day are accustomed
to spend eighty pfennige — that is, more than one- third of their
income — on beer ; these are by no means notorious drinkers, but
steady fellows who only follow the general " custom." The part
played by beer in Germany is played by absinthe in France ; the
well-known " aperitif " to which prostitutes of Paris so often
invite their male clients is in most cases absinthe. Wine, as the

296

experienced Fiaux says, is merely an " ideal drink " in the dreams
of the ordinary Parisian prostitute.

We shall return in subsequent chapters of this work to the
consideration of alcohol in its relations to the sexual life in
general, and to abnormal sexual manifestations in particular.
We shall also have occasion to speak of the momentous role
played by alcohol in the causation of offences against morality.
Baer goes so far as to assert that alcohol is the cause in 77 per
cent, of such offences.

Here we shall only once more insist upon the high degree to
which the excessive enjoyment of alcohol assists in seduction and
favours wild love — that is, sexual intercourse free from all choice
and all regulation. This is to be seen with especial clearness at
popular festivals and other occasions giving rise to alcoholic
excesses ; and the effects are later shown by the resulting increase
in the number of illegitimate births.

Magnus Hirschfeld relates that when he was a student he spent
one Christmas Eve in the company of a professor of medicine in
Breslau. Among the guests were two of the maternity assistants,
and first one, then the other, was called away to attend confine-
ments. An old physician who was present thereupon remarked :
" Yes, yes ; these are the children of the Emperor's birthday."
Hirschfeld, who asked for an explanation of this incomprehensible
phrase, was told that on Christmas Night the lying in hospitals
were overcrowded, because then the illegitimate children were
born which had been procreated nine months earlier, on March 22,
the birthday of the old Emperor, celebrated as a popular
holiday.

The increase in wild love, in sexual intercourse dependent upon
the inclination of the moment and upon chance, with a rapid
succession of different individuals — this increase, which is asso-
ciated in the way above described with the sensual life, is a
characteristic of our own time.

In addition to prostitution, which we shall treat in a separate
chapter, the so-called " intimacy " constitutes the true nucleus
of wild love. When those who support coercive marriage speak
of free love, they do not mean the free love, the higher individual
love, which we have described in the previous chapter, but they
always refer to the latter-day " intimacy," which, in fact, does
involve the most serious dangers, alike from the physical and
from the moral point of view ; for, on the one hand, the " inti-
macy " forms the principal intermediate agent in the wider
diffusion of venereal diseases, and, on the other hand, this new

297

form of sexual relationship has above all introduced the element
of hypocrisy, lying, and mistrust, which poisons love to-day,
separates the sexes continually more each from the other, and
gives rise to that tragic sexual hate, enmity of men on the part
of women, and misogyny on the part of men, which is also
peculiarly characteristic of our own time.

The gradual differentiation of the originally ideal intimacy, to
the wild love of the present day, has been admirably described
and psychologically elucidated by Hellpach in his short work on
" Love and Amatory Life in the Nineteenth Century."

In this admirable characterization of the " intimacy," the fact
is first established, that it is above all and through and through
a product of great towns, and consequently that it is closely
connected with the capitalistic evolution which compels thousands
of young girls to earn their own living, so that from them are
especially recruited the great human class of shop-girls, and all
the allied varieties, so typical of large towns. This is the soil
in which the " intimacy " naturally develops. [Hellpach writes
first of conditions of a generation ago, and then passes on thirty
years to our own day.]

" By day these girls were occupied. When the evening came,
bringing with it the greatly desired closing of the shop, the prospect
opened to them of going home to poor surroundings, often enough of
taking part in painful family scenes, then going to bed, and the next
morning early returning to business. This was their life, day in, day
out. Here was no very pleasant calendar, especially when the way
from the places of business to their home led through streets crowded
with brilliantly lighted beer saloons, cafes, theatres, and concert-
halls. And all this during the years of sexual blossoming, when the
ardent sensual desire for the first time ran through all the nerves !
Who can wonder that the longing became absolutely fiery, after all the
work of the day, to enjoy a little share of all the glories of the great
town which lay extended before their gaze ? After the confinement
of the shop, not to return straightway to the confinement of the
family, but to learn to know a little about the freedom of pleasure —
and this under the most entrancing form of a little love affair ?

" And the social conditions were such as to make it possible for
this yearning to be fulfilled. Were there not thousands of young
shopmen, hundreds of students, clerks, non-commissioned officers,
who would rather walk about in the evening with a girl on their arm
than alone ? Prostitutes would be little suited for such companion-
ship. Besides, it would not be always the young man's intention to
proceed to an extremity, to have a night of love following the evening
of amusement ; the young man simply was in the mood to walk about
with the girl, to gossip, perhaps to embrace and kiss her a little.

" Here was the beginning. The young man accosted a shop-girl,
accompanied her a little way, made an appointment for the following
evening ; then he went a little further ; he saw how pleased the little

one was ; the tutoyer and the kiss followed. So it went on for a few
evenings, and the young man felt that the happy girl was quite as
eager as he himself was to take the last step ; and when this was done,
there was the " intimacy " complete. And in all respects it appeared
preferable to prostitution ; it was inexpensive, unassuming, very
pleasant, and — involved no risk to health. Moreover, to both this
amatory life did not seem a ' necessary evil '; on the contrary, it was
a glorious pleasure, and there were only two little shadows in the
bright picture : the fear of having a child, and the thought of separa-
tion. Moreover, this cloud troubled the man only ; girls then, as
to-day, thought very little about matters so remote.

" In the development of the ' intimacy ' during the last thirty years,
many details have undergone change, but the picture as a whole has
been but little affected. The young shop-girl of to-day does not need
a long courting ; she enters her business already fully aware that
she will soon be ' intimate ' with some one. At first she will always
prefer to choose a man of whom it is possible to assume that he may
marry her. A young shopman, a non-commissioned officer, will,
therefore, be most in demand. It is not till later, when resignation
comes, and the only remaining wish is for amusement, that University
students have the preference ; they are jollier, more entertaining,
and the girl is vain about their position. That has all remained just
as it used to be ; only tliirty years ago there were many shop-girls
who, notwithstanding all their desire, remained untouched. For the
girl brought up in the atmosphere of the lower middle classes there
was a certain ill-odour about free sexual intercourse. This has com-
pletely passed away. The girls of this stratum, who, with open eyes,
withstand all allurements, might be counted on the fingers. At the
present day, these ' intimacies ' extend deeply into the middle classes
of society.

" As regards the men, there has certainly been one marked change.
The illusion that sexual intercourse with an ' intimate ' offered any
guarantee against the danger of venereal disease has now long been
dispelled. We are to-day confronted with the fact that the intimacy
is the focus of venereal infection to a far greater extent1 than is actual
prostitution. In order to understand this, we must glance at the
dissolution of the intimacy.

" We have already pointed out that in the German ' intimacy '
there has never occurred a thorough development of a life like that of
the Parisian ' grisette '; and there will be no change in this respect
within a time which we can at present foresee. Even in Berlin there
are not many dwellings in which the landlord would tolerate the visits
of ladies of doubtful reputation on any account whatever. But even
those who let quarters on easy terms, or, as the student calls them,
' storm-free ' rooms, would never allow their lodger to entertain a
woman day after day, and could not do so without running the risk
of being suspected by the police of procurement. Thus, the only thing
that unites the two parties in the intimacy is in almost all cases sexual
intercourse. The characteristic of grisette-love, the prose of the life
in common, day after day, is hardly ever experienced in the ' intimacy.'

1 It is not yet quite so bad as this. But the number of venereal infections
that occur in consequence of wild love, and of free sexual intercourse in these
relations of " intimacy," is continually on the increase.

299

In consequence of this, on the man's side satiety very readily ensues.

New impressions enchain and stimulate him. He breaks off the
intimacy, and this is not usually done with tenderness. The possi-
bilities are numerous, but the only decent way, the open verbal com-
munication of the fact, is probably the rarest. He breaks off the
intimacy without a word, and as far as he is concerned the matter is
at an end ; he is richer by an agreeable experience, and after a while
begins to look round once more.

" The girl also. But for her, this dissolution of the intimacy is
very often the first step upon a very steep downward path. At first
there perhaps ensues a short period of bitterness, but the sexual im-
pulse makes light of all other activities ; a new intimacy begins. And
now, gradually, the idea gains ground in her mind that a change in
love is, after all, not such a bad thing. The second breach is borne with
equanimity ; and very soon it is by no means rare for the girl to limit
her love associations to a few days, and ultimately, as a matter of
daily custom, to seek fresh gratification with a new associate. It
is not yet professional prostitution ; psychologically also there is
still a difference. There is still sensual perception at the root of her
actions, and of such a strength, increasing owing to excess in sexual
intercourse, that the personality of the partner in the sexual act be-
comes almost a matter of indifference. But now an economic difficulty
commonly intervenes : discharge from her position, expulsion from her
parents' house, either or both being due to her dissipated life, with its
heedlessness and the resulting dislike to hard work — and then the
avalanche falls. Hunger drives her to do that for payment which
hitherto she has done only for the gratification of her own desires.
Prostitution has one victim the more.

" But the whole period between the beginning of the second intimacy
and her enrolment in the list of prostitutes by the police offers to all
her lovers the greatest possible danger of venereal infection. For
the majority of girls actually become infected in their very first in-
timacy. The explanation of this goes back to the time in which the
intimacy first began to become fashionable, and in which the control
of prostitutes with regard to their condition of health was even more
defective, and the safeguarding against the danger of venereal infec-
tion was even less understood than at the present day. In the
majority of cases the young men of the large towns were infected in
their very first experience of love ; for it was with prostitutes that they
always sought their first sexual gratification, as is still customary at
the present day. For the inexperienced youth this course is easier,
making, as it does, fewer demands on his adroitness, and none at all
on his seductive skill ; whereas in the formation of an ' intimacy '
these qualities are somewhat in demand. Later, when he had had
enough of prostitution, he sought an ' intimate,' and since at that
time the treatment of gonorrhoea was still extremely defective, he
promptly infected his partner in the intimacy. In this manner the
girls engaged in intimacies, since they first became fashionable, have
been systematically infected."

Next to prostitution, the intimacy is the great focus of sexual
infection ; and wild love, from the psychological and ethical

300

points of view, involves the same danger as prostitution. The
frequent changes, the multiplicity of sexual intercourse in inti-
macies, allows no deeper spiritual relationships to be formed ;
thus, the girls are debased to become the simple objects of
physical sensuality, and they are forced more and more to depend
on the financially stronger men ; thus, they rapidly become
partial or complete prostitutes. To them now the sensual life,
the pursuit of pleasure, is the principal thing, not love. Venereal
infection is soon superadded, to deprave them more thoroughly.
Still worse is the corruption of the world of men, who transfer to
the intimacy the practices they have learned in their association
with prostitutes ; but, above all, they come finally to seek and
to desire the rude sexual act solely for its own sake, without
feeling the need for any deeper spiritual association. Hence
results the fugitive character of these sexual relationships, the
frequent changes on both sides, and the end — lies, mistrust,
hatred.

Belief in and hope for true love disappear for ever ; there
remains only the cold, desolate, unspeakably embittered dis-
illusionment, the distrust of the other sex which is so charac-
teristic of our time. Never before were there so many woman-
haters and man-haters on principle. In the intercourse between
the sexes, neither believes the other any longer ; and on both
sides the " intimacy " is entered on without any illusions, the
sole aim of both parties being to satisfy in the intensest possible
way their desire for enjoyment and their sensual lusts.

Prostitution can destroy no illusions, for its true character is
manifest at the first glance ; but the modern intimacy has become
the grave of love, and has given rise to a new corruption of the
sexual life, which appears almost more dangerous than the old
corruption dependent on prostitution. It has, moreover, become
a second, and not less dangerous, focus of venereal infection, to
the diffusion of which it is extraordinarily favourable.

He, therefore, who wishes to take part in the fight against the
moral degeneration of our amatory life, and to assist in the cam-
paign against venereal diseases, must attack and endeavour to
suppress the modern development of the life of " intimacy " just
as energetically as he attacks prostitution.

The wild love of the present day, " extra-conjugal " sexual
intercourse (which, as I cannot too often repeat, has nothing
whatever to do with " free love "), and coercive marriage, are
the true causes of sexual corruption. They are intimately asso-
ciated one with the other. The social, economic, and spiritual

301

civilization of the present day demands free love, with which
neither coercive marriage nor wild love is compatible. -; [

Neither for prostitution, nor for the wild extra-conjugal sexual
intercourse of our time, can any justification be found from the
point of view of medicine, racial hygiene, or sociology. In their
nature both lead to the same end : the death and destruction of
all individual love, of all the finer activities of love, by which the
spiritual nature of man is so greatly enriched ; and they both
give rise to a continuous increase and rapid diffusion of venereal
diseases.

The salvation of our people is not to be found in the " recom-
mendation " of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse for all those
who are not in a position to marry — and the number of these
grows from day to day — but it is to be found in the reform of
marriage, in a freer configuration of the amatory life, in con-
nexion with which we can confidently trust Ibsen's saying in the
" Lady from the Sea ":

" We can't get away from this — that a voluntary promise is to the
full as binding as a marriage."

There shall not and must not be " sexual freedom," l but there
must be " freedom of love."

When anyone asks me whether I should advise him to indulge
in " extra-conjugal sexual intercourse," as a physician and a
man of science I am compelled to answer with a bald " No,"
because I cannot undertake the responsibility of the consequences
of such advice.

Fortunately, alike in the world of women and in the world of
men, there manifests itself an increasing disapproval of wild love
as it exhibits itself in the modern " intimacies." There are
already numerous intimacies which closely resemble free love,
and in which all the conditions of free love are fulfilled, in respect
of duration, of a profound spiritual relationship, a sense of sexual

1 Sexual freedom — that is to say, the formal organization of sexual promis-
cuity— was demanded by a certain Dr. Roderich Hellmann in a book which has
now become very rare, because it was confiscated immediately after publication.
Its title was " Sexual Freedom : a Philosophic Attempt to Increase Human
Happiness " (Berlin, 1878). The author demands that immediately after
puberty " the sexual organs shall have the opportunity of a regulated activity,"
and that it shall now be allowed to persons of both sexes " to indulge in sexual
intercourse as much as they please,' of course, with the avoidance of injury to
health and of pregnancy. This remarkable freak proceeds to demand that
public lavatories shall be done away with, so that persons of both sexes shall
relieve themselves freely in one another's presence in the open street, and, with
equal freedom, shall display their sexual organs to one another for the purpose of
sexual allurement ! 1

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responsibility alike physical and moral, and in the joyful
acceptance of the consequences in respect of offspring.

We must, however, continually keep up the fight against wild
love as the enduring associate of prostitution, to which it con-
stitutes the bridge or stage of transition. Therein lies its greatest
danger. This we shall recognize more clearly in the ensuing
chapter, in which we turn to consider the subject of prostitution.

CHAPTER XIII
PROSTITUTION

" On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the
passions that might have filled the world with shame. She remains,
while creeds and civilizations arise and fall, the eternal priestess of
humanity, blasted for the sins of the people." — LECKY.

BQ6

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XIII

Prostitution and venereal disease the central problem of the sexual question —
My belief in the possibility of the suppression of both — Only in recent years
has the scientific attack on both begun — The plaie aociale. — Internal and
local treatment — The scientific literature of prostitution — Rosenbaum's
work on prostitution in antiquity — Aretino, Delgado, and Veniero on the
prostitution of the renascence — Franckenaus's first medical polemic against
brothels — The commencement of the scientific study of prostitution and
venereal diseases in the eighteenth century — Retif de la Bretonno and his
" Pornographe " — " Moral Control " — Parent-Duchatolot's fundamental
work — Analysis of this book — Contemporary works on prostitution in Paris,
London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Lisbon, Lyons, and Algiers — First employ-
ment of the term " male prostitution " — A peculiar species of souteneur —
Prostitution hi Hamburg — Dr. Lippert's book — " Memoirs of a Prostitute,"
the predecessor of the " Diary of a Lost Woman " — Gross-Hoffinger's book
on " Prostitution hi Austria " — Demonstration of the connexion between
prostitution and coercive marriage — Celebrated chapter on " Maidservants
and Prostitution " — Schrank on prostitution in Vienna — Prostitution in
Leipzig — In New York — General works on prostitution — Jeannel, Acton
and Hiigel — Books on secret prostitution, on prostitution of girls under ago,
on regulation and on brothels, and on the social importance of prostitution
— Blaschko's recent critical investigation on the subject of prostitution —
Results of this investigation — Lombroso's anthropological theory — The
works of Tarnowsky and Strohmberg, of Fiaux and von During.

Conception and definition of prostitution — Genuine and pseudo -prosti-
tutes— Prostitution among primitive peoples — Religious prostitution as the
germinal form of modern prostitution — This latter the product of the
growth of large towns — Medieval conditions — Diminution in the number of
brothels since that time — The demand for prostitutes — Relation between
the number of prostitutes and the male population — The supply greater than
the demand — Causes of the male demand for prostitutes — Prostitution as a
product of civilization — Repression of primitive sexual instincts by civiliza-
tion— The sexual supra- and sub-consciousness — Transient elemental
activities of the sub-consciousness — Reports of J. P. Jakobsen and other
writers on this subject — Gratification of these instincts by means of prosti-
tution— This in part the product of the physiological masochism of men.

The numerous causes of prostitution — The anthropological theory and the
doctrine of the congenital prostitute — Criticism of this view — Proof that
many of the physical and mental peculiarities of prostitutes are acquired —
The obliteration of the secondary and tertiary sexual characters in prostitutes
— The nucleus of Lombroso's theory — The economic factors of prostitution
— Actual and relative poverty as a cause — Poverty a cause of prostitution
in the mass — Women's and children's work — Prostitution as an accessory
occupation — Insufficient wages — The inquiries of 1887 and 1903 on this

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305

subject — Examples — The large proportion of maidservants who become
prostitutes — Explanation of this — Relative poverty of maidservants —
Psychological factors of maidservant prostitution — Overcrowded dwellings
— Families living in single rooms, and taking in lodgers for the night —
Alcoholism — The traffic in girls — Sources of this — National and international
preventive measures — Work done by the Jewish Committee to prevent the
traffic in girls in Galatia — Measures taken in Buenos Ay res — The central
police organization in Berlin for the suppression of the traffic in girls.

The localities of prostitution — Public prostitution — Street prostitution —
Character and dangers of street prostitution — Still greater dangers of
brothels — Brothels as centres of sexual corruption and perversity, and as
foci of venereal infection — The high school of psychopathia sexualis — The
brothel jargon — " Animierkneipen " — Dancing saloons, variety theatres,
low music-halls, cabarets, and " Bummel " — " Pensions " and houses of
accommodation — Massage institutes — Cafe's with female attendants.

Appendix : The Half -World. — Origin of the name — The " Demi-Monde "
of the younger Alexandre Dumas — Change undergone by the conception at
the present day — Analogy with the Greek hetairae — Connexion of the half-
world with high life — Origin — The social influence of the " grandes
cocottes " — The half -world hi Germany — The international prostitute.

CHAPTER XIII

Prostitution, and the venereal diseases so intimately connected
with it, constitute, properly speaking, the nucleus, the central
problem, of the sexual question. The abolition of prostitution
and the suppression of venereal diseases would be almost tanta-
mount to the solution of the entire sexual problem. Imagine the
extension and the intension of the idea : No prostitution, no more
venereal disease !

There is, in fact, no more gratifying notion, no more illuminating
ideal, than that of moral and physical purity in the relations
between the sexes. At a time in which, especially in social
spheres, such abundant activity and such far-seeing ideas of
reform are apparent, this notion of a campaign against prostitution
and venereal diseases, in the hope of eradicating both evils,
should stand in the forefront of all the demands of civilization,
in order that finally the tragical influence, the poisonous sting,
should be removed from the disordered, unhappy, amatory life
of the present day, and herewith, unquestionably, a proper
foundation should be laid for a more beautiful future for that
life. This idea is unique ; it is the greatest of all that man, at
length become self-conscious,1 has ever grasped ; and to this idea
belongs the future !

The French term prostitution and venereal diseases une plaie
sociale, a rodent ulcer in the body of society. I take this apt
comparison, and carry it a stage further, to show a clear picture
of the way along which we must go in order to eradicate prostitu-
tion ; for in this respect I am a confirmed optimist. I believe
in the possibility of the eradication of venereal diseases, and of
the abolition of prostitution within the civilized world by national
and international measures. I do not join in the chorus of those
who say, " because prostitution has always existed, it must always
exist in the future ; because venereal diseases have always2
existed, they are unavoidable accompaniments of civilization."

1 Here, in the phrase " man at length become self-conscious," we have the
animating idea of this work, as it is of all fruitful efforts at the amelioration of
the human lot. See the admirable development of this idea in E. Ray Lankester's
Romanes lecture, "Nature and Man " ; and also in H. G. Wells's later writings,
more especially " A Modern Utopia " and " New Worlds for Old." — TRANSLATOR.

2 That this opinion is false, I have proved incontestably as regards syphilis in
my book, "The Origin of Syphilis (Jena, 1901). For the European and
Asiatic world, syphilis is a specifically modern disease, not more than 400 years
old.

306

307

How long is it, then, since any attempt has been made to oppose
prostitution and venereal diseases ? As regards the latter, it is
only within the last few years that we have begun, in the battle
against them, to make systematic use of the results of scientific
research ; and the study of prostitution, and the measures based
on that study for its control and prevention, do not date further
back than the second half of the eighteenth century. In fact,
for practical purposes, they date from the appearance of the
classical and epoch-making work of Parent-Duchatelet (1836).

We are, indeed, in the very first stages of the campaign against
prostitution and venereal diseases. All that has hitherto been
done has been to make inadequate, isolated attempts to introduce
unsuitable and half -considered regulations, based upon successive
misconceptions, which have only made matters worse. To-day
medicine, social science, pedagogy, jurisprudence, and ethics have
combined in a common campaign ; and this is not national merely,
but unites all civilized nations in a common cause.

Here we find an actual prospect, a credible hope, of a radical
cure of the plaie sociale. But such an ulcer can only be
radically cured when we are not content merely with the local
treatment of the existing sore ; we must simultaneously attack the
internal causes of this chronic disease, and in the case with which
we have to do the internal causes are even more important than
the external — that is to say, ethics, pedagogy, and social science
are even more important and indispensable in the campaign
against prostitution than medicine and hygiene. We shall never
attain our goal by considering and fighting prostitution and
venereal diseases, the consequences of prostitution, purely from
the medical and hygienic standpoint. In this case, one-sidedness
will prove tantamount to failure. The problem of prostitution
must be approached from many sides, because the causes that
have to be considered are manifold, alike anthropological,
economic, social, and psychological, in their nature. There are
many varieties of prostitution ; in the same way there are
numerous and various types of prostitutes. It is, therefore, im-
possible for one who is acquainted with actual We to hold fast
in a one-sided manner to a single theory. Thus, in one and the
same case the most various points of view have to be considered.

The history of prostitution is an extremely interesting chapter
of the general history of civilization, which has not hitherto been
written in a manner satisfying scientific and critical demands ;
but the literature of prostitution is already alarmingly compre-
hensive. Here, also, critical grasp and mode of presentation are

20—2

308

still entirely wanting. It is impossible, in this place, in which
we speak only of the present-day conditions, to enter at any
length into the historical and literary aspects of the question of
prostitution. This I must leave for a later, comprehensive work,
for which I have for several years been collecting the materials.
Here I shall only briefly refer, for the sake of the reader interested
in the matter, to the most important writings on the subject of
prostitution which have any scientific and historical importance.

Prostitution in antiquity is treated in a masterly manner by
Julius Rosenbaum in his celebrated " History of Syphilis in
Antiquity " (Halle, 1839) ; this is, down to the present day, the
chief source of our knowledge of the conditions in antiquity. It
is true that he starts from the false assumption that syphilis
already existed in ancient times, a view which in the second
volume of my book on the " Origin of Syphilis " (now in course
of preparation) I show to be incorrect ; this work will also contain
a thorough study of prostitution among the ancients, based upon
the more recent researches published since the year 1839, when
Rosenbaum's book appeared.

The first truly classical descriptions of the nature of modern
prostitution dated from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ;
these are not scientific, belonging rather to the province of belles-
lettres ; but they are of great value in respect of the accuracy of
their observations, and of their psychological insight into the
nature of prostitution. I refer above all to the celebrated
" Ragionamenti " of Pietro Aretino ;x next, to the not less im-
portant work, published earlier, in 1528, " Lozana Andaluza,"
by Francisco Delgado (Francesco Delicado).2 Both these books,
and also the celebrated " Zafetta " of Lorenzo Veniero (circa
1535), describe the conditions of prostitution at the time of the
Italian renascence ; these display a most astonishing similarity
to the conditions of the present day, and the books mentioned
have therefore still an instructive value.3

From the seventeenth century we have as important docu-
ments of civilization the description of prostitution in Holland in
the interesting work " Le Putanisme d' Amsterdam " (Brussels,

1 Venice, 1534.

2 " La Lozana Andaluza " (" The Gentle Andalusian "), by Francesco
Delicado. Traduit pour la premiere fois, texte Espagnol en regard par Aloide
Bonneau, 2 vols., Paris, 1888. Regarding this work, see my book " The Origin
of Syphilis," vol. i., pp. 36-43.

3 C/. also the interesting work of Salvatore di Giacomo, " Prostitution in
Naples in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, based on Un-
published Documents," revised in accordance with the German translation, and
provided with an introduction by Dr. Iwan Bloch (Dresden, 1904).

309

1883 ; the original Dutch edition, Amsterdam, 1681), and also in
the work published in the same year, 1681, " Disputatio Medica
qua Lupanaria ex Principiis quoque Medicis Improbantur," by
Georg Franck von Franckenau,1 noteworthy as being the first
medical polemic against brothels.

Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the study of
prostitution was most active in France.2 In the second half of
the eighteenth century, according to the expression of the de
Goncourts, " pornognomonie " was a scientific problem. Various
attempts at reform were made ; as early as 1763 " moral control "
was recommended ; and in 1769 there appeared the celebrated
" Pornographe " of Retif de la Bretonne,3 the first extensive
work on the state regulation of prostitution, the great historical
importance of which was recognized by Mireur, the well-known
syphilologist of Marseilles, by the publication of a new edition
(Brussels, 1879).

But it was with the publication of the immortal and most
admirable work of Parent-Duchatelet,4 on prostitution in Paris,
that in the year 1836 the modern scientific literature of prostitu-
tion really began. It is the first work in which full justice is
done to the importance of prostitution in all its relations, and it
is based upon exact medical observations and psychological and
social studies. Even to-day it remains unique in its kind, and
a standing example of critical research and of French learned zeal.

A very short account of the contents of this epoch-making book
of Parent-Duchatelet will best teach us its importance, and will
give us an insight into all the problems connected with prostitu-
tion, and considered by the French author.

In the introduction, Parent-Duchatelet explains the reasons
which led him to undertake the work, and the literary sources he
has consulted. The first chapter then proceeds to the considera-
tion of certain general problems, gives a definition of the term
prostitute, an estimate of the number of prostitutes in Paris,
their origin in respect of native country, position, culture, pro-
fession, their age, and the first cause of their adoption of this
profession. The second chapter discusses the manners and
customs of prostitutes, the opinion they have of themselves, their
religious ideas, their sense of shame, their spiritual qualities,

1 Reprinted in his " Satyrse Modicse XX.," pp. 528-649 (Leipzig, 1722).

2 Cf. my work on " Retif do la Bretonne," p. 504 ei aeq. (Berlin, 1906).

3 The contents of this work are enumerated in my above-mentioned book,
pp. 505-512.

4 A. J. B. Parent-Duchatelet, " Do la Prostitution dans la Ville de Paris,"
third edition, 1857 (Parin, 1836).

310

tattooing, occupation, uncleanliness, speech, defects and good
qualities, the various classes of prostitutes, and, finally, the
souteneurs. The third chapter contains physiological observations
concerning prostitutes — namely, concerning their obesity, the
changes in their voice, peculiarities in the colour of the hair and
the eyes, the stature, the condition of the genital organs, and
fertility. In the fourth chapter he deals with the influence of
professional prostitution on the health of the girls, and describes
the various morbid conditions which may result from their
occupation. The fifth chapter treats of the public houses of
prostitution (brothels), their advantages and disadvantages, the
question of brothel streets, and the localization of prostitution
in definite quarters of the town. In the sixth chapter the in-
scription of prostitutes in police lists is discussed ; in the seventh
procurement and the owners of brothels. Chapters eight, nine, and
ten deal with secret prostitution in houses of accommodation,
drinking-saloons, coffee-houses, tobacconists' shops, etc. ; chapter
eleven discusses street prostitution ; chapter twelve, the diffusion
of prostitution in the various parts of Paris ; chapter thirteen, the
relation of prostitution to military life ; chapter fourteen, prostitu-
tion in the environs of Paris. The fifteenth chapter describes the
ultimate destiny of prostitutes ; the sixteenth deals with their
medical treatment — above all, the methods of examination to
ascertain their state of health are accurately described. Chapters
seventeen and eighteen deal with hospitals and prisons for prosti-
tutes ; chapter nineteen, with the former taxation of prostitutes ;
chapter twenty considers questions relating to administration,
and the special branch of police dealing with the institution — for
example, the suggestion (recently revived) is discussed of the
medical examination of the male clients of prostitutes ; prurient
pictures and books are also considered, and thefts in brothels.
The twenty-first chapter is devoted to the question which still
attracts attention at the present day, viz., the peculiar relation-
ship between the owner of a house and the prostitutes living there,
and deals also with the legal aspect of the punishments decreed
against prostitutes. Chapter twenty-two is occupied with a
general discussion of the legal questions connected with prostitu-
tion. At the conclusion, in chapters twenty-three and twenty-
four, the author discusses the question whether prostitutes are
necessary, and this question (nota bene, from the standpoint of
coercive marriage morality) he answers in the affirmative ; he
asks also whether the police should be entrusted with the applica-
tion of measures for the prevention of venereal diseases, and this

311

he agrees to conditionally only, for he considers that the public
recommendation of protective measures should be forbidden by
police ordinance. Finally, in the last chapter, the twenty-fifth,
he speaks of the institutions for the rescue of fallen women, and
he concludes his comprehensive work, in which he has dealt so
thoroughly with all the subdivisions of his general topic, with the
words :

" My work is at an end. When I commenced it, I pointed out what
reasons I had for undertaking it, what aim I wished to attain. Had I
not been firmly convinced that the investigations begun by me
regarding the nature of prostitutes might favour health and morality, I
should not have published them. I have exposed to the public gaze
great infirmities of mankind ; thoughtful men, for whom I have
written, will thank me for doing so. He who loves his fellow-men will
without anxiety follow me into the department of knowledge I have
described, and will not turn away his glance from the pictures I have
drawn. He who wishes to know the good that remains to be done, and
who wishes to learn how to pursue with good results the way by which
something better is to be attained, must first know what actually exists ;
he must know the truth.

" The profession of prostitution is an evil of all times, all countries,
and appears to be innate in the social structure of mankind. It will
perhaps never be entirely eradicated ; still, all the more we must strive
to limit its extent and its dangers. With prostitution itself it is as with
vice, crime, and disease ; the teacher of morals endeavours to prevent
the vices, the lawgiver to prevent the crimes, the physician to cure the
diseases. All alike know that they will never fully attain their goal ;
but they pursue their work none the less in the conviction that he who
does only a little good yet does a great service to the weak man. I
follow their example. A friend whose loss I shall always mourn drew
my attention to the fate of the prostitute. I studied them, I wished to
learn the causes of their degradation, and wherever possible to discover
the means by which their number could be limited. What experience
has taught me on this subject I have openly stated, and I am convinced
that the lawgiver, the man whom the State has empowered with
authority to care for public health and morality, will find in my book
useful information."

Parent-Duchatelet's book, no less admirable in its execution
than in its design, still remains the foundation for the scientific
study of prostitution. It is the exemplar for all contemporary
and subsequent works.

The powerful influence exercised by this book was shown above
all in this — that works on^prostitution appeared in rapid succes-
sion in the various capitals of the civilized world. These were all
based to a greater or less extent upon the work of Parent-Ducha-
telet, and thus they constitute extremely valuable scientific mono-
graphs regarding the conditions of prostitution in particular towns,

312

such as since that date have not been issued. Here there still lies
hidden a wealth of material, a large part of which has not yet
been utilized.

As an enlargement and continuation of the work of Parent-
Duchatelet, there appeared three years later, in the year 1839,
the work of the Commissary of Police Beraud1 on the prostitutes
of Paris and on the Parisian police des mceurs. The book is more
especially distinguished by art elaborate history of prostitution,
and by the wealth of psychological observations it contains ; also
by its exact information regarding secret prostitution.

In the same year a well-known London physician, Dr. Michael
Ryan,2 published his important book on Prostitution in London,3
with a comparison of the conditions in Paris and New York.
Ryan first dealt with the general social and economic causes of
prostitution, with critical acumen, as we could not but expect
from an Englishman. His book also contained an interesting
account of the extraordinary diffusion in England at that time
of pornographic books and pictures,4 and concerning their pub-
lication and sale by pedlars, and the measures undertaken to
repress this traffic. Valuable also are the detailed reports given
in this book, on pp. 212-252, regarding prostitution in the United
States, and especially in New York.

The example of Ryan was followed by his countrymen, Dr.
William Tait and the Rev. Ralph Wardlaw. The former treated
in a comprehensive work the subject of prostitution in Edin-
burgh ;5 the latter, in a shorter book, described prostitution in
Glasgow.6

Very interesting is the book, of which a few copies only ever
reached Germany (one of which is in my own possession )fc and
which even in Portugal is extremely rare, of Dr. Francisco Ignacio
dos Santos Cruz regarding prostitution in Lisbon,7 in which the
whole subject of Portuguese prostitution is admirably described,
with special reference to the capital city. Santos Cruz gives

1 F. R A. Beraud, " Los Filles Publiques de Paris" (Brussels, 1839, 2 vols.).

2 Dr. Michael Ryan was an acquaintance of Arthur Schopenhauer, who in
June, 1829, sent Ryan a copy of his book " Theoria Colorum." Cf. Eduard
Grisebach, " Schopenhauer: the History of His Life," p. 168 (Berlin, 1897).

3 M. Ryan, " Prostitution in London, with a Comparative View of that of
Paris and New York " (London, 1839).

* Cf. in this connexion also the report from other sources given in my " Sexual
Life in England," vol. iii., pp. 315-319, 440-447 (Berlin, 1903).

8 W. Tait, " Magdalenism : An Inquiry into the Extent, Causes, and Conse-
quences of Prostitution in Edinburgh," second edition (Edinburgh, 1842).

6 R. Wardlaw, " Lectures on Female Prostitution ; its Nature, Extent,
Effects, Guilt, Causes, and Remedy," third edition (Glasgow, 1843).

7 F. I. dos Santos Cruz, " Da Prostituicao na Cidade do Lisboa" (Lisbon, 1841).

313

most careful attention to the legislative aspect of the question.
He was the first to advocate a measure which has recently been
proposed also by Lesser (doubtless in ignorance of the work of
his predecessor) — viz., the formation of polyclinics for the gra-
tuitous treatment of prostitutes.1

Regarding prostitution in the town of Lyons, renowned for its
immorality, Dr. Potton wrote a celebrated book, which received
a prize from the Medical Society of Lyons in the year 1841. This
work was based on official sources, and had especial reference to
the relationships of prostitution to the hygienic and economic
conditions of the population.2

A valuable book, also, is the work on prostitution in Algiers
by E. A. Duchesne.3 It contains an elaborate account of
"male prostitution "—that is, prostitution of men for men — an
expansion of the idea of prostitution which is, as far as my
knowledge goes, found here for the first time. Naturally,
in earlier works we find allusions to men who practise pederasty
for money, but the idea " prostitution " had hitherto been
strictly limited to the class of purchasable women.

We see this, for example, in the anonymous book " Prostitu-
tion in Berlin, and its Victims,"4 published in Berlin seven years
before the appearance of the work of Duchesne. The author
definitely states that " the admirable book of Parent-Duchatelet
on prostitution in the town of Paris, and its remarkable success,
have chiefly given occasion to the publication of my own work."
The book is, however, quite independent in character, and treats
of the individual relationships of prostitution in Berlin, on the
basis of official sources and experience, in historical, moral,
medical, and political relations, and also from the point of view
of police administration. It contains an appendix on " prosti-
tuted men " (p. 207), who, however, are not homosexual prosti-
tutes, but, according to the writer's own definition, " men who
make it their profession to serve for payment voluptuous women
by the gratification of the latter's unnatural passions." This
species still exists at the present day, but there is no particular
name for the type. (In the seventies, in Vienna, men who could
be hired to perform coitus were known locally as " stallions "
Ger. Hengste.) We must include them in the great army of

1 " Estabelecimentos de Beneficencia para as Consultas Gratuitas," pp. 203-206.

2 A. Potton, " De la Prostitution et do ses Consequences dans los Grande*
Villi-s. dans la Ville do Lyon en Particulier " (Paris and Lyons, 1842).

3 £. A. Duchesne, ' De la Prostitution dans la Villo d'Algor depuis la
Conquete " (Paris, 1853).

* fl Die Prostitution in Berlin und ihre Opfer " (Berlin, 1840).

314

souteneurs, although the term is not strictly applicable. Later
we shall return to the consideration of this peculiar variety of
male prostitution.

As an enlargement of the work just mentioned, we can regard
the book published in the same year, 1846, by the Criminal Com-
missary, Dr. Carl Rohrmann, on Prostitution in Berlin.1

This book is especially remarkable from the fact that it contains
" complete and candid biographies of the best-known prostitutes
in Berlin," an idea which has recently been revived, for example,
in W. Hammer's " The Life-History of Ten Public Prostitutes in
Berlin " (Berlin and Leipzig, 1905).

Very valuable official material is, finally, to be found in a third
work on prostitution in Berlin, written by the celebrated syphilo-
logist F. J. Behrend.2 It begins with a careful history of the
police regulations regarding prostitution in Berlin, then discusses
the consequences of the abolition of the Berlin brothels in the
year 1845, and proceeds to demand new measures and regulations
for the control of prostitution and for the prevention of syphilis
in Berlin. As a collection of material, the book is of considerable
value.

Little known, but thoroughly original, is the work of the
Hamburg physician, Dr. Lippert, on prostitution in Hamburg.3
Blaschko even fails to mention it in the bibliography at the end
of his own work, presently to be described. Lippert adduces
numerous and interesting new contributions to our knowledge
of " the many-headed hydra, the colour-changing chameleon,"
of prostitution. After an introductory sketch regarding the his-
torical development of prostitution in Hamburg, he gives a
" characterization of the present moral condition of Hamburg,"
embodying important information regarding the number of
brothel prostitutes and street-walkers, the topographical distribu-
tion of prostitution and of brothels, the secret houses of accom-
modation, the remarkable decline in the number of marriages,
the relationship between legitimate and illegitimate births, and
the number of drinking-saloons and dancing-halls ; and he goes
on to describe with more detail these individual factors of prostitu-

1 C. Rohrmann, " Der sittliche Zuatand von Berlin nach Aufhebung der
geduldeten Prostitution des weiblichen Geschlechts " — " The Moral Condition
of Berlin after tho Abolition of Tolerated Prostitution of the Female Sex ' ' ( Leipzig ,
1846).

2 F. J. Behrend, " Prostitution in Berlin, and the Measures it is Desirable
to Adopt against Prostitution and against Syphilis," etc. A work based on official
sources, and dedicated to His Excellency the Minister von Ladenberg (Erlangen,
1850).

3 H. Lippert, " Prostitution in Hamburg " (Hamburg, 1848).

315

tion, and especially the opportunities for prostitution. The third
chapter contains an extremely interesting physiological and patho-
logical description of the Hamburg prostitutes. According to
Lippert, the principal motives of prostitution are " idleness,
frivolity, and, above all, the love of finery." He rightly lays
especial stress upon the last-named cause, which, in the more
recent scientific investigations regarding the causes of prostitu-
tion, has, unfortunately, been too much neglected. Then follow
data regarding the age, nationality, class, and occupation of
prostitutes. We learn that as early as the date of this book of
Lippert's the greatest number of public prostitutes had originally
been maidservants (p. 79), not girls of the labouring classes. Thus
the fact that prostitutes recruit their ranks chiefly from the
servant class is not, as recent writers assert, exclusively the
consequence of the increasing mental culture of the modern
proletariat, but is most probably rather connected with the freer
configuration of the amatory life among the labouring classes,
where the nobler form of " free love " has long been dominant.
From the very nature of the case, this must lead to a limitation
of the supply of prostitutes from this class. The chapter closes
with an elaborate description of the physical and mental pecu-
liarities of the Hamburg prostitutes, and of the diseases observed
in them. In the fourth chapter the various classes of prostitutes
are considered more closely — the brothel prostitutes (with an
exact description of the celebrated brothel streets of Hamburg),
the prostitutes living alone, the street- walkers, the " kept
women," the large group of secret prostitutes. There follow in
an appendix interesting accounts of the public places which
are related to prostitution ; of prostitution in the Hamburger
Berg and hi the suburb of St. Pauli ; and of the rescue work of
Hamburg.

A very good account of prostitution in Hamburg is also found
in a book contemporary with that of Lippert, entitled " Memoirs
of a Prostitute, or Prostitution in Hamburg " (St. Pauli, 1847).
This work, which is now extraordinarily rare, resembles the book
which recently gained such celebrity, the " Tagebuch einer Ver-
lorenen " (" Diary of a Lost Woman "), by Margaret Bohme, in
that it was edited by a Dr. J. Zeisig, professedly after the " original
manuscript." As usual, it has all happened before !

In the preface to his book, Lippert remarks that, since prostitu-
tion in Berlin and in Hamburg has now been adequately described,
it was desirable that an analogous book should be compiled
regarding Vienna, in order that we might have the necessary

316

comparative statistics of " the three principal towns and principal
factors of German prostitution."

The actual account of prostitution in Vienna did not, however,
appear till forty years later, in the year 1886. Still, as early as
1847 the book of Dr. Anton J. Gross-Hoffinger was published,
describing exclusively the conditions of prostitution in Austria,
and naturally chiefly concerned with conditions in Vienna.1 In
my opinion, this book has an epoch-making significance, because
therein we find asserted for the first time, with all possible
emphasis, that the institution of coercive marriage is the ultimate
cause of prostitution, to which all the other causes are subsidiary.
In no other book do we find so painful a description, drawn with
such astonishing clearness, of the horrible conditions resulting
from the artificial preservation of the official and ecclesiastical
coercive marriage, which was really based upon economic con-
ditions peculiar to the remote past. The two first sections,
" Woman the Slave of Civilization " and " Woman in her De-
gradation," are the most frightful accusations of conventional
marriage. On pp. 190 and 191 the author formulates in fifteen
paragraphs a law of marriage reform, which has a very close
resemblance to the previously described ideas of Ellen Key. A
perfect classic is the chapter on servant-girls (pp. 226-284), unique
in its thoroughness, and affording an admirable description of the
legal, moral, and economic relationships of domestic service.

" The great army of domestic servants," he writes, " constitute the
ever-ready reserve force of prostitution. Daily from this reserve are
drawn new recruits for the regular service, and daily the vacant places
in the reserve are once more filled."

Gross-Hoffinger, in 1847, came also to the conclusion that in
" free love " or " free marriage " was to be found the only salva-
tion from the misery of prostitution.

The comprehensive work of Schrank upon prostitution in
Vienna2 is distinguished by an abundance of interesting isolated
observations, and these are especially to be found in the earlier
historical portion. The second part is occupied with the adminis-
tration and hygiene of prostitution in Vienna. The work gives
an exhaustive account of Viennese prostitution down to the
year 1885.

1 A. J. Gross -Hoffinger, " The Fate of Women and Prostitution, in Relation to
the Principle of the Indissolubility of Catholic Marriage, and especially in
Relation to the Laws of Austria and the Philosophy of our Time " (Leipzig,
1847).

2 Josef Schrank, " Prostitution in Vienna in Historical, Administrative,
and Hygienic Relations" (Vienna, 1886, 2 vols).

317

Prostitution in Leipzig was described in three chapters of a
general work on prostitution, published in the year 1854.1 The
titles of these three chapters are : " Moral Corruption in Leip-
zig " ; " Tolerated Prostitutes and Tolerated Houses hi Leipzig " ;
" Tolerated Prostitutes in Leipzig : their Morals, their Customs,
their Hygienic Condition, their End." Very interesting is the
statement of the author that of the 3,000 maidservants in Leipzig,
one-third were engaged in secret prostitution.

The prostitution in the largest town of the new world, in
New York, also found an admirable description in the sixth
decade of the nineteenth century in the great historical work of
the New York physician, William M. Sanger.2 Of the 685
large octavo pages which the book contains, pages 450 to 676 are
devoted to the description of the conditions of prostitution in
New York. The historical portion of the book is also extremely
valuable, being based upon the best historical authorities.

With the year 1860, or thereabouts, this first period of the
scientific literature of prostitution, characterized by monographs
dealing with individual towns, in pursuance of the example of
Parent-Duchatelet, came to a close. Just as Parent-Duchatelet
had inaugurated this kind of description, so the French now
undertook the introduction of the further researches into prosti-
tution. First of all, Dr. J. Jeannel summarized the results of
the books we have already mentioned in a general work on
prostitution,3 which contained a comparative view of the condi-
tions in various countries and towns. An Englishman, W. Acton,
also wrote a similar general work on prostitution ;4 whilst yet
another general work on the subject was written by the German
Hiigel.6

The extremely important question of secret prostitution has
been elucidated especially by the writings of Martineau6 and
Commenge ;7 the not less important question of prostitution
practised by girls under full age is treated by Augagneur ;8 the

1 " The Moral Corruption of Our Time and its Victims in their Relationship
to the State, to the Family, and to Morality, with especial Reference to the
Conditions of Prostitution in Leipzig " (Leipzig, 1854).

3 W. M. Sanger, " The History of Prostitution " (New York, 1859).

3 J. Jeannel, " Prostitution in Large Towns in the Nineteenth Century, and
the Abolition of Venereal Diseases."

4 W. Acton, " Prostitution in its Various Aspects," second edition (London.
1874).

8 Hiigol, " The History, Statistics, and Regulation of Prostitution " (Vienna.
1865).
8 L. Martinoau, " La Prostitution Clandestine " (Paris, 1885).

7 O. Commenge, " La Prostitution Clandestine a Paris " (Paris, 1897).

8 V. Augagneur, " La Prostitution des Filles Mineures " (Paris, 1888).

318

problems of regulation and of brothels have been studied by
Fiaux, whose work is comprehensive and based upon carefully
compiled statistics, and the author attempts the solution of these
problems ;l the sometime French Minister Yves Guyot has dis-
cussed the problem of prostitution from the higher philosophical
and social point of view ;2 in short, the French physicians illu-
minated this obscure province of thought from every side, and
laid the foundations for the scientific and critical study of prosti-
tution, which began with the last decade of the nineteenth
century.

To Alfred Blaschko unquestionably belongs the credit of having
broken entirely new ground in connexion with the problem of
prostitution, by means of the debate instituted by him in the
year 1892 in the Medical Society of Berlin, and by several works
distinguished by a sharp-sighted, critical faculty.3 Upon his
exhaustive scientific studies, and upon the most careful practical
considerations, Blaschko bases the demands :

" Abolish Regulation !
Away with Brothels !"

At the same time, Blaschko is a convinced advocate of the
economic theory of prostitution.

Almost at the same time, Cesare Lombroso, the celebrated
alienist and criminal anthropologist of Turin, propounded his
anthropological theory of prostitution, and enunciated the
doctrine, which attracted so much attention, of the " Donna
delinquinte e prostituta," of the " congenital prostitute."4 This
doctrine found an unconditional supporter in the St. Petersburg
syphilologist Tarnowsky ; whilst the latter strongly opposed the
efforts made by the International Federation, founded in 1875
by Mrs. Josephine Butler, for the abolition of the regulation of
prostitution.5 Strohmberg, in an interesting work on prostitu-
tion,6 takes the same standpoint as LombroBo and Tarnowsky.

1 L. Fiaux, " La Police des Moeura en France et dans les Principales Villes de
1'Europe " (Paris, 1888) ; " Les Maisons de Tolerance, leur Fermeture," 3me
Edition (Paris, 1862) ; " La Prostitution ,' Cloitr6e ' " (Brussels, 1902).

* Yves Guyot, "La Prostitution: Etude de Physiologic Sociale " (Paris,
1882).

3 A. Blaschko, " The Problem of Prostitution," pubb'shed in the Berliner Klin.
Wochenschrift, pp. 430-435 (1892) ; " Syphilis and Prostitution from the Hygienic
Standpoint " (Berlin, 1893) ; " Hygiene of Prostitution and of Venereal Diseases "
(Jena, 1900) ; " Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century" (Berlin, 1902); "The
Dangers to Health resulting from Prostitution, and the Contest with these
Dangers " (Berlin, 1904).

4 C. Lombroso and G. Ferrero, " Woman as Criminal and Prostitute."
6 B. Tarnowsky, " Prostitution and Abolitionism " (Hamburg, 1890).

6 C. Strohmberg, " Prostitution : a Socio-Medical Study " (Stuttgart, 1899).

319

It is, however, noteworthy that quite recently the French ob-
servers also, and, above all, the experienced Fiaux, are inclining to
the views of Blaschko, of the accuracy of which I myself am now
fully convinced, notwithstanding the fact that in my work on
prostitution in England,1 which appeared eight years ago (October,
1900), I still advocated regulation. E. von During also, who, as
professor of medicine in Constantinople for many years, has made
elaborate study of the conditions of prostitution in that town,
adheres, in an essay well worth reading, without qualification to
the opinion of Blaschko regarding the uselessness of regulation
and of brothels.2

After this brief enumeration of the most important descriptive
and scientific studies of prostitution, we shall now proceed to a
short account of the conditions that obtain at the present day.

The idea of " prostitution " is in no respect clearly and sharply
limited. Parent-Duchatelet considered that prostitution only
occurred

" when a woman was known to have accepted money for this purpose
on several successive occasions, when she was openly recognized as
being engaged in this occupation, when an arrest had occurred and the
offence had thus been definitely discovered, or when in any other way
it was proved to the satisfaction of the police " (vol. i., p. 11).

But hi this way he entirely excluded the so-called " secret "
prostitution — that is to say, he excluded by far the largest
category of prostitution.

As soon as we take this latter into consideration, we find it
necessary to have a wider conception of the term " prostitution."
This is recognized by the French physician Rey in his little
book on " Public and Secret Prostitution " (German edition, p. 1 ;
Leipzig, 1851). He regards as prostitution the act "by which a
woman allows the use of her body by any man, without distinc-
tion, and for a payment made or expected."

In this admirable definition we see the two most important
characteristics of prostitution : complete indifference with regard
to the person of the man demanding the use of her body, and
the fact that the act is done for reward. The only point omitted
from consideration is the condition mentioned by Parent-
Duchatelet — namely, the frequent repetition of the act of prostitu-
tion with different men.

Schrank combines all these characteristics of prostitution in a

1 E. Duhren (Iwan Bloch), "The Sexual Life in England," vol. i., pp. 201-445
(Charlottenburg, 1901).

2 E. von During, " Prostitution and Venereal Diseases " (Leipzig, 1905).

320

much briefer phrase, by defining them as " professional acts of
fornication performed with the human body," by which, in the
first place, we include male and female homosexual prostitution,
which are not covered by the definitions previously quoted,
and, in the second place, Schrank's definition lays stress on the
fact that, in genuine prostitution the monetary reward is the aim
of the act of prostitution much more than any kind of enjoyment.
Where enjoyment plays a prominent part, in addition to the
earning of money, we are no longer concerned with genuine prosti-
tution. Even a prostitute, who in other respects is typically a
woman of that class, ceases at that moment and for that time
to be a prostitute, when her earnings become a secondary con-
sideration, and the man to whom she gives herself the principal
consideration.

For this reason, strictly speaking, a large proportion of secret
prostitutes and numerous members of the half -world cannot be
reckoned as prostitutes in the proper sense of the term — at any
rate, not always ; not when, for instance, the man who supports
and pays them is at the same time their " lover " j1 they then
belong for the time being to the not less dangerous province of
" wild love." But hi practice this distinction cannot be strictly
maintained, for the same woman will very frequently undertake
a genuine act of prostitution.

It is only the " sale of the sweet name of love," as the celebrated
politician Louis Blanc expresses it, which constitutes prostitu-
tion— the complete lack of all spiritual and all personal relation-
ships on the one side, and the ignominious predominance of the
mercantile character of the sexual union on the other. Hence
there may be prostitution in marriage, although this always
remains widely different from the sale of the body to numerous
and frequently changing individuals.

The " prostitution " of primeval times, in which social relation-
ships were so utterly different from ours, unquestionably resembled
rather the wild love of the present day than our own prostitution.
It was sexual promiscuity, not professional fornication. Accord-
ing to Heinrich Schurtz, prostitution is indeed not an exclusive
product of higher civilization, but occurs also among primitive
peoples, and appears everywhere where the unrestricted sexual
intercourse of youth — wild love — is prevented, without early
marriage taking its place. But what he describes as prostitution
— for example, the living of several unmarried girls in the houses

1 Goethe, in the poem " Der Gott und die Bajadere," has very beautifully
described the ennoblement of gross love by means of ideal love.

321

of men — is still no more than a peculiar form of wild love. Still,
according to the reports of numerous travellers, there are among
primitive peoples also purchasable women, and this must be
explained, just as in our own case, from the combined influence
of individual, social, and economic conditions.

To my mind there is no doubt that the so-called " religious "
prostitution is to be regarded as at least a germinal form and
predecessor of the prostitution of the present day. In this case
also we had to do with professional fornication ; only, although
the temple-girls, just like our modern prostitutes, gave themselves
indifferently to any man that offered the money paid for this
service, that money did not, in the case of religious prostitution,
go to the girl herself, but to the deity, or to the crafty priests
who represented him ; thus the priests really played the part of
our modern brothel-keepers. It is aboslutely unquestionable
that in this religious prostitution a more ideal element also played
a part. This subject was discussed at considerable length above
(pp. 100-112).

Prostitution is everywhere a product of the growth of large
towns ; its peculiar characteristics are developed only in large
towns. To the country it was always foreign until those beautiful
times of the middle ages, in which prostitution was regarded as
a necessary of life, like eating and drinking, and was organized
in guilds, so that everywhere " women-houses " were instituted
for the public, unconstrained use of all classes, for peasant and
prince. At that time quite small towns also had their brothels.
The appearance of syphilis, and the awakening of modern
individualism, brought these conditions to an end ; the brothels
disappeared everywhere ; and this tendency to a continuous
decrease of barrack prostitution, to a progressive diminution^in
the number of brothels, has continually strengthened. On the
whole, the rural districts to-day do not know prostitution ; there
we have only free love and wild love. The existence of prostitu-
tion is confined to the large towns, because in these all the neces-
sary conditions are fulfilled, and, above all, because in large
towns the possibilities for the gratification of the sexual impulse
by marriage or by free love are in the case of men much more
limited than they are in the country. In the town there is even
a demand for prostitutes, but not in the country. It is true that
the demand on the part of men does not correspond to the ex-
tension which modern prostitution has assumed in the large towns ;
this demand corresponds, as it were, to a portion only of prosti-
tution. In his admirable work on the campaign against prostitu-

322

tion (Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, vol. ii.,
pp. 311-313) F. Schiller proves that prostitution has not increased
merely in proportion to the increase in the male population, but
that in reality, in recent decades, it has increased, on the whole,
in a much greater proportion than the population, and that different
towns exhibit the most remarkable contrasts in the respective
ratios of prostitutes to male population.

For example, in Berlin prostitution has increased to an extent
almost double that of the increase in male population. A similar
relationship is to be observed in other large towns. Everywhere
the supply of prostitutes exceeds the demand ; and we cannot
doubt that by this great supply the need for prostitutes is to a
large extent at first aroused. Street- walkers and brothels allure
many men to sexual intercourse who otherwise would not have
felt any need for it.

But, on the other hand, the existence of a voluntary demand for
prostitutes on the part of men is a fact which cannot be denied.
In this sense prostitution has been described as mainly a " man's
question."

Here we touch upon an extremely difficult problem, and one
which, as far as I can see, no one before myself has definitely
stated, perhaps because no one has ventured to do it — and yet,
for our knowledge of prostitution, the question is one of great
importance.

What precisely is the " need of man for prostitution " of which
Blaschko speaks ? Is it merely the sexual impulse ? Or is there
any other factor in operation ?

Certainly the sexual impulse, simple sensuality, plays a large
part in this male demand for prostitutes ; but this does not
explain the fact why married men, and so many men who, if not
married, have yet opportunities for other sexual intercourse,
have recourse to prostitutes ; it does not explain the fact, by
which I am myself continually and anew astonished, of the
peculiar attractive force which prostitutes exercise upon cultured
men with delicate aesthetic and ethical perceptions. Is there any
deeper physiological relationship here involved ?

I answer this question unconditionally in the affirmative.
It is not by chance that prostitution is mainly a product of
civilization, that it finds in civilization its proper vital conditions,
whereas in primitive states it cannot properly thrive.

In primitive times, unrestrained by the (just) demands of a
higher civilization, and by the social morality intimately
associated therewith, men could, without fear or regret, satisfy

323

their wild impulses, no less in the sexual sphere than in others ;
they could give free play to those peculiar biological instincts
of a sexual nature which lie hidden in every man. Their sexual
" supra- and sub-consciousness," to use the happy phrase which
Chr. von Ehrenfels invented to denote the dualism of modern
sexuality, were still monistic. To-day, however, the primitive
instincts are repressed by the necessities of civilized life, and by
the coercive force of conventional morality ; but these instincts
still slumber in every one. Each one of us has also his sexual
sub-consciousness. Sometimes it awakens, demands activity,
free from all restraint, from all coercion, from all convention. In
such moments it seems as if the man were an entirely different
being. Here the " two souls " in our breast become a reality.
Is this still the celebrated man of learning, the refined idealist,
the sensitive aesthetic, the artist who has enriched us with the
most magnificent and the purest works of poetry or of plastic art ?
We recognize him no longer, because in such moments something
quite different has awakened to life ; another nature stirs within
him and urges him with an elemental force to do things from
which his " supra-consciousness," the consciousness of the
civilized man, would draw back in horror.

Such a delicate sensitive nature, open to the finest spiritual
activities, as that of the Danish poet J. P. Jakobsen, must feel
this contrast in an especially painful manner ; it is precisely such
natures — those in which the extremes we have described appear
most sharply and most clearly — which afford us proof of the
existence of a double consciousness. The primitive instinct breaks
out, like a monomania — of which old psychiatric doctrine of
" monomania " we are involuntarily reminded when we see how
even men of light and leading, men who in other respects live
only in the highest regions of the spirit, are subjected to the
domination of this purely instinctive sexualism, so that they lead
a " secret " inner life, of whose existence the world has no sus-
picion.

In " Niels Lyhne " J. P. Jakobsen has admirably characterized
this double life.

" But when," he writes, " he had served God truly for eleven days, it
often happened that other powers gained the upper hand in him ; by
an overwhelming force he was driven to the coarse lust of coarse
enjoyments ; he yielded, overcome by the human passion for self-
annihilation, which, while the blood burns as blood only can burn,
demands degradation, perversity, dirt, and foulness, with no less force
than the force which inspires the equally human passion for becoming
greater than one is, and'purer."

21—2

324

These human instincts can be satisfied only by prostitution.
By the purchasable prostitute this desire, described so aptly
and with so much insight by Jakobsen, can be fully satisfied.
To the origin of the desire we shall return in another connexion.
The common, the rough, the brutal animal in the nature of prosti-
tution, exercises a formal magical attractive force on large numbers
of men.

Ludwig Pietsch, in his " Recollections of Sixty Years," vol. ii.,
p. 337 (Berlin, 1894), tells of the celebrated cocotte of the Second
French Empire, Cora Pearl, whom he saw in Baden-Baden :

" I have never been able to understand how it was that she exercised
so powerful an attraction. In her appearance, her tumid, painted
' pug-face,' the secret was certainly not to be found. Perhaps the
influence which she exercised on so many men rested principally in the
quality wliicli the royal friend of the Danish Countess Banner described
to the latter, when explaining to her the reason of the power, to others
quite incomprehensible, which Cora Pearl had exercised on his own
heart. He said : ' She is so gloriously vulgar.' '

This word speaks volumes, and illuminates the peculiar influ-
ence of prostitutes and prostitution upon man in an apt and
powerful way.1

Admirably, also, has Stefan Grimmen, in his novelette " Die
Landpartie " (published in Die Welt am Montag^ No. 22, May 28,
1906), described this influence, which in this case was exercised
by two demi-mondaines lying in the grass, upon the masculine
members of a picnic-party, who were so enthralled as completely
to forget the ladies of their company. The de Goncourts were
also aware of the specific allurement exercised by prostitutes, for
in one place in their diary they recommend a wife to adopt
certain customs of prostitutes, in order to bind her husband to
her for a long time.

In this respect, we cannot fail to recognize a certain maso-
chistic trait in the sensibility of men, which appears especially
remarkable when we call to mind the contrast between the nature
of the above described spiritually lofty persons and the nature of
a prostitute. In this way we should be led to the view that
prostitution is in part a product of the physiological male maso-
chism— that is to say, of the impulse from time to time to plunge
into the depths of coarse, brutal, sexual lust and of self-mortifica-

1 Henry Murger, in his " Vie de Bohfeme," also alludes to the " incompre-
hensible" fact that "persons of standing who sometimes possess spirit, a name,
and a coat cut according to the fashion, out of their love for the common will go
so far as to raise to the level of an object of fashion a creature whom their very
servant would not have chosen as a mistress."

325

tion and self-abasement, by surrender to a comparatively worth-
less creature. This attraction towards prostitutes is one of the
most remarkable phenomena in the psyche of the modern civilized
man ; it is the curse of the evolution of civilization.

" The most ideal man also is unable to free himself from his body,"
says Heinrich Schurtz ; " refinement leads ultimately to an unnatural
over-nicety, which must necessarily be permeated from time to time by
a breath of fresh unrefinement and coarse naturalism, if it is not to
perish from its own inward contradiction."

In a certain sense the same need finds expression also in
Gutzkow's remark in the " Neue Serapionsbriider," vol. i., p. 198
(Breslau, 1877), that man sometimes has a need for " woman-in-
herself," not woman with the thousand and one tricks and
whimsies of wives, mothers, and daughters.

Without question, this need is much more characteristic of
man than of woman. Still, I am not prepared altogether to
deny its existence in the latter. In another connexion I shall
return to this extremely important question.

Naturally in this we see no more than a favouring factor of the
appearance of prostitution in the mass ; we do not speak of it as
the definite cause of the production of any individual prostitute.

Speaking generally, I consider the dispute regarding the causes
of prostitution as superfluous ; a number of causes are in opera-
tion, and in each individual case it is always an unfortunate
concatenation of circumstances, of subjective and objective
mil unices, which have driven the girl to prostitution. The
various theories regarding the causes of prostitution have there-
fore only a relative value. Not one of them explains it wholly ;
each explanation demands the assistance of others.

This is, above all, true of the celebrated theory of Lombroso,
regarding the " born prostitute," a theory which states, to put
the matter shortly and clearly, that the girl is born with all the
rudimentary characteristics of a prostitute, and that these rudi-
mentary characteristics have also a physical foundation, in the
form of demonstrable stigmata of degeneration.

Lombroso's " born prostitute " is, above all, distinguished by
a complete lack of the moral sense, by typical " moral insanity,"
which is the true " root " of the prostitute life, for he regards
that life as very little dependent upon the sexual. Prostitution,
therefore, according to Lombroso, " is only a special case of the
early tendency to all evil, of the desire which characterizes the
morally idiotic human being from childhood upwards, to do that

326

which is forbidden." l Tho individual cause of prostitution,
according to this view, is to be found, not in the sexual, but in
the ethical province. With the ethical defects are associated
greediness, the love of finery, a tendency to drink, vanity, dislike
of work, mendacity, and an inclination towards criminality. To
this moral degeneration there corresponds the presence of stig-
mata of degeneration, such as anomalies of the teeth, cleft palate,
abnormal distribution of the hair, prominent ears, asymmetry
of the face, etc.

The above-described type of degenerate woman does, as a fact,
exist. But, in the first place, such women constitute only a
small fraction of prostitutes, and such women are found following
other occupations. Thus, the expression " born prostitute " is a
false one ; it should run, " born degenerate," for not all born
degenerates become prostitutes.

In the second place, not all degenerate prostitutes are born
degenerates. In many cases the degeneration is a result of the
professional unchastity.

" No one," says Friedrich Hammer, " who has not personally
investigated the matter can conceive how rapidly and completely the
process of transformation from an honourable girl into a prostitute
proceeds — the transformation into a street- walker. A few weeks before
she was clean-looking and trim, perhaps with a somewhat frivolous
appearance, but still able to understand the position in which she found
herself ; now, however, she seems to have completely ' gone to pieces ' ;
she is dirty and verminous, and on her face is an expression of absolute
wretchedness, not, as you perhaps might imagine, of unbridled sen-
suality— no, rather one of indifference, of complete helplessness and loss
of will, of unresponsiveness alike to punishment and to benefit."2

The earlier investigators of prostitution, including the first of
all, Parent-Duchatelet, did not fail to recognize that the mental
and physical abnormalities of the prostitute were changes due
to her mode of life. In many prostitutes we can observe a
typical obliteration of the secondary and tertiary sexual characters
after a prolonged practice of their profession. Virey remarked,
very justly, that " in consequence of the frequent embraces of
men, prostitutes gain a more or less masculine appearance ":
their neck is thicker, their voice harsher and more masculine
(J. J. Virey, "Woman," pp. 157, 158; Leipzig, 1827).

Most prostitutes have done more or less injury to the functions
of the human body, have completely disordered their sexual life,

1 C. Lombroso, " Woman as Criminal and Prostitute," p. 650.

2 Friedrich Hammer, " The Regulation of Prostitution," published in The
Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, vol. iii., No. 10, p. 380 (Leipzig,
1905).

327

and are sterile. It is not to be wondered at that this sometimes
manifests itself in their outward appearance — as, for example, in
the slight development of the breasts, which often amounts to
a simple atrophy. The " unmistakable development " of the
tertiary characters of the male in individual prostitutes, which
has led Kurella to propound the interesting hypothesis that
prostitutes are a sub- variety of the homosexual,1 rests for the
most part upon their assumption of a masculine mode of life
and masculine habits, which in the long-run cannot fail to influ-
ence also the bodily development — as, for example, smoking and
the excessive use of alcohol, pot-house life, gluttony, and other
masculine habits. The " deep masculine voice " of many prosti-
tutes is unquestionably in most cases the result of the excessive
use of tobacco and alcohol. To this striking gradual change in
the voice Parent - Duchatelet devoted considerable attention
(vol. i., pp. 86-88, of the German edition) ; it also attracted
Lippert's notice. Parent-Duchatelet refers the common develop-
ment in prostitutes of the masculine voice to their excessive
indulgence in alcoholic beverages, and to their exposure to
frequent changes of weather (catching cold, etc.). Smoking also
certainly plays a part.

Lippert draws attention to other changes (" Prostitution in
Hamburg," pp. 80 and 90) :

" By the daily practice of their profession for many years their eyes
acquire a piercing, rolling expression ; they are somewhat unduly
prominent in consequence of the continued tension of the ocular
muscles, since the eyes are principally employed to spy out and attract
clients. In many the organs of mastication are strongly developed ;
the mouth, in continuous activity either in eating or in kissing, is con-
spicuous ; the forehead is often flat ; the occipital region is at times
extremely prominent ; the hair of the head is often scanty — in fact, a
good many become actually bald. For this reasons are not lacking :
above all, the restless mode of life ; the continued running about in all
weathers in the open street, sometimes with the head bare ; the often
long-lasting fluor albus from which they suffer ;2 the incessant brushing,
manipulation, frizzling, and pomading of the hair ; and, among the
lower classes of prostitutes, the use of brandy.

" The rough voice is the physiological characteristic of the woman
who has lost her proper functions — those of the mother."

However, the majority of youthful prostitutes exhibit purely
feminine characteristics ; it is only late in life that the above-

1 H. Kurolla, " A Contribution to the Biological Comprehension of Physical
and Psychical Bisexuality," published in the Zentralblatt fiir Nervenhetikunde,
1890, vol. xix.. p. 239.

2 Syphilis is not to bo forgotten.

328

described type becomes predominant, and this shows us that the
masculine characteristics are the result of objective influences.
From five to ten years bring about a notable difference. In the
year 1898 I treated a maidservant for syphilis. At that time
she was of an elegant, genuinely feminine appearance. Seven
years later, in the year 1905, I saw her once more. What a
change ! Her face was bloated and widened ; her eyes, once so
bright and clear, had become cloudy and expressionless ; her
voice was rough ; all the specific feminine forms and characters
had been obliterated by extreme corpulence. It was no longer
a woman, it was a " prostitute," a special type of humanity,
but one which had been gradually produced, and as a result
of no more than six years of the practice of professional
prostitution.

These facts do not by any means exclude the existence of
genuine degenerates among prostitutes in a greater percentage
than among non-prostitutes ;l nor do they exclude the existence
of genuine homosexuals among prostitutes. To this extent
Lombroso's theory contains a nucleus of truth ; but it concerns
only a fraction of the entire world of prostitutes. Lombroso has
himself been repeatedly compelled to recognize the frequency
with which he has encountered among prostitutes women of
normal appearance, and even beautiful women.2

Finally, the doctrine of the " born prostitute " is contradicted
by the fact that the same types of degenerate which are described
by Lombroso among prostitutes are found also among women
who are not prostitutes.3 In fact, Lombroso has been led to this
view by the recognition of an " equivalent of prostitutes among
the upper classes "; but in this way he has only proved that the
same moral degeneration that is encountered in a certain pro-
portion of prostitutes is also seen in misconducted women of other
and higher classes. There are, in fact, prostitute natures among
the " upper ten thousand."

The best limitation of the general value of the doctrine of the
" born prostitute " is the concluding chapter of Lombroso's book

1 This modified Lombrosism is advocated by B. A. H. Hiibner in his interesting
work concerning prostitutes and their legal relations (Monatsschrift fur Kriminal-
psychologie, 1907, pp. 1-11). He found that among sixty-four insane prostitutes,
under observation hi the Hertzberg Asylum in Berlin, not less than 59'45 %
were already intellectually defective at the tune they had come under police
control as prostitutes.

2 C. Lombroso, " Recent Advances in the Study of Criminals."

3 Schrank observes (" Prostitution hi Vienna," vol. ii., p. 216) that striking
physical peculiarities do not appear to be either more or less frequent among
prostitutes than they are among the generality of the population.

329

upon " Occasional Prostitutes." He begins with the pertinent
remark :

" Not all prostitutes are ethically indifferent — that is to say, they
are not all born prostitutes ; in this province opportunity also plays its
part."

Lombroso proceeds to develop this thesis, thus markedly
limiting the application of his own theory, and recognizing
that, in addition to natural predisposition, quite other causes
and influences come into play in the production of prostitu-
tion.

Above all, the economic factors are of greater importance in the
genesis and growth of prostitution, even though their influence
is not an exclusive one.

I distinguish here between real, genuine poverty (lack of food,
proper housing accommodation, etc.) and merely relative poverty.
Hitherto, in considering the economic causes of prostitution,
these two elements have not been distinguished with sufficient
clearness.

The fact that real, absolute poverty and lack of the necessaries
of life drives many girls to a life of prostitution can, in view of
recent statistical data, no longer be disputed. More exact material
dealing with this subject is to be found in the above mentioned
writings of Blaschko, one of the principal advocates of the
economic theory of prostitution ; also in the works of Georg
Keben,1 Oda Oldberg,2 Anna Pappritz,3 Pfeiffer,4 Paul Kampff-
meyer,5 E. von During,6 and many others. Here we have a
superabundant material, a quantity of distressing and tragical
individual data and proofs of Gutzkow's thesis, that the material
evils of society always and everywhere undergo transformation
into immorality. Here unquestionably must we first apply the
lever for the removal of this economic predisposing condition of
prostitution. Hie Rhodus, hie salta ! I am myself firmly con-

1 G. Keben, " Prostitution in its Relation to Modern Realistic Literature "
(Zurich, 1892).

3 Oda Oldberg, " Poverty in the Domestic Industry of Making Ready-made
Clothing " (Leipzig, 1896).

1 Anna Pappritz, " The Economic Causes of Prostitution " (Berlin, 1903).

4 Pfeiffer, Poverty and Overcrowding in Great Towns and in Relation to
Prostitution and to Venereal Diseases," published in The Journal for the Sup-
pression of Venereal Diseases, 1903, vol. i., pp. 135-144.

8 P. Kampffmeyor, " Poverty and Overcrowding in Great Towns," etc., pub-
lished in The Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1903, vol. i., pp. 146-
160 ; " Bad Housing Accommodation in Relation to Prostitution and ' Night-
Lodgers ' ; the Necessary Legal Reforms," op. cit., 1905, vol. iii., pp. 165-229.

9 E. v. During, " Prostitution and Venereal Diseases." p. 11.

330

vinced of this fact, although I do not consider that the causes of
prostitution are to be found exclusively in economic conditions —
an opinion which Anna Pappritz, for example, maintains in the
most extreme form. It is quite true, however, that our entire
sexual life at the present day is so intimately connected with the
social question that the reform of the sexual life demands as an
unconditional preliminary a reform of economic conditions.
Prostitution on the large scale, as it manifests itself in modern
days, and its continuous increase to an extent quite unparalleled
in former times, is only explicable by the rapid transformation
of economic conditions — as, for example, by the concentration
of population in large towns, by the industrial revolution, and
by the development of great aggregations of capital, by the con-
sequent greatly increased severity of the struggle for existence,
the postponement of marriage, and the ever-increasing number
of individuals who are not economically and professionally inde-
pendent. The increase in child-labour (naturally we refer espe-
cially to children of the female sex) has also to be considered as a
remarkable phenomenon of modern industrial life ; but, above
all, we must take into account the fact that woman's work is
on the average regarded at a very low valuation, and is paid
accordingly.

The insufficiency of their earnings is the immediate cause of
the fact that so many women and girls seek accessory earnings
in the form of prostitution. It is well known that employers
reckon on this fact in drawing up their pay-lists, and frequently
are so brutally cynical as to point out to their female employees
the possibility of increasing their earnings in this manner — one
very convenient to the employer !

The Reichsarbeitsblatt, No. 2, of the year 1903, publishes a very
remarkable account of the conditions of work and life of the
unmarried female factory employees in Berlin. It is based upon
the reports of the professional factory inspectors in Berlin, who
have access to material affording them accurate information
regarding the mode of life of factory women. The reports con-
cern 939 unmarried factory hands, and include all occupations
in which in Berlin a considerable number of women were employed.
The average age of the women who came under observation was
22 \ years ; the oldest was 54 years ; 53-5 % of the whole number
were over 21 years of age ; 42 % were between 16 and 21 years
of age ; 4-5 % were below 16 years of age. The average number
of hours of daily work was 9£ ; 3-2 % of all the women worked
from 7 1 to 8 hours ; 37-2 %, 8to 9 hours ; 47-7 %, 9 to 10 hours ;

331

and 11-9 %, 10 to 11 hours. The weekly wage amounted on the
average to 11-36 marks (shillings) ; individually, the wages were
very variable ; 4-3 % of the women were paid less than 6 marks
(shillings) ; 1-1 % were paid from 20 to 30 marks (shillings).
In a very large majority of instances the wages varied between
8 and 15 marks. Supplies from a source independent of their
wages, in the form of money, clothing, and means of subsistence,
were received, according to their own statement, by 88 of the
women ; among these, 41 were assisted by parents, 4 by other
relatives, 3 in other ways ; 542 of those examined lived with
their parents, 57 with other relatives — that is, altogether 64-2
of the total number — 21-5 % lived hi common lodging-houses,
14 % in their own rooms. The worst-paid workwomen lived
chiefly with their parents ; as soon as the wage sufficed to sup-
port them away from home a great many left their parents'
houses. The housing accommodation was ascertained in 846
instances ; in 758 of these a single room constituted the dwelling,
in 82 cases a kitchen, in 2 cases an attic, in 3 some other room.
In isolated cases quite unsuitable places were used to sleep in.
Speaking generally, the conditions were worse than appears from
the above figures. Of 832 workwomen, only 169 had a room to
themselves ; 193 slept in a room with one other person, and 470
—that is, 56-6 % — with several persons. With regard to the
cost of their dwellings, there were 464 reports ; the average pay-
ment was 1-79 marks (shillings) per week. The cost of the food
(dinner and lesser meals) amounted on the average, in the case
of 568, to 6-77 marks (shillings) ; of these, 205 paid less than
6 marks (shillings), 109 more than 8 marks (shillings) per week.
The total cost for lodging and food amounted in the case of 867
workwomen on the average to 7-62 marks ; 44-7 % had their
principal meal at midday ; 55-3 % in the evening ; 79-4 % took
it at home ; 9-4 % in the factory ; 11-2 % in a public kitchen, a
cooking-school, or an eating-house. With regard to the expendi-
ture for clothing, etc., very scanty details were obtained — too
scanty to be worth recording. Of the 939 workwomen of whom
inquiry was made on the point, 197, or 21 %, contributed money
to the education or support of relatives or children ; about 10 %
paid (direct) taxes, with a mean expenditure of 8 pfennige (one
penny) per week. For amusement, 233 women recorded an
average weekly expenditure of 1 mark (shilling). To a consider-
able number of those examined it was possible to put a little
money by ; in most cases the amount averaged from half to one
mark (sixpence to one shilling) per week ; in many cases, however,

332

the money saved was spent at some other time during the year,
in consequence of diminished earnings or illness. The figures
obtained, although in many cases they require further examina-
tion, elaboration, and illustration, still suffice to show that much
remains to be done for the improvement of the conditions of life
of female factory employees.

That these wages are quite insufficient is shown by the fol-
lowing table of the daily expenditure of a sempstress for food
and lodging (based on the reports of von Stulpnagel) :

Mk. If.

Bedroom and coffee .;; '. . •"'.'!' 0 20

Second breakfast '-.v^ .. ;* 0 15

Dinner (midday) .. .. 0 30

Afternoon tea . ,1(, .. .. .. 0 15

Supper .. .. '.'., '... 0 20

Two bottles of beer .'.. ' '".'i' .''.: 0 20

Total .. 1 20

That amounts per week to 8 marks 40 pfennige (eight shillings
and fivepence) for board-lodging. For the rest, clothing, washing,
and a little amusement, have to be provided for, and this is only
possible in the case of the highest wages, varying from 12 to 15
marks ; but this higher wage often enough suffices, as Anna
Pappritz herself admits. In many cases the weekly wage is only
5 to 8 marks. In the majority of occupations connected with
the manufacture of ready-made clothing, trade is only brisk for
four to six months in each year. Thus, there is necessarily a
great deal of unemployment.

According to the Statistical Annual for the town of Berlin for
the year 1907, the annual wages amounted :

For tailoresses . . . . . . to 457 marks

,, sempstresses .. .... .. ,, 486 ,,

,, hand buttonhole workers . . . . ,, 354 ,,

,, machine buttonhole workers . . . . ,, 700 „

„ other women factory employees . . ,, 354 ,,

According to the report of the Statistical Bureau, the average
yearly income of women factory employees throughout the
German Empire was only 322 marks !

It is, therefore, no matter for surprise that the industrial coun-
cillors of Frankfurt-on-the-Main and of Wiesbaden, in their pub-
lished reports on the wages of female factory employees for the
year 1887, state :

333

" In Frankfurt, at the end of last month, among 226 persons under
the observation of the police des moeurs (that is, not reckoning secret
prostitution), 98 were female factory employees. Since for their
necessary bare support (food and sleeping accommodation only), the
minimum daily sum needed is 1'25 marks, it appears that the wages
which can be earned by female employees of T50 to T80 marks can
hardly suffice to provide for all their needs. It would seem, therefore,
that the lowness of their earnings must play some part in the matter
under discussion."

The reports of the industrial councillors of Diisseldorf, Posen,
Stettin, Neuss, Barmen, Elberfeld, Gladbach, Erfurt, etc., have
a similar signification.

Important in relation to the incontrovertible connexion between
material poverty and prostitution is the fact that in the majority
of cases the prostitution of female factory employees is only
occasional, and not professional prostitution — that is to say, such
women have recourse to prostitution only when compelled thereto
by deficient means.

As regards genuine professional prostitution, female factory
employees, who live in a state of comparative freedom, con-
tribute a smaller contingent of recruits than maidservants, whose
position is always a more dependent one, and who are much less
experienced in the struggle for existence, although, generally
speaking, they live in better conditions. From a computation
based upon figures for the years 1855, 1873, and 1898 (those for
1855 and 1898 relating to far too small a number of cases),
Blaschko derives the opinion that formerly female factory
employees provided a greater number of recruits to prostitution
than they do at present ; but that, on the contrary, the contribu-
tion of maidservants to the ranks of professional prostitution has
enormously increased. This assertion cannot pass without con-
tradiction. Gross-Hoffinger, in the work previously mentioned,
pointed out that the class of maidservants was the true nucleus
of prostitution, and devoted to this fact a long and illuminating
chapter of his book. And at about the same time (1848) Lippert
also wrote (op. cit., p. 79) : " The principal sources of prostitution
are maidservants, sempstresses, flower-girls, tailoresses, hair-
dressers, shop-girls, and barmaids." (Gross-Hoffmger himself
emphasizes the word " maidservants.")

We see, therefore, that the preponderance of ex-maidservants
in the ranks of professional prostitution is by no means a new
phenomenon, although, possibly, that preponderance is even
greater now than it was in former times. And though in isolated
instances it may happen that simple poverty forces a maidservant

334

to become a prostitute, this explanation does not suffice for the
generality of cases. The same reservation must be made in
respect of seduction and illegitimate motherhood as causes of
prostitution. And in so far as poverty is a cause, we must speak
rather of relative poverty, poverty which has more of a subjective
than an objective character.

Schiller rightly remarks, in his admirable essay on the " Pre-
vention of Prostitution," that in respect of prostitutes who have
been maidservants, in the majority of cases there can be no
question of insufficient wages and actual poverty (if we except
the badly paid servants in public-houses, laundry-maids, and a
few others), since the maidservant receives, in addition to her
wages, free board and lodging, and therefore is in a much better
position than the majority of female factory employees and of
women engaged in home industries. Notwithstanding this, maid-
servants supply the largest proportion of prostitutes.

The majority of maidservants come from the country, where lax
views prevail regarding sexual relationships. In addition, girls
usually come to town when still very young. The want of educa-
tion and experience of life is, in their case, very striking ; and this
is increased by their permanently dependent position, in contrast
with the early independence of the town factory-women, who are
speedily initiated into all the possible evils of town life. In addi-
tion, there comes into the question an influence which hitherto
has been underestimated : the love of finery. Among maidservants
this is especially powerful, since, in this respect, they are con-
tinually exposed to suggestive influences, arising from the clothing
of their mistresses. This love of dress, in association with a far
greater unscrupulousness in sexual matters than exists among
workwomen, drives many servant-girls, even without real poverty,
to prostitution. After they have lost their place, after they have
acquired a distaste for work, have given birth to an illegitimate
child, or have been infected with venereal disease, they very
readily enter the ranks of professional prostitution.

This subjective psychological factor plays nearly as great a role
as the economic factor. Blaschko himself draws attention to the
fact that, in proportion to the hundreds of thousands of women
who are compelled to earn their bread by hard, badly paid toil,
the number of those who ultimately become prostitutes is really
almost infinitesimally small ; and that, therefore, we must regard
as accessory causes of prostitution, defective will-power, want of
industry, of perseverance, and of moral instincts, and, finally, also
— and here Lombroso is justified — congenital deficiency. Hell-

335

pach is right when, in his most readable essay on " Prostitution
and Prostitutes " (Berlin, 1905), he lays the principal stress on
this " social-psychological " explanation of prostitution, and
regards the purely economic factor as " the ultimate turning-
point " in the fatal road that leads to prostitution. (Earlier
than Hellpach, Anton Baumgarten attempted to give a social-
psychological explanation of prostitution. See his essays, con-
taining much valuable material, " Police and Prostitution," and
" The Relations of Prostitution to Crime," published in the eighth
and eleventh volumes respectively of the " Archives of Criminal
Anthropology.")

We must, therefore, hold firmly to the fact that the most
diverse and heterogeneous vital conditions may ultimately lead
to prostitution. Among these, lack of education, premature
habituation to sexual depravation by casual observation and by
deliberate seduction, play an important role. And these causes
are themselves to a large extent secondary to the miserable housing
conditions in great towns, recently so dramatically described by
von Pfeiffer and Kampffmeyer.

" It is easier," says Pfeiffer, " to thunder against immorality from
the top of a lofty tower, than it is to resist every allurement in dull,
narrow dwellings, in the midst of poverty and deprivation. . . . The
lodger flirts with the wife ; the married or free-loving pair, also living
in the house, do not wait to begin their caresses until the children are
out of the way. The children are witnesses of many scenes which are
little adapted to the preservation of pure morals ; they see things
which they later come to regard as matters of course, and when they
have the opportunity they act in the same way themselves, for they
have not learned otherwise, and they think that every one does the
same. . . .

" The servant-girl becomes pregnant ; no one knows what has become
of her child's father. Driven out of her place, she remembers that she
has a married sister, and after long search she finds her in a damp
basement dwelling. This dwelling consists of a single room and a dark
kitchen ; three shivering, dirty children are playing on the floor ; the
husband is out of employment ; but still they can find room for this
sister-in-law and her illegitimate child. Then perhaps there are better
days for a time. But within the narrow limits of the one-roomed
dwelling the association is too intimate, and the sister-in-law again
becomes pregnant, and ultimately in the same week both the sisters
are delivered as the result of impregnation by the same man. When
we think how all this has taken place in the only available room, we can
understand that the children must have seen a great deal little suited
to childish eyes."

The housing statistics of Berlin for the year 1900 give horrible
reports regarding this, and even much worse conditions — condi-

336

tions which are sufficiently explained when we consider how often
families living in a single room take in a male or a female lodger
for the night. One-roomed dwellings in which from four to seven
sleep every night are common ; those in which eight to ten sleep
are by no means rare !

After what has been said above, no elaborate demonstration is
needed to show that alcoholism everywhere, in the most diverse
conditions, prepares the soil for prostitution. Krapelin and
O. Rosenthal have thoroughly exposed this intimate connexion
between prostitution and alcoholism.

An even more important source of prostitution is to be found
in procurement and in the traffic in girls — this grave social evil
of our time. How often are children initiated into the practice of
prostitution, for the sake of pecuniary gain, by their own parents,
or by some other individual devoid of all moral feeling, and taught
to serve as mere instruments of earning money by lust ! Paris
offers more examples of this traffic than any other European city,
but London is not far behind, as was proved by the Pall Mall
Gazette scandals of 1883, to which we shall return in another con-
nexion. In Berlin itself in recent years the number of half-
grown, and even childish, prostitutes has enormously increased.
Prostitutes from thirteen to fourteen years of age are no longer
rare.

An even sadder phenomenon is the modern traffic in girls, a
characteristic product of the age of commerce, although earlier
times were, indeed, familiar with it, especially France in the
eighteenth century,1 witness more especially the accounts of the
celebrated Parc-aux-Cerfs.

The modern traffic in girls2 is intimately connected with the

1 Cf. the description of the astonishing development of the French procure-
ment of that day which is given in my " New Researches concerning the Marquis
de Sade," pp. 88-98 (Berlin, 1904). The Marquis de Sade, in his novel " The
One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom," has very fully described the traffic
in girls of his time. Incredible revelations of this traffic, of the almost absolute
power of the procuresses, and of their relations to the police, led in October, 1906,
to an action against the procuress Regine Riehl, who, under the mask of a
dressmaker's shop, had for years conducted a brothel, hi which the girls were
entirely robbed of their freedom, were subjected to corporal punishment, and
never received payment for their "work." Cf. A. Blaschko, The Journal for
the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1906, vol. v., pp. 427-433 ; also Karl Kraus,
" The Riehl Trial " (Vienna, 1906).

2 The literature of the " White Slave Trade " is extensive. I shall mention a
few works only : Alfred S. Dyer, " The Trade in English Girls " (Berlin, 1881) ; the
celebrated work of Alexis Splingard, " Clarissa, from the Dark Houses of Belgium,"
with an introduction by Otto Henne am Rhyn, fourth edition (Leipzig, 1897) ;
Otto Henne am Rhyn, " Prostitution and the Traffic in Girls " (Leipzig, 1903) ;
Julius Kemeny, " Hungara — Hungarian Girls in the Market: Revelations
regarding the International Traffic in Girls" (Buda-Pesth, 1903). Cf. also the

337

brothel question. We can, in fact, assert that if there were no
brothels there would be no traffic in girls. This is proved also
by the growing dislike to brothels felt by prostitutes, who prefer
a free life. For this reason, it becomes more and more difficult
for the keepers of brothels to obtain inmates, and the international
traffic in girls attempts to fill the continually increasing deficiency
in the number of girls entering brothels.

The traffic in girls is to-day almost exclusively recruited from
Eastern Europe. As regards its original sources, we find that
Galicia — i.e., Austrian Poland — supplies 40 %, Russia 15 %,
Italy 11 %, Austria-Hungary 10 %, Germany 8 %, of the "White
Slave Trade." Most of the girls are transported to the Argentine,
where we find them in the brothels.1

The traders in girls, or " kaften " as they are called in Brazil,
are, for the most part, Polish Jews. Rosenack shows, in his
report on the campaign against the traffic in girls (a campaign
actively taken up by the Western European Jewish Unions, and
especially by the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls
and Women), that five out of six of the Galician Jews engaged
in this traffic are what are called " Luftmenschen " (men of air)—
that is, men without any definite or secure means of livelihood —
and that only an improvement in their social conditions can put
an end to the traffic in girls. As regards that part of the world,
he considers that the measures resolved upon by the National
and International Conference for the Suppression of the Traffic
in Girls (Berlin, 1903 ; Frankfurt-on-the-Main, 1905) are not
adapted to offer any important hindrances to the traffic. More
effective has been the work of the Jewish Branch Committee in
Germany for the suppression of the Galician traffic in girls. Dr.
Rosenack, Berta Pappenheim, and Dr. Sera Rabinowitsch, in
furtherance of the work of the committee, studied the local con-
ditions ; the population was instructed verbally and by leaflets
and pamphlets. Endeavours have been made to improve the
economic condition of the workwomen of Galicia. For this pur-
pose, instructed female assistants are sent from Germany to
Galicia. It has been possible to awaken in Galicia general

extensive references in The Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases,
1904, vol. ii-,pp- 207-212 (Report of the Jewish Commission for tho Suppres-
sion of the Traffic in Girls). Regarding tho traffic in girls in Holland, cf.
J. Rutgers, " Sketches from Holland," ibid., 1906, vol. v., pp. 531-355.

1 Cf. regarding tho conditions in South America, the report of Major D.
Wagner, Secretary of tho Gorman National Committee for the Suppression of
the Traffic in Girls, published in The Journal for the Suppression of Venereal
Diseases, 1906, vol. v., pp. 378-382.

338

interest in the work of the suppression of traffic in girls. In a
Conference held at Lemberg, the Galician clubs and Jewish com-
mittees made representations to German and other societies, in
order to formulate a plan, and to devise measures for the improve-
ment of Galician conditions.

In Buenos Ayres, the principal town of entry for Galician girls,
a committee has been formed to oppose the traffic in girls, the
members of this committee being of all religions and nationalities.
This has had one good effect — that the traders in girls have
become alarmed ; they no longer practise their profession so
openly as before. The Argentine police are also taking an active
part in the fight with the traffic. Not more than two of the judges
at Buenos Ayres were found to make common cause with the
" traders," and to discharge them on receipt of large bribes. A
law has been drafted for the punishment of those engaged in this
traffic, by imprisonment for six years and confiscation of their
property.

The traders in girls constitute an international ring, and the
centre of their organization is in Buenos Ayres.

In Berlin, since 1904, there has existed a central police organiza-
tion for the suppression of the international traffic in girls, the
activity of which extends throughout the Empire. Every case
of this traffic which comes to the notice of the police in Germany
is reported to the central police organization. This draws up a
list of all the traders in girls whose names are definitely known.
It has started an album containing photographs of traders who
have been punished, and it exchanges experiences with the police
of other countries. It is to be hoped that in comparison with the
other countries of Europe the number of German girls exported
to brothels abroad will continually grow smaller, and that the
local measures undertaken in Galicia and the Argentine will have
a good effect in limiting, and ultimately suppressing, this traffic.

Henne am Rhyn has shown that to and from other countries
— for example, from England to Belgium and Germany (Ham-
burg), from Galicia to Turkey, from Italy to North America, etc.
— individual girls are transported. According to Felix Baumann,
the number of traders in girls in New York approaches 20,000.
They have close relations to the police, and they employ young
handsome men, called " cadets," to attract the girls. The aboli-
tion of brothels would here also be the best means of abolishing
the traffic in girls.

Having now learned the sources of prostitution, we must pro-
ceed to give a brief account of the places in which it is carried on.

339

Here we have first of all to distinguish public from secret prostitu-
tion.

As regards public prostitution, there are only two principal
varieties to consider : street prostitution, where the women seek
their victims in the streets, in order to carry them off either to
their own dwellings or to houses of accommodation ; and brothel
prostitution. At the present day in most countries public street
prostitution is far the most general form, and this is especially
true as regards Germany, where in a few towns only brothels
continue to exist. In many places this street prostitution — for
example, in the Friedrichstrasse of Berlin, and also on the
boulevards of Paris — gives rise to conditions which recall the
worst days of imperial Rome. The contact between public life
and professional prostitution is unquestionably a great evil. The
activity of prostitutes in the open streets, the shameless and
lascivious display of their sexual charms, their bold solicitation
coram publico, the stimulating character of professional unchastity
— all these poison our public life, obliterate the boundary between
cleanliness and contamination, and display daily a picture of
sexual corruption — alike before the eyes of the pure, blameless
girl, those of the honourable wife, and those of the immature boy.
Aptly has this street prostitution been termed the cloaca of our
social life, which empties into the open street, whereas at least
brothel prostitution only represented a hidden cloaca, whose offen-
sive odour need not annoy all the world, as inevitably happens in
the case of street prostitution. In addition, we have to consider
the serious dangers involved in the practice of professional forni-
cation in private dwellings and houses of accommodation, as they
involve the decent families living in such houses. What do the
children living in such houses see and hear ? Frequently prosti-
tutes are admitted to confidential family intercourse, and they
seduce the daughters of poor people to join them in the practice
of prostitution, and the sons to a vicious life or to become sou-
teneurs. That the danger of contamination of the lower classes
of the population by means of prostitution is by no means
imaginary, is clearly shown by numerous examples from actual
life. I subscribe to all that the advocates of brothels say in this
respect.

And yet brothels are a still greater evil ! They constitute an
incomparably more dangerous centre of sexual corruption, a
worse breeding-ground of sexual aberrations of every kind, and
last, not least, the greatest focus of sexual infection. With refer-
ence to the last point, the matter will be discussed more fully in

22—2

340

the chapter dealing with the question of regulation in connexion
with the suppression of venereal diseases.

The brothel is the high-school of refined sexual lust and per-
versity. The detailed proof of this I must leave to the descrip-
tions of the two writers most experienced in the life of brothels,
Leo Taxil1 and Louis Fiaux.2

It is a fact well known to all that many young men learn in
brothels for the first time the manifold and artificial ways in
which natural sexual intercourse can be replaced by perverse
methods of sexual activity. Here, in the brothel, psychopathia
sexualis is systematically taught. And what the old debauchee
demands from the prostitute and pays her for, perverse inter-
course, is spontaneously offered to the youthful initiate, because
competition between the prostitutes, and the hope of a higher
payment, lead them to do so. The opinion of the French authors
just mentioned is perfectly credible — that there are young men
who in this way have learned about perverse sexuality before
they were fully acquainted with natural sexuality, and who thus
have permanently acquired more inclination for these mysteries
of Venus than for a natural and normal sexual intercourse.

" Brothel-jargon," or " brothel-slang," contains a number of
words almost peculiar to this dialect, by which the contra-
natural, abnormal methods of sexual intercourse are denoted in
a more or less cynical manner ; for example, faire feuille de
rose = anilinctus ; sfogliar la rosa (to pluck the leaves from the
rose) = paedicare ; faire tete-beche = reciprocal cunnilinctus of two
tribades ; punta di penna = masturbatio labialis ; pulci lavora-
trici (learned fleas !) = tribades, etc.

A learned investigator like Fiaux is led by his observations of
many years to the conclusion that brothels constitute not only
the most dangerous form of public prostitution, but the most
dangerous kind of prostitution that exists at all, and that it is
urgently necessary that they should be abolished in all countries
as soon as possible.

In addition to the two varieties and localities of " public "
prostitution — that is, prostitution carried on under the observa-
tion of the police — there is a much more extensive secret prostitu-
tion, in connexion with which, however, the word " secret " must
always be accepted with reserve, since in its case also it comes
more or less under the eye of the public. This secret prostitution

1 L6o Taxil, " La Corruption Fin-de-Sifecle," p. 169 et seq. (Paris, 1894).
3 Louis Fiaux, " Lea Maisons de Tol6rance : leur Fermeture," troisi£me
Edition, pp. 1G9 set fq., 248, 250, 251 (Paris, 1892).

341

is, for example, accessible at numerous places, and these are very
different one from another. Secret prostitution also has its
types, its peculiarities — in short, its definite local colouring,
according to the place in which it is practised. Let us give a
brief account of the various localities of secret prostitution.

1. Public-houses with Women Attendants, the so-called " Ani-
mierkneipen." — The waitress (barmaid) is the true exemplar of the
secret prostitute, and further, in consequence of the perpetual
association with alcoholism, is the most dangerous variety j1 for
the barmaid allures the guest even more to the excessive con-
sumption of alcohol than to sexual indulgence. For this purpose
barmaids receive a percentage of the receipts from the sale of
liquor, and this sum, in addition to free board, is their only wage.

The " animierkneipen "2 and the restaurants with women
attendants can be plainly distinguished from a considerable
distance by their curtained windows, and by the red, green, or
blue glass panes over the doors of entry. These coloured panes
are so characteristic of these places of lust and gluttony that at
the last year's District Synod of the Friedrichswerder section of
the town of Berlin the attempt was made (cf. Vossische Zeitung,
No. 248, May 30, 1906) to forbid the use of such illuminated
panes for the advertisement of the houses of entertainment in
Berlin with female attendants. To this proposal the reasonable
objection was made that if this distinguishing mark were abolished,
there would be no means of recognizing such places, and therefore
no warning signal for blameless individuals.

Many " animierkneipen " — the French similarly term the girls
in such places " les inviteuses "2 — by their mysterious-looking
interior ; by the heavy curtains, which produce semi-obscurity ; by
small very discreet chambres separees, lighted by little coloured
lanterns and with erotic pictures on the walls ; by their Spanish
walls and their enormous couches — obtain the appearance of small
lupanars. To these the richer customers and the initiates are
brought, whilst the ordinary habitual guests commonly assemble
in the larger bars, where also music — it must be admitted very

1 According to recent statistical data, from 80 to 90 % of barmaids (in
Germany) are infected with venereal diseases, so that they perhaps represent
the most dangerous class of prostitutes.

2 " Animierkneipen." — Kneipe signifies a drinking-saloon or pothouse,
equivalent to the French cabaret. The Animierkneipe is a beer-saloon at which
the attendants aro women (Kellnerinnen), who are engaged on the terms
described in the text, and whose function, therefore, is to attract the male
customers of the plaoe, to incite them (animieren) to drink freely, and to play the
part of prostitutes when required. Thus they correspond to les inviteuses of the

drinking-saloons in Paris. — TRANSLATOR.

342

bad music — in the form of a piano- or a zither-player, is not
wanting.

The whole shameless activity of these " animierkneipen," in
which alcohol and indecency play the principal role, has recently
been described by Hermann Seyffert in a manner no less per-
spicuous than true to life.1 The clients of such places are, for
the most part, immature lads, who squander here the money of
their parents or their employers ; but we find there also the
habitual guests, usually elderly married men, who find in this
atmosphere a welcome variety in comparison with the monotony
of their homes. The quantities of alcohol which are consumed
in the " animierkneipen," both by the guests and by the atten-
dants, are enormous. The barmaids must always drink at the
cost of the guests, in order that the sales of liquor may be larger.
0. Rosenthal2 speaks of barmaids who consume twenty to thirty
glasses of beer a day, and more, without mentioning brandy and
liqueurs !

2. Bali-Rooms and Dancing-Saloons.3 — Properly speaking, these
are only a sub- variety of the places described in Section 1 ; they
are enlarged " animierkneipen," with the addition of (better)
music and of dancing. But the beautiful days of the Bal Mabille
and the Closerie des Lilas, or of Cremorne Gardens, the Portland
Rooms, the Argyll Rooms, and the Orpheum have long passed
away. The majority of the ball-rooms of Berlin and Paris (in
London they disappeared long ago) have sunk to a lower level.
Prostitution is now dominant. The " intimacy," which in the
earlier more idyllic ball-rooms felt so much at home, is now no
longer to be found there. It is only necessary to visit the cele-
brated ball-rooms of Berlin — the Ballhaus in the Joachimstrasse,
the " Blumensale," etc., not to speak of the seats of baser
prostitution, as, for example, Lestmann's Dancing-Saloon — in
order to be aware of this fact. Here also the principal thing is
drinking, and always more drinking ! In Paris, in the dancing-
rooms of Montmartre, we can see the " inviteuses " in full cry ;
some of the French dancing-rooms, however, appear more attrac-
tive from the aesthetic point of view than the haunts of Terp-
sichore in Berlin. A dancing-saloon that was not exclusively

1 H. Seyffert, " Die Animierkneipen und ihre Geheimnisse " (" Animier-
kneipen and their Secrets"), published in Freie Meinung, 1906, Nos. 26 and 27.
See also " Impropriety at Inns with Female Attendants in Prussia, with especial
Reference to the Conditions in Cologne " (1891)

2 0. Rosenthal, "Alcoholism and Prostitution," p. 46 (1905).

3 Cf. the elaborate descriptions by Hans Ostwald, " Berliner Tanzlokale "
(Berlin and Leipzig); regarding the earlier dancing -rooms of London, see my
" Sexual Life in England," vol. i., pp. 324-334.

343

concerned with prostitution was that of Emberg in the Schumann-
strasse, but in the year 1906 this was closed for ever. Now,
similar great ball-rooms exist, properly speaking, only in the
suburbs — in Halensee, Griinau, Nieder-Schonhausen, etc. Here
also, however, the dance is not the principal thing — procurement
and prostitution are widely diffused, as was pointed out fifty
years ago by Thomas Bade in his essay, in this respect most con-
vincing, " Ueber Gelegenheitsmacherei und Offentliches Tanzver-
gniigen " — " Procurement in Relation to Public Ball-Rooms "
(Berlin, 1858).

3. Variety Theatres, Low Music-Hails, and Cabarets. — The prin-
cipal object of these places, so characteristic of our time, is " to
kill time " in as amusing a manner as possible, " amusement "
being what the " average sensual man " of to-day, dull and
empty-headed, demands. What he wants is the satisfaction of
his desire for sensations by the appearance of more or less decol-
lete singers, dancers, acrobats, male and female, by the repre-
sentation of tableaux vivants in which the parts are played by
beautiful women, by the kinematograph, or by pantomime, by
spicy songs, by the performance of clever jugglers, by wrestling
and boxing matches between men and women, by juggling, and
all kinds of spectacles, etc. In short, the most diverse " varieties "
— hence the name — of amusement are offered here, and it is sig-
nificant that these places of pleasure first appeared in the great
seaports of Liverpool, London, Hamburg, and Marseilles, where
the sailors, after the weary monotony of long sea voyages, found
satisfaction in the variegated display of enjoyment offered to
them in such places. Now the monotony, the emptiness of their
life, drives innumerable crowds of townsmen to the variety
theatres, which, even though as little as the drinking-saloons
can they be called true " places " of prostitution, still serve as
localities in which prostitutes meet their clients ; and in this way
evening after evening a large number use them as the field of
their activities.

The lowest class of variety theatre, the " Tingd-Tangd " (low
music-hall), also euphemistically called " Academy of Music," is,
in fact, nothing more than a brothel, the only difference being
that the actual sexual intercourse does not take place in the
house itself, as so often occurs in the similar " animierkneipen."
The singers appearing in these " tingel-tangel " are all low-class
prostitutes. In most cases, whilst one of their number is prac-
tising the " art of song " (sit venia verbo), the others, sitting about
the hall in shameless d6collet6, display their charms, and incite

341

(" animieren ") the visitors to drink. Clerks and students form
the indulgent audience ; in seaport towns the audience consists
generally of sailors. Who is not familiar with the most cele-
brated tingel-tangel streets in the world, the Spielbudenplatz and
the Reeperbahn, in St. Pauli, near the docks of Hamburg ? In
these streets we see one variety theatre after another, and all are
crowded by a smoking, drinking audience, taking part in the
choruses of the songs. A peculiar kind of these places of pleasure
is constituted by the so-called " Rummel," a speciality of Berlin.
Wherever, within or without the town limits, by the demolition
of old houses or in any other way, a large area remains free from
building for a considerable time, these tingel-tangel proprietors
invade the place, erect merry-go-rounds and cake-stalls, and there
develops in the place a manifold activity, in which the lower
classes of the population exclusively share. Here the very lowest
types of prostitute seek their prey, and find it.

4. " Boarding-Houses " (" Pensionate ") and Maisons de Passe
(Houses of Accommodation). — Anyone walking through the streets
of Berlin will not fail to notice boards at the doors of certain
houses, bearing the inscription, " Here rooms can be hired by the
month, week, or day." I do not assert that this announcement
always represents an invitation to fornication, or the provision
of an opportunity therefor ; but in many cases these announce
ments serve as indications of the " intercourse " obtainable in
such dwellings. Often several stories, or even the entire house,
is devoted to this purpose. It professes to be a " Private Hotel "
or Furnished Lodgings ; but in reality it is a masked brothel, a
" house of accommodation " for prostitutes and their clients, a
place in which the landlord — in most cases the landlord is of the
female sex — has for principal occupation the practice of procure-
ment. Other dwellings, without these sufficiently well-known and
suspicious boards attached to the door-posts, passing under the
less striking name of a " pension," are adapted rather for the
exquisite and artificial enjoyment of the richer classes, and are
employed for sexual orgies of a more extensive character, for
the procurement and seduction of young girls, and for the
assignations of the higher classes of the demi-monde and their
clientele.

5. " Massage Institutes." — To these distinctly modern estab-
lishments, which mainly subserve the purposes of masochistic
prostitution, we shall return in the chapter on masochism. Many
prostitutes have some knowledge of massage, and masquerade as
" masseuses "; their supplementary profession is ordinary prosti-

345

tution, and for this reason we are justified in alluding to them in
this section.

6. The Weibercafes. — These are found in all the large towns,
especially in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Buda-Pesth, and
they serve as the principal places in which prostitution is carried
on by day. Prostitutes sit here in great numbers hour after
hour, and wait for their clients, who, of course, must pay for
drinks which are consumed. Certain cafes in Berlin — as, for
example, the " Cafe National," the Cafe" Keck hi the Leipziger
Strasse, etc. — are typical nocturnal cafes, in which from the
onset of darkness until early in the morning prostitutes await
their clients.

Naturally, the above classification does not include all varieties
of modern prostitution, which exhibits many other modes of
activity. Most of these others, however, have some sort of
relationship to the varieties already described, and it is, there-
fore, unnecessary to deal with them all at length. Prostitution
can, of course, be practised anywhere ; and its allurements are
found in all places in which great numbers of human beings come
together.

APPENDIX
THE HALF-WORLD

To prostitution in the wider sense of the term belongs also the
" half-world " (" demi-monde "), under which name, first used
by the younger Dumas, we include the various categories of
" mistresses," femmes soutenues (kept women), lorettes, cocottes,
and fast women.

Alexandre Dumas, in the celebrated passage of his play " Demi
Monde " (Act II., Scene 9), gives by the mouth of Olivier de
Jalin the following definition of the half-world :

" All these women have made a false step in their past ; they have a
small black spot upon their name, and they go in company as much as
possible, so that the spot may be less conspicuous. They have the
same origin, the same appearance, the same prejudices as good society ;
but they no longer belong to it, and they form that which we call the
half-world (demi-monde), which floats like an island upon the ocean
of Paris, and draws towards itself, assumes, and recognizes, everything
which falls from the firm land, or which wanders out or runs away
from the firm land, without counting the foreign shipwrecked indi-
viduals who come no man knows whence.

" Since the married men, under the protection of the legal code, have

346

had the right to banish from the bosom of the family a woman who has
forgotten her duty, the morals of married life have undergone a revo-
lution which has created a new world — for what becomes of all these
expelled, compromised women ? The first of them who found herself
shown the door, bewailed her fault, and hid her shame in retirement ;
but — the second ? She sought the first one out, and as soon as there
were two of them, they called the fault a misfortune, the crime a mis-
take, and began to make excuses for one another mutually. Having
become three, they asked one another to dinner ; having become four —
they danced a quadrille. Now round these women there grouped them-
selves young girls also who had begun their life with a false step ; false
widows ; women who bore the name of the lovers with whom they
lived ; some of those rapid ' marriages ' which had lasted as liaisons of
many years' duration ; finally, all the women who wished people to
believe that they were something else than they really were, and did
not wish to appear in their true colours. At the present day this
irregular world is in full bloom, and its bastard society is greatly loved
by young men. For here love is less difficult than in circles above —
and not so expensive as in circles below."

From the last sentence we see that the original idea of the
" half -world " was not so wide as that of the present day ; above
all, the former notion did not, as it does at present, include the
idea of prostitution. The ladies of the half-world of Dumas were
" not so expensive " as ordinary prostitutes. Our modern demi-
mondaines are characterized by the fact that their price is high.
They are prostitutes for the upper ten thousand. And yet they
have this in common with the other demi-monde — that they do
not, like prostitutes properly speaking, give themselves indiffer-
ently to anyone able to pay the price, but they lay stress on the
social position of their lover for the time being, and upon his
character as a " gentleman." They can even exhibit something
of the nature of love. The modern half -world can most aptly
be compared with the Greek hetairism. It forms a characteristic
constituent of modern " high life." Whether this especially
manifests itself on the racecourse, at first nights at the theatre,
in great charitable bazaars, at masked balls, at fashionable sea-
side resorts, at Monte Carlo, at floral festivals, and the like, there
also we encounter the half-world ; and its members, in respect of
beauty, toilet, distinguished appearance, cultivation, and con-
versation, are hi no way to be distinguished from the ladies of
high society. Certain types of the demi-monde realize, in fact,
the ideal of the Greek hetairae ; but even more than these, the
modern demi-mondaine represents elaborated enjoyment. These
women are thoroughly cultivated, the true law -givers of fashion,
the arbiters in every question of taste. Mondaines and demi-
mondaines are in outward appearance hardly to be distinguished

347

one from the other ; at least, this is the case in Paris, where a
witty writer defined the distinction between them in this way —
that the former received their lovers only in the daytime, the
latter also by night.1 It is only the connoisseur who is able to
detect the " half -world aroma," that indefinable quality which
gives the demi-mondaine such an exceptional value in the eyes
of the jeunesse doree.

From what circles do the recruits of the half-world come ?
The ladies of the theatre, the stars of the variety stage and of
the ballet, send their contingent ; the aristocracy is also repre-
sented in their ranks ; but many a distinguished lorette or " fille
de marbre " is of low origin, and yet understands admirably
how to adapt herself rapidly to all the demands of high life, to
drive her dog-cart as smartly as the most genuine Countess, and
in Longchamps, Karlshorst, Ostend, or Trouville, to play the
part of the fine lady.

The one distinction between them — and it is the distinction of
half a world — is the fact that this fashionable life of the demi-
monde is not provided out of their own means, but out of the
pockets of one, or more often of several, rich galants.

The type of the " grande cocotte " is encountered in its genuine
and unadulterated form only in Paris. Here the demi-mondaine
plays a great part in public life. The time of the earlier mis-
tresses of princes, with their political intrigues and their far-
reaching spheres of influence, is indeed over — a Lola Montez, an
Aurora Konigsmark is to-day no longer possible ; and yet the
Parisian demi-mondaine maintains influential relationships with
the new great power of our time — the power of the press. The
journalists who are in the service of the demi-monde are by George
Dahlen termed the " Press-Fridoline," because " their pens are
paid, not with ducats, but with more or less enviable hours of
love in distinguished boudoirs ";2 and Victor Joze also describes
the advertisements — paid for by a night of love, or perhaps only
by a smile — which the writers of Paris give in the newspapers to
the distinguished cocottes of the Quartier Marboeuf or of the
Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, hi order to attract the attention
of Indian nabobs, Russian Grand Dukes, or American million-
aires, to this or that fashionable beauty. This is characteristic
of Paris. In other great capitals marketable gallantry does not
seek publicity in this way, but pursues a more hidden course.

For what the German, and especially what the Berliners, term

1 Victor Joze, " Paris-Gomorrhe. Moours du Jour," p. 173 (Paris, 1898)
3 Georg Dahlen, " Sketches of European Society," p. 126 (Berlin, 1885).

348

the " half- world " is very different from the type we have just
described of the true Parisian demi-mondaine. Our half-world
(the half -world of Berlin) is recruited for the most part from
intelligent prostitutes, who are to be found chiefly in the public
gardens, in the Zoological Gardens, in the Lehrter Ausstellungs-
park, and in the leading restaurants. Here every evening they
seek new prey, every evening they sell their charms to a new
lover for a definite sum of money ; whereas the true lady of the
half -world never has at any time more than one or two admirers,
who provide for all the expenses of her life, and she never — at any
rate in public — practises professional prostitution, as do the
women just described.

Finally, there is yet another type, which must not be confused
with the demi-monde. This is the international prostitute, who
journeys from one place to another, has indeed often the appear-
ance of a distinguished lorette, but leads a much more insecure,
unstable life than the true demi-mondaine, and often combines
with prostitution the profession of an adventuress. Now she is
iii Paris, now in London, now at Biarritz, now at Monte Carlo
(the principal field of her activity), now in Constantinople,
Smyrna, St. Petersburg, or Berlin. Sometimes she undertakes a
voyage of discovery to the New World. Germany provides a not
insignificant percentage of these international cocottes. Such
wanderers are especially well known in the circles of officers and
of speculators on the Bourse ; by these they are not seldom
" recommended," after the manner in which a traveller is given
letters of introduction. They may even be " raffled for," as
recently happened in an officers' mess in Munich, and so pass to
the share of the fortunate (generally much to be commiserated)
winner. Abroad they prefer to adopt French or exotic names.

CHAPTER XIV
VENEREAL DISEASES

" In co-operation with alcoholic intoxication and with tuberculosis,
syphilis plays in our day the part which in the middle ages was
played by bubonic plague." — ALFRED FOURNIER.

349

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XIV

Prostitution the focus, not the cause, of venereal diseases — Philosophy of venereal
diseases — Their age — Time and place of their first appearance — The origin
of syphilis — Practical importance of the proof of the recent character of
syphilis — The theologico-animistic theory of venereal diseases — Refutation
of this theory — Blameless infection (syphilis innocentium) — The notion of
specific infective disease — Scientific campaign against venereal diseases —
Syphilis as a specific disease of modern times — Description of its symptoms,
its course, and its termination — Consequences of syphilis to the family,
to the offspring, and to the race — Congenital syphilis of the first and second
generations — Racial degeneration in consequence of syphilis — The age at
which infection with syphilis occurs in man and in woman — The soft chancre
(chancroid) — Gonorrhoea — Change in our views regarding the dangers of
gonorrhoea — Urethral gonorrhoea in the male — Acute and clironic stages —
Complications — Gonorrhoea in women — The " diseases of women "-
Blindness due to gonorrhoea.
Appendix : Venereal Diseases in the Homosexual.

350

CHAPTER XIV

THE central problem of the sexual question is, as I pointed out
at the commencement of the previous chapter, the suppression
of prostitution and of venereal diseases, the former evil being the
principal focus of the latter. I say the principal " focus," not
the " cause." For, if all prostitutes were healthy, we could leave
prostitution quietly alone — leaving out of consideration the moral
depravity to which it gives rise — and venereal diseases would
spontaneously disappear.

This opinion I advance at the beginning of the chapter on
venereal diseases because, even at the present day, there is a
remarkable species of philosophy, or rather theology, of venereal
diseases, which propounds the most extraordinary hypothesis
regarding their origin.

For example, the Alsatian writer Alexander Weill, hi his con-
fused work " The Laws and Mysteries of Love," writes :

" Why should we bother our heads about the cure of syphilis ? If
anyone wishes to get rid of any evil, he must first of all ascertain its
causes in order to remove these. If the cause of it is removed, the evil
disappears spontaneously. If the snake has been killed, its poison no
longer does any harm. But how can we put an end to the causes of
syphilis, when this disease is spontaneously renewed and increased day
by day by means of neglected prostitution, and by our social laws
which combine to oppose the monogamy of youth and the increase of
population ? If to-day we could cure all patients suffering from
syphilis, to-morrow the same disease would return in a new form, for it
would be recreated by the same irregularities that first led to its pro-
duction (!) It is absolutely useless to employ iodide of potassium and
mercury, for every new infringement of natural laws would again bring
into being new incurable diseases, which can only be avoided by those
who have firmly resolved to observe these laws strictly."

Weill, indeed, goes so far as to maintain that every man who
simultaneously, or rather in brief succession, has intercourse with
two healthy women, acquires syphilis, even although both these
women remain faithful to him, because " any kind of libertinism
in sexual intercourse suffices by itself to give rise to this disease !"

According to this view, which is shared by many members of
the laity, venereal diseases, and, above all, the worst of them,
syphilis, would be as old as sexual licentiousness itself — that is,
as old as the human race, and an inalienable associate of that
race.

In my book on " The Origin of Syphilis " I have disproved

351

352

this view. I have answered the question, so important alike on
general philosophical and on social-hygienic grounds, regarding
the true nature of syphilis, and have proved that syphilis (and
also the other venereal diseases) had a definite local and temporal
origin ; that syphilis has not existed since the beginning of time ;
and that some day, when certain definite conditions are fulfilled,
the disease will disappear.

The history of syphilis is a matter of profound practical im-
portance. From that history we learn with certainty that the
most dangerous and most dreaded of the venereal diseases has,
for the European world, and for the " old world " in general,
the character of a pure chance comer ; and we learn that retro-
spectively— regarded from the point of view of our present
experience — at the time when the disease first began to flourish,
it might perhaps have been nipped in the bud.

It is hardly possible to overestimate the practical importance of
the recognition of this fact — that for the old civilized world
syphilis represents a historical phenomenon, that it has a history,
a beginning, or, as Voltaire half-ironically remarks, a genealogy.

Is there not a deliverance, a redemption, in the idea that for
the old world there was a time in which syphilis did not exist ;
that this time, in comparison with the time which has elapsed
since syphilis first appeared, was almost infinitely long ; and that
for this reason, when we look out into the future, the history of
the lues venerea assumes the character of a simple episode in
the history of European civilized humanity ?

At the same time, the definite acceptance of this view would
be an urgent warning to all those obscurantists of both sexes who
imagine that the problem of the diffusion of venereal diseases
can be solved exclusively by religious and moral considerations,
and who thus confuse the simplest and clearest relationships,
place everything upon an insecure foundation, and exclude every
possibility of a successful campaign against syphilis.

Even to-day it unfortunately happens that many continue,
as of old, to believe that sexual intercourse is a sin for which a
punishment has been provided, and that this punishment is a
venereal disease — for example, syphilis. Tylor, the celebrated
English anthropologist, has proved that this idea has developed
out of the animism extending back into prehistoric times, which
regarded all illnesses as the work of demons. We are still influ-
enced by this doctrine, this gloomy, demoniacal conception in
respect of everything sexual. I need hardly remind the reader
of the ideas of Tolstoi, and of his disciple, the unhappy Dr.

353

Weininger, a disciple exceeding even his master in respect of
fanatical condemnation of sexual intercourse. Until recently
the laws regulating our German system of workmen's insurance
against illness continued to exhibit definite traces of our legis-
lators' adhesion to this view. The majority of physicians and
historians who said that syphilis was as old as sexual intercourse
itself, who employed the phrase ubi Venus ibi syphilis, were un-
consciously influenced by this idea, that venereal diseases are to
be regarded as a mark of the Divine wrath.

This theological theory, as we may call it, of the origin of
syphilis is opposed by certain incontrovertible facts, which
suffice to show its utter nullity and untenability.

The mere fact that there exists a blameless infection with
syphilis (syphilis innocentium), that, for example, hi certain
districts of Russia as many as 90 % of the cases of this disease
are acquired quite independently of sexual intercourse, by simple
contact, shows the absurdity of this superstitious idea.

In the second place, it is a widely known fact that quite fre-
quently persons who are still entirely uncontaminated, blameless
initiates, become infected with syphilis on the very first occasion
in which they have sexual intercourse, whilst greater experience
and more exact knowledge of the threatening dangers induce
notorious debauchees to adopt effective measures of protection
(which, however, would be useless if syphilis were really a divinely
decreed punishment for licentiousness of this kind !).

In the third place, the occurrence of syphilis in little children —
partly owing to inheritance, partly, however, acquired in the way
already mentioned by casual contact — affords a striking refuta-
tion of the above idea, which, unfortunately, still dominates and
fascinates a large circle of people.

We could adduce further arguments against this view, but
what we have said should suffice to show clearly the untenability
of such a superstition. The syphilis of one individual is not the
consequence of sexual intercourse, but the consequence of another
case of syphilis in another individual — that is to say, syphilis is
a specific infective disease, transmissible only by means of its
peculiar specific virus, and this transmission can be effected
without any sexual intercourse, by means of contacts of other
kinds. Syphilis arises only from syphilis.

We have, therefore, to attack this disease precisely in the same
manner as the other venereal diseases. As a Portuguese physician
has most aptly remarked, to the tyranny of syphilis we must
oppose the tyranny of human reason. The principal aim of a

354

campaign against venereal diseases will be the organization of
the means offered to us by reason and experience to cope with
the disease. The knowledge of these means must be diffused in
ever-wider circles of humanity, and care must be taken that every
individual is fully and clearly informed regarding the importance
and the dangers of syphilis and the other venereal diseases.

Here also history is our teacher, our lamp of truth, and promises
us complete success as the result of our campaign against venereal
diseases.

The results of my investigations regarding the origin of syphilis
all point to a single extremely important fact — namely, that in
the case of syphilis, and as regards the " old world," we have
to do with a specific disease of modern times, which made its first
appearance at the end of the fifteenth century, and of the previous
existence of which, even in the most distant prehistoric times,
not the minutest trace remains. This view was held by very
eminent physicians, even before the publication of my own
critical work, based upon entirely new sources of study. Among
these authorities I may mention Jean Astruc and Christoph
Girtanner, in the eighteenth century ; in the nineteenth century,
the Spanish army surgeon Montejo, and of German physicians,
above all, Rudolf Virchow, A. Geigel, von Liebermeister, C. Binz,
and P. G. Unna. The great philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
held the same view.1

Bicord, the celebrated French syphilologist, spoke once of a
romance of syphilis which still remained to be written. I should
rather compare it with a drama, the separate acts of which are
centuries. Of this drama, four acts have already been played.
At the present moment we find ourselves at the beginning of the
fifth act. Thus, we have an entire century before us, in which,
with all the powers placed at our disposal by scientific medical
research, by practical therapeutics, and by hygiene in association
with social measures, we must work to this end, that this fifth
act shall also be the last, as it is in the case of a proper drama.

The history of syphilis has remained so long obscure, because,
until the time of Philipp Ricord — that is to say, until the beginning
of the second half of the nineteenth century — the three venereal
diseases, syphilis, or lues, the so-called soft chancre (venereal ulcer
or chancroid), and gonorrhoea, were regarded as essentially one
disease ; whereas we know to-day that syphilis is a specific infec-

1 Cf. Iwan Bloch, " Schopenhauer's Illness in the Year 1823. A Contribution
to Pathography based upon an Unpublished Document." Published in
Medizinische Klinik, 1906, Nos. 25 and 26. (This gives an account of all
Schopenhauer's utterances regarding syphilis.)

355

tive disease of a constitutional character, which permeates the
whole body, and must be absolutely distinguished from the other
venereal diseases, these latter being purely local in character.
This earlier belief in the identity of all venereal infections, an
error held even by so great an authority as John Hunter, who
was misled by falsely interpreted experiments, renders it neces-
sary that the historical side of the question should be considered
also from this point of view.

If gonorrhoea and chancroid were of a syphilitic nature, then
certainly syphilis must have existed from very early times. It
would not be difficult to refer to syphilis some descriptions and
accounts of diseases of the genital organs given by the ancient
and medieval writers. It was the progressive enlightenment
regarding the essential differences between the three venereal
diseases which first proved the untenability of such opinions ;
we were further assisted by the knowledge of pseudo-venereal
and pseudo-syphilitic diseases which we have obtained from
modern dermatology. Moreover, in the old world syphilitic
bones belonging to ancient or medieval times have never been
discovered.1 The first syphilitic bones date from after the time
of the discovery of America. They appear, above all, after the
outbreak of the great epidemic of syphilis which followed the
Italian campaign of King Charles VIII. of France, in the years
1494 and 1495 ; it was then that syphilis first became diffused
in the old world.

In my work on " The Origin of Syphilis " (Jena, 1901),2 I have
adduced proof, basing my views upon the criticism of older
opinions, and assisted by the utilization of very abundant new
sources of material, that syphilis was first introduced into Spain
in the years 1493 and 1494 by the crew of Columbus, who brought
it from Central America, and more especially from the island of
Hayti ; from Spain it was carried by the army of Charles VTII.
to Italy, where it assumed an epidemic form ; and after the army
was disbanded the disease was transported by the soldiers to the
other countries of Europe, and also was soon taken by the Por-
tuguese to the Far East, to India, China, and Japan. At the
time of its first appearance in the old world, syphilis was extra-

1 At a meeting of the Soci^te d'Anthropologie de Paris, held on April 19,
1906, I read a paper on "La Syphilis Pretendue Pr6historique," in which I
discussed this question. The important question of ancient bonos is further
considered in the second volume of my work on " The Origin of Syphilis," pp. 317-
364 (now in the press).

* The results of this study I have briefly epitomized in an address given
before the Social Science Congress in Berlin, entitled " The First Appearance of
Syphilis in Europe " (Jena, 1904).

23—2

356

ordinarily virulent. All the morbid phenomena produced by the
disease had a more rapid and violent course than at the present
day ; the mortality was much higher ; the consequences, even
when a cure was effected, were much more severe. This virulence
of syphilis at the time of its first introduction can only be ex-
plained, in accordance with our modern views of the nature and
mode of appearances of the disease, by the fact that the nations
of the old world (who, nota bene, were all attacked with equal
intensity) had, until that time, been completely free from syphilis.
All classes of the people and all nations were visited by syphilis
to an equal extent and with the same violence.

Even to-day we observe everywhere, when syphilis is intro-
duced into regions which have hitherto been free from the disease,
that it has the same acute course, the same violence of morbid
manifestations, that characterized its first appearance in Europe.
In the four centuries that have elapsed since its introduction
into Europe there has occurred a gradual mitigation of the
syphilitic virus, or rather a certain degree of immunization of
European humanity against the disease. Speaking generally,
syphilis has to-day — in comparison with that earlier time — a
relatively mild course. To this point we shall return later.1

The two other venereal diseases, gonorrhoea and chancroid,
unquestionably existed in Europe in the days of antiquity. But
they also are specific infective diseases, and are only produced
by the virus peculiar to each, just as syphilis has its own peculiar
virus.

Ricord (1800-1889), in the years 1830 to 1850, proved the com-
plete diversity of syphilis and gonorrhoea, established the doctrine
of the three stages of syphilis — primary, secondary, and tertiary—
and, finally, taught us to distinguish the soft, non-syphilitic
chancre (chancroid) from the hard, syphilitic chancre. Virchow,
in his celebrated essay on " The Nature of Constitutional Syphi-
litic Affections " (Virchow's Archiv, 1858, vol. xv., p. 217 et seq.),
then threw a clear light on the peculiar course of constitutional
syphilis and on the causes of the occasional disappearance and
sudden reappearance of the morbid phenomena. Hitherto, how-
ever, our knowledge of venereal diseases had rested on an ex-

1 Regarding the gradual acquirement (by means of natural selection) of
immunity to epidemic diseases, the works of Archdall Reid may be most profit-
ably consulted ("The Present Evolution of Man," London, 1896; "The Prin-
ciples of Heredity," London, 1905). Dr. Reid's views on the part played in
human history by tha transference of diseases from immunized to non -immunized
races are of especial interest. Unfortunately, as regards syphilis, he accepts
Hirsoh's erroneous statements relative to the antiquity of that disease, and its
origin in the eastern hemisphere (see also p. 384, note 2). — TRANSLATOR.

357

tremely insecure foundation ; and the truly scientific study of
the subject jmay be said to have begun in the year 1879, with
Albert Neisser's epoch-making discovery of the gonoeoccus as
the specific exciting cause of gonorrhoea. In the years 1889 to
1892 there followed the discovery of the bacillus of chancroid by
Ducrey and Unna, by means of which discovery the complete
distinction between the soft and the hard chancre was definitely
proved ; and, finally, the three years 1903 to 1906 were
characterized by remarkable discoveries, the full importance of
which is not as yet fully realized, regarding the nature of the
syphilitic virus. In the year 1903 Eli Metchnikoff succeeded in
transmitting syphilis from human beings to apes, and thus laid
the foundation for progressive research regarding syphilis by
means of experiments on animals ; this was carried further by
Lassar, by the inoculation of the syphilitic virus from one ape
to another, and also by A. Neisser in his experimental researches
in Java j1 and in March, 1905, the Berlin protozoologist Fritz
Schaudinn, since prematurely lost to the world of science, pub-
lished his first studies on the probable exciting cause of syphilis,
the so-called " spirochaete pallida." Numerous subsequent in-
vestigations have established the connexion between this spirilla-
form, belonging to the order of protozoa, and syphilitic disease.
In this way we have been brought notably nearer to the discovery
of the certain cure of syphilis and to the discovery of means of
immunization against the disease. In this direction quite new
views are opening before our eyes.2 Numerous ideas suggested
by recent discoveries in the province of syphilitic research are
described in the admirable essay by J. Jadassohn, " Contribu-
tions to Syphilology," published in the German " Archives for
Dermatology and Syphilis," 1907. Cf. also the account of the
recent doctrines regarding syphilis by P. G. Unna and Iwan
Bloch, " Die Praxis der Hautkrankheiten," pp. 548-592 (Vienna
and Berlin, 1908).

When some day humanity has been freed from the " sexual
plague," from the hydra of venereal diseases, and when a monu-
ment is erected to the liberators, four names will there be com-
memorated : Ricord, Neisser, Metchnikoff, and Schaudinn !

After these preliminary remarks on the nature of venereal
diseases, I proceed to a short description of them, and I

1 Cf. A. Neisser, " The Experimental Investigation of Syphilis as it Stands
at the Present Day" (Berlin, 1906).

a Cf. Erich Hoffmann, "The Etiology of Syphilis" (Berlin, 1906); Hans
Hiibner, " Recent Researches into the Nature of Syphilis," published in the
Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1906, vol. v., pp. 468-481.

begin with the most dangerous of all the venereal diseases,
syphilis.1

The first manifestations of syphilis make their appearance
about three or four weeks after infection, at the place at which
infection has occurred, and this is not in every case the genital
organs. It is true that syphilis is most commonly transmitted
by means of sexual intercourse, but frequently also by contacts
of other kinds — for example, by kissing ; by gynecological or
surgical examinations and operations ; by drinking from a glass
which has previously been used by some one suffering from
syphilis ; by the use of uncleansed pocket-handkerchiefs, towels,
and bedding, which have been used by a syphilitic patient ; by
the use of tobacco-pipes, wind-instruments, tooth-brushes, tooth-
picks, a glass-blower's mouthpiece, etc., belonging to strangers ;
by an uncleansed razor ; by the nasty habit of licking the point
of a pencil ; by moistening postage-stamps with the tongue ;
by sucking the wound in circumcision ; by the suckling of the
infant at the breast of a syphilitic wet-nurse, etc.2 In England
the custom, when taking a judicial oath, of kissing the Bible
has repeatedly sufficed to transmit syphilitic infection.

In certain districts in which the level of civilization is a low
one — as, for example, in some parts of Russia and of Turkey—
as many as 50 to 60 % of all infections occur independently of
sexual intercourse.

All the discharges from syphilitic lesions in all three stages of the
disease are infective. The infective character of the tertiary stage
of syphilis was formerly doubted, but has recently been proved
beyond dispute. Blood also, although more rarely, can prove
infective. On the other hand, the pure secretions — that is, the
physiological secretions, not contaminated by morbid products
— such as the saliva, tears, and milk, are not infective. Syphilis
is, however, very frequently transmitted by means of the semen.

1 I must not omit allusion to some recent admirable works on venereal
diseases : A. Blascbko, " Venereal Diseases " — a popular exposition — (Berlin,
1904) ; Paul Zweifel, " Venereal Diseases and. their Importance to Health "
(Leipzig, 1902) ; Alfred Fournier, " Syphilis a Social Danger " ; Karl Hies,
" Blameless Sexual Infection " (Stuttgart, 1904) ; 0. Burwinkel, " Venereal
Diseases " (Leipzig, 1905) ; Waldvogel, " The Dangers of Venereal Diseases and
their Prevention ' (Stuttgart, 1905). In view of the large number of popular
warks on venereal diseases, those without professional knowledge should confine
themselves to the best names, because in this province trashy literature is extra-
ordinarily abundant, and by the false and erroneous views it diffuses, it does
much more harm than good. The writings mentioned in this note I am able to
recommend as thoroughly scientific and trustworthy.

2 Galewsky, " The Transmission of Venereal Diseases in the Suckling of

Children," published in the Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases,

1906, vol. v., pp. 365-371.

359

Infection occurs in places in which there is a solution of con-
tinuity of the skin or mucous membrane, such as a scratch or a
superficial wound, through which the virus can enter. In this
way an apparently healthy syphilitic patient — when, for example,
he gets a small abrasion on the penis (or, in the case of a woman,
in the vagina) — can transmit syphilis if the othec individual also
has a similar abrasion through which infection can occur.

As we have said, it is not till the lapse of two to four weeks
after infection has occurred that the first manifestations of
syphilis appear, in the form of a small vesicle or nodule in the
infected area ; less often merely an abraded area of a peculiar
red colour. Gradually this nodule or area enlarges, and becomes
continually harder at the base, whilst the surface often undergoes
ulceration, and secretes extremely infective pus (the so-called
" hard chancre " or " primary lesion 5>1).

This induration is in most cases a certain sign that the syphilitic
virus has already entered the body ; at least, it has only been
possible in a few very rare cases, by excision or cauterization of
the hard chancre, to prevent syphilis from entering the blood.
Almost always, notwithstanding such endeavours, the manifesta-
tions of general infection of the body soon appear.

From the place of infection — that is, from the place at which
the hard chancre forms — the syphilitic virus next passes by way
of the lymph-stream into the inguinal glands, so that these, in
the third or fourth week after the appearance of the hard chancre,
begin to swell and to become hard. This swelling of the inguinal
glands is painless (the so-called " indolent bubo "), in contrast to
the painful swelling which accompanies the soft chancre. From
this region the poison now proceeds by way of the bloodvessels
and lymph paths on its wanderings all over the body, the indi-
vidual stages of which can be detected by swellings of the lymph-
glands of the axilla, the elbow, the neck, etc. Sometimes other
symptoms of general infection are noticeable ; above all, the
appearance of fever (never earlier than forty days after infec-
tion), pains in the muscles, joints, nerves, also severe headaches,
a general feeling of lassitude, pallor, and a falling-off in the
nutritive condition.

These are the forerunners of the so-called secondary stage of
syphilis, which now manifests itself by the appearance of a
multiform skin eruption, rendering the diagnosis of syphilis abso-

1 It is true that such a hardening may also occur in other non-syphilitic
affections of the genital organs — for example, when they aru peculiarly situated
or as a result of cauterization. Only the physician can determine whether in
uuch a case syphilitic infection has actually occurred.

360

lutely certain. For this reason, in doubtful cases of ulceration of
the genital organs the patient should inspect his skin very carefully
every day for several weeks or months, and keep watch for the
appearance of red spots or nodules. This syphilitic eruption on
the skin is also in the later periods one of the most certain and
most characteristic insignia of the disease.

The eruption commonly appears first on the trunk, in the form
of rose-coloured spots (the so-called " roseola syphilitica "),
spreads thence over the whole body, and in many cases, simul-
taneously with or shortly after the spotted eruption, nodules
appear on the skin, and marked thickenings form on the mucous
membranes, especially at the anus, in the mouth, and on the
tongue (the so-called " plaques muqueuses," or " condylomata ").
The patient's attention is spontaneously directed to these lesions
by painful sensations in the mouth or by itching of the anus.
Often it is these painful sensations, associated with a violent
inflammation of the tonsils and pharynx (the so-called " angina
syphilitica "), which first lead the patient to consult a doctor,
after all the earlier symptoms have passed by unnoticed ! As
characteristic forms of the secondary syphilitic changes in the
skin must, therefore, be mentioned the so-called "corona Veneris,"
by which distinguished name is denoted an eruption on the fore-
head, especially along the margin of the hair, which by members
of the laity is easily confused with other affections of the skin
common in this locality ; the so-called " collier de Venus," or
leukoderma syphiliticum, a peculiar pigmentation of the skin on
the throat and the back of the neck in the form of brown patches
with white intervening areas. This symptom, which occurs
almost exclusively in women, is an absolutely certain sign of
syphilis. Equally characteristic is the so-called " syphilitic
psoriasis," the appearance of peculiar patches and thickenings
on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet ; characteristic
also is the syphilitic loss of hair, by its sudden onset and by the
patchy way in which it occurs. Not rarely do we see purulent
eruptions on the skin in this secondary stage of syphilis.

The syphilitic eruption of the skin is only an external mani-
festation of a disease affecting the entire body, for the internal
organs also suffer. The affection of the liver manifests itself by
jaundice ; that of the brain and the meninges by headaches and
by weakness of memory, which is often well marked at this stage ;
that of the spleen by swelling ; that of the kidneys by the appear-
ance of albumin in the urine ; that of the bones by very painful
inflammatory swellings ; that of the eyes specially by the well-

361

known inflammation of the retina (60 % of all inflammations of
the retina are syphilitic in nature !).

If the disease remains untreated, the appearances just described
become more general and continually more severe ; and after
some time, quite new morbid symptoms are superadded (often
as early as the third year, on the average five to ten years after
infection, but also later), resulting from the transformation of the
syphilitic morbid process into the tertiary stage. To these new
manifestations belong the appearance of large nodules in the skin
and other organs, which sooner or later undergo ulceration, the
so-called " syphilitic gummata "; their ulcerative destruction may
entail the greatest disfigurement or danger to life — for example,
perforation of the hard palate ; sinking of the bridge of the nose
(the syphilitic " saddle-nose ") ; ulcerative destruction of large
portions of the bones of the skull, of the intestine, of the liver,
the lungs, the testicles, the bloodvessels (especially dangerous
are gummous diseases of the bloodvessels of the brain), the brain,
and the spinal cord. Apoplectic strokes occurring in compara-
tively young persons and nervous paralysis of the most various
kinds, as well as sudden deafness and blindness, are in most cases
referable to syphilitic disease. Many chronic diseases of the
liver, kidneys, and nervous system, are consequences of previous
syphilis ; also calcification of the arteries, the very dangerous
dilatation of the great bloodvessels, especially of the aorta
(aneurism of the aorta), are very often of syphilitic origin.

By the researches of Alfred Fournier and Wilhelm Erb, we
know to-day that two severe diseases of the central nervous
system — tabes dorsalis or locomotor ataxy, and general paralysis
of the insane (paralytic dementia) — are almost always (in about
95 % of the cases) referable to earlier syphilis. Among 5,749
cases of syphilis encountered in his own private practice, Fournier
observed no less than 758 cases of brain syphilis, 631 cases of
tabes, and 83 cases of softening of the brain. Tabes and general
paralysis of the insane are all the more dangerous because they
are no longer, properly speaking, " syphilitic " diseases, and
therefore they cannot be cured by antisyphilitic treatment ;
they are severe degenerative changes of the central nervous
system, which has been, as it were, prepared for their occurrence
by the previous syphilis. These belong to the class of the so-
called " parasyphilitic " diseases in which antisyphilitic treatment
has little or no good effect.

Even more tragic are the consequences of syphilis to the family,
the offspring, and the race. Syphilis in married life, congenital

syphilis, and the degeneration of the race by syphilis— these are
the tragic manifestations which come under consideration in this
connexion.

In his admirable work on " Syphilis and Marriage," Alfred
Fournier, the greatest living authority on syphilis in all its mani-
festations and relationships, has described the momentous influ-
ence exercised by syphilis in conjugal life ; and in his recently
published work, " Syphilis a Social Danger," he has dealt also
with congenital syphilis and racial degeneration. He found that,
on the average, among 100 women suffering from syphilis, 20 had
been infected by their husbands, either at the very commence-
ment of married life, or in its later course, or finally through the
offspring after conception. Divorce on the ground of syphilitic
infection by the husband is at the present day of frequent occur-
rence.

The transmission of syphilis to the child by inheritance may
be effected either by the father or the mother ; when both the
father and the mother are syphilitic, it occurs with absolute cer-
tainty. The various possibilities of transmission, and the con-
tingent immunity of mother or child, as they are expressed in
Colles's law (Baumes's law), and in Profeta's law, cannot here be
further dealt with. If the mother has herself been infected with
syphilis, or if she was previously syphilitic, either the child is not
carried until term, abortion or miscarriage ensuing, or, finally, it
is born with symptoms of congenital syphilis.1

The frequent occurrence of premature births and still-births in
any family suggests strong suspicions that they are due to syphilis.
The general mortality of the children in a family is regarded by
Fournier as an important sign to the physician of congenital
syphilis. Syphilitic infection of the father gives rise to a mor-
tality in the children of 28 % ; syphilis in the mother causes a
mortality in the children of 60 % ; when the disease affects both
parents, the mortality among the children amounts to 68 %.
Absolutely astounding is the mortality of the children of syphilitic
prostitutes ; it amounts to from 84 to 86 %.

Children born alive, suffering from congenital syphilis, are
generally weakly,1 of deficient body- weight ; have often a flaccid,

1 According to English experience, the congenitally syphilitic child rarely
exhibits any sign of syphilis when born. Thus, Hutchinson writes (" Syphilis,"

E. 73) : " At the time of birth, the congenitally syphilitic infant almost invariably
as a clear skin, and appears to bo in perfect [health." According to Osier also
(" Medicine," sixth edition, p. 269) : " The child may be born healthy-looking
or with well-marked evidence of the disease. In the majority of instances the
former is the case, and within the first month or two the signs of the disease
appear." — TRANSLATOR.

363

wrinkled skin, covered with typical syphilitic eruptions, and fre-
quently with great purulent vesicles, especially on the palms of
the hands and the soles of the feet (" pemphigus syphiliticus ") ;
the internal organs also, the spleen, the liver, and the bones,
exhibit morbid changes. Characteristic is the syphilitic affection
of the upper air-passages, especially the syphilitic " cold in the
head " (syphilitic rhinitis — " snuffles "), of new-born congenitally
syphilitic children. Congenital syphilis further gives rise to
severe disturbances of development and to phenomena to which
Fournier has given the name of " late syphilis " (" syphilis here-
ditarla tarda "), because they first make their appearance in the
later years of We.1 Permanent debility, arrest of development,
stigmata of degeneration, in the form of various malformations—
as, for example, notching of the edge of the upper central incisor
permanent teeth (a symptom first described by Jonathan Hutchin-
son), malformations of the nose, the ears, and the palate, dwarfing,
deaf-mutism, malformations of the external and internal repro-
ductive organs, rickets,2 epilepsy, and mental weakness — are the
consequences of congenital syphilis. Tarnowsky, Fournier, and
Barthel6my have traced the consequences of congenital syphilis
into the second and third generation, and so have discovered an
important cause of racial degeneration. Syphilis in the grand-
father can still exercise its disastrous influence in the grandson,
and give rise to the above-mentioned stigmata of degeneration.3
Indeed, congenital syphilis of the second generation often appears
with the same severity as that of the first generation ; and, like
acquired syphilis, congenital syphilis in women can cause a pre-
disposition to miscarriages and still-births.

According to statistics obtained by Edmond Fournier, relating
to 11,000 cases of syphilis (10,000 men, 1,000 women) from the

1 Of. the recently published admirable work of Edmond Fournier, " Recherches
et Diagnostic de l'Her6do-Syphilis Tardive " (Paris, 1907).

2 Parrot regarded rickets as a manifestation of congenital syphilis, but this
view has never found acceptance in England. Hutchinson remarks (" Syphilis,"
p. 408) : " The typical forms of rickets are constantly met with in conditions which
do not lend the slightest support to the suggestion of syphilis." As Cheadle
remarks : " Syphilis modifies rickets ; it does not create it. — TRANSLATOR.

3 This view must be accepted with reserve. See, for instance, Osier's
" Medicine," sixth edition, p. 271 : " Is syphilis transmitted to the third genera-
tion ? The general opinion is opposed to this view. Occasionally, however,
cases of pronounced congenital syphilis are met with in the children of parents
who are perfectly healthy, and who have not, so far as is known, had syphilis,
and yet, as remarked by Coutts, who reported such a group of cases, they do not
bear careful scrutiny. The existing difference of opinion is well illustrated in
the account by G. Boock (Berl. Klin. Wochenschrift, September 12, 1904) of
four instances of hereditary lues in the second generation, while in the same
journal Jonathan Hutchinson expresses his belief that syphilis is not trans-
mitted to tho third generation." — TRANSLATOR.

364

private practice of his father, Alfred Fournier, regarding the age
at which infection occurs, it appears that in men it most commonly
occurs between the ages of twenty and twenty-six years (the
maximum number of infections during the twenty-third year) ; in
women, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one ; 8 % of
syphilitic males and 20 % of syphilitic females were infected
before the age of twenty years. Syphilis is to a considerable
extent at the present day a disease of inexperienced youth. This
fact is important in relation to the problem of prevention and
the problem of enlightenment.1

Of much less importance than syphilis is the purely local soft
chancre, or chancroid, which never results in general infection.
Chancroid is produced by a specific exciting cause, a chain-
forming bacillus (streptobacillus), Bacillus ulceris cancrosi, which
is found in the pus secreted by the ulcer. One or two days after
infection, a small pustule forms at the site of inoculation, generally
on the external genital organs. This pustule soon bursts, and a
deeply hollowed ulcer makes its appearance, which usually under-
goes rapid increase, and frequently, owing to the infective char-
acter of the pus, gives rise to new chancres in the neighbourhood
of the original one, so that the soft chancre is commonly multiple.
When suitably treated with antiseptic powders and cauterization,
chancroid usually heals quickly ; there are, however, very dan-
gerous varieties of chancroid — for instance, the serpiginous
chancre, which continues to creep irresistibly forward ; and the
phagedaenic or gangrenous chancre, which puts the skill of the
physician to the utmost test. A less dangerous but extremely
disagreeable complication of chancroid is inflammation of the
inguinal glands, most commonly only on one side ; this painful
" bubo " (painful in contrast with the painless syphilitic bubo)
has a well-marked tendency to suppuration. If this occurs,
and the pus finds its way to the surface, fistulas and new chancrous
ulcers are liable to occur at the place where it opens. By rest in
bed, the inunction of iodide ointment, the application of cold
compresses, the injection into the bubo of a solution of nitrate
of silver, and the internal use of iodide of potassium, this unfor-
tunate course maj^ be prevented.

A remarkable change of views has, in the course of the last

1 As more important scientific works on syphilis I must mention that of
Isidor Neumann (Vienna, 1899, second edition), containing the entire biblio-
graphy of the subject ; that of Joseph Lang (Wiesbaden, 1896, second edition) ;
but, above all, the epoch-making work of Alfred Foumier, " Traite do Syphilis "
(Paris, 1898) — English translation, Fournier, " The Treatment and Prophylaxis
of Syphilis " (Rebman Ltd., London, 1900).

365

thirty years, taken place in respect of the nature and importance
of gonorrhoea.1 Whereas formerly this was regarded as a com-
paratively harmless disease, we know to-day that gonorrhoea in
the male, and still more in the female, gives rise to tedious dangers
and painful morbid phenomena, and is the source of unspeakable
sorrows, and of the miserable ill-health of numerous women, and
that it is the chief cause of sterility in both sexes.

Gonorrhoea is principally a disease of the mucous membrane,
and is, in this way, distinguished from syphilis, which is a general
disorder, diffusing itself by way of the bloodvessels. In rare
cases, indeed, gonorrhoea can exhibit general morbid manifesta-
tions, the so-called gonorrhoeal rheumatism, gonorrhoeal affections
of the spinal cord and of the heart, and gonorrhoeal nervous
troubles, all of which are so rare, that for practical purposes they
can be left out of consideration.

The typical seat of gonorrhoea is the mucous membrane of the
urinary and the genital organs of the male and the female ; in the
male affecting chiefly the urinary organs, and in the female
affecting chiefly the genital organs. The cause of genuine
gonorrhoea is always infection, the transmission from one human
being to another of the purulent inflammation produced by the
gonococcus discovered by Neisser in 1879. Simple urethral
inflammations with a purulent discharge also occur in which no
gonococci are found. These arise also from infection, but their
actual exciting cause has not yet been discovered. Not less
obscure is the relationship of many of the irritants giving rise to
simple urethral catarrh — for example, that which is active during
menstruation — to the supposed exciting cause. In any case,
these simple catarrhs have a very mild course, and undergo a cure
after a few days or weeks, spontaneously or as a result of treat-
ment with mild injections.

Quite otherwise is it with genuine gonorrhoea. In the male it
begins from two to six days after the infective intercourse, with
a burning sensation on passing water, itching at the urethral
orifice, which very easily becomes reddened, and this is soon
followed by the discharge, either spontaneously or as a result of
pressure on the urethra, of a thick fluid, at first mucous, later
purulent, and then of a yellow or a greenish colour. Inflamma-
tion, discharge, and pain, the latter especially in association with
urination, increase during the subsequent weeks ; in addition, in
a good many cases there are slight fever, lassitude, and mental

1 The most important scientific work on gonorrhoea is that of Ernest Finger,
" Blennorrhoca of the Sexual Organs," fifth edition (Leipzig and Vienna, 1901).

366

depression, and the patient is tormented, especially during the
night, by violent, painful erections. In exceptional cases there
are haemorrhages from the urethra (the so-called " Russian clap ").
In some cases the disease terminates favourably ; this is especially
observed after the first attack of gonorrhoea. As early as the
third week the above symptoms become less severe, and in the
fourth or sixth week after infection the whole morbid process
may come to an end, the discharge ceases, the urine becomes
clear once more, and, in fact, definite cure of the gonorrhoea
ensues.

But the number of those who are so fortunate is comparatively
small. In the majority of cases, there are other morbid pheno-
mena and complications ; the gonorrhoea becomes " subacute, '
and later " chronic." Ricord wrote many years ago : " When
anyone has once acquired gonorrhoea, God only knows when he
will get well again !" Happily, this pessimism is no longer fully
justified at the present day ; but it is a fact that in the majority
of cases even to-day gonorrhoea is a very obstinate, wearisome
illness, a long-continued burden, not only for the patient, but
also for the doctor. The gonococci proliferate in the deeper
layers of the mucous membrane, and pass upwards into the
posterior part of the urethra, this latter migration being mani-
fested especially by frequent and painful strangury ; further, the
bladder, the prostate gland, and the epididymis may be attacked.
Bilateral epididymitis has often serious consequences as regards
the procreative capacity. In about 50 % of the cases incapacity
for fertilization (impotentia generandi) has resulted.

If the gonorrhoea becomes chronic, thickenings occur in isolated
portions of the urethral mucous membrane ; the urine remains
turbid for a long time ; the discharge, it is true, becomes scantier,
but shows itself with the most annoying persistency every morn-
ing as soon as the patient leaves his bed, in the form of the so-
called " bon jour " drops in the meatus ; there are also troubles
connected with the prostate (painful sensations, especially during
defsecation), and symptoms of stricture of the urethra may occur.
Very often, also, relative impotence and severe sexual neuras-
thenia are observed, as consequences of chronic gonorrhoea.
Worst of all is the long duration of the infectivity. There is
always the danger that somewhere or other some gonococci may
remain hidden, and, given an opportunity, may start the process
all over again, or may transmit the infection to another person.
Zweifel reports a case in which a man actually infected a woman
thirteen years after he had first acquired gonorrhoea !

367

The infection of a woman with gonorrhoea, as we know to-day,
is a disaster. It is the immortal service of the German- American
physician Noeggerath that, in the year 1872, he proved that the
majority of the stubborn " diseases of women " were nothing
more than the consequences of gonorrhceal infection. Gonorrhoea
selects by preference the internal reproductive organs of woman ;
upon the extensive mucous membranes of these organs the gono-
cocci find the most favourable conditions for their persistent life ;
they find a thousand out-of-the-way corners and hiding-places,
where they can elude the therapeutic activity of the physician.

" They grow luxuriantly, like a weed which it has not been possible
to uproot, over the entire surface of the genital mucous membrane,
attacking with the same vigour the mucous membrane of the uterus
and that of the Fallopian tubes. In women, as in men, they induce
ulceration, they cause adhesions, and they give rise to sterility.
But in the case of women, something further must be added — that,
namely, this disease has upon them a miserably depressing effect, and
that, in contradistinction from men, they are likely to suffer for many
years from intense pains. Whenever they execute certain bodily
movements, it may be during ten years in succession, they experience
pains, often horribly severe, and in most cases they are condemned to a
life of deprivation and misery — not usually for any fault of their own,
since most women are infected by their husbands " (Zweifel).

Gonorrhoea" in women, attacking successively the vagina, the
uterus, the Fallopian tubes, the ovaries, and the peritoneum, is
a true martyrdom, a hell upon earth. Sick in body and in mind,
these unhappy women drag out a miserable existence ; and to
them so often the last consolation, that of motherhood, is denied,
for gonorrhoea is the most frequent cause of sterility in woman.

Patients infected with gonorrhoea further run the danger of
blindness, by transference of the gonorrhoeal virus to the eye.
This is one of the most distressing of the possible results of the
disease. New-born children whose mothers are infected with
gonorrhoea are during birth exposed to the same danger of eye
infection, as they pass down the genital passage. In earlier
days a very large proportion of the blind were persons who had
lost their sight in this way very shortly after birth. Since Cr6d6
advocated the admirable method of introducing nitrate of silver
solution into the conjunctival sacs of new-born children, gonor-
rhoeal inflammation of the eye has become one of the greatest
rarities.

368

APPENDIX
VENEREAL DISEASES IN THE HOMOSEXUAL

It is an old belief, shared by the homosexual themselves, that
venereal infections are extremely rare among them. If male
homosexual persons had sexual intercourse only with one another,
this assumption would be in some degree plausible. For the
principal focus of venereal infection is feminine prostitution, by
which venereal diseases are transmitted to heterosexual men.
But since these homosexual men often undertake sexual acts with
heterosexual men — apart from occasional sexual intercourse with
women — a priori there is a possibility of infection in their case,
and such infection is, in fact, observed. Above all, many male
prostitutes also indulge in intercourse with women, and thus
diffuse venereal troubles among homosexual men.

It is obvious that syphilis can be diffused among the homo-
sexual as easily as among the heterosexual, for syphilis is trans-
mitted by many varieties of contact — by kisses, other caresses, etc.
But how is it as regards gonorrhoea ?

In the case of heterosexual men and women gonorrhoea is almost
exclusively transmitted by the sexual act, by the introduction of
the male penis into the female vagina. The analogous act between
men — that is to say, paederasty, immissio penis in anum — is
unquestionably far rarer than the ordinary sexual act between
men and women ; it is commonly replaced by mutual onanism,
by kisses and other caresses, and quite frequently by coitus in os.
This last is much commoner than genuine paedication. Of gonor-
rhoea of the rectum produced by paedication when the active man
is suffering from gonorrhoea, we very rarely hear. But is there,
in the case of homosexual men, any possibility of gonorrhoeal
infection due to coitus in os ?

There can be no doubt that typical gonorrhoea of the mouth
occurs. The observations of Kuttler, Atkinson, Rosinski, Dohrn,
and Kast, have proved it.1 Horand and Cazenave have even
observed gonorrhoeal infection of the urethra as a result of oral
coitus !2 A homosexual patient told me that some years^before,
after coitus in os with a man, he had for several weeks had a dis-
charge from the urethra, which spontaneously ceased, and there-
fore cannot have been genuine gonorrhoea, but only urethritis

1 Cf. M. von Zcissl, " Diagnosis and Treatment of Venereal Diseases," third
edition, pp. 171, 172 (Berlin and Vienna, 1905).
• Op cit., p. 172.

369

resulting from infection by contagious angina. In the case in
question, the urethral catarrh was certainly due to the coiius in
os, since any other sources of infection could be excluded.

On the other hand, in a second case an apparently gonorrhoeal
infection of the oral cavity was transmitted from the urethra.

A homosexual man, forty-five years of age, one day allowed a
heterosexual man to perform coitus in os on him. Some days after-
wards he experienced difficulty in swallowing, was feverish, and saw in
the looking-glass that the uvula was swollen. A specialist for throat
troubles diagnosed merely a catarrhal infection. The illness became
worse, and a second throat specialist detected the presence of a purulent
angina of both tonsils, ordered painting with argentamin, also vapour
baths, and an astringent gargle, whereupon the affection gradually sub-
sided. Six weeks later the patient had swelling and pain in the joints
of the right knee and foot ; under cold compresses these swellings sub-
sided after a fortnight. Of the whole trouble nothing now remains.

This description, on the part of a patient who is thoroughly
trustworthy, aroused strong suspicion of a gonorrhoeal angina,
with a consecutive gonorrhceal arthritis. Unfortunately, the
purulent discharge from the tonsils was not examined for gono-
cocci by either of the physicians in attendance. The case remains,
anyhow, very remarkable.

In the case of homosexual women, it is obvious that syphilis,
and also gonorrhoea, can be transmitted, the latter by mutual
friction of the genital organs. I do not know what actually
occurs in practice.

CHAPTER XV

PROPHYLAXIS, TREATMENT, AND SUPPRESSION (BEKAMPFUNG)
OF VENEREAL DISEASES

" The friend of humanity may with some confidence anticipate a
gradual diminution in the prevalence of venereal diseases, and may
hope for their complete extinction in a not too distant future. All
that is requisite for the attainment of this end is that those engaged
in the study and practice of general hygiene, and those concerned in
the safeguarding of public morality, should not weary in their efforts ;
and that scientific research should pursue its aims firmly and clearly,
uninfluenced by the tyranny of custom, and independent of pre-
judice"—K. F. MARX.

871 24—2

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XV

The suppression of venereal diseases — Organization of the campaign against
them — International Conference in Brussels — Foundation of the Gorman
Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases — Three methods of carrying
on the campaign against venereal diseases.

Personal Prophylaxis against Venereal Diseases : R61e of cleanliness — The
preputial secretion and balanitis — Importance of circumcision — Technique
of the cleansing of the genital organs before and after sexual intercourse —
Examination for disease — Dangers of repeated coitus — Special protective
measures — The condom — Varieties and technique of its use — The instilla-
tion of solutions of silver salts — Their relative value — The inunction of fat
— MetchnikofFs ointment for the prevention of syphilis — Antiseptic wash-
ings— The public advertisement of protective measures — Legal protection
against venereal infection — Opinions of legal authorities on this subject
(von Liszt, von Bar, Schmolder).

The Suppression of Venereal Diseases by Medical Treatment : Favourable
conditions as regards syphilis — Mitigation of the syphilitic virus — Mercury
and its importance — A " triumph of medicine " — Methods of employing
mercury in the treatment of syphilis — Mode of action of the mercury cure —
Means for the after-treatment of syphilis — Curability of syphilis — Treat-
ment of gonorrhoea — Necessity for microscopical examination and the
scientific methods to be employed — The different modes of treatment —
The determination of the cure of gonorrhoea — Facilitation of the treatment
of venereal diseases for the great mass of the public — " Krankenkassen M|
and venereal diseases.

State Action and Public Action in the Campaign against Venereal Diseases :
Statistics of venereal troubles — Blaschko's researches — Frequency of
venereal diseases in Denmark — Among various classes in Germany —
Prussian statistics of April 30, 1900 — Conclusions deducible from these
statistics — The different sources of infection — Prostitution the principal
source of infection — Danger of youthful prostitutes — Measures to be taken
by the State against the diffusion of diseases by prostitution — Regulation —
Criticism of this measure — Its illegality — Its uselessness and its dangers —
Favourable results of the withdrawal of " moral control " — Prostitution
and crime — Soutenage — Criticism of Lombroso's theory of the relations
between prostitution and criminality — The brothel question — Diminution
in the number of brothels — Dangers of brothels — Brothel streets and the
limitation of prostitution to definite quarters — Proposals for the examination
of the male clientele — Criticism of these proposals — The true way towards
the suppression of prostitution.

1 See note to p. 390.

872

CHAPTER XV

THE motto which I have placed at the head of this chapter on
the campaign against venereal diseases and on the attempt to
suppress them is taken from an interesting academic essay by
the former professor of medicine at Gottingen, K. F. H. Marx,
who is well known to have been the physician of Heinrich Heine
during the latter's student life in Gottingen. The title of this
essay is " The Diminution of Diseases in Consequence of Advanc-
ing Civilization," p. 35 (Gottingen, 1844).

The hopeful view which is here expressed by the university
professor regarding the ultimate eradication of venereal diseases
was shared at that time by the eminently practical physician
Parent-Duchatelet. He appeals, unfortunately, not to medical
men and students of social hygiene, but to the police :

" Pursue without cessation the diseases which are diffused by means
of prostitutes ; take it as your goal to cause them to disappear from the
list of human troubles ; do not doubt that your labours will ultimately
be crowned with success, although the task may be one that will occupy
several generations." 1

Two complete generations had, however, to pass away before
the campaign against venereal diseases and the attempt to suppress
them became a burning question of the time, became a question
of public health and social hygiene, like those which concern the
fight with tuberculosis, with infant mortality, and with alco-
holism. Once again I must repeat that the organized systematic
campaign against venereal diseases is still in its very earliest
stages. Strictly speaking, it dates only from seven years ago,
when the first international congress for the prophylaxis of syphilis
and other venereal diseases was held in Brussels, from September 4
to 8, 1899. Almost all the civilized countries, European and
other, took part in this congress, and not only physicians and
dermatologists, but also lawyers, clergymen, attaches of embassies,
authors, and philanthropists, explained their views, and thereby
showed that the question of the suppression of venereal diseases
was one of equal interest to all classes of society, and one which
must exercise the activity of the community at large. At the

1 Parent-Duchatelet, " The Moral Corruption of the Female Sex in Paris,"
vol. ii., p. 234 (Leipzig, 1837). Similarly, Julius Donarth remarks (" The
Beginnings of the Human Spirit," p. 19 ; Stuttgart, 1808) : " Syphilis and alco-
holism can by social arrangement and carefully adapted measures he suppressed
just as much as plague and cholera."

878

374

conclusion of this first international conference in 1899, there
was founded the International Society for the Sanitary and
Moral Prophylaxis of Syphilis and other Venereal Diseases,
which has its seat in Brussels, and meets at periodical intervals
for international conferences.

Especially in Germany has this organization aroused active
interest, and it was soon decided to found a national German
Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, whose first
meeting was held on October 19, 1903, in the hall of the Berlin
Rathaus. The meeting was opened by a speech from Albert
Neisser, after which Alfred Blaschko spoke on " The Diffusion of
Venereal Diseases," Edmund Lesser on " The Dangers of Venereal
Diseases," Martin Kirchner on " The Social Importance of
Venereal Diseases," and Albert Neisser on " The Aims of the
German Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases." The
committee of the Society consists of Messrs. A. Neisser, president ;
E. Lesser, vice-president and treasurer ; and A. Blaschko, general
secretary. The organ of the Society is issued six times yearly,
under the title, Reports of the German Society for the Suppression
of Venereal Diseases, and has been published for the last four
years ; it is supplied gratis to members ; to non-members the
yearly subscription is only three marks. In the spring of the
year 1903 there was founded a larger Journal for the Suppression
of Venereal Diseases, of which five volumes have hitherto ap-
peared ; this serves for the publication of more comprehensive
critical studies.

Still in the same year, 1902, there were formed the first branches
and local groups of the German Society for the Suppression of
Venereal Diseases in Hanover, Wiesbaden, Breslau, and Berlin.
Subsequently other branches were formed in Mannheim, Munich,
Cologne, Beuthen, Danzig, Stettin, Posen, Dortmund, Elberfeld,
Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Gorlitz, Hamburg, Konigsberg, Niirnberg,
Stuttgart, and Heidelberg.

During the last four years, by means of lectures, the circulation
of pamphlets and leaflets, and by public discussions, information
regarding the dangers of venereal diseases has been diffused among
the widest circles of the population. Of the other activities and
measures of the Society we shall have to speak later.

We pass on to the consideration of the principal elements of
the modern campaign against venereal diseases. In view of the
limits of this work our discussion of this question must necessarily
be a brief one. The eradication of venereal diseases must be
effected in" a threefold manner :

375

1. By measures of personal prophylaxis against infection.

2. By the proper medical treatment of all cases of venereal
disease.

3. By measures belonging to the province of public hygiene, to
that of state action, and to that of education.

The personal prophylaxis of venereal diseases1 has made great
progress with the increasing scientific knowledge of the causes
and modes of infection of these diseases. We know now precisely
where and how we can lay down personal rules which give us at
least a fairly secure guarantee that in an individual case venereal
infection will not occur. Various points of view must then be
taken into consideration, the combined influence of which will
alone promise a successful result. No one single measure will
suffice to gain this end.

Above all, in this department of the prophylaxis of venereal
diseases, experienced physicians, alike of earlier and more recent
times, will unanimously agree in this proposition, that the prin-
cipal preliminary means for the avoidance of venereal infection,
means which it is absolutely essential to employ in every instance,
consist of perfect cleanliness on both sides. He who insists on
the most scrupulous cleanliness of body, clothing, and under-
clothing, will be sure to get rid immediately of any uncleanliness
acquired in sexual intercourse. Cleanliness and health are often
(not always) identical. In any case, the greatest mistrust should
be felt as regards a person evidently unclean, with a neglected
exterior, for this is always a sign that such a person is not par-
ticular as regards choice in matters of sexual intercourse. " Ger-
many, get into your bath !" Heinrich Laube once exclaimed. This
would be a good device to adopt in the campaign against venereal
diseases. Every uncleanliness is an irritant ; it impairs the intact-
ness of the skin ; and especially is this true of any uncleanliness
of the genital organs, and above all of the male genital organs,

1 The literature of this subject is very extensive. In addition to a compre-
hensive work dealing with the older literature, by J. K. Proksch, " The Prevention
of Venereal Diseases " (Vienna, 1872), I must mention the following : E. Lang,
" The Prevention of Venereal Diseases " (Vienna, 1894) ; M. Joseph, " Prophy-
laxis of Cutaneous and Venereal Diseases" (Munich, 1900); Neuberger, "The
Prophylaxis of Venereal Diseases," pp. 36-37 (Munich and Berlin, 1904) ; Felix
Block, " How shall We protect Ourselves against Venereal Diseases and their
Evil Consequences ?" second edition (Leipzig, 1905) ; E. Boureau, " Conseils
Pratiques a la Jeunosse pour Eviter les Avaries " (Paris, 1905) ; Suarez do
Mendoza, " Conseils de Prophylaxio Sanitairo ot Morale " (Paris, 1906) ; same
author, " ABC a PUaage des Meres de Famille pour la D6fenso de Lours Foyers
centre los Grands Fleaux du XXoSieclo: Tuborculoso, Avarioso [=Syphilis],
Neiaseroso [ = Gonorrhoea], Alcoolismo, Mortalit6 Infantile" (Paris, 1905); same
author, " Avarioso dos Innocents " (Paris, 1905).

376

where, under the foreskin, the " smegma " (the sebaceous secre-
tion of the preputial glands) often undergoes decomposition, and
gives rise to an inflammation, the so-called balanitis, which
greatly favours the probability of infection.1

If the foreskin has been removed by circumcision, this secretion
entirely ceases, and the mucous membrane covering the glans
penis is transformed into a thick skin, which is much less readily
affected by the causes of infection. There is no doubt that cir-
cumcision is to a certain extent a protective measure against
syphilitic infection, whilst it does not in any way protect against
gonorrhoea. Neustatter has recently collected some very remark-
able facts relating to this question.2

Breitenstein has contrasted 15,000 indigenous circumcised
soldiers with 18,000 uncircumcised European soldiers of the army
of the Dutch Indies, living under similar local and hygienic con-
ditions. Thus, in the year 1895 there were infected with venereal
diseases, of the circumcised 16 %, of the uncircumcised 41 %.
As regards infections with syphilis, of the circumcised 0-8 % were
infected ; of the uncircumcised, on the other hand, 4-1 % — that
is, five times as many. Similar observations were made by the
celebrated English syphilologist Jonathan Hutchinson, one of
the most ardent advocates of the general introduction of circum-
cision as a protective measure against venereal, and above all
against syphilitic, infection. Moreover, with regard to the
observations made in Java, the difference did not depend upon
race, because similar differences have been observed as regards
comparative immunity from infection in respect of circumcised
Christians, circumcised on account of phimosis and other troubles,
whose number is by no means insignificant.

Since, however, it is unlikely that circumcision will come into
general use in Europe as a prophylactic measure, it only remains
to recommend that, as a fundamental procedure, the greatest
possible care should be employed in the daily and delicate cleans-
ing of the preputial sac. By this means inflammation and lacera-
tion of these parts will be most effectually prevented, and even
without circumcision a certain resisting power will be induced.
For washing this region, lukewarm water which has been boiled
and cooled may best be employed ; then dry the part carefully,

1 Cf. also the valuable remarks of Robert Hcssen, " Cleanliness or Morality ?"
published in Die Zukunft, June 9, 1906, pp. 367-377 (also separately printed in
Munich, 1906).

2 Otto Neustatter, " The Public Recommendation of Protective Measures,"
published in The Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, vol. v., No. 3,
pp. 225-227 (Leipzig, 1905).

377

so as not to rub off the skin. In the case of women, frequent
washings of the external genital organs, and vaginal douches,
are also of great importance in regard to the prevention of venereal
infection. Before and after the sexual act, these measures are of
especial value, because often by simple mechanical means, infec-
tive material already deposited may be carried away. The same
purpose is subserved by urination, a procedure certainly adapted
for washing out gonorrhceal pus which has found its way into the
urethra, before the gonococci have had time to establish them-
selves in the mucous membrane. I know a number of patients
who use no other means of protection in sexual intercourse beyond
the observation of extreme cleanliness, by washing and douching,
in both sexes, before and after sexual intercourse, and by passing
water immediately after intercourse, and thus have remained
free from infection ; but who promptly became infected as soon
as they discontinued these simple measures.

For this reason, these measures, where possible with the assist-
ance of soap, which certainly exercises some antiseptic influence,
cannot be too warmly recommended, although they naturally
do not offer any absolute security. They have, however, the
advantage that, in the first place, they can always be employed,
even when the true protective measures of which we speak below
are not available, and that, in the second place, they can always
be used in addition to these. It sounds, perhaps, somewhat
absurd, and yet it is true, to say that washing and urination are
the first and most important protective measures against sexual
infection.

The second point, which must also be considered important in
this connexion, is the exercise of self-command before and during
the sexual act, as far as this is possible in view of the nature of
sexual excitement, which always lessens the personal responsi-
bility, and overcome^ reason and understanding. Yet no one
should have sexual intercourse when in a state of alcoholic in-
toxication, in which self-control is completely lost ; as we have
shown in an earlier passage (pp. 292-296), there are several reasons
why intercourse is apt to be disastrous to a drunken man. More-
over, love prefers the dark, but precaution prefers the sunlight.
Before having intercourse with a woman previously unknown to
him, a man should inspect her in clear daylight, with a view to
her state of health. Suspicious spots on the skin, especially on
the forehead and on the trunk ; white areas on the lips, the
tongue, the throat, and the back of the neck ; visible glandular
swellings ; a marked discharge from the genital organs ; ulcerated

378

areas in this region, etc., are of an extremely suspicious nature,
and should cause abstinence from intercourse. French physicians
go so far as to recommend examination of the inguinal and
cervical glands under the harmless form of pretended caresses ;
but persons without medical education would seldom be suffi-
ciently skilled to be able to detect glandular swellings unless
these were unusually well developed. Especially enlargement
of the cervical glands — this " pulse of syphilis," as Alfred Fournier
terms it — is a comparatively certain indication of syphilis.

It is dangerous also in many cases to repeat the sexual act several
times in brief succession, because old experience has taught us
that infective material may first make its appearance at the
second or third act of coitus, and thus infect then only. This
affords an explanation also of a fact often observed — that in
intercourse with an infected woman on the part of two healthy
men, with but a brief interval between the acts, the one who had
intercourse first often remains healthy, whilst the second is
infected.

I pass on to consider the special protective measures which
have long been recommended for the prophylaxis of venereal
infection.

1. The Condom. — This is the oldest and even to-day beyond
question the best and most trustworthy artificial protective
measure. Employed long ago in the days of antiquity, it was
in the sixteenth century once more recommended by the Italian
physician Fallopius, and therefore is not the invention of a physician
" Conton," after whom it is said to have been named (perhaps
the name is connected with that of the French town " Condom ").
Hans Ferdy (A. Meyerhof) suggests that the word is derived
from '" condus "— that is, one who preserves or protects — and
that the article should properly be called " condus " instead of
" condom." l

The condom is a protective membrane, with which the penis
is covered before intercourse. We distinguish as " rubber con-
doms " those made of rubber, gutta-percha, or caoutchouc ; and
as " crecal condoms " those made out of the caecal mucous mem-
brane of the goat or sheep (incorrectly termed also " isinglass
condoms "). The csecal condom is thinner and more delicate,
and blunts sensation less, than the rubber condom. The rubber
condom, however, is more trustworthy, in respect of durability
and its slighter liability to laceration, if the little precaution is not

1 H. Ferdy, " The History of the Oecal Condom," published in The Journal
for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases," 1905, vol. iii., No. 4, pp. 144-147.

379

neglected to keep it in a cool place, and to protect it from the
long-continued influence of warmth. The habit of carrying about
a rubber condom in the pocket for a long time favours its rapidly
becoming untrustworthy and easily torn. Csecal condoms, on
the other hand, very readily become fragile and pervious, although
the contrary is the common opinion, and they are preferred to
rubber condoms in the belief that the dearer article must be the
better. Advertisement is exceedingly active in this direction,
and every kind of speciality is widely recommended. In Eng-
land condoms are sometimes sold bearing the portrait of some
celebrated person !

The condom is a "general protective measure" — that is, it
protects against both gonorrhoea and syphilis, in so far as the
latter disease, as is usually the case, is transmitted from the
genital organs. All the leading physicians engaged more espe-
cially in the treatment of venereal diseases are agreed that the
condom, when of good quality, when properly applied, and when
removed with care (for in the removal material adhering to the
outer surface may very readily give rise to infection), constitutes
the very best and most certain of all the protective measures
hitherto advocated. It is true that it can be used by men only,
but when used by the man it simultaneously protects the woman
from gonorrhoeal infection, and not rarely also from syphilitic
infection.

2. The Instillation of Solutions of Silver Salts.1 — These serve
exclusively for the prophylaxis of gonorrhoea, and are not, there-
fore, general protective measures. We owe their introduction to
Blokusewski, who recommended the use of a two % solution of
nitrate of silver. More recently, the albuminates of silver have
been preferred, such as protargol in a 10 to 20 % solution, albargin
in a 4 to 10 % solution, or a solution of 20 % protargol-gelatine.
These solutions can be carried about in small drop-bottles — for
example, as the " Sanitas " (silver nitrate) of Blokusewski, the
" Viro " or the " Phallokos " apparatus (these are trade names
for proprietary preparations — solutions of protargol). All solu-
tions of silver salts must be kept in the dark, and after the lapse
of any considerable time, some freshly prepared solution must be
introduced, for time and the influence of light destroy their
efficacy. Immediately after intercourse and urination, one or two

1 Cf. in this connexion the admirable essay, distinguished by a critical spirit,
of R. do Campagnollo, " The Value of the Modern Prophylaxis of Gonorrhoaa by
Moans of Instillations/' published in The Journal for the Suppression of Venereal
Diseases, 1004, vol. iii.. Nos. 1-4, pp. 1-31, 51-115, 148 (with a complete
bibliography).

380

drops of the solution are instilled into the urethra, and a drop or
two also allowed to run over the fraenum praeputii.1

The views regarding the value of these protective measures are
conflicting. Beyond question, they are less trustworthy than the
condom. Infection has been observed in spite of the use of
instillations. Above all, however, the continued use of these
methods gives rise to disagreeable irritative manifestations in the
urethra and may even cause catarrhal inflammation, and thus
artificially increase the liability to infection. Hence, these instil-
lations should be reserved for occasional use ; habitually, only the
condom should be employed.

3. Inunction. — Whereas the instillation of chemical solutions
serves to protect against gonorrhoea only, the practice recom-
mended for a much longer time of anointing the penis with a
simple fatty material, or with an antiseptic ointment, before or
after sexual intercourse, protects against syphilis only. It is
obvious that a layer of fatty material covering the penis exercises
the purely mechanical function of preventing the passage of
infective matters to the skin. It is, however, equally obvious
that by the to-and-fro friction during sexual intercourse, espe-
cially when this occupies a considerable time, this fatty covering
will be rubbed away, so that the virus can find a means of entrance.
The protection is thus extremely relative. Still, such authors as
Neisser, Max Joseph, Loeb, and Campagnolle, report favourable
experiences regarding the prevention of syphilis by the inunction
of the penis, for which purpose simple vaseline, or Schleich's wax-
soap cream, which is sold with the " Viro " apparatus, may be
employed. In any case, this method is better than nothing at
all. He who has no other protective measure available should
remember that in every house there is always some fat or oint-
ment obtainable which can be used for this purpose.

In order, whilst using this method, to protect simultaneously
against gonorrhoea, it has been recommended that antiseptic oint-
ment should be inserted into the urethra before intercourse, but
this is a very unsatisfactory and untrustworthy method.

Well worth attention is the inunction recently recommended
by Metchnikoff2 of a specific mercurial ointment, after intercourse,

1 In place of these solutions, Cronquist (" Contributions to the Personal
Prophylaxis against Gonorrhoea," published in Medizinische Klinik, No. 10, 1906)
recommends the use of little rods or bougies containing 2 per cent, of albargin.
which melt from the body-heat when introduced into the urethra (these are sold
under the trade name of " antigon-rods ") ; they are used, like the solutions,
immediately after coitus. The advantage they possess is their greater durability.

2 The same idea had already been advanced in Germany by Eduard Richter
and 8. Behrmann.

381

for the destruction of any syphilitic virus which may have been
deposited.1 He used for this purpose, not the strongly irritant
blue ointment, but the white precipitate ointment, an ointment
of the salicyl-arseniate of mercury (enesol), and, above all, a
30 % calomel ointment. After any suspicious coitus, this ointment
should be rubbed for four or five minutes into the area of possible
infection ; this should be done without delay ; but even after the
lapse of eighteen to twenty-four hours an effect has been traced.
The experiments on apes inoculated with syphilis gave positive
results ; also in the case of a student of medicine who voluntarily
offered himself for inoculation with the syphilitic virus, the in-
unction of calomel ointment appears to have prevented the out-
break of the disease.

In any case, these new methods for the prophylaxis of syphilis
demand the most careful attention. Further experience is needed
to determine whether they deserve general application.

4. Antiseptic Washes. — Washing of the penis and douching of the
vagina with antiseptic lotions (sublimate, lysol, permanganate of
potassium) after intercourse are among the most uncertain of
protective measures, because the sublimate solution, or whatever
may be used, does not find its way into any possible lacerations ;
and because, in consequence of the profuse secretion of the
sebaceous glands of the male and female genital organs, these
organs are covered with a layer of fatty material, which prevents
the contact of watery fluids, but does not in the same degree
prevent the entrance of the syphilitic poison. Antiseptic washes
after the sexual act have as little value as the same used before
the sexual act.

The knowledge of these protective measures — above all, of those
named under the first, second, and third headings — ought to be
very much more general than it is. Unfortunately, however, in
public life such measures are still viewed largely from the stand-
point of the moralist as " indecent " or " improper "; and the
criminal law classifies them thus, so that their public recommenda-
tion and diffusion is still exposed to great hindrances.

At the second congress of the Society for the Suppression of
Venereal Diseases, held in Munich in March, 1905, the question
of the public recommendation of protective measures was opened
to discussion, and was dealt with in two admirable addresses by

1 E. Metchnikoff, " The Prophylaxis of Syphilis," published in Medizinische
Klinik, 1906, No. 16, pp. 372, 373. Cf. also Paul Maisonneuvo. " Experimenta-
tion sur la Prophylaxie de la Syphilis " (Paris, 1900) ; and A. Neisser. " Experi-
mental Research regarding Syphilis," pp. 81-83 (Berlin, 1906).

382

0. Neustatter1 and Georg Bernhard.2 Bernhard proposed that
to Section 184, paragraph 3, of the Criminal Code, which declares
it to be a punishable offence to " expose for sale articles intended
for an indecent use, or to recommend or sell such articles to
the public," should be added a legal definition in the following
sense : articles which are used either to prevent venereal diseases
or to prevent conception are not regarded as " intended for an
indecent use "; and Neustatter pleaded for an alteration of the
existing state of the law, in the sense that the public recommenda-
tion of means for the prevention and cure of venereal diseases
should be legally permissible, being restricted merely by certain
regulations against quackery, extortion, and other misuse. The
regulation of the recommendation could best be associated with
the necessary control of the recommendation of therapeutic and
preventive measures in general. A supreme sanitary authority
should be constituted, part of whose duties should be to examine
the form and contents of recommendations of this character.

Another juristic relationship of the prophylaxis of venereal
diseases concerns legal protection against venereal infection.
Franz von Liszt,3 von Bar,4 and Schmolder,5 opened the discus-
sion on the biological and criminal aspects of the prophylaxis of
venereal diseases at the first congress of the Society for the Sup-
pression of Venereal Diseases, held at Frankfurt-on-the-Main in
the year 1903.

Hitherto the heedless or deliberate transmission of venereal
disease was punishable only as personal injury, since in the
Criminal Code there was no paragraph directly relating to this
matter. Only in the Criminal Code of Oldenburg of 1884 was
such punishment expressly provided for (Article 387), and by
this provision the intercourse of an infected person with a healthy
one was punishable, without regard to the subsequent infection.
In the legal regulations of other countries than Germany, we find
several instances in which the witting transmission of venereal
infection by means of sexual intercourse is punishable. In Ger-

1 O. Neustatter, " The Public Recommendation of Protective Measures,"
published in The Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1906, vol. iv.,
pp. 203-262.

2 G. Bernhard, " The Criminal Law and Protective Measures against Veneieal
Diseases," ibid., pp. 253-273.

3 F. von Liszt, " Legal Protection against Dangers to Health from Venereal
Diseases," published in The Journal for the Svppression of Venereal Diseases,
1903, vol. i., pp. 1-25.

4 Von Bar, " The Need for a Special Law against Blameworthy Venereal
Infection," ibid., pp. 64-72.

6 R. Schmolder, " Criminal and Civil Juridicial Significance of Venereal
Diseases," ibid., pp. 73-106.

383

many a measure proposing this was rejected by the Reichstag
in 1900. Von Liszt advocated the introduction of the following
paragraph into the Criminal Code :

" One who, being aware that he is suffering from a contagious
venereal disorder, performs coitus, or in any other way exposes another
human being to the danger of infection, shall be punished with
imprisonment for a term of two to three years, and in addition shall be
deprived of civil rights."

Schmolder enlarged this clause by an amendment relating to
the punishment of prostitutes disseminating venereal diseases.

On the other hand, von Bar drew attention to the inconveniences
and dangers which a punishment of this nature would involve,
especially to the dangers of blackmail, and to the duty it would
impose on physicians of breaking their obligations of professional
secrecy. Moreover, a proof of the knowledge of venereal infec-
tion is difficult to obtain ; the proof that infection is derived from
a definite person is also far from easy. Von Bar opposed the addi-
tion of such a clause on this and other grounds. In the discussion
upon the motion, this view was shared by C. Frankel, Ries,
Oppenheimer, and others ; Neisser was in favour of a punishment
of this kind, because then, at any rate, there would be a public
recognition of the fact that such an action was open to severe
punishment, and was a disgraceful one ; thus, by the mere exist-
ence of the paragraph an educative influence would be exerted.

In any case, such a punishment would be a two-edged weapon,
and as far as present necessity goes, we have sufficient powers in
the application to such offences of the paragraphs of the Criminal
Code relating to bodily injury.

The second great means for the limitation and entire suppres-
sion of venereal diseases is to deal with them by medical treat-
ment, to cure as speedily as possible persons suffering from syphilis
of gonorrhoea, and thus to prevent these persons from becoming
sources of fresh infection. Systematic, methodical treatment on
a large scale — that is the goal at which we have to aim. To the
poor man or woman suffering from venereal infection the same
advantages should be opened as to the wealthy voluptuary. The
provision of means of treatment of venereal diseases cannot be
too free. In public hospitals, private clinics, ambulatoria, and
sanatoria, in convalescent homes, and polyclinics for prostitutes,
everywhere must be provided means for an intelligent treatment
of venereal diseases. Just as tuberculosis is now attacked syste-
matically and vigorously, so must it be with venereal diseases.

384

Since syphilis constitutes only about 25 % — only one-fourth
part, that is to say — of venereal diseases in general, since also
during the last four centuries the disease has shown a natural
tendency to decline in virulence, since a mitigation in the in-
tensity of the virus is clearly recognizable, it is in the case of this
disease that the hope of radical success is especially great.

Our forefathers carried out for us a great part of the campaign
against syphilis. The comparatively mild course of syphilis in
the majority of uncomplicated cases leads us to infer that there
has been a relative immunization against syphilitic poison.

Albert Reibmayr remarks that " during the last 400 years, every
human being now living in Europe has had about 4,000 ancestors ;
of these, however disagreeable the fact may seem, a considerable
number must have had to contend with syphilis." '

But this undoubted fact, that all of us have been to a certain
extent " syphilized,"2 plays its part to our advantage in the
campaign against syphilis — that campaign which our own time
has taken up with joyful hope of success.

Above all, let honour be paid to the ever youthful and fresh
master and Nestor of European research into the subject of
syphilis, Alfred Fournier, the evening of whose life is devoted
to the campaign against syphilis as a " social danger." To
the great scientific works of his life he has now added the
small, but not less valuable, explanatory writings, which are
being sold at a low price all over France, and in part also
have already been translated into German and English.3 Their
aim is to get the people on our side in the campaign against
syphilis.

When, in April, 1906, 1 paid the master a visit, he gave me the

1 Albert Reibmayr, " The Immunization of Families by Inheritable Diseases
(Tuberculosis, Lues, Mental Disorders)," p. 17 (Leipzig and Vienna, 1899).

2 This conception of " partial syphilization " of our race appears somewhat
vague. If we take care to think clearly, and in terms of exact biological know-
ledge, we shall see that — apart from a spontaneous loss of intensity on the part
of the syphilitic virus (of which we have no precise knowledge whatever) — the
only known way of accounting for syphilis having become milder is by natural
selection, by the death of those who suffered most severely from the disease.
Now, in 400 years, ten or twelve human generations, there has hardly been time
for the development of immunity to a disease to which at most a small fraction
only of the population has ever been exposed. It appears to me, however,
that we may reasonably doubt the alleged decline in the severity of syphilis. It
must be remembered that the entire absence of mercurial treatment at first, and
the misuse of that specific for many years after its value had been proved, will
account for much in respect of the apparent greater virulence of medieval as com-
pared with modern syphilis. (See also p. 356, and footnote to that page referring
to the writings of Archdall Reid). — TRANSLATOR.

3 Alfred Fournier, "The Treatment and Prophylaxis of Syphilis." One vol.
Rebman, London.

385

last of these popular campaign writings. Its title was in the
form of a question :

" En Guerit-on ?" (" Is it Curable ?").

And the answer given on p. 4 runs : " Yes, it is curable, for of all
diseases syphilis is the one which can best, most easily, and most
certainly be cured." And why ? Because we have a wonderful
specific against this disease, which, when given at the proper
time and in the proper manner, works a miracle. This remedy is

Mercury.

I put this name clearly and visibly before the eyes of the
reader, a name which for every physician to whose lot it falls to
treat cases of syphilis has a truly miraculous sound, a name
against which the unconscientious ignoramuses, the evil-disposed
enemies of the human race have spoken their anathema, one
which a great thinker and honourable man like Schopenhauer
regarded as a " triumph of medicine," a fact which he experi-
enced personally in his own body. All honourable, critical, and
scientific physicians agree in this opinion. In my work on " The
Origin of Syphilis," vol. i., p. 127, I have expressed the matter in
the following words :

" Mercury is and remains — notwithstanding the ignorant and ill-
considered hostility of quacks and their kindred — the divine means for
the treatment of syphilis ; mercury is to syphilis what water is to fire,
in the hands of that physician who knows how to use the drug rightly,
how to apply it at the right time and in the right form, who watches
closely the course of the disease in his patient, and who supports the
mercury cure (always of primary importance) by other therapeutic
measures as indicated."

Only the physician, the scientifically trained medical man, can
cure syphilis ; the quack certainly cannot ; in his hands mercury
is truly enough a dangerous " poison." But he has no right to
say, and he speaks deliberate untruths when he says, that we
physicians " poison " the " unfortunate " syphilitics with mer-
cury. To such preposterous accusations we can give a brief and
incisive answer.

Therefore, during my lecturing journey, undertaken recently1
under the auspices of the German Society for the Suppression of

1 Cf. Iwan Bloch, " Personal Reminiscences of my Lecturing Journey this
Year," published in Medvziniacht Klinik, 1906, No. 10.

386

Venereal Diseases, I prepared the following brief account of the
therapeutic employment of mercury in syphilis, which in my
opinion suffices to throw the proper light upon the value and
importance of the mercurial treatment of the disease ; it is a
sufficient answer to the " Nature-Healers," who are opposed to
the use of this " poison ":

1. In innumerable instances it has been observed by the most
experienced and scientific physicians, that cases of syphilis treated
without mercury run a very severe course, accompanied by the
most dangerous symptoms, such as extensive destructive lesions
of the skin, lesions of the internal organs, brain syphilis, eating
away of the bones, loss of the nose, etc.

2. In cases which previously have been treated without mercury,
the administration of the latter drug immediately arrests the
destructive processes, and saves the patient from death, or from
very severe illness, and from physical disfigurement.

3. No less an authority than Virchow, in his celebrated treatise
" On the Nature of Constitutional Syphilitic Affections," pp. 7-14
(Berlin, 1859), has shown that the hypothesis of Hermann1 is
entirely devoid of foundation in fact.

4. I should feel conscientiously compelled to denounce myself
for the commission of grievous bodily harm if I ventured to-day,
after the accumulated experience of four centuries, to treat a case
of syphilis without mercury.

What use is it to continue to fight against the disbelief and
superstition which clings to mercury ? Why should we for ever
be occupied in contradicting the false accusations brought against
this drug ? For four centuries the divine mercury has withstood
all attacks, and will continue to withstand them, until a greatly
desired and even better measure is discovered — prophylactic
immunization against syphilitic infection.2

How mercury is to be given, whether in the form of the long-
prized " schmierkur " (cure by inunction), or by hypodermic injec-
tion, or by ordinary internal use, must be left in individual cases
to the decision of the medical man, for numerous considerations,
which can only be properly weighed by the physician, have to be
taken into account. A mercury cure is a serious matter, but
always also one which repays all the trouble that we take. In
"En Guerit-on ?" Fournier has most admirably described the

1 Hermann is a fanatical medical opponent of mercury. There are, in fact, such
oddities. They are very rare birds in the medical world.

2 Recently R. Kaufmann has collected in a small readable essay the scientific
views of the present day, " The Therapeutic Use of Mercury " (Leipzig, 1906).
I warmly recommend this book to all who are interested in the question.

387

wonderful results of a critically considered and carefully conducted
mercury cure. I do not, indeed, belong to the " doctors who
build for themselves a house of pure quicksilver," when they enter
the field against the " French " ( = syphilis), as the phrase runs in
Schiller's work " The Robbers." I hold by a reasonable, measured
use of mercury in the course of the treatment of syphilis, and I
advise a good " after-treatment " in addition to the treatment
with mercury.1 Mercury, when given in moderate but sufficient
doses, not only destroys the syphilitic virus, but also has a very
favourable influence on the general condition, and sometimes even
gives rise to an increase in the number of the red blood-corpuscles.
Thus, mercury is not only notapoison: it is a most valuable restora-
tive and vitalizing means. This is well illustrated by the following
case, which came under my own observation, and which I recom-
mend to the Nature-Healers, in the hope that it may lead them to
revise their views regarding the action of mercury :

The case was that of an official, thirty years of age, who had been
under my care several times before since the year 1898 for other
troubles (gonorrhoea, etc.), and who was always pale and with hollow
cheeks, in no way giving the impression of possessing a constitution
with strong powers of resistance. Late in the summer he was infected
with syphilis ; the attack proved a severe one, running a serious course,
complicated by an extremely painful suppurative inflammation of the
lymphatic vessels of the penis, and accompanied by fever, lassitude,
and a sense of exhaustion. An energetic inunction cure was immedi-
ately begun. Under this not only did the morbid symptoms rapidly
disappear, but there occurred a remarkable change in the general con-
dition, in the sense of an increase of strength, such as had not existed
before the illness. Notwithstanding slight stomatitis, the patient
during and after the cure felt stronger and more fit for work than he ever
had before, and even now this favourable state continues unaltered, as
is manifested above all by the increase in the body- weight, by the good
appearance, etc. The patient, who now, one and a half years after the
cure, has had no relapse, informed me repeatedly and spontaneously
that this delightful improvement in his health could only be attributed
to his syphilis (!) or to the mercury !

A single mercury cure will suffice, in some cases, to cure syphilis
for ever ! Regarding this, we have numerous trustworthy obser-
vations. In most cases, indeed, during the early years relapses
occur, and then we need to use the indispensable mercury cure once
more with care, and to employ all the other measures which make
up the above-mentioned " after-treatment," the supplementary
means being, above all, iodide of potassium, sulphur (in the long-

1 Cf. Iwan Bloch, " The After-Treatment of Syphilis," published in Medizin-
ische Klinik, 1905, No. 4, pp. 88-91.

25—2

388

celebrated sulphur-baths of Aix, Nenndorf, etc.) and arsenic (first
recommended by me); also the water cure, brine-baths, and iodide-
baths, and a visit to the seaside or to the mountains, and massage,
are good accessory means to the cure. Above all, however, the
state of nutrition of the patient1 must always be kept under con-
sideration, and assisted where necessary, for which purpose
preparations of iron, nutritive preparations like sanatogen, and
milk cures, are of value. Strict abstinence from alcohol is
always necessary in the treatment of syphilis. Alcohol has
a very unfavourable influence on the syphilitic process, and
is often the only cause of continually recurring relapses of this
disease.

The thorough treatment of syphilis is a matter of several years,
during which frhe patient must repeatedly present himself to the
physician for examination, and should any relapse occur, he must
be subjected to renewed treatment. Such thoroughness will
invariably be rewarded. Attention to detail will always bear fruit.
Syphilis is curable. It is purely fanciful to say that syphilis is
never cured, that it pursues its victims up to the end of life, that
it knows no pardon. That is not true. Treat your syphilitic
patients, treat them properly and thoroughly, if necessary for
years in succession, and they will be freed from the disease.
" Syphilis," says Fournier, " is a misfortune, but it is a misfortune
from which complete recovery is possible." From the day when
the patient becomes aware that he is suffering from syphilis, he
must face the situation " in a calm and manly fashion," and must
say to himself :

" Now there is to be a fight between syphilis and me. To work,
therefore, and courage ! Courage, because science assures me that
with the aid of mercury, of hygiene, and of time, an end will come to the
syphilis, and because science gives me an absolute assurance that some
day I shall be as healthy as I was before, and that I shall again have
the right to a family, that I shall attain the freedom and the happiness
of being a father !"2

With these admirable words of the greatest living authority on
syphilis, I close my account of the suppression of syphilis by
medical treatment, and turn to the not less important question
of the management of gonorrhoea.

Recent scientific researches, especially those of A. Neisser and
E. Finger, have shown that the infective urethritis of the male

1 C/. Iwan Bloch, " Nutritive Therapeutics in Cases of Syphilis," published in
Medizinische Klinik, 1905, No. 18, pp. 442-446.

2 Alfred Fournier, " En Guerit-on ?" pp. 96, 96 (Paris, 1906).

389

produced by gonococci is by no means the " trifling and childish
complaint " which it was formerly supposed to be, but, on the
contrary, is a very serious and obstinate trouble, often resisting
the very best means of treatment, so that it may persist for years,
and remain for years infective. Still worse is it as regards gonor-
rhoea of the female genital organs, the cure of which is even more
difficult, and the consequences of which are even more disastrous
than in the case of the male. If the physician is needed for the
cure of syphilis, still more is this the case as regards gonorrhoea.
He only can command the scientific methods, and the very compli-
cated technique of the treatment of gonorrhoea. He only can
undertake the indispensable control of the treatment by means of
microscopic and other methods of investigation. Every cobbler
thinks he can cure gonorrhoea, and yet it is this disease which,
even more than syphilis, demands the most precise knowledge of
the local anatomical and pathological conditions. Blaschko
rightly says :

" While no one gives a damaged watch to a baker to mend, or a torn
coat to a tinsmith, every one seems to believe that in order to restore
the most valuable gift of humanity, health, it is unnecessary to
possess the profoundest knowledge of the human body, and to under-
stand the nature and the causes of the disease. Anyone who has come
to grief in his ordinary profession, but who understands how with a
brazen voice to denounce the so-called ' medicine of the schools,' and
to praise with sufficient confidence his own successes, is supposed to
possess the wonderful power, without any exact knowledge at all, of
charming all the illnesses of mankind out of the world."

Gonorrhoea is also a curable disease, though curable often with
great difficulty. We see this from the fact that, notwithstanding
the extraordinarily wide diffusion of gonorrhoea (for a far greater
number of infections with gonorrhoea occur than of infections
with syphilis), still ultimately the majority of the men, and a large
proportion of the women, infected with gonorrhoea are com-
pletely cured of their trouble.

The treatment of gonorrhoea is a complicated affair. Within
the first two days, by the injection of powerful caustic agents,
we are sometimes able to cut the matter short and to put an
end completely to the gonococci. In every case the patient, as
soon as he perceives a discharge, though not yet purulent, from the
urethra, should immediately consult a physician, in order to deter-
mine the nature of his disease, which, in the majority of cases,
will be found to be true gonorrhoea. If it is not possible to abort
the gonorrhoea, then the disease will have to run its course. The

390

best measure, whenever possible, is rest in bed for a week or two,
in association with a mild, unstimulating diet, and the absolute
prohibition of all alcoholic beverages — the last is indispensable
throughout the duration of the gonorrhoea — the drinking of uva
ursi tea, and, if the inflammatory symptoms are severe, the
application of cold compresses to the penis. Only when the first
more severe symptoms have passed away, by which time, owing
to the reaction of the urethra! mucous membrane, a large propor-
tion of the exciters of the disease will already have been expelled, is
it time to begin injections or irrigations of the urethra, containing
medicaments the nature of which must be left to the decision of the
experienced physician, who will regard each individual case on its
own merits. If rest in bed is not possible, the patient must wear a
so-called " suspensory " bandage, in order to give as much rest as
possible to the testicles and the epididymis, which are gravely
endangered in every attack of gonorrhoea. If, as often happens,
gonorrhoea ascends to the posterior part of the urethra, or to the
bladder, or to the prostate, or if, finally, it becomes chronic, then
special methods of treatment, with internal medicines, with local
cauterization, massage, distension, medicated bougies, baths, etc.,
are needful. The cure will ensue very gradually ; relapses are fre-
quent ; even cessation of the discharge is no certain sign of cure,
as the presence in the still turbid urine of " threads " containing
gonococci sufficiently proves. Only when the urine has become
perfectly clear, and any threads which it may contain are shown
by repeated search to contain no more gonococci ; when also the
prostate, a favourite seat of the last remnants of gonorrhoea, is
free from inflammation, can the cure be regarded as complete.
Even more difficult is the determination of a cure hi women.
But persistency in the treatment, and frequently repeated
examinations, will lead also in women to the desired goal,
or, at any rate, will overcome the capacity for spreading the
infection.

In the campaign against venereal diseases by the methods of
medical treatment, the facilitation of treatment for the great masses
of impecunious persons, for the proletariat, is of great value. For
them, above all, the provision of Krankenkassen1 is needed, and it
is very satisfactory to note that during recent years the Kranken-

1 " Krankenkassen." — I have to employ the German term, since in England
we do not possess the institution, nor even the name. In Germany there is a
general system of insurance against illness, to which workmen have to contribute
a proportion of their wages, the fund being supplemented by contributions from
the employers of labour. When ill the workman applies to the Krankenkasse
for the necessary medical advice and treatment. — TRANST.ATOR.

391

kassen have especially directed their attention to venereal diseases,
since A. Blaschko,1 A. Neisser,2 R. Ledermann,3 and Albert Kohn4
drew attention to the duties of Krankenkassen in this relationship
in a number of admirable works. Krankenkassen are in a position
to obtain exact statistics regarding venereal diseases ; to diffuse
information, verbally and in writing, to the widest extent among
their members ; to facilitate hospital treatment, and treatment by
specialists ; to give medical aid as required to infected relatives of
the insured ; to carry out regularly every year, once or twice, a
medical examination of all members, and to distribute among all
these writings on the prophylaxis of venereal diseases. The
question also of payment on the part of the patient requires new
regulations as regards venereal diseases.5

Finally, it has been recommended that, in association with the
Krankenkassen there should be founded " daily sanatoria "
(Neisser), " work sanatoria " (Saalfeld), " ambulatory places for
treatment " (Ledermann), and " convalescent homes " (Stern), for
members of Krankenkassen suffering from venereal disease, and
for insured persons similarly affected. All these institutions
would, moreover, be valuable to the community at large.

What admirable results are obtainable by such a systematic
treatment of as far as possible all the venereal patients throughout
an entire country has been shown by the astonishing decline in
the number of cases of venereal diseases in Sweden and Norway,
and in Bosnia, where a gratuitous treatment of all such patients
at the cost of the state has been introduced. Thus the organized

1 A. Blaschko, " The Treatment of Venereal Diseases in Krankenkassen "
(Berlin, 1890).

2 A. Neisser, " Krankenkassen and the Campaign against Venereal Diseases,"
published in The. Journal fa the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1904, vol. ii.,
pp. 161-169, 181-194, 221-247.

3 R. Ledermann, " Do the Provisions of the Law for Insurance against Sickness
Provide for the Cure of Venereal Disease ?" ibid., 1905, vol. iii., pp. 449-463.

4 Albert Kobn, " Should Krankenkassen send Delegates to Hygienic Con-
gresses T" ibid., 1906, vol. v., pp. 121-130.

8 Rudolf Lennhoff, in an address on February 8, 1907, to the local group of
Berlin of the German Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases on
" Venereal Diseases and Social Legislation, drew especial attention to the
necessity of enrolling in the scheme of insurance against illness wider circles of
the impecunious population, especially the class of domestic servants. Servants
suffering from venereal disease, since at the present day they usually preserve
secrecy as to their trouble, in order that they may not lose their plaoo, constitute
a dangerous source of infection for their employers and the latters' children.
Therefore, a particularly thorough and speedy treatment of servants suffering
from venereal diseases is necessary. It is further necessary to insist that all
the employees of the Krankenkassen should observe the duty of professional
secrecy. Recently the Landesvcrsicherungsanstalt (an insurance institution) of
Berlin started a dispensary of it« own in Lichtenberg for patients suffering from
venereal disease, in which every year more than 400 patients undergo treatment.

392

campaign against venereal diseases, which during recent years has
been initiated in all the civilized countries of Europe, has led more
particularly to efforts in the direction of the sufficient treatment
and speedy cure of recent syphilis and recent gonorrhoea.

We pass now to the consideration of the third factor in the
campaign against venereal disease, which comprises the duty of the
state, the task of social hygiene, and the task of public pedagogy.

The foundation for the suppression of venereal diseases by
state effort consists in a knowledge of the extent of the diffusion of
these diseases ; we need, that is to say, accurate statistics regarding
venereal diseases.

It is once more the great service of Blaschko to have been the
first in Germany to work on these lines.1

Dismissing from consideration the distribution of venereal
diseases in countries outside of Europe, regarding which he gives
interesting reports, we find that the European conditions are of
such a nature that the large towns, the centres of industry and
manufacture, garrison towns, and university towns, are most
severely affected ; that the smaller provincial towns suffer less ;
that the agricultural population is comparatively free from this
disease, with the exception of the uncultivated country districts
of Russia and of the Balkan States, where the country people
suffer from syphilis to a terrible extent. No exact statistical
data are at present available regarding the diffusion of venereal
diseases in the individual countries of Europe. The best measure
of the prevalence of these diseases is afforded by the figures for
the different armies. From these we learn that Denmark,
Germany, German Austria, and Switzerland, show the most
favourable conditions ; next come Belgium, France, Spain,
Portugal, North and Middle Italy. Worst of all are the con-
ditions in Southern Italy, Greece, Turkey, Russia, and — England.
These army statistics are, however, insufficient, for, as a matter
of fact, England is most favourably placed in respect of the
diffusion of venereal diseases. The most exact reports come from
the Scandinavian countries, from Norway and Denmark, in which
for several years all physicians have kept a list of all the infective
diseases treated by them, as they are compelled every week to
make a return to the Board of Public Health. According to these
reports, it appears that venereal diseases in Copenhagen constitute
the greater part of such diseases in the entire country ; but in the

1 A. Blaschko, " The Diffusion of Venereal Diseases," published in The
Hygiene of Prostitution and of Venereal Diseases," pp. 19-36 (Jena, 1900).

393

period between 1876 and 1895 these diseases have notably declined
in frequency in Copenhagen, and all venereal diseases have shared
in this decline ; gonorrhoea constitutes 70 % of all cases of venereal
disease. With regard to the diffusion of infection, it appears
from the Copenhagen statistics that one woman with venereal
disease serves to transmit it to four men ; on the other hand, of
four men with venereal disease, one only will transmit that disease
to a woman. On the average, there are infected with venereal
disease every year 16 to 20 % of all young men between the
ages of twenty and thirty years ; with gonorrhoea 1 in 8 are
infected ; with syphilis 1 in 55 are infected. In these last ten
years, for every 100 young men living, there have been 119 infec-
tions during ten years ; that is to say, on the average every one
has been infected once, and a great many have been infected more
than once ; in the same period of ten years, for every 100 young
men, there have been 18 infected with syphilis — that is to say,
1 for every 5-5.

Especially valuable also are the figures which Blaschko
obtained in 1898 from the carefully kept books of a large mercan-
tile Krankenkasse whose operations were diffused throughout
Germany ; these figures also give the result of an inquiry regarding
venereal diseases amongst workmen, waiting-maids, secret prosti-
tutes , and students. The result of these statistics, as regards
Berlin, are given briefly in the following table :

Secret Prostitutes, 30 %.

V/////I,, Soldiery 4%.

'//l

VENEREAL DISEASES AFFECTING VARIOUS CLASSES OF THE POPULATION
or BERLIN (AFTER BLASCHKO).

According to these statistics, the diffusion of venereal diseases
among shop employees, students, and secret prostitutes (chiefly
barmaids and waitresses), is the greatest ; it is much less among

394

workmen and soldiers. It further appears, from Blaschko's
inquiry, that of the men who entered on marriage for the first time
when above the age of thirty years, each one had, on the average,
had gonorrhoea twice, and about one in four or live had been
infected with syphilis. Wilhelm Erb, in Heidelberg, obtained
similar results.

Still more remarkable were the results of the statistical investi-
gation which was carried out for the entire Kingdom of Prussia by
the Prussian Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs and Public Instruc-
tion on April 30, 1900.1

According to this investigation, it appeared that on this day, in
Prussia, there were 41,000 persons suffering from venereal disease,
among whom 11,000 were infected with recent syphilis ; in Berlin,
on the same day, there were 11,600 cases of venereal disease,
among whom 3,000 were infected with recent syphilis. The
general relations are shown in the following table :

The whole of Prussia, 0-28 %.

Berlin, 1'42 %.

Towns over 100,000 inhabitants, 1 %.

Towns over 30,000 inhabitants, 0-58 %.

Towns below 30,000 inhabitants, 0'45 %.

The Army, 0'15 %.

VENEREAL DISEASES AFFECTING THE MALE POPULATION ov PBUSSIA,
APRIL 30, 1900 (AFTER BLASCHKO).

Thus, for every 10,000 adult men there were on this day
persons suffering from venereal diseases to the following numbers :
in Berlin, 142 ; in the remaining large towns, 100 ; in the smaller
towns, 50 ; and in the whole of Prussia, on the average, 28.
Naturally the figures should in reality be larger, for of the
physicians to whom inquiries were sent, only 63 % returned an

1 " Diffusion of Venereal Diseases in Prussia, as well as the Measures Necessary
in the Campaign against these Diseases," edited by A. Guttstadt; Berlin, 1901
(Journal of the Royal Prussian Statistical Bureau).

395

answer. Moreover, the annual figure of cases is a very much
larger one. Kirchner l assumes that every day in Prussia more
than 100,000 individuals — that is to say, about 3 per mille — are
suffering from a transmissible venereal disease, and he estimates
the damage to the national property by typhoid fever as about
8 million marks annually, but that from venereal diseases as not
less than ninety million marks annually. In these reports of
April 30, 1900, the ratio of men to women suffering from recent
syphilis was as 3 : 1.

In order to obtain more exact information regarding the
diffusion of venereal diseases, and the actual number of those
affected by them, it is of very great importance that there should
be a revision of the duty of medical men in respect of the notifica-
tion of diseases, and also in respect of the duty of professional
secrecy.2

This latter question is also of importance in respect of the pre-
vention of venereal infection in married life. (The question of
syphilitic infection of married women by their husbands has
recently been considered by Alfred Fournier : " Syphilis in
Honourable Women.")

In addition to the question of the diffusion and frequency of
venereal diseases, the greatest interest attaches to the sources of
dangerous infections — that is to say, the question where men and
women most frequently contract venereal disease.

Here also Blaschko has obtained interesting information ; he
states :

Of 487 syphilitic men, the disease was acquired by 395 (81-1 %)
from professional prostitutes (officially inscribed or secret) ; 23
(4-7 %) from waitresses and barmaids; 23 (4-9 %) from their
" intimate " ; 45 (9-2 %) from casual acquaintances, shop-girls, or
workwomen.

According to this report, it appears that prostitution, public

1 M. Kirchner, " The Social Importance of Venereal Diseases."
a Cf. Chotzon and Simonson, " The Duty of Notification and the Obligation
of Professional Secrecy on the Part of Physicians in the Case of Venereal
Diseases," published in The Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases,
1904, vol. ii., pp. 433-474 ; A. Neisser, " Amendment of § 300 of the Criminal
Code, and the Medical Duty of Notification, in Relation to the Suppression of
Venereal Diseases," op cit., 1905, vol. iv., pp. 1-28 ; Bernstein, " Medical Profes-
sional Secrecy and Venereal Diseases," ibid., pp. 29-31 ; M. Flesch, " Medical
Professional Secrecy and the Suppression of Venereal Diseases," ibid., pp. 32-51 ;
Magnus Mdllor, " The Duty of Professional Secrecy on the Part of Physicians,
the Notification of Diseases, and the Ascertainment of the Sources of Infection
in the Case of Venereal Diseases," ibid., 1906, vol. vi., pp. 241-258, 283-301 ;
Ludwig Bendiz, " Professional Secrecy on the Part of Physicians," ibid.. 1906,
pp. 372-376.

396

and secret (under which heading the waitresses and " casual
acquaintances " must be numbered), forms the principal focus of
venereal infection.

And that wild sexual intercourse is here almost exclusively to
blame is shown by the following statistics, given by Blaschko :

Of 67 syphilitic wives, almost all the wives of workmen, 64 were
infected by their husbands ; whereas, on the contrary, of 106 hus-
bands, 7 only acquired the disease from their wives ; the remaining
99 acquired it by extra-conjugal sexual intercourse, either before
or after marriage.

Another very valuable set of statistics dealing with the sources
of infection has been published by Heinrich Loeb.1

These relate to the conditions in Mannheim. It appears that
the sources of infection were as follows :

Waitresses and barmaids
Maidservants, cooks * ' ;. ' ,H I '
Shop-girls

Middle-class girls

Seamstresses and embroidery workers

Chambermaids

Factory workwomen

Artistes, singers, and ballet-girls . .

Wife or betrothed

Tailoresses and modistes

Ironers

Book-keepers

Widows

Country girls

Mistresses

155 instances.
67
65
29
27
20
17
16
12
11

Total 442

Here, as we see, the chief types of secret prostitution, the
waitresses and barmaids, play the principal part ; next, but a long
way after, come maidservants and shop-girls. This, however,
does not amount to saying that public prostitution is less dan-
herous. We know that a prostitute who has never been infected
with venereal disease is something very rarely seen ; that prosti-
tutes under regulation are almost all, especially when still quite
young, in an infective state, and that they serve just as much as
secret prostitutes for the diffusion of venereal disease. It is a
well-known fact that youthful prostitutes are more dangerous than
women who have long practised prostitution, because the former
are all suffering from more or less recent infection, and both

1 H. Jx>eb, " Statistics Relating to Venereal Diseases in Mannheim," published
in The Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, vol. ii., pp. 97, 98 (1904) .

397

gonorrhoea and syphilis are present in them in the stages in which
they are still strongly infective. H. Berger bases upon statistical
investigation's1 his belief that red-haired girls have the most deli-
cate epithelium, fall sick most rapidly and in the greatest numbers;
dark -haired women at first suffer less. After they have been pros-
titutes for some time, there is no important difference between
blonde, brown, and black-haired women ; but black-haired
prostitutes are, in fact, more inclined to infection later in their
career, because they are more in request.

Now that we have learned that at the present day prostitution
remains the principal source of venereal infection, the following
question immediately demands an answer : What can the state
do in order to remove these sources of infection ? and have the
measures which the state has hitherto put into operation been of
any use in this direction ? To put it shortly, what part has been
played by the state regulation of prostitution, as hitherto prac-
tised, in the campaign against venereal diseases ?

With Schmolder,2 we understand by " regulation " the follow-
ing practice, which is what obtains in the majority of civilized
countries : The police keep a list in which the girls and women
regarded by them as prostitutes have their names entered. The
" inscribed " (inscrites) receive a " licentia stupri " — that is
to say, the permission to practise professional fornication under
continual observation on the part of the police (the renowned
" moral control "3), which is associated with a number of com-
mands, prohibitions, and regulations — above all, with the neces-
sity of submitting to medical examination at definitely stated
intervals, and, where necessary, to compulsory medical treatment.
At the same time, public prostitution on the part of those who
are not inscribed is suppressed as much as possible. Berger has
admirably described ("Prostitution in Hanover," pp. 1-19) the
methods of regulation and their consequences. Above all, how-
ever, have Blaschko, Schmolder, and Neisser considered the modes
of regulation customary at the present day from the moral, legal,
and medical points of view, and have in part entirely condemned
them (Blaschko and Schmolder), in part declared them to be
gravely in need of reform (Neisser).4

1 H. Berger, " Prostitution in Hanover," pp. 37, 38 (Berlin, 1902).

2 Schmolder, " The State and Prostitution/' p. 1 (Berlin, 1900).

3 Cf. J. Fabry, " The Question of Inscription under Police Surveillance, with
especial Regard to the Conditions in Dortmund," published in The Journal for
the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1906, vol. v., pp. 325-342.

4 A. Neisser, " In what Direction can the Regulation of Prostitution be
Reformed ?" published in The Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases,
1903, vol. i., pp. 163-356

398

Among those who have recently discussed the question of the
regulation of prostitution, we may mention Anna Pappritz,1 who
condemns the practice ; Clausmann, who is in favour of it ;2
Friedrich Hammer, also in favour of it ;3 and, finally, S. Bett-
mann, who leaves the question open.4

In our consideration of the coercive system of regulation, we
take a single standpoint — namely, that of its possible value for
the suppression of venereal diseases. Some demand the abolition
of regulation on ethical and humanitarian grounds, and we do
not wish in any way to make light of these grounds. But they
could not be decisive, if, as an actual fact, regulation had an
effect either in diminishing the prevalence of venereal diseases
or in checking prostitution ; but, hi truth, the reverse is the
case !

Schmolder5 has shown beyond dispute that the compulsory
inscription of prostitutes, introduced from France, is in our
country an utterly illegal measure, arbitrarily enforced by
the police. It has been amply proved that this illegal com-
pulsory inscription has actually made prostitutes of many girls
who had no inclination to permanent professional prostitution ;
that this method produces artificial prostitutes. What errors
of judgment, what abuses of power, occur on the part of the
police, in connexion with this compulsory inscription ! How
often does the inscription result from a denunciation made on
grounds of private spite ! The " Committee of Fifteen," con-
stituted for the study of prostitution in New York, declares in
its report :

" Men with political insight are of opinion that every limitation of
the freedom of the individual is in itself an evil, and that such a limita-
tion can only be justified in cases in which the good derived from the
infringement can really be estimated at a very high valuation. A
system which permits the police, simply on grounds of suspicion, to
arrest a citizen, to submit him to an injurious examination, only with
the aim of discovering a disease he is suspected to have, and then to

1 Anna Pappritz, " Is the Present Method of the Regulation of Prostitution
Capable of Reform, and in What Manner T" published in The Journal for the
Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1903, vol. i., pp. 357-372.

2 Clausmann, " Prostitution, Police, and Justice," op. cit., 1906, vol. v.,
pp. 219-225.

3 Friedrich Hammer, " The Regulation of Prostitution," published in The
Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1904, 1905, vol. iii., pp. 373-385,
425-435.

4 S. Bettmann, " The Medical Treatment of Prostitutes " (Jena, 1905) — a
thorough study of all the available material.

6 Schmolder, " Professional Fornication and Compulsory Inscription on the
List of Prostitutes " (Berlin, 1894).

399

put him into prison, on the suspicion that he might have indulged in
immoral intercourse if he had been left at liberty, cannot possibly be
regarded as harmonizing with the principles of personal freedom." i

Blaschko and Fiaux have proved that regulation concerns only
a small fraction of prostitutes, usually the older ones ; whereas
the beginners, who are precisely those most dangerous in respect
of venereal infection, and, further, the army of secret prostitutes,
half prostitutes, occasional prostitutes, and the half-world, remain
free from regulation — are probably left free deliberately — and
anyhow could not possibly be supervised, on account of the
enormous cost of supervision. In Berlin, speaking generally, only
one-fifth part of the girls arrested are subjected to regulation,
four-fifths are simply " warned and discharged "; and even of
this fifth part, in reality a large percentage does not come under
control because " escape from the lists " renders permanent
observation impossible. Fiaux proves that more than 50 % of
the medical examinations which ought to have been made on the
4,000 women under regulation in Berlin during the years 1888 to
1901, were in fact neglected.2

It is certain that regulated prostitution is more dangerous
from the point of view of public health than free prostitu-
tion. The prostitute remaining under surveillance is in constant
fear of compulsory treatment in the lock hospital, and therefore
endeavours to conceal her illness as long as possible, or tem-
porarily to avoid medical examination altogether. The free prosti-
tute has a personal interest in becoming well again as soon as
possible, and generally goes voluntarily and at once to seek
treatment from a physician. Thus it happens that, among the
regulated prostitutes, the number of those infected appears
surprisingly small. In addition, we have to consider the in-
adequacy of the medical examination, because the number of the
physicians and the time assigned to them are too small. And
whilst it appears to be a fact that every third prostitute is in-
fected with gonorrhoea, in Berlin, during the year 1889, as the
result of official examination under regulation, only one prosti-
tute in 200 was declared infected, and in 1884 only 1 in
1,873. Moreover, very many infected prostitutes under com-

1 " The Social Evil, with Especial Reference to Conditions existing in the
City of New York. A Report prepared undor the Direction of the ' Committee
of Fifteen,' " pp. 91, 92 (Now York and London, 1902).

3 A severe criticism of regulation and its consequences is to be found in the
excellent£dis3ortation of Paul Emile Morhardt, " Les Maladies Veneriennes et
la Reglementation de la Prostitution au Point de Vue de 1' Hygiene Sociale "
(Paris, 1906).

400

pulsory medical treatment are, as Blaschko proves, allowed to
resume their professional occupation in an uncured state, and to
diffuse their illness freely once more. The figures given by
Blaschko speak very clearly on this point :

Place.

Date.

Annual Percentage of
Prostitutes attacked
by Syphilis.

Regulated.

Free.

Paris
Brussels
St. Petersburg
Antwerp

1878-1887
1887-1889
1890
1882-1884

12-2
25-0
335
51-3

7'0
9-0
12-0

7'7

From this it is clear that the abolition of the regulation of
prostitutes will not have an unfavourable, but, on the contrary,
will have a thoroughly favourable, influence in respect of the
frequency of venereal diseases. The conditions in England and
Norway show this very clearly. In Christiania, after the aboli-
tion of regulation in the year 1888, syphilis declined in frequency
— in the first place, because the number of girls who applied for
treatment increased, whilst prior to the abolition of regulation
they had concealed their illness in order to avoid falling into the
hands of the police ; and in the second place, because now the
fear of venereal infection kept many young men from having
intercourse with prostitutes, whereas previously they had errone-
ously believed that the " control " would free them from the
danger of venereal infection. The same was the case in London,
where there is no regulation ; the frequency of venereal disease
has decreased because young men now avoid intercourse with
prostitutes as much as possible. In France, the country in which
regulation was first introduced, the commission formed for the
study of prostitution came to the conclusion that " regulation
of prostitutes should be abolished." The principal reason for
which the police continue to advocate the preservation of the
system of regulation — namely, that they have an interest in the
matter on account of the intimate connexion between many
prostitutes and criminality — will not bear examination. It is true
enough that soutenage1 is inseparable from prostitution. More-

1 Cf. the admirable description of soutenage given by Hans Ostwald,
" Soutenage in Berlin " (Berlin and Leipzig, 1905).

401

over, the world of criminals is very near to prostitution, in the
first place, because the prostitute also has need of a man on
whom she can lean, who can be something to her from the per-
sonal point of view, to whom she is not simply a chattel j1 and,
in the second place, because the prostitute is, like the criminal,
despised and defamed — she shares with the criminal the pariah
nature. Lombroso's doctrine that prostitution is throughout
equivalent to criminality is certainly not justified. It is only by
the outward circumstances of their life that the bulk of prostitutes
are driven into intimate relations with criminality. And among
these outward circumstances, regulation, and the expulsion ot
prostitutes from honourable society (which is a necessary part
of regulation) play the principal role ! For this reason, if for
this reason alone, regulation must be abolished, because then a
strong supplement to criminality from the circles of prostitution
would be cut off.

Even before investigators had become convinced of the useless-
ness and danger of regulation the cry arose : " Away with the
brothels !" We have already alluded to the continuous decline
in the number of brothels in all large towns. In 1841 there were
in Paris still 235 brothels (to 1,200,000 inhabitants) ; in 1900
there were only 48 brothels (to 3,600,000 inhabitants) ; and for
St. Petersburg and other large towns a similar decline in the
number of brothels can be established, notwithstanding the fact
that everywhere the population has markedly increased. This
proves that the brothels no longer correspond to any real need.2
At the present day, owing to the great development of inter-
course in modern times, brothels are a public calamity ; they
bring the quarter of the town in which they exist into disrepute,
and deprive the neighbourhood of its proper monetary value.
Moreover, the time is past for slave-holding on the part of the
brothel-owner. The existence of brothels favours the traffic in
girls (the " White Slave Trade "), encourages sexual perversities,
and increases the diffusion of venereal diseases. The prostitute
living in a brothel is sometimes compelled to have intercourse
with ten or twelve men in a single day, and is thus pre-eminently
exposed to venereal infection, all the more because she must admit
the embraces of every man who pays the brothel-keeper money ;
whilst the prostitute living freely can at least refuse to have any-
thing to do with a man who appears to her to be ill. According to

1 " The human being awakens in the prostitute. That is the whole secret and
the cause of soutonago." — H. OSTWALD.

a The dislike to the brothels of Paris is confirmed by Lassar (" Prostitution in
Paris," Berliner kliniache Wochenschrift, 1892, No. 5).

402

Lecour, Mireur, Diday, and Sperk, prostitutes in brothels suffer
from syphilis about three times as often as free prostitutes.1

Other modifications of brothel life, such as the so-called " con-
trolled streets,"2 the best known of which are in Bremen3 — that is
to say, streets closed to ordinary traffic, the houses of which are
inhabited only by prostitutes under control, but the girls being
in other respects free and not living under the domination of a
brothel-keeper ; also the " Kasernierung "4 of prostitutes, their
confinement to particular streets, or special " quarters " of the
town (" Dirnenquartiere ")5 — are all to be rejected on the same
grounds.

The whole nature of brothel life, and the very serious dangers
it involves, have been discussed in excellent works by E. von
During,6 Henriette Fiirth,7 Karl Notzel,8 and Martin Bruck.9
They illumine the whole question, and provide sufficient grounds
for the condemnation of brothels.

A few authors, however, continue to advocate the preservation
of brothels, and some of these wish to enforce medical examina-
tion, not only of prostitutes, but also of their masculine clients.
This proposition is made, for example, by Ernst Kromayer in his
work, which, notwithstanding many Utopian ideas, is nevertheless
very stimulating, " The Eradication of Syphilis," pp. 67, 68
(Berlin, 1898). Von During, in his criticism of these ideas,
rightly points out that this recommendation would be quite
useless in practice, because, in the first place, only a small pro-
portion of men visit brothels at all. In the second place, in the
hurry in these resorts no proper examination could be under-
taken. In the third place, the doctors who were to be appointed
as a kind of medical porters to brothels, would not easily be found

1 J. Rutgers (" Sketches from Holland," published in The Journal for the
Suppression of Venereal Diseases," 1906, vol. v., p. 345) has admirably expressed
this fact in the following words : " The danger of infection is directly propor-
tionable to centralization/'

2 Anna Pappritz, " What Protection can Brothel Streets Offer ?" published in
The Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1904, 1905, vol. iii., pp. 417-
424.

3 Stachow, " The Controlled Streets of Bremen," ibid., 1905, vol. iv., pp. 77-87.
* Fabry, " Brothels and Brothel Streets," ibid., 1905, pp. 157-169 (in favour

of " Kasernierung ") ; Wolff, " The Question of Kasernierung," ibid., 1905,
vol. iv., pp. 73-76 (in favour of " Kasernierung ") ; F. Block, " The Kasernierung
of Prostitution in Hanover " (Hanover, 1907).

6 F. Zinsser, " The Conditions of Prostitution in the Town of Cologne,"
ibid., 1906, vol. v., pp. 201-218.

6 E. von During, * The Brothel Question," ibid., 1905, pp. 111-128.

7 H. Fiirth, " The Suppression of Venereal Diseases and the Brothel Question,"
ibid., pp. 129-156.

8 K. Notzel, " Brothels in Russia," ibid., 1906, pp. 41-56, 81-106.

9 M. Brack, " Good Morals and the Brothel Trade," ibid., pp. 57-62.

403

to accept such situations. Lassar, who answers this last criticism,
is of opinion that the brothel-master, or anybody with a little
experience, could easily undertake this examination in the case
of men.1

But these men would probably also decline the office ; and
even if they were willing, it is very doubtful if they would
be in a position to make the suggested examinations, which,
after all, require real medical skill ; and, finally, the only result
would be — to increase the number of quacks. Therefore, this
idea of the examination of the male visitors to brothels is
Utopian.

No, the true hope lies in absolute freedom ; in relieving prostitu-
tion from the oppression of the police ; in its gradual separation
from criminality ; in — I am not afraid of the word — in an " en-
noblement " of prostitution.2 The " prostitute " (German Dime
= drab) must disappear, and the " human being " must reawaken.
The prostituted woman must be readmitted into the social com-
munity. No more coercion ! Free and voluntary treatment, in
polyclinics3 and hospitals ; the " rescue " of youthful prostitutes,4
not in the prison-like " Magdalen Homes," but by means of
ethically instructive influence from human being to human
being, of the value of which the " Letters to Prostitutes "
of the noble philanthropist Frau Eggers-Smidt,5 and also
the experiences of the Salvation Army,0 give such admirable
evidence.

Very aptly, also, Kromayer has shown to what an extent a
change in our present attitude towards sexual intercourse out-
side the conditions of coercive marriage, the removal of the stamp
of infamy from such intercourse, would limit prostitution, and
therewith also limit venereal diseases.7 This is as clear as day-
light. But, unfortunately, those very persons who declare the
existing conditions in respect of prostitution to be absolutely
intolerable will not admit its truth.

The misery of the life of these unhappy creatures must be re-

1 0. Lassar, " Prostitution and Venereal Diseases," published in Hygieniache
Rundschau, 1801, No. 23.

2 See note at end of chapter.

3 B. Marcuso, " Treatment of Prostitutes," published in The Journal for the
Suppression of Venereal Disease*," 1906, pp. 1-8.

4 F. Schiller, " Rescue- Work and the Suppression of Prostitution," ibid., 1903,
1904, vol. ii., pp. 294-313, 341-349.

6 Ibid., 1905, vol. iii., pp. 336-350.

8 P. Kampffmeyer, Educational Work in Connexion with Prostitutes,"
ibid., pp. 351, 352.

7 E. Kromayer, " The Physician and the Protection of Motherhood," pub-
lished in Mutterschutz, 1905, vol. iii., pp. 351-352.

26—2

404

lieved, but we must do it ourselves, and soon ; for they are not in
a position to do so. The last, the highest goal of the campaign
against venereal disease is the humanization of the prostitute.1

1 Quite recently — October, 1906 — the first step in this direction has been taken.
The Chief Commissioner of the Berlin Police addressed to the medical specialists
in venereal diseases an inquiry whether they were prepared to treat gratuitously
impecunious prostitutes who wore not under police control. The girls would
then be given a register of these doctors. If they presented themselves for
treatment, no particulars about them would be demanded from the physician.
The presentation by the patients to the police of a certificate from a medical man
would suffice to exempt them from police control, and from compulsory ex-
amination and treatment at the police department of the section of the town
to which they belonged. Further details will be arranged later in co-operation
with the Committee of the Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases.

In bis valuable study, "The Future of Prostitution," published in the monthly
magazine Mutterachutz, July, 1907, pp. 274-288, Havolock Ellis also takes an
extremely optimistic view regarding the gradual and inevitable diminution of
prostitution by indirect means — that is to say, in this way we are elevating our-
selves socially and economically to a higher stage of humanity.

I J-'UiJJ '' •!!/» " '., -:i|(i;-<JJ- t;-{;i!» f<>i:7!.i -

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE. — In the essay on " The Woman's Question " in the
sociological section of his work, " The Ethic of Free-Thought," Karl Pearson
discusses the question of Prostitution hi relation to the Woman's Question at
large. His remarks have especial interest in view of what is said above about
" the ennoblement of prostitution " and " the humanization of the prostitute,"
and it seems expedient to quote the passage at length (op. cit., 1888, pp. 379-382).
— TRANSLATOR.

" The emancipation of woman, while placing her in a position of social
responsibility, will make it her duty to investigate many matters of
which she is at present frequently assumed to be ignorant. It may be
doubted whether the identification of purity and ignorance has had
wholly good effects in the past ; indeed, it has frequently been the false
cry with which men have sought to hide their own anti-social conduct.
It is certain, however, that it cannot last in the future, and man will
have to face the fact that woman's views and social action with regard
to many sex-problems may widely differ from his own. It is of the
utmost importance that woman, not only on account of the part she
already plays in the education of the young, but also because of the
social responsibilities her emancipation must bring, should have a full
knowledge of the laws of sex. Every attempt hitherto to grapple with
prostitution has been a failure. What will women do when they
thoroughly grasp the problem, and have a voice in the attitude the
state should assume in regard to it ? At present hundreds do not
know of its existence ; thousands only know of it to despise those who
earn their living by it ; one in ten thousand has examined the causes
which lead to it, has felt that degradation, if there be any, lies not in the
prostitute, but in the society where it exists ; not in the women of the
streets, but in the thousands of women in society, who are ignorant of
the problem, ignore it, or fear to face it. What will be the result
of woman's action in the matter ? Can it possibly be effectual, or
will it merely tend to embitter the relations of men and women ?
Possibly an expression of woman's opinion on this point in society
and the press would do much, but then it must be an educated opinion,

405

one which recognizes facts and knows the difficulties of the problem.
An appeal to chivalry, to a Christian dogma, to a Biblical text, will
hardly avail. The description we have of Calvin's Geneva shows that
puritanic suppression is wholly idle. What form will be taken by
the reasoned action of women, cognizant of historical and sexualogical
fact ?

" Perhaps it may be that women, when they fully grasp the problem,
will despair, as many men do, of its solution. They may remark that
prostitution has existed in nearly all historic times, and among nearly
all races of men. It has existed as an institution as long as mono-
gamic marriage has existed ; it may be itself the outcome of that
marriage. I do not know whether any trace of a like promiscuity has
been found in the animals nearest allied to man — I believe not. The
periodic instinct has probably preserved them from it. How mankind
came to lose the periodic instinct, and how that loss may possibly be
related to the solely human institution of marriage, are problems not
without interest. On the one hand, it has been asserted that prosti-
tution is a logical outcome of our present social relations, while, on the
other hand, it is held to be a survival of matriarchal licence, and not a
sine qua non of all forms of human society. There is very considerable
evidence to show that a large percentage of women are driven to
prostitution by absolute want, or by the extremities to which a seduced
woman is forced by the society which casts her out. This point is
important. It may, perhaps, be that our social system, quite as much
as man's supposed needs, keeps prostitution alive. The frequency with
which prostitutes, for the sake of their own living, seduce comparative
boys, may be as much a cause of the evil as male passion itself. The
socialists hold the sale of a woman's person to be directly associated
with the monopoly of surplus labour. Is the emancipated woman likely
to adopt this view ? and if so shall we not have a wide-reaching social
reconstruction forced upon us ? That emancipated woman would strive
for a vast economic reorganization, as the only means of preserving the
self-respect and independence of her sex, is a possibility with the
gravest and most wide-reaching consequences. We cannot emancipate
woman without placing her in a position of political and social influence
equal to man's. It may well be that she will regard economic and
sexual problems from a very different standpoint, and the result will
infallibly lead to the formation of a woman's party, and to a more or
less conscious struggle between the sexes. Would this end in an
increased social stability or another subjection of sex ?

" Woman may, however, conclude that the alternative is true —
that prostitution is not the outcome of our present social organii&tion,
but a feature of all forms of human society. She must, then, treat it as
a necessary evil or as a necessary good. In the former case she will at
least insist on an equal social stigma attaching to both sexes if she does
not demand, as in the instance of any other form of anti-social conduct,
so far as practicable its legal repression. In the latter case — that is, if
its existence really tends in some way to the welfare or stability of society
—women will have to admit that prostitution is an honourable profes-
sion ; they cannot shirk that conclusion, bitter as it may appear to some.
The ' social outcast ' would then have to be recognized as filling^a
social function, and the problem would reduce to the amelioration of
her life, and to her elevation in the social scale. Either there is a

406

means of abolishing prostitution, or all participators must be treated
alike as anti-social, or the prostitute is an honourable woman — no other
possibility suggests itself. Society has hitherto failed to find a remedy,
perhaps because only man has sought for one ; woman, when she for the
time fully grasps the problem, must be prepared for one, or must
recognize the alternatives. There cannot be a doubt, however, that in
a matter so closely concerning her personal dignity she will take action,
and that, if only in this one matter, her freedom will raise questions,
which many would prefer to ignore, and which, when raised, will un-
doubtedly touch principles apparently fundamental to our existing
social organization."

CHAPTER XVI

STATES OF SEXUAL IRRITABILITY AND SEXUAL WEAKNESS

(Auto-erotism, Masturbation, Sexual Hyperaesthesia and Sexual Anaes-
thesia, Seminal Emissions, Impotence, and Sexual Neurasthenia).

" The conditions of modern civilization render auto-erotism a
phenomenon of increasing social importance" — HAVELOCK ELLIS.

407

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XVI

Wide diffusion of auto -erotic phenomena — Their significance in relation to
civilization — Physiological and pathological relations — Their diffusion
among animals and among primitive peoples — The auto-erotic instrumen-
tarium — Causes of auto -erotism and of masturbation — New views regarding
the masturbation of sucklings — The sexual tension of puberty — Sexual
toxins — Mechanical stimuli in sexual tension — Sedative and anodyne effects
of masturbation — Seduction as the cause of masturbation — Group-mas-
turbation in schools, etc. — Diseases as causes of masturbation — Inheritance
of the tendency to masturbation — Masturbation in the female sex — Its
frequency — Psychical onanism — Sexual day-dreams — Erotic correspon-
dence— Consequences of masturbation — Exaggerated views of former times
— Analysis of the harmfulnoss of masturbation — Changes of the psyche and
of the will — Explanation of certain phenomena of our time as due to mas-
turbation— Physical consequences of masturbation — Local changes in the
genital organs — Abnormalities in the libido sexualis — Treatment and cure
of masturbation — Clothing — Trousers and masturbation — Doctor Bernhard
Faust's book — Various medical methods employed in the treatment of
masturbation.

Sexual neurasthenia — Its connexion with masturbation — Relative inde-
pendence of ite symptoms — Abnormal increase of the sexual impulse (sexual
hyporsesthesia) — Causes — Peculiar form of nocturnal increase of the sexual
impulse — Satyriasis and priapism — Nymphomania — Causes of Nympho-
mania — Examples — Treatment of sexual hypersesthesia — Abnormal diminu-
tion of the sexual impulse (sexual anaesthesia) — Causes — Frequency of
sexual frigidity in women — Causes — Vaginismus — Treatment of frigidity
in women — Frigidity and prostitution — Frigidity and marriage — Eroto-
mania— Seminal emissions — Lallemand's distinction between normal and
abnormal pollutions — Morbid pollutions — Diurnal pollutions — Abnor-
malities of the genital organs and of the sensation during pollutions —
Spermatorrhoea and prostatorrhcea — Pollutions in women — Older and more
recent observations — Medical treatment of pollutions.

Impotence — Its principal forms — Malformations of the genital organs —
Castration — Gonorrhoaal diseases — Azoospormia — Smallness and injuries of
the penis — Incomplete erections — Central and peripheral causes of erection
— Functional impotence — General disorders — Deleterious influence of
alcohol and tobacco — Nervous impotence — The psychical impotence of the
wedding night — Examples — Mental work and potency — The effect of sudden
mental impressions — Reflective impotence — Rousseau's Venetian adventure
— Neurasthenic impotence — Its forms and symptoms — Impotence due to
abstinence — Senile impotence — Treatment of impotence.

Other phenomena of sexual neurasthenia (gastric disorders, etc.) — Sexual
hypochondria — The treatment of sexual neurasthenia.

408

CHAPTER XVI

ALMOST as widely diffused as venereal diseases are the abnormal
sexual manifestations to be considered in this chapter under the
general title of " States of Sexual Irritability and Sexual Weak-
ness." They arise in part out of the very nature of mankind ;
in part they are the external manifestations of a natural impulse,
of an instinctive excitement, in which form we see them also in
other animals ; in part they are connected with man's spiritual
nature, with civilization. We may, indeed, say that the duplex
nature of man, his bodily-spiritual dualism, is most clearly
reflected in this phenomenon of his sexuality. In this respect
he is wholly human.

It is a great service performed by Havelock Ellis1 that he was
the first to direct attention to the " involuntary " manifestations
of the sexual impulse peculiar to mankind, occurring without
relation to the other sex. He gives them the distinctive name of
" auto-erotism," by which he means " the phenomenon of spon-
taneous sexual excitement manifesting itself without any stimulus,
direct or indirect, supplied by any other person." For the most
part, therefore, the normal manifestations of art and poetry
belong also to the province of auto-erotism, in so far as they are
the result of erotic perception ; and the same is true of all those
manifestations which I have termed " sexual equivalents," all
transformations of sexual energy, such as religio-sexual phenomena,
the transformation of individual love into the general love of
mankind, the stimuli of fashion, and every powerful activity by
means of which sexual tension finds a mode of discharge, even
though this sexual relationship is usually of an unconscious
nature, as in the dance, in society games, and other enjoyments.

In my essay on " The Perverse," pp. 14, 15 (Berlin, 1905), I
have shown that there is no doubt that these sexual equiva-
lents, taken in their entirety, have played an extremely
important part in the course of the evolution of mankind ; that
they represent the natural outlets for feelings of tension and
excessive forces of sexual origin ; and that they should not be
unnecessarily suppressed, unless we wish to evoke much worse
and far more dangerous variations of their activity — as, for
example, in the political sphere.

Appositely, I find in Friedrich Nietzsche's " Posthumous

1 Havelock Ellis, " The Sexual Impulse and the Sense of Shame."

409

410

Works " (vol. xii. of the " Collected Works," p. 149 ; Leipzig,
1901) an interesting remark bearing on the question :

" Many of our impulses find an outlet in a mechanically powerful
activity, which can be directed by intelligent purpose ; unless this is
done, these manifestations are destructive and harmful. Hate,
anger, the sexual impulse, etc., can be set to the machine and taught
to do useful work — for example, to chop wood, to carry letters, or to
drive the plough. Our impulses must be worked out. The life of
the learned man more especially demands something of the kind."

What a wise and apt remark ! Our whole civilization is per-
meated with sexual equivalents of this kind ; the pleasure of life
and the joy of existence are based thereon, however much our
puritans and asexual " morality-fanatics " may strive against
this fact. And it is well that the sexual impulse has been " civi-
lized," that there are now so many spontaneous modes of its
discharge, that the sphere of auto-erotism increases pari passu
with the growth of civilization. Many new, finer, and nobler
incitations and stimuli stream therefrom into love and life, upon
which they exercise a rejuvenating and strengthening influence.
Still, this light throws a shadow, inasmuch as fantastic and
unnatural aberrations of the sexual life are also apt to ensue.

Auto-erotism (including its grosser form, masturbation) is
therefore, to a certain extent, a physiological manifestation ; it
becomes morbid only in certain conditions — that is to say, in
individuals who are previously morbid. This is, indeed, an old
medical doctrine, that there exists a physiological masturbation
faute de mieux, and a morbid masturbation in cases of neu-
rasthenia, mental disorder, and other troubles. The same is
true of auto-erotism in its entire extent. When Furbringer
describes masturbation as "an unnatural gratification of the
sexual impulse,"1 this is only partly true. There exists a natural,
physiological masturbation, a normal auto-erotism. Metchnikoff
shares this view.2 He says : "It is man's constitution itself
that permits the premature development of sexual sensibility,
before the reproductive elements are mature." The ultimate
cause of such auto-erotic manifestations as belong neither to the
category of " vice " nor to that of " crime " is to be found, he
thinks, in a disharmony in the nature of man in respect of the
premature development of sexual sensibility. For this reason
we meet with these manifestations just as much among the

1 Furbringer's article, " Masturbation," in Eulenburg's Real-Enzyklopddie
der gesamten Heilkunde, vol. xvii., p. 523, third edition (Vienna and Leipzig, 1898).

2 Metchnikoff, " The Nature of Man," pp. 95-99.

411

lowest races of mankind as we do among civilized peoples ; even
among animals auto-erotism is a widely diffused phenomenon.
This can be observed, not only among the monkeys (perhaps
already a little civilized) of our Zoological Gardens, which
masturbate freely coram publico, but it may be seen also in horses,
which shake the penis to and fro until seminal emission occurs ;
also in mares, which rub themselves against any available firm
object. We see the same thing in wild deer. Even elephants
masturbate. Among primitive races masturbation is, perhaps,
even more general than among civilized races. Among South
African tribes, Gustav Fritsch reports, masturbation is actually
a popular custom.

Havelock Ellis has described the entire auto-erotic instru-
mentarium, and it appears from his account that savage races
manufacture onanistic stimulatory apparatus for women quite
as elaborate as those which are produced by the most highly
developed lewd industry of civilized peoples. Most frequently
articles in everyday use are employed for auto-erotic gratifica-
tion— as in Hawaii, bananas ; in our own part of the world,
cucumbers, carrots, and beetroots. Further, in the vagina and
bladder have been found pencils, sticks of sealing-wax, empty
reels, bodkins, knitting-needles, needle-cases, compasses, glass
stoppers, candles, corks, tumblers, forks, toothpicks, pomade-
boxes, cockchafers,1 hens' eggs, and, with especial frequency,
hairpins.

I may allude here, in passing, to the fact that C. Posner refers
the discovery of various bodies in the male urethra to other
causes than masturbation in some cases. He states that often
they have been introduced by other persons than the one in
whom they are found, and is of opinion that the introducer is
a man with sadistic tendencies, and usually homosexual (see
C. Prosner, " The Introduction of Foreign Bodies into the Male
Urethra, with Remarks on the Psychology of such Cases," pub-
lished in Therapie der Gegenwart, September, 1902). In the
year 1862 masturbation with the aid of hairpins was so widely
practised in Germany that a surgeon invented a special instru-
ment for the removal of hairpins from the female bladder ! At
the present day this hairpin masturbation is extremely common.2

1 A French erotic work describes how an impotent man, in the hope of obtain-
ing an erection, allowed a cockchafer to crawl about his penis.

2 Probably the following case of an onanlst, sixty-four years of age, is unique.
It is reported by A. Wild ( A Contribution to the Refinements of Masturbation,"

Sublished in the Miinchener Medizinisckr Wochenschrift, No. 11, 1906). He intro-
uood a twig of a pine-tree into the urethra, and in such a way that when the

412

Still more elaborate are artificial imitations of the male penis,
the so-called godemiches (gaude mihi, dildoes, consolateurs ,
"bijoux indiscrete," etc.),1 of which we find representations in
ancient Babylonian sculpture, in Egypt, and in the " Mimi-
amben " of Herondas 2 (third century before Christ) ; and since
very ancient times they have been in use in Eastern Asia, where
the Spaniards found them in the Philippines. Particularly well
known are the wax phalli of the Balinesian women. In Europe,
as early as the twelfth century, Bishop Burchard of Worms con-
demned the use of artificial penes. Their use was especially
common at the time of the Italian renascence ; the technique
of their employment became continually more elaborate. The
culmination was reached in the eighteenth century France. No
less a man than Mirabeau, the celebrated French politician, in his
erotic romance, " Le Rideau Lev6, ou 1' Education de Laure,"
describes such an artificial phallus, and I append his description
in order to enable the reader to represent to himself the ex-
tremely elaborate technique that was used in the application of
such auto-erotic instruments :

" The instrument resembled in every respect the natural penis.
The only difference consisted in this, that from the apex to the root
it was shaped in transverse waves, in order to render the rubbing action
more powerful. Made entirely of silver, it was covered with a kind of
smooth and very hard varnish, giving it the natural colours. For the
rest, it was very light and thin, being hollow. Through the middle of
the hollow interior there passed a round tube, made also of silver, and
about twice the diameter of a goose-quill, and within this tube was
a piston ; the tube was firmly closed at the other end by means of a
screw. This screw was perforated, and firmly soldered to the base of
the head. Consequently there was an empty space between the central
tube and the outer wall of the instrument. This outer cavity of the
godemiche was filled with water warmed to blood-heat, and then
closed with a well-fitting cork. The small central tube was filled with
a thin, whitish solution of isinglass (!), which was previously prepared.
The warmth of the water was immediately communicated to the
isinglass solution ; and the latter then represented, as far as was
possible, the human semen."

This description dates from the year 1786 ! But even to-day
apparatus of this kind are advertised in the catalogues of certain

attempt was made to draw it out, the pine-needles acted as barbs ; consequently
the twig broke off short, and it was necessary for the medical man to remove it
with the aid of dressing forceps !

1 Cf. the complete historical and literary account of godemiches, given in my
" Sexual Life in England," vol. ii., pp. 284-292 (Berlin, 1903).

2 Cf. the explanation of this passage by Iwan Bloch, " Were the Ancients
aware of the Contagious Character of Venereal Diseases ?" published in the
Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, No. 5, 1899.

413

traders, under the title of " Parisian Rubber Articles." Whether
they really exist I do not know, for I have never actually seen
anything of the kind. Havelock Ellis assumes that they are still
used to-day. In brothels, prostitutes use at the present time
very primitive leathern phalli, such as were described by Herondas
and Aristophanes, for erotic practices and demonstration.

In addition to these, there are numerous other methods of
purely peripheral-mechanical masturbation. Thus, the rubbing
and movement of the genital organs in bicycle-riding, horse-
riding, very frequently in working the treadle of a sewing-machine,
and in travelling on the railway, may give rise to masturbatory
stimulation. Very commonly in women merely rubbing the
thighs against one another is sufficient to induce a sexual orgasm ;
whereas men almost always need to have recourse to more powerful
manipulation, such as manual friction (manustupratio).

What are the general physiological factors of auto-erotic
phenomena, more especially of masturbation ? In this con-
nexion it is interesting to note that auto-erotism is almost always
a precursor of completely developed sexuality, and manifests
itself a long time before puberty ; and may even appear soon
after birth, for the older and more recent medical literature of
the subject contains numerous observations of masturbation in
sucklings, not to speak of masturbation in older children. The
auto-erotism of sucklings is purely peripheral in its nature, and
depends upon the mechanical stimulation of certain parts of the
body, the first " erogenic " zones of man. Freud enumerates
among the regions of the body by the stimulation of which sexual
pleasure is most readily obtained, the lips of the infant, which,
in sucking the mother's breast or its substitute, receive an
instinctive perception of pleasure, in which the stimulation
produced by the warm flow of milk also plays a part. This
" ecstatic sucking " of infants is auto-erotic in character. Not
infrequently, while sucking in this voluptuous manner, the
infant simultaneously rubs certain sensitive parts of the body,
such as the breast and the external genital organs. A kind of
orgasm occurs, followed by sleep. Freud aptly compares this
phenomenon with the fact that in later life sexual gratification
is often the best means of inducing sleep. Freud also regards
the masturbation of sucklings as being within certain limits a
physiological phenomenon, as exhibiting on the part of Nature
an intention " to establish the future primacy of these erogenic
zones for sexual activity."1

1 S. Freud, " Throe Papers on the Sexual Theory," pp. 37, 42 (Leipzig and
Vienna, 1905).

414

With the onset of puberty the auto-erotic instincts are newly
stimulated ; new sources of auto-erotism become active, prin-
cipally owing to the development of the genital organs and to
the evacuation of the reproductive products. Various theories
have been propounded to explain by what means the sexual
tension occurring at puberty is induced, this sexual tension
being regarded as the ultimate cause of the masturbation of
sexually mature human beings. The most plausible hypothesis
is the chemical theory of sexual tension and sexual excitement,
which was explained in more detail above (p. 47). It may be
that, as Freud assumes, a substance generally diffused through-
out the organism is destroyed by the stimulation of the erogenic
zones, and that the products of decomposition of this substance
give rise to a discharge of sexual energy ; it may be that the re-
productive organs themselves produce such chemical substances,
sexual toxins. This assumption is supported by the experi-
mental observation that when in animals the ovaries and all the
nerves connected with these organs have been removed, and con-
sequently the ordinary periodic recurrence of sexual activity is
no longer seen, if now ovarian extract is injected into the body
of such animals, rutting once more occurs. Starling introduced
the term " hormone " to denote these chemical sexual substances.
They appear also to play a part in connexion with certain abnor-
malities and perversions of the sexual impulse — a matter to
which we shall return later. R. Kossmann also speaks of a
" neuro-chemical " injury — a kind of intoxication of the nervous
system induced by " retained secretions or excretions of the
reproductive organs."1

The same author also advances the neuro-mechanical theory
of sexual tension. He understands by this that the purely
mechanical distension of the organs belonging to the reproductive
apparatus exercises a mechanical stimulus on the genital nerves,
and thus has a reflex action upon the centres of the brain and
spinal cord, which reflex stimulation is allayed by orgasm and
ejaculation. Haig explains the feeling of relief after masturbation,
and the consequent discharge of sexual tension, as rather depen-
dent upon the mechanism of the blood-pressure. He remarks :

" Since the sexual act gives rise to a low and falling blood-pressure,
it must necessarily alleviate conditions which are due to high and
increasing blood-pressure — for example, mental depression and ill-

1 R. Kossmann, " Is the Medical Man Justified in Recommending Extra -
Conjugal Sexual Intercourse ?" published in the Journal for the Suppression of
Venereal Diseases, 1905, vol. iii., p. 126.

415

humour — and if my observations are correct, we have here an explana-
tion of the relation between conditions of high blood-pressure with
mental and physical depression, on the one hand, and masturbatory
practices on the other, for such practices alleviate this condition, and
are readily indulged hi for this purpose " (quoted by Havelock Ellis).

The statement made to Dr. Gamier by a monk, thirty-three
years of age, bears out this view :

" If no nocturnal seminal emissions occur, the tension of the semen
gives rise to general depression, headache, and sleeplessness. I admit
that sometimes, in order to obtain relief, I lie upon the abdomen, and
so produce a seminal discharge. I immediately feel freed, as if a
burden had been lifted from me, and sleep returns " (ibid., p. 273).

Similar motives for masturbation are alleged by many other-
wise healthy onanists. They apply, moreover, in an equal
degree to the normal, not excessive, sexual intercourse of ordinary
human beings. Persons belonging to the most diverse classes
of society — men of letters, shopmen, labourers, etc. — of whom
I have inquired regarding the effect of seminal emissions, whether
produced by masturbation or by coitus, have unanimously agreed
in describing to me this sense of " freeing " from a burden, from
pressure, from harmful substances accumulated in the body — a
sense of mental energy and creative power after such discharges
of sexual tension not exceeding normal limits. The frequency
of these discharges varies in different individuals ; in one the
intervals were short, in another they were long. This point
has a very important bearing upon the " question of sexual
abstinence," and we shall return to it in the discussion of that
topic.

Masturbation is often the means for inducing sleep and repose ;
it dulls nervous sensibility, and connected with this is the fact
that pain is often allayed by masturbation. Here I may refer
once more to the previously quoted (p. 44) view of a talented young
alienist, Edmund Forster, that, in association with sexual tension,
there occurs an increased stimulation of the pain-perceiving
nerves of the genital organs. It is conceivable that sexual
tension, especially it it depends upon chemical causes, also in-
creases pains arising from other areas of the body, and that
the discharge of sexual tension would thus alleviate or com-
pletely allay these pains. Coe reports (American Journal of
Obstetrics, 1889, p. 766) the case of a woman who was accustomed
by masturbation to obtain immediate relief of intense menstrual
ovarian pains. It is very remarkable that these pains were
accompanied by a powerful sexual impulse, which ceased when

416

the pain ceased, and did not return during the intermenstrual
period. Here we have a striking testimony of the accuracy of
Forster's view. The phrenologist Gall was aware of the manner
in which masturbation relieves pain.

In addition to these more natural causes of masturbation,
which in themselves suffice to explain the wide diffusion of the
practice, we have also to consider masturbation dependent upon
seduction and upon morbid states.

To seduction must be referred all the phenomena of group-
masturbation (masturbation on the large scale) in schools,1
training-ships, barracks, factories (especially in this case as
regards female employees !), prisons, etc. One leads another
astray, and masturbation is diffused like an epidemic disease ;
the individuals are subjected to the influence of the suggestion
of the crowd, which they are unable to resist. Thomalla describes
boarding-schools in which masturbation was practised for a
wager, and that boy won the prize in whom seminal emission
first occurred ! He further speaks of a school club in which
obscene readings were held, and in which by means of forbidden
pictures the boys were sexually excited until erection occurred,
then followed general masturbation, also accompanied by wagers.

This group-masturbation is the best proof of the fact that those
who masturbate are not simply individuals with an inherited
morbid predisposition ; for nothing is easier to suggest than
masturbation. Havelock Ellis2 reports the following case of
an unmarried healthy young woman, thirty-one years of age,
which throws a strong light on this suggested manifestation :

" When I was about twenty-six years of age, a female friend in-
formed me that she had masturbated already for several years, and
was so much enslaved by the habit that she suffered seriously from
its ill-effects. I listened to her account with sympathy and interest,
but felt rather sceptical, and I resolved to make the attempt on myself,
with the intention of understanding the matter better, so that I might
be able to help my friend. With a little trouble I succeeded in awaken-
ing what had hitherto slumbered in me unknown. I intentionally
allowed the habit to become stronger, and one night — for I usually
did it just before going to sleep, never in the morning — I really experi-
enced an extremely agreeable sensation. But the next morning my
conscience was aroused, and I felt pains also in the back of the head
and along the spine. For a time I discontinued the habit, but later
began it again, masturbating with considerable regularity once a
month, a few days after each menstruation. . . . The habit overcame

1 Of. R. Thomalla, " Masturbation in the School : its Consequences and its
Suppression," published in the Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases,
1906, vol. v., pp. 63-68.

2 H. Ellis, " The Sexual Impulse and the Sense of Shame."

417

me with alarming rapidity, and I soon became more or less its slave.
... In conclusion, I must say that masturbation has proved to me
one of the blind chances in my life's history, out of which I have derived
many valuable experiences."

Frequently local morbid changes in or near the genital
organs lead to the practice of masturbation, such as skin
troubles, intestinal worms, phimosis, inflammatory states of
the penis or near the entrance of the vagina, prurigo and
other itching affections of the penis, constipation, urinary
anomalies, etc. Further, mental disorders, epilepsy, and de-
generative nerve troubles, are frequent causes of masturbation.
Masturbation has been observed after epileptic paroxysms in
patients who at other times never masturbate. There is no
doubt that neurasthenia powerfully predisposes to masturbation.
Excessive masturbation is almost always the consequence, not
the cause, of associated neurasthenia ; it is " the manifesta-
tion of a disease in course of development or of a permanently
existing degenerative predisposition." * To these cases of in-
vincible, habitual, excessive masturbation Oppenheim's view
applies — that the disposition to onanism is often inherited. A
characteristic instance of this is offered by an observation of
Block's (Havelock Ellis, op. cit., p. 240) in the case of a little
girl, who began to masturbate at the early age of two years, and
had probably inherited this tendency from her mother and
grandmother, for they had both masturbated throughout life,
whilst the grandmother had actually died in an asylum of " mas-
turbatory insanity." In the majority of cases in which mastur-
bation makes its first appearance in sucklings we have to do
with such an inheritance. In many cases the peculiar oscillatory
movements of sucklings may merely be the expression of the
sense of general comfort, as Fiirbringer believes, and may have
nothing to do with actual masturbation ; but, on the other hand,
it cannot be denied that veritable masturbation may be observed
in the first and second years of life. Havelock Ellis, J. P. West,
and Louis Mayer have reported such cases. In children some-
what older than this — from three years upwards — seduction and
suggestion certainly play a great part. The author of " Splitter "
was told by a professor that, when visiting an institution for
small children in St. G[allen], he saw a girl about three years of
age who was making suspicious movements. The matron, whose

1 Gustav Aschaffonburg, " The Relations of the Sexual Life to the Origin of
Nervous and Mental Disorders," published in the Miinchener Medizinische
Wocherwchrift, 1906, No. 37, p. 1794.

418

attention was called to the matter, said that almost all babies
were already infected when they first came to the institution
(" Splitter," p. 375).

Another disputed question relates to the diffusion of mastur-
bation in the female sex. Is the practice commoner or less
common among women than among men ? Metchnikoff1 is of
opinion that in girls it is much less common than in boys, because
sexual excitability generally develops much later in the female
sex. Female monkeys masturbate only in exceptional cases,
whereas in male monkeys masturbation is very common. The
circumstance which Metchnikoff adduces in further support of
his view of the rarity of masturbation in women — that, namely,
most girls are enlightened regarding sexual sensibility only after
marriage — proves very little, because the sensations aroused in
woman by masturbation are of a very different nature from those
produced by coitus, and coitus often first makes them acquainted
with entirely new sensations. Tissot regards masturbation as
commoner in women than in men ; Deslandes believed that there
was no difference between the sexes. Lawson Tait, Spitzka, and
Dana, inclined rather to Metchnikoff' s view as to the greater
rarity of the practice among women. Albert Eulenburg con-
siders masturbation " not quite so common among young women
as among young men," but still " far more common than parents,
teachers, and the laity of both sexes as a rule imagine."2 Havelock
Ellis considers that after puberty masturbation is commoner in
women because men can then much more readily obtain gratifi-
cation in a normal manner by means of intercourse with the other
sex. Otto Adler estimates the frequency of masturbation to be
very great, because he regards it as the principal cause of deficient
sexual sensibility in women, which latter condition he also
believes to be extremely common, although he does not go so far
as to accept Rohleder's enormous proportion of 95 masturbators
in every 100 women (!).3 L. Lowenfeld, who characterizes
Rohleder's and Berger's (99 %) estimates as exaggerations, con-
siders that the frequency of masturbation in women is not so
great as in men.4 In reality, masturbation, given similar cir-
cumstances and causes, is probably diffused to an approximately
equal extent among both sexes.

1 Metchnikoff, " The Nature of Man " (English edition), p. 96.
8 A. Eulenburg, " Sexual Neuropathy," p. 80 (Leipzig, 1895).

3 Otto Adler, " Deficient Sexual Sensibility in Woman," p. 112 (Berlin, 1904).
Mendel observed excessive masturbation in hypochondriacal women (Deutsche
Medizinal-Zeitung, 1889, No. 15, p. 180).

4 L. Lowenfeld, " The Sexual Life and Nervous Disorders," fourth edition,
p. 114 (Wiesbaden, 1906).

419

> .But this relates only to peripheral-mechanical masturbation ;
from this " psychical onanism " has rightly been separated — that
form of masturbation in which, simply by ideas, without the
assistance of manual stimulation of the genital organs, sexual
excitement is caused and the orgasm is induced. Psychical
onanism, of which Eduard Reich1 remarked that our own time
nourishes it to the fullest possible extent, develops in the majority
of cases out of masturbation proper. In this form the imagina-
tion is tasked with representing all the factors of normal sexual
gratification. The simple physical act suffices only in the first
beginnings of this vice. Every practised onanist understands
that he must soon call his imagination to his aid in order to
produce sexual gratification, and that ultimately ideas alone
dominate the entire libido, and the orgasm often enough termi-
nates an act which in every respect has throughout remained
purely ideal.

" So great is the power of imagination," remarks the experienced
Rouband, " that quite alone, without the assistance of physical
stimulation, it can produce the venereal orgasm, with ejaculation of
the semen, as happened to one of my fellow-students every time he
thought of his beloved."8

Hammond even knew an actual sect of such " onanists by
means of simple ideal unchastity," who formed a sort of club or
society, and who were known to one another by certain signs.3
A patient related to him that in his thoughts of women whom he
met, or those who were sitting opposite to him in the railway-
carriage, he was accustomed to undress them in imagination ;
he then would represent to himself very plainly their genital
organs, and during this representation he experienced very active
voluptuous sensations, culminating in ejaculation. Lowenfeld
has also observed several such cases. Eulenburg speaks of an
" ideal cohabitation." The ideas are usually of a lascivious
nature, but this is not always the case. Von Schrenck-Notzing
reports the case of a lady twenty years of age in whom the
simple idea of men, but also agreeable sensory perceptions, such
as theatrical scenes, or musical impressions, or beautiful pictures,
gave rise to the sexual orgasm.4

1 Eduard Roich, " Immorality and Immoderation," p. 122 (Neuwied and
Leipzig, 1866).

J Felix Roubaud, " Treatise on Impotence and Sterility in Man and Woman,"
third edition, p. 7 (Paris, 1876).

3 W. A. Hammond, " Sexual Impotence in the Male and Female Sexes."

4 A. von Schronck-Notzing, " Therapeutic Suggestion in Cases of Morbid
Manifestations of the Sexual Sensibility, pp. 66, 67 (Stuttgart, 1892).

27—2

420

Allied with psychical onanism is the brooding over sexual
ideas — the delectatio morosa of the theologians — and erotic ex-
citement associated with dream-imaginations, or "sexual day-
dreams " (Havelock Ellis). This is the spinning out of a con-
tinuous erotic history with any hero or any heroine, which is
carried on from day to day. Most commonly this occurs in bed
before going to sleep. Sexual activities form the material of
these histories. We often find carefully worked out and more or
less erotic day-dreams in young men, and especially in young
women, frequently containing perverse elements. This dream-
ing, according to Havelock Ellis, does not necessarily lead to
masturbation, although it often induces seminal discharges. It
occurs both in healthy and in abnormal persons, especially in
imaginative individuals. Rousseau experienced such erotic day-
dreams. The American author Garland, in his novel, " Rose of
Dutcher's Coolly," has admirably described the part played by a
circus-rider hi the erotic day-dreams of a normal healthy girl
during the period of puberty.1

In close relationship with these psychical-onanistic day-
dreams there stands another phenomenon, to which, as far as
I know, I was the first to refer, which I have denoted by
the term erotographomania.- There are numerous men and
women who induce their lovers — male or female, as the case may
be — prostitutes, masseuses, etc., to write to them letters with a
sexually stimulating content ; or also, as very frequently occurs,
they themselves write such letters, containing numerous ob-
scenities. Such correspondence, filled with ardent erotism,
seems recently to have made its appearance as a peculiar refine-
ment of sexuality ; this also has the effect of a kind of psychical
onanism. The interchange of obscene letters of this character
recently played a part in the trial of two homosexual individuals
hi East Prussia. There exists, also, a comparatively blameless,
more or less physiological, erotographomania of the time of
puberty, in which most passionate letters are written to im-
aginary lovers, and the still obscure sexual impulse finds a satis-
faction in these erotic imaginations.

After this brief account of the various forms and varieties of
masturbation, we now turn to consider the consequences of the
practice. In the course of time there has been a remarkable
change of views in respect of this matter. The true founder of

1 Cf. Havelock Ellis, " The Sexual Impulse and the Sense of Shame," pp.
184-186.

2 Iwan Bloch, " Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,"
vol. ii., pp. 107, 108 (Dresden, 1903).

421

the scientific literature of masturbation, Tissot, in his celebrated
monograph (" Masturbation ; or, the Treatment of the Diseases
that result from Self-Abuse " ; St. Petersburg, 1774), regarded
masturbation as the evil of all evils, and deduced from it all
possible severe troubles. His book bears as motto the verse by
Von Canitz :

" Wenn schnode Wollust dich erfiillt,
So werde durch ein Schreckensbild
Verdorrter Totenknochen
Der Kitzel unterbrochen."

[" When base lust fills thy thoughts,

Let a horrible picture rise before thy mind

Of withered dead men's bones,

So let the sensual stimulation be driven away."]

It is dominated by a thoroughgoing pessimism. In this view
he is followed by Voltaire, in his " Dictionnaire Philosophique,"
and by the authors of the first seventy years of the nine-
teenth century. Such gloomy views are expressed, above all,
by Lallemand, in his celebrated book upon involuntary losses of
semen ; but they are shared by German physicians also, as, for
example, B. Hermann Leitner, in his treatise, " De Mastur-
batione " (Buda-Pesth, 1844), and in the preface to his book
we read : " The writers who speak of the terrible results of self-
abuse do not exaggerate ; on the contrary, their picture is not
sufficiently gloomy." *• Modern medical science has, however,
reduced these exaggerations to a reasonable measure. For this
we have, above all, to thank W. Erb and Fiirbringer. The old
belief in the enormous dangers and the eminent injuriousness of
masturbation, still remains as a bugbear in certain popular
writings, some of which have been published in hundreds of
editions. Who has not heard of the " Selbstbewahrung " (" Self-
Abuse ") of Retaus,2 the prototype of this dangerous literature,
which must be regarded as the principal source of sexual hypo-
chondria ; frequently, also, it induces direct sexual stimulation,
because it does indeed describe the devil, but describes also
voluptuousness !

At the present day all experienced physicians who have been
occupied in the study of masturbation and its consequences hold
the view that moderate masturbation hi healthy persons, without

1 On p. 18 of his treatise he goes so far as to say: " There is no disease of the
body or the mind which cannot be referred to masturbation."

2 Eulenburg refers also to " Personliohe Schutz," by Laurentios ; the " Jugend-
spiegel," by Bernhard ; the " Johannistriob," by B. Mohrmann; the "Krankheit
dor Welt," by A. Damm.

422

morbid inheritance, has no bad results at all. It is only excess
that does harm ; but even excess in healthy persons does less
harm than hi those with inherited morbid predisposition. I may
express the matter hi this way : it is not masturbation (Ger.
Onanie) that is harmful, but " onanism " (Ger. Onanismus)—
that is to say, the habitual and excessive practice of masturba-
tion, continued for a number of years, which certainly has an
injurious influence on health. The boundary line at which the
harmless masturbation (Onanie) ceases and the injurious onanism
(Onanismus) begins cannot generally be denned. The difference
between individuals makes their reactions in this respect very
different. For example, Curschmann reports the case of a
talented and brilliant author who, notwithstanding the fact that
he had masturbated to excess for eleven years, remained physi-
cally and mentally vigorous, and pursued his literary labours
with notable success. Fiirbringer reports a similar case in a
University lecturer. The following case, which came under my
own observation, shows that even excessive masturbation need
not impair health and working powers. A man of letters, forty
years of age, probably misled by a nursemaid hi the first instance,
had masturbated without intermission since the age of five, and
since puberty had done so several times a day (three to ten
times), without any interference with his powers for work. He
is a big, powerful, healthy man, of a really imposing appearance.
No one would suspect him to be a habitual masturbator. That
from the masturbation (Ger. Onanie) of childhood and youth there
developed a condition of formal onanism (Ger. Onanismus) in
the adult is in this case principally to be ascribed to the con-
tinued abuse of alcohol. The patient drinks daily twelve to
fourteen glasses of Munich beer. He is also a heavy smoker.
No evidence of inherited predisposition to masturbation can be
obtained. For the patient the female sex exists only in the
imagination ; he has very rarely had sexual intercourse, and
avoids ladies' society, although he has good fortune with women.
It is the same with masturbation as it is with sexual intercourse :
the effects vary according to the individual. Recently mastur-
bation and coitus have been compared in this respect. Sir James
Paget in his lecture on " Sexual Hypochondriasis " says : " Mas-
turbation does neither more nor less harm than sexual inter-
course practised with the same frequency in the same conditions
of general health and age and circumstance." Erb and Cursch-
mann go even further ; for they consider that masturbation has
less influence on the nervous system than coitus. In reality,

423

however, masturbation is almost always more harmful than
coitus. The reasons for this are obvious. In the first place,
masturbation is begun much earlier, generally at an age when the
body has not yet developed any marked capacity for resistance.
Masturbation in childhood is, therefore, especially harmful.1
Lowenfeld (op. tit., p. 127) is of opinion that self-abuse begun
before virility is attained more readily gives rise to weakness of
the nervous system than masturbation begun later in life. In
neuropathic children he saw several times, as a consequence of
masturbation, well-marked general nervousness, paroxysms of
anxiety, sleeplessness, and arrest of mental development. In the
second place, masturbation is more dangerous than coitus hi
this way — that it can be carried out much more frequently, on
account of the more frequent opportunities, so that masturbation
four, five, or even more, times in a single day is by no means rare.
In the third place, the spiritual influence of masturbation is much
more harmful than that of normal coitus. The " solitary " vice
influences the psyche and the character hi the mere child. The
youthful masturbator seeks solitude, becomes shy of human
beings, reserved, morose, unhappy, hypochondriacal. In the
adult the sense of the debasing character and of the sinfulness of
masturbation is much more lively ; self-confidence departs ; the
masturbator regards himself as absolutely " enslaved " by his
vice, the eternal struggle against the ever-recurring impulse gives
rise more to mental depression than to actual physical harm.
From this there results a whole series of diseases of the will, for
by masturbation much less harm is done to the intellect than to
the vital energy, the capacity for spiritual and physical activity.
The cold, blas6 manner of many young men, who seem never to
have known the natural youthful joy of life, the whole " demi-
virginity " of modern young girls — all these are without doubt
dependent upon masturbation and upon psychical onanism.
The egoism of the onanist in the sexual relationship increases
his egoism in other respects, gives rise to cold-heartedness, and
blunts the more delicate ethical perceptions. The campaign
against masturbation as a group manifestation is eminently a
social campaign for altruism ; it insists that young people should
take their share in all questions relating to the common good.
Peculiar extravagances and unnatural characteristics in art and
literature may also be partly attributed to masturbation. Many

1 According to A. Jaoobi (" The History of Pwdiatry, and its Relation to Other
Arts and Sciences," p. 66 (Berlin, 1905), this is not true of quite young children,
at ages of from one to ton years, in whom masturbation does less harm than in
half -grown or adult individuals.

424

works clearly bear its imprints. Thus Havelock Ellis rightly
refers in this connexion to the peculiar melancholy in Gogol's
stories, for Gogol masturbated to great excess. It would be
possible to mention also certain writings of our own time which
inevitably give rise to such a suspicion.

The reader will do well to consult the interesting discussion of
masturbation from the philosophical standpoint by Schopen-
hauer (" Neue Paralipomena," ed. Grisebach, pp. 226, 227).

The physical consequences of immoderate and habitual mastur-
bation may also be really serious. The eye especially suffers
manifold injuries, as has been proved by the investigations of
Hermann Cohn. Irritable states of the conjunctiva, spasms of
the eyelids, weakness of accommodation, subjective sensations of
light, and photophobia, may result from masturbation. The
heart also is sympathetically affected. Krehl even speaks of
" masturbator's heart " as a consequence of the long-lasting
nervous hyperexcitability, which injures the heart and the
vessels, and is manifested by irregularity of the pulse and by
sensations of pressure and pain in the cardiac region, by palpita-
tion, etc. Discontinuance of the habit leads to an immediate
disappearance of all these alarming symptoms. Very important
is also the causal connexion between masturbation and nervous
or mental disorders. Here, however, as Aschaffenburg has re-
cently insisted, we must distinguish clearly between masturbation
resulting from previously existing nervo-psychical troubles, in
which a vicious circle develops — for here the masturbation is
partly the consequence of the original trouble, partly the cause
of an aggravation of this trouble — and the effects of onanism
on the healthy central nervous system. Here Aschaffenburg is
in agreement with the views of those who consider these effects
are less serious than earlier writers were accustomed to assume.
Aschaffenburg also recognizes that the most harmful effect is
to be found in the psychical influence of masturbation, in the
continuous, but ever-vain, contest against the habit. This is
the source of the majority of the hypochondriacal and other
troubles. He often succeeded, by the discovery of this psychical
mode of origin, in putting an end to a number of morbid manifes-
tations. As soon as the patient becomes aware that these have
a purely mental cause, he at once feels himself freed from them.
That masturbation is never a direct cause of mental disorder is
now generally recognized by alienists.1 At the most, masturba-
tion is no more than a favouring element in the production of

1 <7/. H. Rohlecier, " Die Masturbation," pp. 186-192 (Berlin, 1899).

425

such disorder." Masturbatory insanity " occurs only in those with
marked hereditary predisposition, and who already have been
extremely neurasthenic.1

But masturbation can unquestionably give rise to purely
local changes in the genital organs, such as inflammatory states
of the prostate gland, spermatorrhoea, and prostatorrhcea ; in
women fluor albus, excessively painful menstruation, and other
disturbances of the menstrual function, and in connexion with
these phenomena there may appear the morbid picture of
" sexual neurasthenia," which we have soon to describe.

A very serious result of onanism (not of Onanie) is the
disinclination to normal sexual intercourse to which the habit
gives rise, and the production of sexual perversions. The former
is more marked in the female sex, the latter more in the male
sex. Masturbation is the principal cause of sexual frigidity in
women and of a disinclination to normal intercourse. Un-
doubtedly psychical influences here play the principal part ;
but also a certain blunting of the sensations of the genital organs
by means of excessive masturbatory stimulation. They are no
longer susceptible to the normal stimulatory influence of coitus.
Moreover, masturbation is often effected by stimulation applied
to some definite portion of the female reproductive organs, most
frequently to the clitoris or the labia ; and these parts in such
cases are not sufficiently stimulated by coitus. In the male the
especially sensitive portions of the penis are stimulated alike by
masturbation and in coitus, for which reason man, notwithstanding
the practice of masturbation, is much more readily able to obtain
sexual gratification in the course of ordinary sexual intercourse.
Notwithstanding this, there are also certain peculiar methods of
masturbation hi the male, the effect of which is not attained by
coitus. In such cases men also may fail to induce the sexual
orgasm by ordinary intercourse.

The close relationship of masturbation to sexual perversions
is obvious. The more frequently the onanistic act is repeated,
the more the normal sensibility is blunted, the stronger and more
peculiar are the stimuli, which must be of a nature diverging from
the ordinary, demanded in order to induce a sexual orgasm.
The content of the lascivious ideas must be varied more and
more frequently, and soon passes entirely into the sphere of the
perverse. Gradually these perverse sexual ideas become more
firmly rooted, and ultimately develop into complete sexual
perversions. A classical example of this is the case reported by

1 i '(. L. Lowenfeld, op. cit., p. 137.

426

Tardieu1 of a man who was in the habit of masturbating seven
or eight times every day, and ultimately inflamed his imagination
to the point of representing the act of intercourse with female
corpses. At length he passed to the practical carrying out of
this horrible idea, which had now assumed definite sadistic
characters. He arranged to obtain a view of opened female
bodies, killed dogs, dug up human corpses — all in order thereby
to provide satisfaction for his imagination, which had been dis-
ordered in consequence of masturbation, and thus to obtain
sexual gratification. In the etiology of pseudo-homosexuality
masturbation unquestionably plays a part — a fact to which
Havelock Ellis has drawn attention.2 The Mexican " mujerados "
are trained for paederasty by means of masturbation repeated
several times daily. Ideas of bestial intercourse may even be
aroused by masturbation. Von Schrenck-Notzing3 reports the
case of a woman who had masturbated for thirty years, and
ultimately came to represent to herself in imagination that she
was having intercourse with a stallion.

The prospects of the satisfactory treatment and cure of mastur-
bation are unquestionably greater in the case of children. To
attain perfect success, parents, teachers, and physicians must
co-operate. Above all, it is necessary to relieve any local and
general morbid conditions favouring the practice of masturbation.
The diet should be light and unstimulating, the clothing and
bedding light and cool. In the year 1791 the body physician of
the Schaumburg-Lippe family, Dr. Bernhard Christian Faust,
published a remarkable work under the title " How to Regulate
the Human Sexual Impulse," with a preface by the celebrated
pedagogue J. H. Campe (Brunswick, 1791). In this book he
maintained the thesis that the principal cause of masturbation
in boys was the wearing of breeches. According to him, the
wrapping up of children in swaddling clothes causes premature
stimulation of the sexual organs. Later, in consequence of
wearing breeches, there is produced " a great and damp warmth,
which is especially marked in the region of the sexual organs,
where the shirt falls into folds " (p. 46). Also, the boy, " when
he wishes to pass water, must take his little penis out of his
breeches. At first, and for a long time after he begins to wear
them, the little boy cannot manage this himself ; other children,

1 A. Tardieu, "Etude Medico -Legale sur les Attentats aux Moeurs," p. 114
(Paris, 1878).

2 Cf. my " Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. i.,
p. 135.

3 Von Schrenk-Notzing, op. cit., p. 9.

427

maids, and menservants, help him, and pull and play with his
sexual parts. By this handling, pulling, and playing, which he
himself does, or which others do for him, with his sexual organs,
the boy is led (also the girl, who very often assists, and whom the
blameless boy, out of gratitude, wishes to help in return) into
constant acquaintanceship with parts which he would otherwise
have regarded as sacred, unclean, and shameful. The child
becomes accustomed to play with his sexual organs, and occa-
sional masturbation develops into habitual self-abuse, all brought
about by wearing breeches " (p. 45). To prevent all this, he
suggested that boys from nine to fourteen years of age should
wear clothing resembling rather that of girls. Then these chil-
dren would be " according to Nature, children, and would ripen
late ; and the human sexual impulse would come under control,
and mankind would be better and happier " (p. 217).

Although the far-reaching and systematic development of this
thesis appears ludicrous, still, there is an element of truth in it,
and unsuitably tight and warm clothing certainly favours the
tendency to masturbation.

According to the suggestion of Ultzmann, in the case of nursing
infants and of small children, the hands may be confined in little
bags or tied to the side of the bed. The methods of the older
physicians, who appeared before the child armed with great
knives and scissors, and threatened a painful operation, or even
to cut off the genital organs, may often be found useful, and may
effect a radical cure. The actual carrying out of small operations
is also sometimes helpful. Fiirbringer cured a young fellow in
whom no instruction and no punishment had proved effective,
by simply cutting off the anterior part of his foreskin with jagged
scissors. In the case of a young lady who often in company
indulged her passionate impulse towards masturbation, he
brought about a cure by repeated cauterization of the vulva.
Other physicians perforate the foreskin and introduce a ring.
Cages have even been provided for the genital organs to prevent
masturbation, the key being kept by the father (!). Enveloping
the penis in bandages without any opening has also been tried.
Corporal punishment sometimes has a good effect. Of the
greatest value is continuous care, to safeguard the children
against seduction. " Parents, protect your children from ser-
vants," exclaimed Retif de la Bretonne. Valuable also are
earnest warnings and explanations, increase of energy and force
of will (by sports and games, and by work in the garden, and by
the setting of tasks which stimulate ambition). Climatic cures

428

and hydro-therapeutic methods are also valuable means in the
treatment of masturbation. The same measures may be em-
ployed in the treatment of masturbation in adults. In their
case, however, psycho-therapeutics plays the principal part. In
many cases here also local cauterization of the urethra and
massage of the prostate may bring about a cure. Utterly per-
verse would it be to introduce youthful onanists to actual
sexual intercourse, after the manner of the Parisian " soup-
merchants," as the common speech names them, who, in order
to cure their youthful scholars of masturbation, take them into
brothels.1

Masturbation is intimately connected with irritable nervous
weakness, or " neurasthenia," this typical disease of civiliza-
tion, and more especially with the genital form of the disease,
" sexual neurasthenia." In an analysis of 333 cases of neu-
rasthenia Collins and Philipp found that 123 cases — that is, more
than one-third — resulted from overwork or from masturbation.2
Freud, von Krafft-Ebing, Savill, Gattel, and Rohleder see in
masturbation the true cause of neurasthenia. Fiirbringer,
Lowenfeld, and Eulenburg are of opinion that other injuries must
also come into play in order to produce the typical picture of
sexual neurasthenia. It is certain that very frequently the order
of causation is reversed, neurasthenia being the primary and
masturbation the secondary disorder. Masturbation is then only
a symptom of sexual neurasthenia. The same duplex mode of
consideration may also be applied to the other morbid phenomena
of which the clinical picture of sexual neurasthenia is composed.
Every one of these symptoms of irritable weakness, the excessive
sexual excitability, the deficient sexual sensibility, the seminal
discharges, and the impotence, can, like masturbation, exhibit a
certain independence, can be induced by various causes, and may
lead to sexual neurasthenia ; it may be, on the other hand, that
they first developed in the soil of sexual neurasthenia. It is often
impossible to determine the true beginning of the vicious circle.
It therefore appears to be more practical to describe the morbid
picture of sexual neurasthenia (which we owe to Beard)3 accord-
ing to its individual symptoms, as is done also by A. Eulenburg4

1 Of. A. Weill, " The Laws and Mysteries of Love," p. 101 (Berlin, 1895).

2 Havelock Ellis, op. cit., p. 266.

3 G. M. Beard, " Sexual Neurasthenia," second edition (Leipzig and Vienna,
1890).

4 A. Eulenburg, " Sexual Neurasthenia," published in Deutsche Klinik, 1902,
vol. vi., pp. 163-206.

429

in an admirable essay, and by L. Lowenfeld in his well-known
work on " The Sexual Life and Nervous Disorders."

The abnormal increase in the sexual impulse (sexual hyper-
aesthesia, satyriasis, nymphomania) begins at the point at which the
normal sexual impulse is exceeded ; and that point is subject to
wide individual variations, according to the age, race, habits,
and external influences. The normal sexual impulse can also
be temporarily increased by special circumstances — as, for
example, by prolonged sexual abstinence, and by various kinds
of erotic stimulation, without our being justified in speaking of
" hyperaesthesia." This is always an abnormal condition, which
may be referred to various causes. It is more frequent in men
(" satyriasis ") than in women (" nymphomania ") ; it may be
permanent or periodic ; it almost always arises from lascivious
ideas, and, according to its cause, is accompanied by a greater
or less diminution of responsibility, or even by complete lack of
responsibility. The readiness with which sexual ideas give rise
to an abnormally increased desire and to reaction on the part of
the genital apparatus is characteristic of sexual hypersesthesia ;
and this may attain such a degree that the man (or woman) may
really be " sexually insane," and, like the wild animals, rush at
the first creature he meets of the opposite sex in order to gratify
his lust ; or he may be overpowered by some abnormal variety
of the sexual impulse, so that he seizes in sexual embrace any
other living or lifeless object, and in this state may perform acts
of paederasty, bestiality, violation of children, etc. In these
most severe cases we can always demonstrate the existence of
mental disorder, general paralysis, mania, or periodical insanity,
and very often of epilepsy (Lombroso), as a cause. In a more
chronic and milder form, sexual hyperaesthesia is observed after
excessive masturbation, often also in association with a con-
genitally neuropathic constitution. Lowenfeld describes a peculiar
form of nocturnal sexual hyperaesthesia occurring in married
men, especially men in the forties or fifties, who for various
reasons are compelled to abstain from conjugal intercourse, and
who live continently. In the daytime these patients were free
from their trouble ; it appeared only at night. Soon, or some
hours after going to sleep, a violent, painful, enduring erection
of the penis (priapism) set in, which disturbed their sleep, and
left them in the morning with a feeling of enervation. In such
a case obviously there is a hyperexcitability of the genital erection
centre. The erection results as a reflex effect of stimuli pro-
ceeding from the genital organs, but manifests itself only when,

430

during sleep, the inhibitions proceeding from the brain are in
abeyance. This nocturnal priapism may, according to Lowen-
feld's observations, last for years.1

Sexual hypersesthesia in women, or " nymphomania," is, in
its slighter forms, also in most cases a consequence of excessive
masturbation. Such women do not so much exhibit a more
powerful inclination towards sexual intercourse, which, on the
contrary, is incompetent to satisfy their abnormal and perverse
sexual excitability. We rather see in them an impulsion to
obtain new sensations in their sexual organs in any possible way.
These are the women who, for example, consult the gynaecologist
as often as possible, because examination with the speculum or
other manipulations induce in them sexual excitement. During
the climacteric — the time when menstruation ceases — such states
are also met with. Nymphomania proper always develops
upon the foundation of severe neurasthenia and hysteria, or of
direct brain and mental disorder. Then is produced the type of
the " man-mad " woman, as described by Juvenal in the person
of the Empress Messalina, who in the brothel gave herself to all
comers, without obtaining complete satisfaction of her sexual
desire. Such types exist also at the present day. Thus, the
brothers de Goncourt in their Diary reported the case of an old
housekeeper who for several decades indulged in the most las-
civious love orgies, had innumerable lovers, and a " secret life
full of nocturnal orgies in strange beds, full of nymphomaniac
lusts."2 There recently lived in Charlottenburg the wife of a
workman, well known on account of her incredible sexual
ardour and man-mania. Her husband, a professional stabber,
was imprisoned for life. His wife often gave herself in a single
day to four or five different men ; every male creature that
approached her she asked to perform the sexual act with her.—
The following almost incredible case of this nature is reported by
Trelat :

Madame V., of a strong constitution, agreeable exterior, good-
natured manner, but very reserved, came under the care of Trelat on
January 1, 1854. Notwithstanding the fact that she was sixty years
of age, she still worked very diligently, and hardly spared herself time
for meals. Nothing in her outward appearance or in her actions
indicated during her stay in the asylum that she was in any way
affected with mental disorder. During the four years not a single
obscene word, not a gesture, not the slightest passionate movement,
indicated anger or impatience.

1 L. Lowenfeld, op. cit., pp. 273, 274.

a Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, " Leaves from a Diary."

431

r Since her earliest years she has pursued handsome men and given
herself to them. When a young girl, by this degrading conduct she
reduced her parents to despair. Of an amiable character, she blushed
when anyone spoke a word to her. She cast her eyes down when in
the presence of several persons ; but as soon as she was alone with a
young or old man, or even with a child, she was immediately trans-
formed ; she lifted her petticoats, and attacked with a raging energy
him who was the object of her insane love. In such moments she
was a Messalina, whereas a few instants before one would have regarded
her as a virgin. A few times she met with resistance, and received
severe moral lectures, but far more often there was no obstacle to
her desires. Although various distressing adventures occurred, her
parents arranged for her marriage, in the hope thereby to put an end
to the moral disturbance. But her marriage was only a new scandal.
She loved her husband passionately ; and she loved with the like
passion every man with whom she happened to be alone ; and she
exhibited so much cunning and cleverness that she made a mock of
any attempts at watching her, and often attained her end. Now it
was a manual worker busy at his trade, now some one walking past
her in the street, to whom she spoke, and whom she brought home
with her on any possible excuse — a young man, a servant, a child
returning from school ! In her exterior she appeared so blameless,
and she spoke so gently, that every one followed her without mis-
trust. More than once she was beaten or robbed ; but this did not
prevent her continuing the same way of life. Even when she had
become a grandmother there was no change.

One day she enticed a boy, twelve years of age, into her house,
having told him that his mother was coming to see her. She gave him
sweets, embraced and kissed him, and as she then began to take off
his clothes and approached him with obscene gestures, the boy strove
to resist her. He struck her, and he related everything to his brother,
twenty-four years of age. The brother entered the house pointed out
by the boy, and abused the corrupt woman to the uttermost, saying :
"In such circumstances one helps oneself , without having recourse to
law, in order not to bring one's name into disrepute by public pro-
ceedings. I hope this disturbance will teach you not to behave in
this way again." While this scene was going on, the woman's son-in-
law chanced to come in, realized the situation before there was time
to tell him anything, and at once took sides with the incensed young
man.

She was shut up in a convent, where she behaved in so good, sweet,
amiable, and modest a manner, that no one would have believed that
she had ever committed the slightest fault, and representations were
made to the effect that she ought to be allowed to return to her home.
All the inmates of the convent had been charmed by the zeal with
which she took part in the religious exercises. When she was free
again, the scandalous doings were immediately resumed, and so it
went on all through her life.

After she had reduced her husband and children to despair, they
finally hoped that age would extinguish the fire with wliich she was
consumed. They were mistaken. The more excesses she com-
mitted, the more she wanted to commit, the more vigorous she
appeared. It is hardly credible that such debased ideas and habits

432

should leave intact such a sweet expression of countenance, a voice
so youthful, a behaviour so full of calm repose, and a glance of such
clear assurance. She became a widow. Her children, on account
of her horrible mode of life, could not any longer keep her at home,
and they sent her to a distant place, where they provided her with an
allowance. Since she was now old, she was at length compelled to
offer payment for the shameful services which she demanded ; and as
the small allowance she received did not suffice for this purpose, she
worked with untiring zeal in order to be able to pay the great number
of her lovers.

To see the old, alert woman sitting at her work, as I myself saw her,
when aged seventy or upwards, without spectacles, always cleanly
and carefully, but not strikingly, dressed, with a simple and honour-
able appearance, and an open countenance — to suspect her shameful
mode of life would never occur to anyone. Several of the wretched
men who were paid by her related how diligent she was. She assured
Trelat of her morality, in the hope that he would discharge her, and
so enable her to resume her mode of life. Trelat could not agree to
this, and he succeeded in obtaining from one of these men an accurate
account of her shameless loves.

This corrupt woman preserved her repose of manner, her excellent
appearance, and her honourable demeanour until her death. She
died at the age of seventy-four years from a cerebral haemorrhage.
There was no remarkable change in the brain (Journ. de Mbd. de Paris,
1889, No. 16).

With regard to the treatment of abnormal sexual hyper-
excitability, the severer forms — satyriasis and nymphomania—
urgently need asylum treatment. In the slighter forms favour-
able results will be obtained by means of psycho-therapeutics,
the internal use of sedatives (such as monobromide of camphor
and bromide of potassium), regulation of the diet, suitable
clothing and bedding.1

The converse of sexual hyperaesthesia is sexual anaesthesia, or
the abnormal diminution of the sexual impulse. It occurs in
both sexes as a congenital condition, owing in such cases to
atrophy or absence of the genital organs, after exhausting
diseases, or in consequence of arrest of development of the re-
productive organs from unknown causes. This latter condition
is denoted by A. Eulenburg by the name of " psycho-sexual
infantilism." The same author also terms sexual anaesthesia
" sexual loss of appetite." It is commoner in women than
in men. It is often merely apparent — a pseudo-anaesthesia—

1 '' During my life I have had under observation many a lecherous man and
many a wanton woman, and I have always found that, without exception, volup-
tuous persons clothe themselves very warmly, and sleep under very warm bed-
clothes. In earlier years I have reported several cases observed by me of warm
clothing of the genital organs on the part of women who distinguished themselves
by lasciviousness, and I could increase the number of examples of this kind
by several dozen " (E. Reich, " Immorality and Intemperance," pp. 43, 44).

433

because the man does not understand how to awaken the still
slumbering sexual perceptions (vide supra, p. 86). Recently
Otto Adler has written a comprehensive and interesting mono-
graph on this " Deficient Sexual Sensibility in Women " (Berlin,
1904). According to him, the statement of Guttzeit, that of
ten women, four have no sensation at all " in coitu," and submit to
it without any agreeable sensation at all during the friction,
and without any intimation of the intense pleasure of ejaculation—
that is, that 40 % of women suffer from coldness and lack of
sensibility, from "frigidity" — is indeed somewhat exaggerated
in respect of the percentage ; but still it is a correct expression of
the fact that deficient sexual sensibility is much commoner in
women than it is in men, hi whom Effertz,1 for example, estimates
the frequency of frigidity at only 1 %.2 In women various cir-
cumstances explain the frequency of deficient sexual sensibility.
First of all, masturbation lowers sexual excitability in women
much more than it does in man, and, above all, it blunts sensi-
bility for normal sexual intercourse, both by means of psychical
influences and by the insensibility of the external genital organs,
owing to deficient stimulation of the clitoris during normal
intercourse, whereas this organ is most powerfully stimulated
during masturbation. Sexual frigidity also occurs in women in
consequence of maladroitness and brutality of the man in coitu,
giving rise rather to pain than to voluptuous sensations, and
very frequently being the cause of the first onset of the so-called
vaginal spasm, or " vaginismus."3 It is also due in some cases
to impotence on the part of the man.

1 O. Effertz, " Neurasthenia Sexualis," p. 46 (New York, 1894).

2 Effertz estimates the frequency of frigidity in women at about 10 per cent.
The truth probably lies midway between the views of Effertz and those of
Guttzeit.

3 By vaginismus we understand involuntary convulsive contraction of the
vaginal muscles, associated with abnormal sensibility of the vaginal inlet, de-
pendent on masturbation, or induced by the above-mentioned painful sensations
and injuries which occur in maladroit and brutal coitus (this is by far the com-
monest cause of vaginismus), especially when the penis is very large and the
vaginal inlet very small, or when the female genital organs are further forward
than usual. Vaginismus generally arises from small injuries and lacerations,
produced in this manner ; with the physical sense of pain is associated also
psychical anxiety with regard to renewed attempts at intercourse ; and in this
way the reflex spasm is produced. Sometimes the vaginal spasm does not
begin until after the penis has been introduced, so that this organ is retained
(penis captivus). A few years ago a remarkable case of this kind occurred in
Bremen. One of the dock labourers was having sexual intercourse in an out-of-
the-way corner of the docks, when the woman became affected with this in-
voluntary spasm, and the man was unable to free himself from his imprisonment.
A great crowd assembled, from the midst of which the unfortunate couple were
removed in a closed carriage, and taken to the hospital, and not until chloroform
had been administered to the girl did the spasm pass off and free the man !

434

In an interesting and valuable work, Carl Laker, in the year
1889, described, as " A Peculiar Form of Perversion of the Sexual
Impulse in the Female " (German Archives of Gynaecology, 1889,
vol. xxxiv., No. 3, pp. 293 et seq.), cases of sexual frigidity in
woman in coitu, which are not to be regarded as cases of " an-
aesthesia sexualis," since the sexual impulse was normal — indeed,
frequently was increased — and it was sexual gratification in
normal intercourse which was completely wanting. In these
cases gratification was obtainable only by simple or mutual
onanism. There existed a normal inclination towards the other
sex, associated with mental and physical health. The author
assumes that, in consequence of some anatomical abnormality,
stimulation of the sensory nerves by which the voluptuous sensa-
tion is perceived, especially those of the clitoris, failed to occur ;
but perhaps by a change of posture in coitu this stimulation can
still be effected. The case previously reported by me on page 86
belongs to this category of relative or temporary sexual anaes-
thesia ; whereas in cases of genuine absolute sexual anaesthesia the
sexual impulse also is in abeyance at the outset, or disappears in
consequence of excesses and in female libertines and in prostitutes.

The treatment of deficient sexual sensibility in women must,
above all, take into consideration psychical influences, and
depends, therefore, more on the husband or lover than it does on
the physician ; the conditions of intercourse must be adapted
to the particular circumstances of the case (as by change of
posture in coitus, preparatory tenderness, etc.). Painful sensi-
bility in vaginismus can sometimes be cured by mechanical
treatment, by the removal of painful remnants of the hymen, by
the cure of small lesions, and also by extension by means of the
speculum. It also appears, as is evidenced by an observation
of Courty, that at the time of impregnation there occurs a stronger
stimulation and voluptuous sensation in coitu in women who are
at other times frigid.

Sexually frigid women of the lower classes are apt, as Effertz
points out, to become prostitutes. During the practice of their
profession they always keep a cool head, because they are at first
and always sexually insensitive, and can devote their whole
energy and regulate all their actions towards the plunder of the
man. The following case reported by Effertz (op. cit., p. 51)
illustrates this connexion very clearly :

" I was once consulted by a very highly placed hetaira on account
of supposed articular rheumatism. When I informed her of my
diagnosis of lues, she was greatly moved, and said to me that I should

435

not therefore think the worse of her. She was better than her occupa-
tion ; she had never followed it on account of evil passions ; she was
quite insensitive ; she had done it only in order to provide for her
parents freedom from care in the evening of their life, and to secure the
future of her small child. She also told me on this occasion that she
owed her success to her coldness, for which condition she was ex-
tremely thankful. She never gave herself for less than 1,000 marks
(£50). At the same time, she made a mock of her colleagues — those
stupid and wicked girls who frequently, when their heads were fired
by champagne, would give themselves for nothing, and would even
run after men."

Otto Adler describes Madame de Warens, in Rousseau's " Con-
fessions," as a type of such a femme de glace. Frigid women
many with comparatively greater frequency than women who
are sexually very excitable, because their natural reserve endows
them with greater value in the eyes of men, and also offers a
certain security for their faithfulness. Such marriages are
naturally in almost all cases unhappy, for the man soon grasps
the true nature of the case, and since most will say with Ovid,
odi concubitus qui non utrimque resolvunt, he seeks outside the
house some response for his love.1 In some cases, indeed, frigid
women make a pretence of experiencing libido and the sexual
orgasm, so that the man is deceived. In some cases, also, not-
withstanding a manifest frigidity on the part of the wife, the
marriage is none the less happy when the husband is partially
or wholly impotent, and voluntarily renounces coitus. Such a
case I myself recently observed.

" The case was that of a merchant, physically and bodily in ex-
cellent health, aged a little under forty years, who, since the eleventh
year of his age down to the present time, has continued to masturbate
(between the eleventh and eighteenth years of his life, twice daily).
He has often had ejaculation without erection. When twenty years
of age, he frequently attempted coitus, but could not obtain an
erection. Generally speaking, he never had an erection when his
attention was directed to the matter, but only without his co-opera-
tion, on other occasions than those of attempted sexual intercourse.
Thus, until his engagement, in the thirtieth year of his age, he had
never completed normal coitus, but had only obtained sexual gratifi-
cation by means of masturbation, and therefore married with con-
siderable hesitation, although during the eleven months of his engage-
ment he had masturbated much less frequently. On the wedding-
night, however, and later, it appeared that his wife had a natural
disinclination to coitus, was extremely frigid, and only had traces of
sexual sensation when, by means of onanistic stimulation on the part

1 A very clever study of the conditions here described will be found in a recent
English novel, " Mr and Mrs. Villiere," by Hubert Wales (Heinemann, London,
1907).— TRANSLATOR.

28—2

436

of her husband, her libido was slightly stimulated. Spontaneously
she never felt any desire for sexual gratification, not even in conse-
quence of masturbation. The two have lived for seven years in most
happy married life, and love one another tenderly, without ever having
completed coitus. This deficient sensibility in the wife, and her
failure to respond, have naturally not relieved the impotence of tho
husband, and he gratifies himself now, as before, by solitary mas-
turbation."

This case proves that the capacity for love is to a certain extent
independent of the strength of the libido ; frigid men and women
can be thoroughly " erotic " ; that is to say, they can experience
the need for tenderness, just as " erotomania " — that is to say,
the excessive longing for love — is completely different in its
nature from satyriasis and nymphomania (*= excessive sexual
desire).1

Julius Pagel and other authors have recently drawn attention
to the fact that the condition of " erotomania " — excessive
amativeness — was fully described by the ancient and medieval
physicians, who regarded it as a morbid state. He published
(in the Deutsche Medizinal-Zeitung, 1892, p. 841) under the
title, " A Historical Contribution to the Chapter of * Cures by
Disgust,' " the translation of a passage from the Lilium Medicince
of Bernhard von Gordon in Montpelier, a well-known and favourite
compendium of the beginning of the fourteenth century, in which,
following the example of Avicenna, the amor (h)ereos was num-
bered among the melancholicce passiones, and was considered to
constitute a particular section of the group of diseases of the
brain (see the edition of the Lilium Medicince, p. 210 (Lyons,
1550). It is, unfortunately, impossible here to deal at any
length with the exceedingly instructive and remarkable contents.
One of the methods of treatment was to find an old hag as hideous
and repulsive as possible, who was to hold under the nose of the
erotomaniac a chemise stained with menstrual blood, saying at
the same time, talis est arnica tua. We may remark, in passing,
that this genuine medieval " cure by disgust " diverges, much to
its disadvantage, from the manner in which hi antiquity (three
centuries before Christ) Erasistratos, the pupil of Aristotle, a
celebrated physician of the Alexandrian school, cured the son of
King Antiochus, who had fallen in love with his stepmother
Stratonica. An account of the ancient therapeutic art is also
to be found in another work by J. Pagel, " Introduction to the
History of Medicine " (Berlin, 1898). In a comprehensive

1 Rozier describes two typical examples of feminine erotomania (" The Secret
Aberrations of the Female Sex," pp. 123-128 ; Leipzig, 1831).

437

work, " The History of Love Considered as a Disease," this topic
has recently been considered by Hjalmar Crohns. Here we have
a theme the literature of which is very extensive, and which might
be suitably dealt with in a special treatise.

In the male, sexual frigidity in the majority of cases is asso-
ciated with sexual weakness or with impotence — that is to say,
with the impossibility of copulating or of procreation. The
former variety of sexual incapacity (impotentia cosundi) is,
properly speaking, peculiar to the male. The second form — true
"sterility" (impotentia generandi) — occurs in women as well as
in men.

In the case of male impotence, various symptoms, preliminary
disturbances, and associated phenomena, make their appearance,
and these we shall have to describe separately, since they often
occur as independent disorders.

This is, above all, true of the outflow of sexual secretions from
the urethra, seminal losses (pollutions1 and spermatorrhoea), and
the evacuation of the secretion of the prostate gland, the so-called
" prostatorrhoaa." The literature of these conditions, which are
partly physiological (as a proportion of pollutions) and partly
morbid, is enormous. Of fundamental importance, notwith-
standing the serious exaggerations of the author, is the cele-
brated work of Dr. M. Lallemand, " Involuntary Losses of
Semen." In recent times this important province of sexual
pathology has been more especially advanced by the reseaches
of leading German physicians, above all by those of Curschmanr
and Fiirbringer.

The most important question with regard to seminal losses or
pollutions in any case is this : have we to do with physiological
processes, lying within the range of health, or have we to do with
morbid processes ?

As normal, not morbid, seminal losses Lallemand regarded
pollutions in healthy, sexually mature, continent individuals,
occurring spontaneously during sleep, associated with erection of
the penis and voluptuous sensations. He rightly regarded these
as physiologically necessary, indicated their purpose to be the

1 POLLUTIONS. — This term has not perhaps as yet acquired a right of residence
in the English tongue, but I use it because it is needed. There is no other word
which can be employed as a general term (1) to include all involuntary omissions
of semen, whether nocturnal or diurnal ; and (2) to include involuntary sexual
orgasm in the female as well as in the male. In the female the term " seminal
emission " is inapplicable ; but the term " pollution " can be applied in English (as
it is in German) to either sex. By American writers the term " pollution " is
now generally used (see, for instance, Allen, " Disorders of the Male Sexual
Organs," Tiventieth Century Practice, vol. vii., p. 012 ft aeg.). — TRANSLATOR.

438

discharge of sexual tension, the prevention of an excessive accumu-
lation of the reproductive products, and compared their effect
with that of haemorrhages from the nose, which are so common
in youth, and in most cases are distinctly beneficial. But he
drew attention to the indeterminate, fluctuating boundary-line
between normal and morbid pollutions. This latter point of
view is dealt with also by Eulenburg (" Sexual Neurasthenia,"
p. 171), in opposition to other authors who regarded all pollu-
tions, even the physiological, as abnormal. In practice, however,
it is generally not difficult to distinguish between physiological
and morbid seminal losses. The former are characterized,
not only by the distinctive signs already mentioned, but also
by their occurrence at longer intervals, and by the absence of any
disadvantageous effect upon the general state of health. As
soon as pollutions have such a deleterious influence they are
morbid ; and they are generally morbid when they occur abnor-
mally early, before puberty, with abnormal frequency, at abnormal
times of the day, and in association with abnormal conditions of
the genital organs. According to Fiirbringer, the normal in-
tervals between pollutions in the case of continent youths vary
between ten and thirty days. Lowenfeld considers pollutions
occurring once a week, and even the transient occurrence of pol-
lutions on several successive nights, as a result of sexual excite-
ment, as being still within normal bounds. But if these repeated
pollutions within a single week, or even within a single day, con-
tinue for a long time, we are always concerned with morbid
pollutions. These sometimes occur not only at night, but
also — a fact to which the German physician Wichmann, in his
dissertation De Pollutione Diurna (Gottingen, 1782), drew
attention — they occur by day (" diurnal pollutions "), in the
waking state, without masturbation or coitus, upon slight
mechanical or physical stimulation. In such cases erection of
the penis is often completely wanting ; ejaculation of the semen
takes place with the organ flaccid, and even without any volup-
tuous sensation. In many cases, indeed, these pollutions are
accompanied by actual painful sensations in the genital organs,
and instead of voluptuous dreams or thoughts, the nocturnal
ejaculation is accompanied by anxious dreams, the daylight
pollution by an extremely disagreeable sensation. Commonly
in these pollutions ordinary semen is at first evacuated — a
mixture of the secretions of the testicles, the prostate, the
vesiculse seminales, and Cowper's glands — containing numerous
spermatozoa. After the trouble has lasted a long time the

439

semen becomes thinner (owing to its containing a smaller propor-
tion of the thick testicular secretion) and more transparent ;
the spermatozoa are less numerous and mostly undeveloped, and
ultimately they may be completely absent. Lowenfeld observed
a peculiar form of pollution in which the semen was ejaculated
only in drops, or might be completely wanting — that is to say,
there might be a pollution without ejaculation, purely a volup-
tuous orgasm.1

In such cases Lowenfeld was able to prove that it is not the
loss of semen which weakens, as Lallemand assumed, but that
it is the nervous disturbance of the lumbar spinal cord which
plays the principal part. This irritable weakness of the lumbar
spinal cord may have existed for a long time before, or may have
developed only as the result of repeated pollutions or of excessive
sexual excitement ; it may give rise, not only to proper seminal
emissions, but, in addition, to " spermatorrhoea " — that is to
say, to the outflow of semen accompanying urination or de-
faecation ; and it may also cause the rarer " prostatorrhoea " —
the outflow of the secretion of the prostate gland. A long dura-
tion of all these morbid discharges has a serious effect on the
health, and induces the typical picture of sexual neurasthenia.
As a cause of seminal losses we must mention masturbation,
excessive sexual intercourse, chronic inflammation of the urethra
(especially after gonorrhoea), stricture of the urethra, rectal
affections, alcoholism, diabetes, and tabes dorsalis.

In women, also, processes analogous to pollution may be ob-
served, although much more rarely than in men, and generally
as a consequence of masturbation practised for several years.
According to Adler (op. cit., p. 130), pollutions — that is to say,
evacuations of the secretion of the vaginal glands and of the
uterine mucous membrane, as well as of the secretion of Bar-
tholin's glands near the vaginal inlet — never occur in chaste and
intact virgins, but only in women who have already learned
the enjoyment of sexual intercourse, and who are subsequently
compelled to lead a continent life. For this reason pollutions
are a " trouble of young widows," and occur in young girls only
when they have learned to know the nature of sexual pleasure
by means of masturbation. Eulenburg remarks (" Sexual Neu-
rasthenia," p. 174) :

" In connexion with lascivious dreams there occur spontaneous,
more or less abundant, discharges of the clear muco-gelatinous secre-
tion of the glands. These form a striking manifestation of sexual

1 L. Lowenfeld, op. cit., pp. 206, 207.

440

neurasthenia in women, and can be compared with the morbid pollu-
tions occurring in similar circumstances in male neurasthenics. We
hear less about them, however, and they are insufficiently known, even
by medical men. For this reason especially, when they occur in
association with physical virginity and a normal genital condition in
other respects, they do not usually receive sufficient attention."

The older physicians, especially those of the eighteenth cen-
tury,1 described these pollutions in women very well and
thoroughly ; in erotic and pornographic literature they have
always played a great part. An interesting observation on
peculiar processes analogous to pollutions is reported by Paul
Bernhardt.2 A hysterical sempstress, twenty-five years of age,
as the result of any land of annoyance, experienced sexual excite-
ment completely resembling the sensation of sexual intercourse,
and ending with a discharge of mucus. This was, however,
never accompanied by any trace of voluptuous sensation ; on
the contrary, it gave rise to lumbar pains. Also, when she
dreamed of anything disagreeable or had nightmare, this con-
dition recurred. Erotically the patient is very indifferent, and
denies the practice of masturbation.

To the category suggested by P. Bernhardt of sexual excite-
ment induced by anxiety and trouble belongs the case reported to
me by Dr. Emil Bock of a boy of fifteen years of age, who, when
very anxious about his inability to complete a school task, ex-
perienced an ejaculation for the first time. To the literature
of impotence belongs the work by Nicolo Barrucco, " Sexual
Neurasthenia, and its Relations to the Diseases of the Genital
Organs." Regarding physiological pollutions, and the trifling
difference between them and normal seminal discharge during
coitus, Schopenhauer makes some apt observations in his " Neue
Paralipomena," pp. 230, 231.

In the treatment of pollutions, which always demands the most
careful medical observation and examination of the individual
case, the most important measures are dietetic and hygienic

1 Swediaur relates : " I have, although much more rarely, seen the aforesaid
diseases also in the other sex" (he speaks of diurnal pollutions). " At the present
time I have under treatment a woman, twenty -eight years of age, who for a year
and a half, since the time when she had a miscarriage, suffers from very frequent
involuntary nocturnal pollutions, which are induced by very voluptuous dreams,
and are accompanied by all the symptoms of wasting of the spinal cord, which
Hippocrates describes as a disease peculiar to the male sex." Quoted by L.
Desfandes, "Masturbation and other Aberrations of Sexual Intercourse," p. 204
(Leipzig, 1835).

2 Paul Bernhardt, " Processes Resembling Pollutions Occurring in Women,
without Sexual Ideas or Lustful Feelings," published in Die arzdiche Praxis,
1903, No. 17, pp. 193-197.

441

treatment, change of scene from town to country, and especially
to mountain air, methodical hydrotherapeutic measures, warm
baths, massage, electricity, hyperalimentation, the use of bro-
mides, local treatment of the urethra, etc., etc.

The last and most important of the phenomena connected
with sexual neurasthenia is sexual weakness or impotence in its
various forms.1

We distinguish in the male two principal forms of impotence :
(1) " Impotentia coeundi " — that is, incapacity for erection of the
penis and the completion of coitus ; (2) " impotentia generandi " —
that is, the impossibility of fertilization (owing to want of semen
or to the lack of fertilizing quality in this fluid).

Congenital malformations of the genital organs giving rise
to impotence are extremely rare. Gyurkovechky, amongst
6,000 men fit for military service, found three such men
only. More frequently are acquired defects met with as causes
of impotence, such as complete or partial loss of the penis
and testicles, as in eunuchs and castrated persons. It is
well known that, notwithstanding the removal of the external
genital organs, sexual desire may persist ; and when the penis is
retained, though the testicles have been removed, erection and
copulation are possible, providing the castration was effected
after puberty. But it is obvious that in most cases potency is
very markedly interfered with, and ultimately it may entirely
disappear. More light is thrown on the question by the occur-
rence of impotence after unilateral castration. A tragical case
of this latter kind is reported by von Gyurkovechky (op. cit.,
p. 71):

" A former colleague of mine at the University of Vienna had to
have one of his testicles removed in consequence of obstinate inflam-
mation resulting from gonorrhoea ; thereafter the second testicle
underwent complete atrophy. The much-to-be-pitied, handsome,
elegant, and amiable young man remained for some years capable of
performing coitus, was greatly pleased with himself for this reason,
and paid ostentatious court to ladies. Still, he was seldom in a
position to perform coitus, and after three years he completely with-
drew himself from the society of ladies, and became gradually morose

1 The best recent work on impotence is Fiirbringor's " The Disturbances of
the Sexual Function in Man," second edition (Vienna, 1901). Soo also Fronzel,
" On Incapacity for Procreation " (Wittenberg, 1800) ; F. Roubaud, " Traite
de rimpuissanco et de la Sterilite chez 1'Hommo et chez la Femme " (Paris,
1878) ; V. von Gyurkovechky, " Pathology and Therapeutics of Impotence in
the Male " (Vienna and Leipzig, 1897) ; J. Stoinbacher, " Impotence in the
Male," fifth edition (Berlin, 1892) ; W. A. Hammond, ". Sexual Impotence in the
Male and Fonmle Sexes " (Berlin, 1891) ; A. Eiilenburg, " Sexual Neurasthenia "
(pp. 177-183) ; Ixjopold Ca«por, " Impotentia et Sterilitaa Virilis " (Munich, 1890).

442

and reserved, until one day he disappeared from Vienna, discontinued
his studies, and never let any of us hear from him again. This case
has remained very vividly in my memory, and it illustrates most
clearly the influence of virile potency upon the entire being of the
individual."

If the second testicle remains intact, the capacity for sexual
intercourse is not interfered with ; and reproductive capacity also
persists, although it may be diminished in degree.

An important source of sterility in the male, in which the
capacity for sexual intercourse remains unimpaired, is bilateral
epididymitis, consequent upon gonorrhoea. This represents more
than 50 % of all the cases of incapacity for procreation in the
male. Finger found in 85 % of cases of epididvmitis that the
spermatozoa were absent from the semen (the so-called " azoo-
spermia ") ; and Fiirbringer is led by his own experience to
believe that 80 % of men who have had double epididymitis are
incapable of procreation. Thus we may really speak of " gonor-
rhoeal sterility in the male." In many sterile marriages the fault
lies with the husband, as was first clearly proved by F. Kehrer's
fundamental investigations. And the no less momentous
gonorrhceal sterility in women is also, in the majority of cases,
ultimately dependent upon the husband, who has presented his
wife with " gonorrhceal infection as a wedding gift." *

An extremely small size of the penis, also a relatively small
size of this organ in cases of obesity and tumours, malformations
of the penis, also the by no means rare mechanical hindrances to
erections due to injuries and indurations in the corpora cavernosa
(especially as a result of gonorrhceal inflammation) — all these
may make coitus impossible. Fiirbringer and Finger have also
seen peculiar chronic shrinking processes of the corpora cavernosa
occur independently of gonorrhoea and tumours. All these con-
ditions give rise to incomplete erection, in which the penis is bent
at an angle at some point or other, or is curved, so that it cannot
be introduced into the vagina (chordee).

All the hitherto described forms of impotentia coeundi are
less frequent than those in which the external genital organs are
completely intact, and in which we have to do simply with im-
perfection or complete failure of erection in consequence of various
general disorders.

Erection of the penis is induced both centrally from the
brain (by voluptuous ideas), and from the spinal cord (by direct

1 W. Schallmayer, " Infection as a Wedding Gift," published in the Journal
for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1903, vol. iv., pp. 389-419.

443

stimulation), and also peripherally from the genital organs (by
friction of the glans penis, by stimuli proceeding from the urethra,
bladder, prostate, seminal vesicles, rectum, and the neighbour-
hood of the genital organs (as, for example, the buttocks), and
may be either of a morbid or of a physiological character. When
there are inflammatory conditions of the genital organs, especially
gonorrhoea of the anterior and posterior urethra, erections occur
very readily. From the full bladder there also proceed stimuli
giving rise to erection, thus inducing the well-known " morning
erection," utilized by many who would otherwise be completely
impotent. Blows on the buttocks also give rise to erections — a
subject to which we shall return when we come to discuss
flagellation.

The nature of erection can be very briefly described as con-
sisting in a stiffening of the penis by the profuse streaming of
blood into the reticular spaces of the corpora cavernosa, enlarged
by stimulation of the erection nerves. The consequent erection
of the penis is dependent upon the action of a particular muscle —
the ischio-cavernosus muscle.

Impotence when the external organs are intact is in most cases
due to central causes, and ultimately to psychical causes, even
though severe bodily affections or local morbid states play a pre-
disposing part (the so-called " functional impotence ").

This impotence is sometimes one of the earliest symptoms of
diabetes mellitus and of chronic Bright's disease with contracted
kidney, also of severe conditions of exhaustion — to which con-
sumption offers a significant exception, signalized already by
the old saying, phthiaicus salax — of obesity, and of tabes dorsalis,
in which the sexual potency gradually disappears, but libido
outlasts the capacity for erection. Certain poisons also par-
ticularly damage potency. This is especially the case with
alcohol, the deleterious influence of which on potency has already
been described (pp. 293, 294). Georg Hirth goes so far as to
recognize a special " impotentia alcohol ica."

" Above all, no alcohol," says he, " especially not as a means for
producing erection. In youth a man needs no such stimulus, and in
age he will be apt to find, with the porter in Shakespeare's ' Macbeth '
(Act ii., Scene 3), that ' drink may be said to be an equivocator with
lechery,' for, as he says, ' it provokes the desire, but it takes away the
performance ; it makes lechery, and it mars him ; it sets him on and
takes him off ; it persuades him and disheartens him ; makes him stand
to and not stand to : in conclusion, equivocates him into sleep, and,
giving him the lie, leaves him.' " l

1 G. Hirth, " Ways to Love," pp. 461, 463.

444

Furbringer's view, that alcohol, taken up to the degree of slight
intoxication, rather increases potency, in connexion with which
he refers to sexual invalids who are only able to perform sexual
intercourse in a state of moderate intoxication, cannot be re-
garded as generally true. It is possible that in these admitted
sexual invalids alcoholic intoxication overcomes stronger psy-
chical inhibitions, which in the state of sobriety had hindered
erection. For the normal individual alcohol is not a means for
the increase of sexual potency, but the reverse.

The free use of tobacco certainly also impairs sexual potency.1
Nicotine and love are as little compatible as alcohol and love.
Fiirbringer, Hirth, and Eulenburg, ascribe to the excessive use of
tobacco a diminution in sexual potency. The following interest-
ing passage is from the Diary of the De Goncourts (op. cit.,
p. 89) :

" There is an antagonism between tobacco and women. The taste
for one diminishes the taste for the other. So true is this, that pas-
sionate Lotharios usually give up smoking, because they feel or believe
that tobacco diminishes their sexual appetite and their powers of love."

Coffee and tea, taken in excess, and, above all, morphine, are
also antagonistic to potency. Dupuy has observed the frequent
occurrence of impotence in men who were in the habit of drinking
large quantities of strong coffee (five or six breakfast-cups every
day). Sexual potency returned as soon as the use of coffee was
discontinued ; whilst when the use of the beverage was resumed
the impotence again appeared (Comptes Rendus de la Societe de
Biologie, 1886, No. 27).

The majority of cases of functional disturbances of potency
depend upon nervous impotence. It is the form which at the
present day the physician most frequently encounters. It is
intimately connected with the state of " irritable nervous weak-
ness," or sexual neurasthenia, the most important symptom of
which is represented by " psychical " impotence. There exist,
also — and this justifies the independent consideration of psychical
impotence — numerous cases of impotence without neurasthenia
(Fiirbringer). This remarkable form occurs especially in per-
fectly healthy young husbands, who often before were completely
potent, and had previously effected coitus in a perfectly normal

1 Jscquemart reports a striking case of impotentia coeundi, which he saw in an
engineer who received an appointment in a State tobacco factory. After he had
resigned his appointment, the patient fully recovered his sexual powers (cf.
Loebisch, article "Tobacco," in Eulen burg's Real-Enzyklopadie,' 1900, vol. xxiv.,
p. 19).

445

manner, or had lived a quiet, continent life, without having in-
jured themselves in any way by masturbation. Such individuals,
in consequence of the excitement, shame, and embarrassment of
the wedding-night, often suffer from psychical impotence.
Reti1 speaks of " impotence due to compassion," arising from
" the sympathy felt with the pains suffered by the still virgin
wife " when the attempt at coitus is made.

" The young married pair kiss one another and vie with one another
in tenderness, but when the matter becomes serious — when the hus-
band wants to enjoy his rights as a husband — the wife experiences
incredible anxiety ; she trembles in all her limbs, writhes, screams, and
weeps. The man becomes exhausted, and at length, when the wife is
resigned, and willing to surrender herself to her fate, he has become
unfitted for his share in intercourse."

It is clear that these forms of psychical impotence, which
appear in very various shades, are mostly transient phenomena,
and exhibit a good prospect of complete cure.

Much more difficult is the matter when we have to do with
cases, becoming commoner every day, of psychical impotence in
consequence of sexual perversions. Sadistic, masochistic, fetich-
istic, and homosexual inclinations may, in certain individuals,
predominate to such an extent that either copulation cannot
be effected without the preliminary gratification of these perverse
instincts, or else the latter entirely usurp the place of normal
coitus, which has become, generally speaking, quite impossible
(relative and absolute psychical impotence hi consequence of
sexual perversions). To the former category belong, for example,
those cases, which are by no means rarely seen, in which homo-
sexual persons are only able to have intercourse with their wives
after preliminary caresses by their male friends ; or masochists
must be subjected to a preparatory flagellation in order to become
potent. In the second category copulation has become quite
impossible ; the orgasm takes place only in connexion with the
activity of the perverse impulse, and there often exists an actual
repugnance to normal coitus.

Well known also is that rare relative psychical impotence in
which the man can perform coitus only with prostitutes, whereas
he is impotent as regards decent women. This, however, may
often be associated with the existence of sexual perversions, which
are gratified only during intercourse with prostitutes.

Another form of relative psychical impotence is temporary
impotence, in which the potency is entirely subject to custom,

1 8. Reti, " Sezuelle Gebrechen," second edition, p. 15 (Halle, 1904).

446

and a change in the custom induces impotence. Thus, Frenzel
reports the case of a man who had always had intercourse with
his wife immediately on going to bed, and proved completely
impotent when this habit was interrupted, and he now wished to
perform the act early in the morning. Only gradually did he
recover his lost potency and become able to adapt himself to the
changed conditions.1

Another form of impotence by no means rare, and occurring
in otherwise healthy men, is that produced by powerful mental
activity or artistic production, the impotence of literary men
and of artists. It is usually of a transient nature,2 manifesting
itself only during the periods of intellectual activity, and it is
explicable in accordance with the law of sexual equivalents,
according to which the sexual potency appears in the latent form
of spiritual productive activity. A remarkable case of this im-
potence of literary men is reported by the just quoted Frenzel.3
Allied with this variety of impotence is the form due to transient
mental distraction, to instantaneous ideas, which suddenly act
as psychical inhibitions. These sudden ideas can be of a very
varied content — joyful, sad, anxious, annoying ; in every case
they are capable of annulling the already existing potency, and
of making the further erection of the penis impossible. Such
conditions occur alike in healthy persons and in those who are
readily excitable and neurasthenic. A classical instance of this
nature is J. J. Rousseau's adventure with the Venetian courtesan
Giulietta, which he describes very vividly in his " Confession."
He went to see her full of passionate desire for sexual enjoyment,
but Nature " had put into his head a poison against this un-
speakable happiness " for which his heart yearned. Hardly had
be glanced at the beautiful girl than an idea came to him which
moved him to tears, and completely diverted him from his pur-
pose. He became more deeply absorbed in this idea, the sexual
desires completely disappeared, and he was no longer in a position
to prove his manhood. To this tragi-comic episode we owe the
exclamation of the disappointed girl, which has passed into a
proverb : " Lascia le donne e studia la matematica " (" Leave
women alone, and go and study mathematics "). In the re-
flexion love of Kierkegaard, Grillparzer, Alfred de Musset, and
other men of remarkable genius, there is also recognizable an
element of impotence.

1 J. S. T. Frenzel, " Impotence," Part I., p. 164 (Wittenberg, 1800). ;

2 In some cases it is said to have given rise to permanent impotence.

3 Frenzel, op. cit., pp. 165, 156.

447

The majority of all cases of impotence belong to the class of
true nervous, neurasthenic impotence, and these are diffused
especially among the circles who supply the greatest contingent
to the ranks of neurasthenics in general — that is, among officers,
merchants, physicians, and other classes of the cultured part of
our population whose professional duties are arduous. Among
the causes of neurasthenic impotence, excessive masturbation
and chronic gonorrhoea, with its consequences, play the principal
part. Neurasthenic impotence manifests itself, above all, by
abnormal conditions of erection and ejaculation, either of which
may by itself be diminished or completely prevented ; or, again,
both may exhibit abnormalities, whilst in some cases even
erection may be very frequent, unusually powerful, and long-
lasting (the so-called " priapism "), whilst ejaculation and
voluptuous sensation are completely wanting, and these erections
are in most cases accompanied by very painful sensations. An
extremely characteristic symptom of nervous impotence is a
premature discharge of the semen, not merely ante portas, but often
even at the first signs of activity of the libido sexualis, at which
time erection may be very well developed. In other cases,
again, erection occurs, but no ejaculation of the semen. Finally,
both may be completely wanting (the so-called " paralytic
impotence ").

The following cases, which came under my own observation,
show some of the above-mentioned types of impotence :

1. A man, twenty-nine years of age, married for ten months, complains,
after obviously excessively frequent enjoyment of his conjugal rights, of
a sense of weakness and weariness after intercourse, such as he has
never previously experienced, as well as of a continually earlier ejacula-
tion, latterly even on simple contact of his penis with the vulva.
Erection is always present and is powerful. On further inquiry he
admitted that in his four-weeks' honeymoon he had connexion once
daily, and thenceforward two or three times a week.

2. A man, twenty-one years of age, states that a year and a half
ago for the first time he endeavoured to have sexual intercourse;
he has never yet succeeded in completing coitus. Since the age of
fourteen years he has suffered from frequent pollutions and from
marked sexual excitability. He has often tried to effect coitus, but
there has always resulted precipitate ejaculation, with his penis in a
flaccid condition. He has, properly speaking, only morning erections,
dependent upon a full bladder. It is possible that a marked varicocele
on the left side has something to do with the genesis of this impotence.

3. A man, forty-eight years of age, has noticed for some years a
distinct decline in sexual potency. Ejaculation always occurs shortly
before immissio membri, when the penis is flaccid or only semi-erect. If
erection is complete, on the other hand, then ejaculation fails to occur.

448

Very peculiar, and offering a kind of analogy to vaginismus in
women, is impotence consequent upon excessively painful sen-
sibility of the glans penis, as a result of sexual neurasthenia or of
local inflammatory processes (balanitis, etc.). The pains during
coitus in these cases are often so severe that those thus affected
completely abandon any attempt at intercourse.

The question whether impotence can result from sexual absti-
nence is still disputed. Fiirbringer does not know of any certain
cases. According to Virey,1 by " complete and continuous
abstinence from intercourse " in the male the organs by which
the semen is prepared — the testicles, the seminal vesicles, and the
vasa deferentia — and also the penis, become smaller, " unsightly,
wrinkled, and inactive." Galen reports the same of the
athletes of the Roman Empire, men who had to live a life of strict
continence. Virey alludes to an " extremely chaste saint, in
whom after death no trace of genital organs could be dis-
covered " (!). That absolute abstinence must ultimately limit
potency, if only by psychical means, is a priori probable.

Recent observations confirm the view that long-continued
absolute sexual abstinence exercises a harmful influence upon
potency, and especially upon potentia coeundi. As a proof of
this, I may more especially mention two cases of University pro-
fessors, not yet thirty years of age, both of whom until a little
while ago had had no experience of sexual intercourse, one having
remained continent during two years of married life ! Quite
recently both of them repeatedly attempted normal coitus, but
with complete failure quoad erectionem. Von Schrenck-Notzing2
also reported a case of this character not long ago, in which,
notwithstanding the strong desire for normal sexual intercourse,
in the case of a literary man thirty-five years of age, who prior
to marriage had lived a life of complete abstinence, and had never
practised masturbation, every attempt at coitus proved a failure.

Finally, we have to consider the more or less physiological
presenile and senile impotence which accompanies the com-
mencement of old age, but naturally occurs at very different
times in different individuals, for some men are already old at
the age of forty years, and others are not yet old at the age of
seventy years. Von Gyurkovechky dates the first decline in
the sexual powers from the fortieth year of life, and considers
that normally these powers are completely extinguished at about

1 J. J. Virey, " Woman," p. 367 (Leipzig, 1827).

2 Von Schrenck-Notzing, " Studies in Crimino-Psychology and Psycho-
Pathology," p. 176 (Leipzig, 1902).

440

sixty-five years. But there are numerous exceptions. Com-
plete potency in respect of libido, erection, and ejaculation has
been observed in men of seventy and eighty years ; and isolated
cases have even been recorded in which men of ninety and one
hundred years have procreated children.1 In the sense of
Metchnikoff and Hirth, who in their writings proclaim the pre-
vention of senility as a hygienic ideal, this physiological potentia
senilis is no Utopia, and a future scientific macrobiotic will defer
the onset of old age by from ten to twenty years.

" I do not ask," says Georg Hirth, " that the man in advanced age
should play with his sexual powers ; but that he should possess the
consciousness of being able to use them — that I do demand " (" Ways
to Love," p. 462).

The treatment of impotence in the male in its various forms is
indeed a difficult matter in individual cases, more especially in
view of the great number of existing methods of treatment ; but
treatment promises good results when it is based upon an exact,
critical, individual analysis of the separate causes and symptoms.
It is partly local and partly general. In the case of impotence
resulting from excessive masturbation, or in the case of the well-
known " gonorrhceal " impotence, good results will be obtained
from slight cauterization of the urethra and massage of the
prostate, local carbonic-acid douches or carbonic-acid baths,
warm or cold sitz-baths, or electrical treatment, with which,
however, great care must be exercised. In some cases imperfect
erection will be benefited by the application of a 10 % ethereal
solution of camphor, in the form of friction or a spray, to the
entire genital region. Mechanical apparatus have also been
employed to favour erection, as, for example, the so-called
" schlitten," consisting of a conducting instrument for an in-
sufficiently erect penis, made up of two thin, suitably shaped
laminae of metal, or the " erector " of Gassen, which works in a
similar manner. Apparatus of this nature are useful only to
this extent, that they give the penis a certain purchase. We
cannot allow that they possess any other effect, any more than
Gassen's other apparatus, the " compressor," the " cumulator,"
and the " ultimo " (Lowenfeld, Fiirbringer). Any local changes
that can be detected as having some connexion with the occur-
rence of impotence must receive attention. This is obvious ; and

1 The Englishman Thomas Parr, who attained the age of one hundred and
fifty-two years, remarried at the age of a hundred and twenty years, and his wife
is said " to have noticed no defects in him on account of his age " (cf. William
Ebstein, " The Art of Prolonging Human Life," p. 70 (Wiesbaden, 1891).

450

no less obvious is the treatment of any general disorders which
may give rise to the impotence. As regards the general treat-
ment of impotence, psychical influence must first be considered.
In most cases this must take the form of temporary withdrawal
of the thoughts from the sexual sphere in general, for which the
strict prohibition of sexual activity (masturbation, etc.) forms
the foundation ; in addition, will and self-confidence must be
strengthened. In these matters an intelligent wife can do much
to supplement the work of the physician. Sometimes a mere
change in the mode of life or in the relations between husband
and wife, above all, a change in the mode of performing sexual
intercourse (a change in posture, greater responsiveness on the
part of the wife, etc.), may have a manifest curative influence.
The treatment of the neurasthenia which may have caused the
impotence will also have a favourable effect. Alcohol and
tobacco are best entirely forbidden. Innumerable drugs have
been recommended for the treatment of impotence. The belief
in the beneficial effect of cantharides is as much a superstition as
the belief in the aphrodisiac action of celery, asparagus, caviare,
and truffles. Certainly all these may cause excitement of the
genital organs, but this is merely due to an increased flow of blood
to these organs, which is of a very fugitive nature, and when the
effect is often repeated (especially when cantharides is used for
this purpose), it may have serious consequences. The influence
of these substances may be compared with the purely stimulating
effect of flagellation. More confidence may be placed in phos-
phorus, strychnine, and, above all, in yohimbin, a drug prepared
from the bark of a West African tree,1 which is warmly recom-
mended in cases of neurasthenic impotence by Mendel and
Eulenburg. Having myself seen good results from the use of
Yohimbin Riedel in two cases of pre-senile gonorrhoeal impotence,
I can confirm the favourable judgment of Eulenburg. In the
case of pre-senile impotence in a man nearly sixty years of age
yohimbin was the only means which, after several years' inter-
mission, enabled him once more to have erections, and repeatedly
to perform coitus. Eulenburg reports the case of a man, which
is probably unique, in whom, after a few days' use, yohimbin
restored sexual potency after he had been impotent for twelve
years ! This interesting drug is certainly a valuable enrichment
of our aphrodisiac armamentarium, and the first drug of this

1 In the drug trade we find two brands, known respectively as " Yohimbin
Spiegel " and " Yohimbin Riedel" ; both preparations are of equal value. [In
a letter to the translator under date January 8, 1908, Dr. Bloch writes that
" Yohimbin Riedel " is preferable to " Yohimbin Spiegel."]

451

nature to which the name of a specific against impotence can
justly be given.

Quite recently Eulenburg, Posner, Nevinny, and others, have
warmly recommended as a true specific in cases of functional im-
potence a combination of lecithin with the active principle of
the Brazilian plant Muira Puama. This new drug is by Eulen-
burg termed " muiracithin."

From the above-described individual troubles (masturbation,
sexual hyperaesthesia, sexual anaesthesia, pollutions, and im-
potence) is composed the clinical picture of sexual neurasthenia,
which, however, is manifested also by other symptoms, among
which we must mention certain perceptions of anxiety and certain
coercive ideas, :such as the condition, known also to the laity, of
agoraphobia, which is very frequently met with in sexual neu-
rasthenia ; also the fear of travelling alone by railway, or sudden
anxiety hi the theatre or concert-hall, in the form of the fear of
fire, with the accompanying irresistible impulse to rush out into
the open ; further, lumbar pains and neuralgia of the genital
organs, and anomalies and pains connected with the evacuation
of urine ; an inclination to sexual perversions ; gastric affections,1
such as nervous retching and vomiting, painful cramps of the
stomach, loss of appetite, also excessive hunger, nervous dys-
pepsia, etc. ; migraine and heart troubles of manifold kinds. It
is not to be wondered at that when sexual neurasthenia is
markedly developed, and when several of the above-described
manifestations occur, the disease may pass on into a condition
of complete mental exhaustion, associated with morbid irrita-
bility and hypochondriacal and melancholy ideas. We then
ultimately see the development of typical sexual hypochondria.

The treatment of sexual neurasthenia — which in the last-
described general symptom-complex occurs also hi women,
associated in their case with amenorrhoea, dysmenorrhoea, or
menorrhagia2 — consists for the most part in the already de-
scribed treatment of the individual symptoms. In addition, we
ha veto make use of hyperalimentation, hydro-therapeutic methods,
gymnastic treatment, general massage, and climatic cures.

1 Cf. Alexander Peyer, " Affections of the Stomach Associated with Disorders
of the Male Genital Organs " (Leipzig, 1890).

3 Cf. Koblanck, " Some Clinical Observations on Disturbances of the Physio-
logical Functions of the Female Reproductive Organs," published in the Zeit-
achrift fiir Qeburtshilfe und Qyndkologie, vol. xliii., No. 3. Moriz Porosz (" Sexual
Truths," pp. 213-218; Leipzig, 1907) devotes with good reason a special chapter
to the neurasthenia of young married women. The change from the virgin
state into married life often gives rise to such transient neurasthenic conditions
in the young wife, especially when there exists any sort of disharmony in respect
of marital intercourse.

29—2

CHAPTER XVII
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASPECT OF PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS

" / hope that in the not distant future, for the advancement of
science, physicians will be glad to ally themselves with folk-lorists
and ethnologists." — FREDERICK S. KRAUSS.

i:,.;

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XVII

Anthropological and clinical views of sexual anomalies — Ubiquity and
enduring nature of psychopathia sexualis — Secondary role of civilization
and degeneration — The fable of " the good old times " — The ungrounded
fear of degeneration — " Nervous degeneration " in earlier times — Recent
arguments against the degeneration theory — Metchnikoff s book, " The
Nature of Man " — Georg Hirth's idea of " Hereditary Enfranchisement."

Elements of the anthropological theory of psychopathia sexualis — The
need for variety in sexual relationships — Sexual perversions in healthy
persons — The effect of external influences — Morbid impressions — Artificial
production of perversions (repetition, suggestion, imitation, seduction) —
Importance of sexual differentiation — Congenital character of perversions —
The diffusion of perversions among savage races — Examples — Immorality
in the country — Influence of race and nationality — Of age and sex — Social
differences — Influence of civilization — Influence of conventionality — The
unrest of the present day — Spiritual configuration of modern perversity.

Appendix : Sexual Perversions due to Diseases. — General survey — Epilepsy
and sexual perversions — Other mental diseases — Syphilis and sexual per-
versions— Abnormalities of the genital organs.

454

CHAPTER XVII

IN my " Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,"
published in the years 1902 and 1903, 1 for the first time attempted
to deal systematically, from the standpoint of the anthropologist
and ethnologist, with the great province of the so-called " psycho-
pathia sexualis," the field of sexual aberrations, degenerations,
anomalies, perversities, and perversions. I started from the
point of view that, in order to obtain new ideas regarding the
nature of psychopathia sexualis, and in order to revise the old
ideas in the light of recent knowledge, we must keep before our
eyes, not one-sidedly " the sick man," but comprehensively
" man as man," both as civilized man and as savage man.

Previously the doctrine of psychopathia sexualis had been
dominated exclusively by clinical, purely medical conceptions.
Observations had been limited to morbid phenomena, occurring
in individuals with an abnormal vita sexualis. Thus there had
arisen a general view of the nature of sexual anomalies, by which
these anomalies were allotted almost entirely to the province of
the physician, and were described as stigmata of degeneration.
H. J. Lowenstein,1 Haussler,2 and Kaan,3 in the third and fifth
decades of the nineteenth century, were the first to adopt this
medical point of view of sexual aberrations ; and finally, in the
last quarter of the same century, Richard von Krafft-Ebing4
converted modern sexual pathology into a comprehensive
scientific system,5 which stands and falls with the idea of de-
generation.

Von Krafft-Ebing is, and remains, the true founder of modern
sexual pathology. Without wishing in the slightest degree to
underestimate the value of the clinical researches he carried out
in this province of research, characterized by precision and pro-
found scientific zeal — without undervaluing for a moment these
extraordinary services — I am compelled to point out that his
purely medical view of sexual aberrations is one-sided, and to

1 Hermann Joseph Lowenstein, " Do Mentis Aberrationibus ex Partium
Soxualium Condi tione Abnormi Oriundis " (Bonn, 1823).

3 Joseph Haussler, " The Relations of the Sexual System to the Psyche "
(Wurzburg, 1826).

8 Heinnch Kaan, " Psychopathia Sexualis " (Leipzig, 1844).

4 R. von Krafft-Ebing, " Psychopathia Sexualis (Stuttgart, 1882).

5 We must not omit to mention the fact that a little earlier the French physician
Moreau de Tours published a comprehensive work upon psychopathia sexualis,
entitled " Des Aberrations du Sens Genesiquo " (Paris, 1880).

455

456

insist that it must be amplified and rectified by anthropological
and ethnological researches.

Let us leave the hospital and the medical consulting-room ; let
us make a journey round the world ; let us observe the sexual
activity of the genus homo in its manifold phenomena, not as
physicians, but as ordinary observers ; let us compare the sexu-
ality of the civilized human being with that of the savage : then
we shall recognize the vast extension of our visual field for the
comprehension of psychopathia sexualis ; we shall see how the
civilized and temporary phenomenon becomes absorbed into
the general human phenomenon, presenting amid all local varia-
tions the same fundamental lineaments. Psychopathia sexualis
exists everywhere and at all times. Culture, civilization, and
diseases play only the parts of favouring, modifying, intensifying
factors.

I do not go so far as Freud, who, on account of the now generally
recognized wide diffusion of perverse sexual tendencies, is com-
pelled to adopt the view " that the rudiments of perversions are
the primeval general rudiments of the human sexual impulse, out
of which the normal sexual mode of behaviour is developed in
the course of evolution, in consequence of organic changes and
psychical inhibitions 'V but I do maintain that sexual perver-
sities and perversions appertain to the human race as such, and
independently of civilization. I am convinced that they are
supplementary to normal sexual manifestations, and that their
diffusion among civilized and savage peoples extends far more
widely than the circle of true degenerative phenomena.

The sexual impulse, as a purely physical function, is neither
an object of comparison nor a distinctive characteristic between
primitive and civilized humanity. The " elementary ideas " of
humanity return everywhere again in the elementary manifes-
tations of sexual aberrations.

From the investigations collected and published in the above-
mentioned work I have been led to the firm conviction, which I
must now put forward as a scientific truth based upon the teach-
ing of anthropology, folk-lore, and the history of civilization, that
at the present day, in our time so widely decried as " nervous,"
" degenerate," and " overcivilized," not only are there no more
sexually " perverse " persons than there were in former days —
let us think only of the middle ages, with their frightful excesses,
appearing in epidemic diffusion — but, further, that the greater
part of the perversions of the present day are not to be regarded

1 S. Freud, " Throe Essays in Contribution to the Sexual Theory," p. 70. j $

457

as " degenerations " at all ; and, finally, that the factors which
are to weaken and undermine the vital forces of a nation must
be something other than purely sexual factors. For sexual
aberrations alone have, taken as a whole, but a trifling influence
in effecting the decadence of a nation. They first gain such an
influence in combination with causes, which we cannot now dis-
cuss, of an economic and political nature.

As old as humanity is the fable of the good old times, of the
golden youth of the human race, of the glorious past, to which an
always corrupt, physically and morally rotten present is supposed
to have succeeded.1 The ancients held this view ; it recurred at
the time of the renascence ; and since the time of Rousseau's
unfortunate condemnation of all civilization, it has been, in the
hands of all zealots, moral fanatics, backsliders, and guardians
of conventional morality, a greatly prized weapon, and one, also,
of great power when used to influence the ignorant and easily
misled. Anthropology, the history of primitive man, and the
history of civilization in general, have utterly destroyed this
beautiful dream of the good old times and of the better days of
the past. Nothing has been left but the ever more beautiful
present !

The critical and far-sighted Lessing opposed Rousseau's
hypothesis of corruption by means of " civilization." It was
true, he said, that Athens, standing so high in civilization, and
at the same time so corrupt, passed away ; but the virtuous Sparta,
did not this also pass away ? Rousseau himself had to admit
that the destruction of civilization would be of no use, that the
world would then relapse into barbarism, and that the corrup-
tion would none the less persist. The philologist Muff,2 discuss-
ing this question, added that if civilization had not come, vice
would still have been dominant, and that civilization, involving
as it does intellectual progress, provides also the means for
counteracting vice.

Physicians and natural philosophers have long protested
against the theory of the corrupt and degenerate " present."
For instance, a countryman of Rousseau's, Dr. Delvincourt,3
exclaimed :

1 (7/. the interesting remarks of G. H. C. Lippert, " Mankind in a State of
Nature," p. 1 el seq. (Elborfield, 1818).

3 Christian Muff, " What is Civilization ?" pp. 30, 31 (Hallo, 1880).

3 G. L. N. Delvincourt, " De la Mucito Genito-Sexuelle," p. 64 (Paris, 1834).
Apt remarks on the alleged degeneration of the French are to bo found also in
the work of P. Nacko, The Alleged Degeneration of the Latin Races, more
Especially of the French," published in Archive* for Racial and Social Biology,
1906, vol. iii.

458

" How false is the assumption of the fanatics and the pious who
attribute to the moral corruption of our century the majority of
diseases, and, above all, venereal diseases ; who maintain that the
race is degenerating ; and who thunder an anathema against modern
young men, whom they would gladly muzzle as we muzzle an animal."

Must we, then, he asks, at a moment when civilization is
marching forward with giant strides, have our ears wearied
with sophisms which can no longer deceive even the ignorant
masses ? And he shows how since primeval times, everywhere,
all over the earth, vice has been diffused. He rightly points to
the innumerable monuments de turpitude of all ages.

About the same time (be it noted, more than sixty years ago)
in Germany the celebrated natural philosopher Christian Gottfried
Ehrenberg, in an academic speech with the distinctive title " The
Fear that Progressive Intellectual Development will Lead to
Physical National Degeneration : A Demonstration that this
Fear is entirely devoid of Scientific and Medical Foundation "
(Berlin, 1842), opposed the belief in the unwholesome influence
of civilization upon the popular strength and popular morals.
Of special interest to us are his remarks upon the alleged de-
leterious influence of civilization upon sexuality. He says
(p. 8) :

" The occurrence of puberty in warm climates at a comparatively
early age (from ten to fifteen years), in cold climates somewhat later
(from fourteen to eighteen years), is a natural measure of human in-
telligence and power ; and if our sexually mature youths at school, at
the time at which their development has naturally progressed to this
point, experience also sexual stimulation, this is entirely according to
the nature of things, and only imposes upon those in charge of schools,
and upon parents, the special duty of watchfulness in these respects.
Even if secret vice becomes general anywhere among young fellows in
a manner open to regret, still, this does not mean that our schools
are the cause of physical weakness, of overstimulation, and of de-
terioration of the people and of the epoch ; it merely indicates a local
deficiency in energetic purposive education, and a lack of the necessary
watchfulness over the youths in the particular institution in which the
trouble has occurred, or that the family life of the children thus affected
is less strictly moral than we could wish ; and the evil is only to be
overcome by counteracting its especial causes. In many cases we may
compare outbreaks of premature sexuality with epidemics of disease,
which also find entrance through lack of sufficient care. Just the same
is it in respect of the great mass of adults who, by exhortation and
example on the part of those whose business it is to give them counsel,
are in most cases so easily led in the right direction, but who, in the
absence of such judicious treatment, often give way to the most un-
bridled licentiousness. The student of popular history will easily
find numerous instances of cause and effect, now of the former and now
of the latter kind."

459

Ehrenberg comes to the conclusion, most encouraging to our-
selves and to our time, and one which may be unhesitatingly
accepted, that the entire history of humanity, in so far as that
history is open to us, leads us to believe, not that the progress of
civilization1 has given rise to infirmity or to nervous over-
stimulation of the people, but, on the contrary, that as the
centuries pass, our bodies are as powerfully developed as formerly,
and that there is an ever-happier development of all the nobler
human activities, such as can only result from an improvement
in our mental faculties.

At the fifty-ninth Congress of German Natural Philosophers and
Physicians, held at Berlin in the year 1886, the celebrated physicist
Werner von Siemens, discussing the same problem in a formal
speech, proved the nullity of the hypothesis of the evil influence
of civilization upon the physical and moral nature of humanity,
and expressed himself as fully convinced that

" our activity in research and discovery conducts humanity to higher
stages of civilization, ennobles humanity, and makes ideal aims more
easily accessible ; that the coming scientific age will diminish poverty
and illness, will increase the enjoyment of life, and will make humanity
better, happier, and more contented with its lot."

" Has humanity degenerated ?" asks a celebrated specialist,2
who, owing to the nature of his speciality, has been able to obtain
exhaustive information regarding what is often believed to be a
symptom of degeneration — namely, falling out of the hair and
baldness — and he answers :

" Certainly not ! In the process of civilization, which has lasted
for many thousands of years, our organization has not experienced
any serious convulsion of its fundamental nature. Superficially
only have the battles we have had to fight made any mark upon us."

To a frightful extent in earlier times the great infective epidemic
diseases decimated civilized humanity, to an extent which is hardly

1 As, for example, Immermann, in his work " Epigonen," published at the
same period (1836), assumes. In the mouth of the physician he puts the follow-
ing words : " The physician has a great task to perform in the present day.
Diseases, especially nervous troubles, to which for a number of years the human
race has been especially disposed, are a modern product," Of. Leopold Hirschberg,
" Medical Matters as dealt with in General Literature : the Judgment of a
Member of the Laity regarding Nervousness in the Year 1876," published in
Afedizinische Wochenschrift, 1906, No. 41, p 428. Seventy years ago the German
people was " nervous " ; thirty-four years before Sedan, thirty years after Jena I
Therefore neither Jena nor Sedan can be connected with the nervous " degenera-
tion." The authors of the eighteenth century (!) made similar complaints of the
nervousness of their time, upon which Cullen and Brown founded their medical
theories.

a J. Pohl-Pincus. " The Diseases of the Human Hair, and the Care of the
Hair," third edition, p. 57 (Leipzig, 1885).

460

realized at the present day, and thcwe of more powerful consti-
tution were undoubtedly carried off quite as much as those
endowed with weaker powers of resistance. Bubonic plague,
small-pox, leprosy, the sweating sickness, scarlatina, cholera, and
syphilis (which at its commencement was a far more severe
disease than it is at the present day), have often annihilated the
blossoms of youth ; and yet mankind as a whole has not suffered
therefrom. Formerly there were much more violent and obstinate
nervous troubles than our modern " nervousness," which, to a
large extent, represents merely a phenomenon of adaptation, not
a disease in the proper sense of the term. St. Vitus's dance, the
dancing mania, and similar psycho-nervous epidemics, disturbed
medieval humanity, without, however, giving rise to any per-
manent injury, and without causing progressive degeneration.
And the most frightful sexual excesses can do no harm to the
strength of the nation.

With regard to this point, the reputed connexion between sexual
excesses and the political downfall of a nation, Carl Bleibtreu1
rightly remarks :

" Ancient Rome produced its greatest men during a period of moral
degeneration. The finest blossoms of Hellenic civilization coincided
with a period of fundamental immorality. We might easily urge that
after Pericles, Phidias, Aristophanes, Euripides, Alcibiades, and
Socrates, the decay of the Greek race began, notwithstanding the fact
that much later in Greek history the vital force of the nation was
proved by the appearance of men of the first rank, such as Alexander,
Aristotle, and Demosthenes. But this rejoinder does not help us
much, for in the earliest days of Greek history, in the legal codes of
Solon and Lycurgus, we find the most notable and clear indications
that precisely in respect of sexual relationship, and more especially
in regard to marriage and the procreation of children, the morals of
this fresh and youthful race were disordered to the greatest possible
extent.

" Just the same do we find it at the time of the Italian renascence
and at the time of the Hohenstaufen dynasty — a complete confusion
of sexual relationships. The eighteenth century, also, notwithstand-
ing all the justified jeremiads of Rousseau regarding the widespread
unnaturalness of the time, and notwithstanding all the sorrows of the
young Werther, was distinguished by the production of an incredible
abundance of men of genius ; and in contemporary France, the country
which was most severely affected by this moral decay, there flourished
the generation to which such men as Mirabeau and Napoleon belonged
— men whose unparalleled vitality influences us to this moment."

Finally, I must refer to two leading authors of recent years,
Eli Metchnikoff and Georg Hirth, whose writings exhibit a remark-

1 Carl Bleibtreu, "[Paradoxes the [Conventional Lies," sixth edition, pp. 1, 2
Berlin, 1888). tj

461

able similarity in respect of general philosophical foundation.
Both have energetically opposed the unfounded fantasies of
degeneration (there exists also a justified campaign against the
continuously effective causes of degeneration in the form of
alcohol, syphilis, etc.), and both have advocated a belief in life
and in the life-force.

In his work " The Nature of Man " (English translation by
Chalmers Mitchell ; Heinemann, 1903), Metchnikoff advances an
" optimistic philosophy," in opposition to the pessimistic de-
generative theory of our time, of which latter P. J. Mobius may
be regarded as the chief advocate, and he proves how the im-
perfections and " disharmonies " of the human organism may
give place to a further development and perfectibility of human
nature, and this precisely in connexion with culture and civili-
zation. It is now that humanity first begins really to live.1
Mankind has not degenerated in consequence of civilization, but
has, on the contrary, by means of civilization, first attained the
possibility of establishing " physiological old age " and " physi-
ological death." Our device is not backwards, but forwards !
The pessimists cry out : " Existence has no meaning ! For what
purpose do we live, and for what purpose do we die ?" This
dreadful " for what purpose " with which Friedrich von Hellwald
concludes his history of civilization, disturbs day by day emotional
minds. Metchnikoff proves that this problem is connected with
the existence of the disharmonies of human nature. But evolu-
tion continues to transform these disharmonies into harmonies
(" orthobiosis "). Thus the aim of human existence lies in " the
completion of the entire physiological cycle of life with a normal
old age, so that, with the cessation of the instinct to live, and
with the appearance of the instinct for natural death, the cycle
comes to an end." This is, to a certain extent, the scientific
formulation of the " superman " of Nietzsche, who based upon
quite similar considerations his opposition to the hypothesis of
degeneration, and who, out of the disharmonies, imperfections,
and pains of life, also created the conviction of a progressive
evolution, and thus, like Metchnikoff, thoroughly affirmed life.
Metchnikoff 's ideal human being of the future is realizable,
but only by means of the principles of science and intelligent
culture.

Similar views *o those of Metchnikoff are advanced by Georg
Hirth. He, above all, has introduced into science the most

1 See " Nature and Man," E. Ray Lankeater's Romanes Lecture, 1905. —
TRANSLATOR.

462

felicitous conception of " hereditary enfranchisement." l Thus to
the pessimistic degeneration theories and the psychical paralysis
evoked by the idea of " hereditary taint " (we now hear the ex-
pression from every mouth), Hirth opposes a word of power, a
word expressing "an energetic opposing stream of tendency."
Thus the incontestable fact finds simple expression, that

" The requirements of all individuals through millions of genera-
tions constitute an inalienable, progressively influential common
possession of the whole of humanity, an impulsive force based upon
natural law, which marches victoriously forward over the sins and
failures of individuals. . . . That is to say, that in our entire organism,
so long as it continues to live, in addition to the disturbing influences
which we have inherited or have acquired by our own faults, there
exists also a mass of old and new constructive influences, which work
towards the restitution of the former condition. . . . Enfranchise-
ment by means of primevally old, healthy, and strong reproductive
cells is stronger than the quite recent tainting by means of weakly and
diseased germs. If it were not so, the entire human race would long
since have passed away, for there can hardly exist a single family tree
at the foot of which there are not somewhere worms gnawing."

I cannot here examine more closely the extremely interesting
foundation of this view, which rightly places in the foreground
the capacity for self-regeneration, for the removal of morbid
vital stimuli, and their replacement by new and healthy vital
stimuli, and which notably limits the extension of hereditary
" tainting." The conclusion which Hirth draws from this view
is identical with that of Metchnikoff — namely, that our life
remains capable of upward progress, a view which Hirth every-
where happily employs in his battle " with the forces of obscurity
and degeneration."

The theory of degeneration finds a thorough scientific
refutation also in the admirable work by Dr. William Hirsch,
" Genius and Degeneration : a Psychological Study " (Berlin
and Leipzig, 1904). At the end of the book (p. 340) the
writer says :

" In view of the investigations I have made, we are necessarily led
to the conclusion that the authors mentioned have by no means
adduced proof of a general degeneration of the civilized nations.
Humanity need not be alarmed with regard to the alleged ' black
plague of degeneration,' and the world need be as little concerned by
these fables of the ' twilight of the nations ' as by Heir Falb's pro-
phecies of the approaching destruction of our planet."

1 G. Hirth, " Hereditary Enfranchisement," published in " Ways to Freedom,"
pp. 106-127 (Munich, 1903).

463

It cannot be denied that the wide diffusion of the deleterious
means of sensual gratification (alcohol, tobacco, etc.), the
increase in the number of large towns, and the rapid growth
in their population, by means of which prostitution and the
spread of venereal diseases are especially favoured, constitute
important etiological factors for the degeneration of the race.
Still, the wide diffusion of public hygiene, which is more and
more brought under the notice of the individual, affords here
an effective counterpoise. " Enfranchisement " in Hirth's sense
is here clearly manifested.

After we have seen that the " degeneration " of our time, to
the medical idea of which we shall return to speak more exactly
in the next chapter, is not greater now than it was in earlier
epochs, and that sexual anomalies have always existed, let us
return to consider this point, to the anthropological view of
psychopathia sexualis.

In my " Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis " I have collected
the general human phenomena of the sexual impulse in primitive
and civilized states — that is, the everywhere recurring funda-
mental lineaments and phenomena of the vita sexualis peculiar
to the genus homo as such.

As the principal result of this inquiry, the following propositions
appear to me to be established :

Degeneration cannot be employed, as von Krafft-Ebing has
employed it in his " Psychopathia Sexualis," as a heuristic prin-
ciple in the investigation, recognition, and judgment of sexual
aberrations and perversions.

At the most, degeneration is no more than a favouring
factor of the diffusion of sexual abnormalities, an influence
which increases the frequency of their appearance.

On the contrary, the ultimate cause ot all sexual perversions,
aberrations, abnormalities, and irrationalities, is the need for
variety in sexual relationships peculiar to the genus homo, which
is to be regarded as a physiological phenomenon, and the increase
of which to the degree of a sexual irritable hunger is competent to
produce the most severe sexual perversions.

In contrast with this, " degeneration " or diseases play only
a subordinate part, and can be invoked for the explanation of
only a small number of sexual aberrations — at most for those
which come to the notice of physicians on account of pathological
conditions or in foro. In fact, the majority of cases of sexual
perversions which come the way of the physicians in clinical or
forensic relationships are pathological, but these constitute only

464

a minority of all cases. The large majority of cases do not come
within the scope of degeneration.1

Freud, in his " Three Essays on the Sexual Theory," recog-
nizes the justice of my view, and on p. 80 he writes :

" Physicians who have first studied perversions in well-marked
examples and peculiar conditions are naturally inclined to regard them
as signs of disease or as stigmata of degeneration, just as in the case of
sexual inversion. Daily experience has shown that the majority of
these transgressions — at any rate, the less marked of them — constitute
a seldom lacking constituent of the sexual life of healthy persons.
In favourable conditions the normal individual may exhibit such a
perversion for a considerable length of time in the place of his normal
sexual activity ; or the perversion may take its place beside the normal
sexual activity. Probably there is no healthy person in whom there
dees not exist, at some time or other, some kind of supplement to his
normal sexual activity, to which we should be justified in giving the
name of ' perversity.' "a

A second important factor in the genesis of sexual anomalies
is the ease with which the sexual impulse is affected by external
influences, the associative inclusion of manifold external stimuli
in sexual perception itself, the " synaesthetie stimuli," as I myself
have called them, in the amatory life of mankind. In this way
gradually all the relations of art, religion, fashion, etc., to sexu-
ality have developed, and they offer, in conjunction with the
sensory impressions and the psychical and physical imaginative
associations which accompany the sexual act, an incredibly rich
material for the manifold realizations of the sexual need for
variation.

The need for variety in sexual relationships, in conjunction
with the sexual " demand for stimulation " (Hoche),3 plays a
great part, especially in the occurrence of sexual perversions in
adult persons and at a more advanced age of life. The effect of
external influences is most clearly noticeable in childhood, when
it is experienced most deeply and in a most enduring manner, and
when it can become permanently associated with sexual per-
ception (Binet and von Schrenck-Notzing).

1 Nacke's thesis is in agreement with this, that " all sexual abnormal practices
in an asylum are for the most part much more rare than the laity, or even many
physicians, imagine." Cf. P. Nacke, " Some Psychologically Obscure Cases of
Sexual Aberrations in the Asylum," published in the Annual for Sexual Inter-
mediate Stages, vol. v., p. 196 (Leipzig, 1903). See also, by the same author,
" Problemi nel Campo dello Psicopatie Sessuali," in Archivio delle Psicopatie
Sessuali, 1896 ; " Sexual Perversities in the Asylum," in the Wiener Idinische
Rundschau, 1899, Nos. 27-30.

2 S. Freud, op. cil., pp. 19, 20.

3 A. Hoche, " The Problem of the Forensic Condemnation of Sexual Trans-
gressions," published in the Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1896, p. 58.

465

Alexander von Humboldt, in his " Cosmos " (vol. ii., Intro-
duction), drew attention to the well-known experience that
" sensual impressions and apparently chance occurrences are,
in the case of youthful emotional individuals, often capable of
determining the entire course of a human life." Freud draws
attention to the psychological fact that impressions of childhood,
which have apparently been forgotten, may, notwithstanding,
have left the most profound marks upon our psychical life, and
may have determined our entire subsequent development. The
impressions of childhood are often incorporated fate. For this
reason, for example, the children of criminals become criminals
themselves, not because they are " born " criminals, but because,
as children, they grow up in the atmosphere of crime, and the
impressions they here receive become firmly and deeply rooted
in their natures. Hence the campaign against crime must in the
first place take into consideration the education of the children
of criminals !

From the need for variety hi sexual relationships, and from
the effect of external influences, we deduce the possibility and the
actual frequency of the acquirement and the artificial produc-
tion of sexual perversions and perversities ; and these, in pro-
portion to the intensity of the sexual impulse (very variable in
strength in different individuals, according to the ease with which
it is excited), will appear now earlier, now later, will be now
transient and now enduring.

The third important etiological factor in the origination of
sexual perversions is the frequent repetition of the same sexual
aberration. There can be no doubt whatever that the normal
human being can become accustomed to the most diverse sexual
aberrations, so that these become perversions, which appear in
healthy human beings just as they do in the diseased.

Fourthly, suggestion and imitation play an extremely important
role in the vita ^exualis alike of primitive and of civilized nations,
hi accordance with which certain aberrations in the sexual
sphere become diffused with great rapidity, and make their
appearance as customs, fashions, and psychical epidemics.
Those who everywhere trace perversities from morbid rudiments
underestimate the powerful influence which example and seduc-
tion exercise in the human sexual life. This is especially notice-
able to-day in those sexual perversions which have become
national customs. The most celebrated example is that of
Hellenic paederasty, reputedly introduced from Crete, but prob-
ably hi the first place originated by a few genuinely homosexual

466

individuals, who in their own interest transmitted artificially by
suggestion their peculiar tendencies to a few heterosexual indi-
viduals, until at last the love of boys became a national custom
which every heterosexual man adopted. The momentous part
which modern prostitution, and more especially brothels, plays
in the suggestion of perversions has already been mentioned. It
is a matter to which we shall frequently have occasion to return.
Schrank alludes ("Prostitution in Vienna," vol. i., p. 285) to
a prostitute who enjoyed a " European reputation " as an artist
in sexual perversities of every kind, and who enjoyed the nick-
name of "the Ever- Virgin," because she allowed men every
possible kind of enjoyment except that of regular normal
intercourse (which she avoided for fear of becoming impreg-
nated).

Fifthly, the difference between man and woman in the essence,
the kind, and the intensity, of sexual perception (sexual activity
in man, sexual passivity in woman) constitutes a rich source of
sexual aberrations, most of which belong to the provinces of
masochism and sadism.

Sixthly, and lastly, in otherwise healthy individuals there
occur at a very early age, and probably in consequence of con-
genital conditions, changes in the direction and the aim of sexual
perception, variations from the type of differentiated hetero-
sexual love. Genuine homosexuality is the principal phenomenon
to be considered under this head. It occurs in perfectly healthy
individuals quite independently of degeneration and of civiliza-
tion ; and it is diffused throughout the whole world.

From all these facts may be deduced the untenability of a
purely clinical and pathological conception of sexual aberrations
and perversions. We must now accept the point of view that,
although numerous morbid degenerate and psychopathic indi-
viduals exhibit sexual anomalies, yet these identical anomalies
and aberrations are extraordinarily common in healthy persons.

Ethnological research, for more exact details of which I may
refer to my own work already mentioned, and to the pioneer
works of Ploss-Bartels,1 Mantegazza,2 Friedrich S. Krauss,3 and
Havelock Ellis,4 has adduced stringent proof that sexual aberra-

1 Ploss-Bartols, " Das Weib in der Natur und Volkerkunde," eighth edition,
2 vols. (Leipzig, 1905).

2 Mantegazza, " Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Sexual Relation-
ship of Mankind."

3 F. S. Krauss, " Morals and Customs relating to Sexual Reproduction among
the Southern Slavs," published in " Kryptadia," vols. vi.-viii. (Paris, 1899-
1902) ; and in the larger work, " Anthropopnyteia " (Leipzig, 1904-1906).

4 In all his works.

467

tions and perversions are ubiquitous, diffused throughout the
entire world, just as much among primitive races as among
civilized nations, that on the psycho-physical side they are
" elementary ideas " hi Bastian's sense, that they recur every-
where in a qualitatively identical manner as a result of similar
conditions. As it is with prostitution, so it is also with sexual
perversions — a tendency to sexual aberration is deeply rooted
in human nature. It is a primitive, purely anthropological
phenomenon, which is not strengthened by civilization, but,
on the contrary, is mitigated thereby. Charles Darwin rightly
points out that the hatred of sexual immorality and of sexual
aberrations is a " modern virtue," appertaining exclusively to
" civilized We," and entirely foreign to the nature of primitive
man. Primitive man revelled in wild indecency (as Wilhelm
Roscher also proves), in sexual perversions, and libertinism.1
The sexual aberrations of civilized mankind are for the most
part imitations of the examples given by primitive peoples.

Thus, the well-known " stimulating rings " of European rubber
manufacturers (cf. Weissenberg, in the " Transactions of the
Anthropological Society of Berlin," 1893, p. 135) correspond to
the " stimulating stones " of the Battaks (Staudinger, op. cit.,
1891, p. 351), to the "penis stones " of the savage Orang Sinnoi
in Malacca (Vaughan Stevens in the Zeitechrift fur Ethnologic.
1896, pp. 181, 182), the " ampallang " of the Sunda Islands
(see Miklucho-Maclay in the " Transactions of the Anthropo-
logical Society of Berlin," 1876, pp. 22-28). The " renifleurs "
and " gamahucheurs " of the Parisian brothels and houses of
accommodation find their typical analogues in the urine fetichists
and cunnilingi of the Island of Ponape, in the Carolines (cf.
Ploss-Bartels), who are, in truth, far removed from the fin-de-
siecle life. And what a perverse imagination have the women
of this same island ! According to Otto Finsch (Zeitschrift fur
Ethnologic, 1880, p. 316), the men of this island have all only
one testicle, because in boys at the age of seven or eight years
the left testicle is removed by a piece of sharpened bamboo.
This is said to make the men more desirable to the women !
Among the Masai, for similar reasons, circumcision is effected
in such a manner that a portion of the prepuce is left behind
to form a kind of firm button of skin. " This mode of circum-
cision is greatly prized by the women. Among the black races,
indeed, everything turns round the question of sensual enjoy-

1 Cf. Charles Darwin, " The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex,"
vol. i., p. 182 (2 vols., London, 1898).

30—2

468

ment " (" Medical Notes from Central Africa," by M. C., published
in the Deuteche Medizinische Presse, 1902, No. 14, p. 116). And
how can our roues compete with the Tauni islanders of the South
Seas ? These select certain women, who are not allowed to marry,
but are reserved as simple " objects of sensual pleasure," and
with these every kind of sexual artifice is practised (Dempwolf,
" Medical Notes on the Tauni Islanders," published in the
Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1902, p. 335).

Thus between primitive and civilized races in these respects
there are no important differences ; and according to recent
researches we find the same may be said with regard to civilized
nations, that there is no difference between town and country.1
I quote here the account given by an experienced author sixty
years ago :

" People usually believe that in the country morals are much better
than in the towns, but this belief is quite erroneous. Brothels and
professional prostitutes naturally cannot exist in the country, but
nearly every peasant-girl in the country is equivalent to a secret
prostitute. It is incredible what sexual excesses go on between the
masculine and feminine inhabitants of the villages. Every barn, every
shed, every haystack, every copse, bears witness to this. Especially
disadvantageous to morals is it when in the heat of summer persons
of different sexes work side by side, half undressed, in remote fields
for the whole day, and lie down to rest side by side."2

We may here allude to a fact that we shall have to discuss
later — that young men, after the conclusion of their term of
military service, carry back with them to the country the
knowledge of sexual excesses and perversities which they have
acquired in the town, and thus diffuse these tendencies more and
more widely.

Since sexual anomalies constitute a phenomenon generally
characteristic of humanity, race and nationality, as such, have
less to do with the matter than is commonly imagined. The
Mongol and the Malay are not less voluptuous than the Semites,
or than many Aryan races. Among the Semites, the Arabs and
the Turks are pre-eminently sexually perverse nations. They seek
sexual gratification indifferently in the female harem and in the
boys' brothel (see numerous descriptions of travellers on the moral
customs of Turkey, the Levant, Cairo, Morocco, the Arabian
Soudan, the Arabs in Africa, etc.). Among the Aryan races the

1 Cf. the inquiry of C. Wagner, containing extremely valuable material, " The
Sexual and Moral Relationships of the Protestant Agricultural Population of
the German Empire " (3 vols., Leipzig, 1897, 1898).

2 " Prostitution in Berlin and its Victims," p. 27 (Berlin, 1846).

469

Aryans of India must be considered pre-eminent as refined
practitioners of psychopathia sexualis, which they have reduced
to a system. In addition to recognizing forty- eight figures
Veneris (different postures in sexual intercourse), they practise
every possible variety of sexual perversion ; and they have
in various textbooks1 a systematic introduction to sexual im-
morality. Here there is manifestly no trace of morbid condi-
tions, of degeneration, or of psychopathia ; it is simply a matter
of popular manners and customs. Sexual perversion among the
Greeks and the Romans, two other Aryan nations, is too well
known to need detailed description. In modern Europe the
French were at one time believed to lead the way in sexual
artifices. For a long time this has ceased to be true, and, in fact,
never was true. They do, indeed, excel, if one may use the
expression, all other nations in the outward technique and in
the elegance of their sexual excesses. To them from very early
times there has been ascribed a certain preference for the skato-
logical element in the sexual life ; but according to the recent
researches of Friedrich S. Krauss regarding the Slavs, pub-
lished in his " Anthropophyteia," this alleged pre-eminence is
extremely doubtful. That among the Slavs sexual perversions
of every kind have an extraordinarily wide diffusion has been
shown by this investigator by the collection of an enormous mass
of material. It is also very generally known that the English
from early days have exhibited a marked tendency to sadistic
practices, and especially to flagellation. I will return later to this
remarkable phenomenon. The French accuse the Germans of an
especial tendency to homosexuality (le vice Allemand), but there
are no sufficient grounds for this accusation. In psychopathia
sexualis, the Germans are as cosmopolitan as they are in other
respects.

With regard to the age of the individual in relation to sexual
perversions, the frequency of these is greater after puberty than
before,2 and the frequency increases with advancing years. The
time at which the imagination unfolds its greatest activity, the
commencement of manhood, is extremely favourable to the
origination of sexual aberrations, and to their becoming habitual
practices; and, again, the age at which the sexual powers
begin to decline, and when for their incitation new stimuli are

1 Cf. the detaihd bibliography of these works in my " Contributions to the
Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis." vol. i., pp. 29, 30.

2 Typical sexual perversions have, however, been observed even in children,
and it is this fact which has chiefly given rise to the doctrine of the " congenital "
character of sexual perversions.

470

needed, is one at which abnormal varieties of sexual gratification
frequently originate.1

Which sex is more inclined to abnormalities of the sexual im-
pulse, the male or the female ?

The primitively more powerful sexual impulsive life of man in
association with his greater use of alcohol makes him distinctly
more inclined to follow sexual bypaths than woman, whose
sexuality at first develops very gradually, and experiences, in
consequence of motherhood, powerful inhibitions to the develop-
ment of any sexual anomalies. On the other hand, the much
more difficult development of voluptuous sensations in women,
by means of normal coitus, is not rarely the cause of a tendency
to perverse varieties of sexual intercourse. They often seduce
man in this direction, and excel him in the discovery of sexual
artifices. Among primitive races, where the relationships are
clearest, this is still easily recognizable, whereas by civilization
the matter is often obscured. All the artificial deformities of
the male genital organs amongst savages, which give the man
much more trouble than pleasure, but which, on the other hand,
increase the voluptuous enjoyment of the woman during the
sexual act, cannot otherwise be explained except on the ground
of an original demand on the part of women. To this category
belong incisions in the glans penis, and the implanting of small
stones in the wounds until the skin has a warty appearance
(Java) ; perforation of the penis to enable rods beset with bristles,
feathers, rods with balls (the well-known " ampallang " of the
Dyaks of Borneo), bodkins, rings, bell-shaped apparatus, to be
inserted through these perforations ; the wrapping up of the
penis in strips of fur with the hair outwards, or enveloping it in
a leaden cylinder, etc. The feminine imagination has proved
inexhaustible in this direction. Miklucho-Maclay, the great
authority on the sexual psychology of the savage races of the
Malay Archipelago and the South Sea Islands, declares it to be
extremely probable that all these customs and all these appa-
ratus were invented by or for women. The women reject all men
who do not possess these stimulating apparatus on the penis.
Finsch and Kubary confirm this, and state that in most cases
it is the frigidity of the women which makes them desire such
means of artificial stimulation. Among civilized races, also,
abundant material can be collected with regard to sexual per-

1 Cf. the remarks of the Marquis de Sade regarding the abnormal sexuality
of elderly men, in my " New Research Concerning the Marquis de Sade," pp. 421,
422 (Berlin, 1904).

471

versities among women, as has recently been done by Paul de
Regla in " Les Perversites de la Femme " (Paris, 1904), and by
Ren6 Schwaeble in " Les Detraquees de Paris " (Paris, 1904).

The following case shows that European women sometimes
demand artificial changes in the male genital organs, in order
to increase their voluptuous sensations. Some years ago a
man, fifty years of age, was admitted into the syphilis wards of
the Laibacher Hospital. The discharge from the penis was,
however, found to be due merely to balanitis. On examination the
greatly enlarged penis was found to be perforated by rod-shaped
objects, and an incision through the skin showed that these were
pins and hairpins. The pins were about two inches long, with
brass heads the size of a peppercorn, and they were at least
ten in number. One of the pins was run partly into the testicle.
After the foreign objects had been removed, the man informed
us that his mistress had stuck these in, in order that she
might experience more ardent sensations. The pins were all
subcutaneous ; several of them ran right round the penis.

Social differences in respect of the frequency of sexual per-
versions do not exist. Sexual perversions are just as widely
diffused among the lower classes as among the upper. A. Ferguson,
Havelock Ellis, Tarnowsky, and J. A. Symonds are all in agree-
ment regarding this fact, which, indeed, in view of the anthropo-
logical conception of psychopathia sexualis, does not require
additional explanation.

Finally, we come to the last and most important point — to the
question of the relation of culture and civilization to psychopathia
sexualis. Even though psychopathia sexualis is in its essence
independent of culture, is a general human phenomenon, still we
cannot fail to recognize that civilization has exercised a certain
influence upon the external mode of manifestation, and also
upon the inner psychical configuration of sexual aberrations.
Especially as regards the latter — the psychical relationships — the
perversity of the civilized man is more complicated than that of
primitive man, although in essence the two are identical.

The modern civilized man is in respect of his sexuality a peculiar
dual being. The sexuality within him leads a kind of independent
existence, notwithstanding its intimate relationship to the whole
of the rest of his spiritual life. There are moments in which, even
in men of lofty spiritual nature, pure sexuality becomes sepa-
rated from love, and manifests itself in its utterly elementary
nature beyond good and evil. I expressed earlier the idea that
this frequent phenomenon reminded me of the " monomania "

472

of the older alienists. " II y a en nous deux etres, 1'etre moral
et la bete : 1'etre moral sait ce que meYite I'amour veritable, la
bete aspire a la fange on on la pousse," we find in a French
erotic work ("Impressions d'une Fille " par Lena de Mauregard,
vol. i., pp. 57, 58 ; Paris, 1900).

No other human impulsive manifestation is so ill adapted as
sexuality to the coercion and conventionality which civilization
necessarily entails. Carl Hauptmann, in an interesting socio-
psychological study, "Unsere Wirklichkeit " ("Our Reality";
Munich, 1902), has described very impressively this frightful
conventionality, especially characteristic of our own time, which
so painfully represses the " reality " of love, suppresses every-
thing primitive in it, banishes it into the darkness of its own
interior, and only allows the conventionally sanctioned forms of
sexual love to subsist. This coercion, this outward pressure,
develops a volcano of elementary sexuality, which usually
slumbers, but may suddenly break out in eruption, and give
free vent to excesses of the wildest nature. Dingelstedt in his
poem " Ein Roman," has excellently described this condition :

" Wenn du die Leidenschaft willst kennen lernen,
Musst du dich nur nicht aus der Welt entfernen.
Such' sie nicht auf in friedlicher Idylle,
In strohgedeckter und begniigter Stille . . .
Da suche sie in festlich vollem Saale
Bei Spiel und Tanz, an feierlichem Mahle,
Dort, eingeschniirt in Form und Zwang und Sitte,
Thront sie wie Banquos Geist in ihrer Mitte."

[" If you wish to learn to know passion,
You must, above all, not remove yourself from the world.
Do not look for it in a peaceful idyll,
In padded and satisfied quietude. . . .
Look for it in the full festal hall,
At the game and the dance, at the brilliant banquet ;
There, entrapped amid form, and coercion, and custom,
Enthroned, like Banquo's ghost, it sits amid the throng."]

Similarly, Charles Albert1 remarks :

" If love nowadays so often manifests itself in the form of aberra-
tion or passion, tliis is almost always to be explained by the hindrances
of every kind which have been opposed to it. No other feeling is so
hindered, opposed, detested, and loaded with material and moral
fetters. We know how education makes a beginning in this way,
declaring that love is something forbidden, and how the hardness of
economic life continues the process. Hardly has a young man or a
young girl gone out into life, hardly have they begun to feel their way

1 C. Albert, " Free Love," p. 148.

473

into society, but they encounter a thousand difficulties which are
opposed to their living out their life from a sexual point of view. How
would it be possible that, in the limits of such a society, love could
become anything else but a fixed idea of the individual, and how could
it fail to give rise to continuous restlessness ? Nature does not allow
herself to be inhibited by our artificial social arrangements. The
need for love within us remains active ; it cries out in unsatisfied de-
sire ; and when no answer is forthcoming, beyond the echo of its own
pain, it takes a perverse form. The love which is prevented from
obtaining complete satisfaction and repose is to many an intensely
painful torment. . . . The over-rich imagination and the unsatisfied
longing give rise to the most horrible and abnormal forms of love.
Above all, in a society which will make no room for love, the love-
passion must give rise to the greatest devastation. The impulse to
love which is repressed by the organization of society does not only
fight violently for air — the inevitable consequence of any pressure —
but it discovers also all those artifices and corruptions which are sup-
posed to make the enjoyment of love more intense. Conscious of
being despised by society, it endeavours to regain by violence what is
wanting to it in sensuality."

The struggle for reality in love, for the elementary and the
primitive, manifests itself in the search for the greatest possible
contrast to the conventional, to the commonly sanctioned mode
of sexual activity. Love cries out for " nature," and comes
thereby to the " unnatural," to the coarsest, commonest dissipa-
tion. This connexion has been already explained (pp. 322-325).
Certain temporary phenomena exhibit also this fact — for example,
the remarkable preference for the most brutal, the coarsest,
the commonest dances, mere limb dislocations, such as the
cancan, the croquette (machicha), the cake-walk, and other wild
negro dances, which rejoice the modern public more than the
most beautiful and gracious spiritual ballet. It was only when
the above-described connexion became clear to me that I was
able to understand the remarkable alluring power of these dances,
which had hitherto been incomprehensible to me.

An additional factor which favours the origination of sexual
perversions is the unrest always connected with the advance of
civilization, the haste and hurry, the more severe struggle for
existence, the rapid and frequent change of new impressions.
Fifty years ago the celebrated alienist Guislain exclaimed :

" What is it with which our thoughts are filled ? Plans, novelties,
reforms. What is it that we Europeans are striving for ? Move-
ment, excitement. What do we obtain ? Stimulation, illusion,
deception." l

1 Joseph Guialain, " Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases," p. 229 (Berlin,
1854).

474

There is no longer any time for quiet, enduring love, for an
inward profundity of feeling, for the culture of the heart. The
struggle for life and the intellectual contest of our time leaves the
possibility only for transient sensations ; the shorter they are,
the more violent, the more intense must they be, in order to
replace the failing grande passion of former times. Love
becomes a mere sensation, which in a brief moment must contain
within itself an entire world. Modern youth eagerly desires such
experience of a whole world by means of love. The everlasting
feeling of our classic period had been transformed, more especially
among our leading spirits, into a passionate yearning to reflect
within themselves truly the spirit of the time, to live through
in themselves all the unrest, all the joy, all the sorrow, of modern
civilization.

From this there results a peculiar, more spiritual configuration
of modern perversity, a distinctive spiritualization of psycho-
pathia sexualis, a true wandering journey, an " Odyssey " of the
spirit, throughout the wide province of sexual excesses. Without
doubt the French have gone furthest in this direction, and the
names of Baudelaire, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Verlaine, Hannon,
Haraucourt, Jean Larocque, and Guy de Maupassant, indicate
nearly as many peculiar spiritual refinements and enrichments
of the purely sensual life.

We have no longer to deal with the pure love of reflection, as
in the case of Kierkegaard and Grillparzer, and in the writings of
young Germany, where, indeed, reflection predominates, but
which still more extends to the direction of higher love. Con-
trasted with this is the simple lust of the senses, by means of
which new psychical influences are to be obtained. Voluptuous-
ness becomes a cerebral phenomenon, ethereal. In this way the
most remarkable, unheard-of, sensory associations appear in
the province of sexuality — true fin-de-siecle products which are,
above all, specifically modern, and could not possibly exist in
former times. For it is always the same play of emotion, the
same effects, the same terminal results : ordinary voluptuousness.
The dream of Hermann Bahr, of " non-sexual voluptuousness,"
and the replacement of the animal impulse by means of finer
organs, is only a dream. The elemental sexual impulse resists
every attempt at dismemberment and sublimation. It returns
always unaltered, always the same. It is vain to expect new
manifestations of this impulse. Such efforts end either in bodily
and mental impotence, or else in sexual perversities. In these
relationships the imagination of civilized man is unable to create

475

novelties in the essence ; it can do so only as regards the objective
manifestations. This is confirmed by the increase of purely
ideal sexual perversities in connexion with certain spiritual
tendencies of our time. Martial d'Estoc, in his book, "Paris
Eros " (Paris, 1903), has given a clear description of these peculiar
spiritual modifications of sexual aberrations. (It is interesting to
note that Schopenhauer remarks, in his " Neue Paralipomena,"
pp. 234 and 235 : " The caprices arising from the sexual impulse
resemble a will-o'-the-wisp. They deceive us most effectively ;
but if we follow them, they lead us into the marsh and dis-
appear.")

APPENDIX
SEXUAL PERVERSIONS DUE TO DISEASE

It is the immortal service of Casper and von Krafft-Ebing to
have insisted energetically upon the fact that numerous indi-
viduals whose vita sexualis is abnormal are persons suffering from
disease. This is their monumentum cere perennius in the history
of medicine and of civilization. Purely medical, anatomical,
physical, and psychiatric investigations show beyond question
that there are many persons whose abnormal sexual life is patho-
logically based.

I shall not here discuss the peculiar borderland state between
health and disease, the existence of which can be established in
many sexually perverse individuals ; I shall not refer to the
" abnormalities," the " psychopathic deficiencies," the "un-
balanced," etc. ; nor shall I discuss the question of the significance
of the stigmata of degeneration, because these will be adequately
dealt with in connexion with the forensic consideration of punish-
able sexual perversions.

Here we shall speak only of actual and easily determined
diseases which possess a causal importance in the origination and
activity of sexual perversions. The great majority of these are,
naturally, mental disorders.

Von Krafft-Ebing, to whom we owe the most important
observations regarding the pathological etiology of sexual per-
versions, enumerates the following conditions : Psychical develop-
mental inhibitions (idiocy and imbecility), acquired weak-
mindedness (after mental disorders, apoplexy, injuries to the
head, syphilis, in consequence of general paralysis), epilepsy,
periodical insanity, mania, melancholia, hysteria, paranoia.

476

Among these, epilepsy possesses the greatest importance.1 It
comes into play much more frequently as a causal morbid in-
fluence in the case of sexually perverse actions and offences than
has hitherto been believed. The psychiatrist Arndt maintains
that wherever an abnormal sexual life exists, we must always
consider the possibility of epileptic influence. Lombroso assumes
that all premature and peculiar instances of satyriasis are in-
stances of larval epilepsy. He gives several examples in support
of this view, and also a case of Macdonald's which illustrates
the connexion between epilepsy and sexual perversity.2 Especially
in the so-called epileptic " confusional states " do we meet with
sexually perverse actions ; exhibitionism and other manifestations
of sexual activity coram publico are frequently referable to
epileptic disease. Similar impulsive sexual activities and similar
confusional states are seen after injuries to the head and in
alcoholic intoxication, also after severe exhaustion. Many cases
of " periodic psychopathia sexualis " are due to epilepsy.

Senile dementia and paralytic dementia (general paralysis of
the insane), also severe forms of neurasthenia and hysteria, often
change the sexual life in a morbid direction, and favour the
origin of sexual perversions.

It is a fact of great interest that Tarnowsky and Freud attribute
to syphilis an important role in the pathogenesis of sexual
anomalies. In 50 % of his sexual pathological cases Freud
found that the abnormal sexual constitution was to be regarded
as the last manifestation of a syphilitic inheritance (Freud,
op. cit., p. 74). Tarnowsky observed that congenital syphilitics,
and also persons whose parents had been syphilitic, but who
themselves had never exhibited any definite symptoms of the
disease, were apt later to show manifestations of a perverse sexual
sensibility (Tarnowsky, op. cit., pp. 34 and 35). Obviously this
is to be explained by the deleterious influence upon the nervous
system (perhaps by means of toxins ?) which syphilis is also sup-
posed to exert in the causation of tabes dorsalis and general
paralysis of the insane. When investigating the clinical history
of cases of sexual perversion, it appears that previous syphilis
is a fact to which some importance should be attached.3

1 Kowalewski, " Perversions of Sexual Sensibility in Epileptics," published in
the Jahrbiicher fiir Psychiatric, 1887, vol. vii., No. 3.

2 C. Lombroso, " Recent Advances in the Study of Criminology," pp. 197-200
(Gera, 1899). — Tarnowsky has even described a form of " epileptic psederasty "
(cf. B. Tarnowsky, " Morbid Phenomena of Sexual Sensibility," pp. 8, 51 ; Berlin,
1886).

3 E. Laurent (" Morbid Love," pp. 43-45 ; Leipzig, 1895) regards tubercular
inheritance as an important etiological factor of sexual anomalies, for these
occur more frequently in blonde, weakly individuals, than in brunettes (?).

477

From syphilis we pass to consider direct physical abnormalities
and morbid changes in the genital organs as causes of, sexual
anomalies. In women prolapsus uteri sometimes leads to
perverse gratification of the sexual impulse — for example, by
paedication ;J in men, shortness of the fraenum preputii plays a
similar part,2 also phimosis. Wollenmann reports the case of a
young man suffering from phimosis, who, at the first attempt at
coitus, experienced severe pain, and since that time had an
antipathy to normal sexual intercourse. He passed under the
influence of a seducer to the practice of mutual masturbation.
Only after operative treatment of the phimosis did his inclination
towards the male sex pass away, and the sexual perversion then
completely disappeared.3

1 Bacon, " The Effect of Developmental Anomalies and Disorders of the
Female Reproductive Organs upon the Sexual Impulse," published in the American
Journal of Dermatology, 1899, vol. iii., No. 2.

2 M. Feie, " Sexual Hyperaesthesia in Association with Shortness of the
Fraenum Preputii," published in the Monatshefte fiir praktische Dermatologie,
1896, vol. xxiii., p. 45.

3 A. G. Wollenmann, " Phimosis as a Cause of Perversion of Sexual Sensi-
bility," published in Der arzdiche Praktiker, 1895, No. 23. Matthaes has shown
that morbid changes of the genital sphere or its vicinity are apt to give rise to
offences against morality (" The Statistics of Offences against Morality," published
in the Archiv fiir Kriminalanthropologie, 1903, vol. xii., p. 319).

CHAPTER XVIII
MISOGYNY

" Thou priestess of the most flowery life, how is it possible that
such things should draw near to thee — one of those pale phantoms,
one of those general maxims, which philosophers and moralists have
invented in their despair of the human race ?" — G. JUNG.

479

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XVIII

Non-identity of misogyny with homosexuality — History of misogyny — Misogyny
among the Greeks — Christian misogyny the true source of the modern
contempt for women — Characteristics of modern misogyny — De Sade and
his modern disciples (Schopenhauer, Strindberg, Weininger) — Scientific
misogyny (Mobius, Schurtz, B. Friedlander, E. von Mayer) — Distinctions
between the individual varieties — Counteracting tendencies — Beginnings
of a new amatory life of the sexes — A common share in life — Freedom with,
not without, woman.

CHAPTER XVIII

BEFORE proceeding to the consideration of homosexuality I
propose to give a brief account of contemporary misogyny, in
order to avoid confusing these two distinct phenomena under one
head, and also to avoid making the male homosexuals, who
are often erroneously regarded as *' woman-haters," responsible
for the momentarily prevalent spiritual epidemic of hatred of
women. This would be a gross injustice, because, in the first
place, this movement has in no way proceeded from the
homosexual, but rather from heterosexual individuals, such as
Schopenhauer, Strindberg, etc. ; and because, in the second
place, the homosexual as such are not misogynists at all, and it
is only a minority df them who shout in chorus to the misogynist
tirades of Strindberg and Weininger.

The misogynists form to-day a kind of " fourth sex," l to
belong to which appears to be the fashion, or rather has once
more become the fashion, for misogyny is an old story. There
have always been times in which men have cried out : " Woman,
what have I to do with you ? I belong to the century "; 2
times in which woman was renounced as a soulless being, and the
world of men became intoxicated with itself, and was proud of
its " splendid isolation."

Of less importance is it that the Chinese since ancient times
have denied to woman a soul, and therewith a justification for
existence,3 than that among the most highly developed civilized
races of antiquity such men as Hesiod, Simonides,4 and, above all,
Euripides, were all fierce misogynists. In the " Ion," the
" Hippolytus," the " Hecuba," and the " Cyclops " we find the

1 V. Hoffmann, in a bad novel, " Das vierte Geschlecht " (Berlin, 1902), gives
this name to the non-homosexual misogynists.

2 Karl Gutzkow, " Sakularbilder," vol. i., p. 55 (Frankfurt, 1846).

3 In the Shi -king we find the following characterization of woman :

" Enough for her to avoid evil,
For what can a woman do that is good ?"

Indian literature is also full of such ideas. <"/. H. Schurtz, " Altersklassen und
Mannerbundo " (Classes of Antiquity and Associations of Men), p. 52.

4 Simonides considered that women were derived from various animals.
W. Schubert (" From the Berlin Collection of Papyri," published in the Voasiche
Zeitung, No. 23, January 15, 1907) reproduces long fragments of a Greek antho-
logy which collates praise and blame of woman in the original words of the
poet*.

481 31

482

most incisive attacks on the female sex. The most celebrated
passage is that in the " Hippolytus " (verses 602-637, 650-655) :

" Wherefore, 0 Jove, beneath the solar beams
That evil, woman, didst thou cause to dwell ?
For if it was thy will the human race
Should multiply, this ought not by such means
To be effected ; better in thy fane
Each votary, on presenting brass or steel,
Or massive ingots of resplendent gold,
Proportioned to his offering, might from thee
Obtain a race of sons, and under roofs
Which genuine freedom visits, unannoyed
By women, live." l

In this passage we have the entire quintessence of modern
misogyny. But Euripides betrays to us also the real motive of
misogyny. In a fragment of his we read " the most invincible
of all things is a woman " ! Hinc illce lacrimce ! It is only the
men who are not a match for woman, who do not allow woman
as a free personality to influence them, who are so little sure of
themselves that they are afraid of suffering at the hands of
woman damage, limitation, or even annihilation of their own
individuality. These only are the true misogynists.

It is indisputable that this Hellenic misogyny was closely
connected with the love of boys as a popular custom. To this
we shall return when we come to describe Greek paederasty.

Among the Romans woman occupied a far higher position than
among the Greeks — a fact which the institution of the vestal
virgins alone suffices to prove. Among the Germans, also, woman
was regarded as worthy of all honour.

The true source of modern misogyny is Christianity — the
Christian doctrine of the fundamentally sinful, evil, devilish
nature of woman. A Strindberg, a Weininger, even a Benedikt
Friedlander, notwithstanding his hatred of priests — all are the
last offshoots of a movement against the being and the value of
woman — a movement which has persisted throughout the
Christian period of the history of the world.

" If I were asked," says Finck,1 " to name the most influential,
refining element of modern civilization, I should answer : ' Woman,
beauty, love, and marriage '! If I were asked, however, to name the
most inward and peculiar essence of the early middle ages, my answer
would be : ' Deadly hostility to everything feminine, to beauty, to
love, and to marriage.' '

; * I quote from " The Plays of Euripides in English," in two volumes, vol. ii.,
p. 136 (Everyman's Library, Dent, London). — TRANSLATOR.

2 H. T. Finck, " Romantic Love and Personal Beauty," vol. i., pp. 186, 187
(Breslau, 1894).

483

The history of medieval misogyny was described by J. Michelet
in his book "The Witch." Since woman and the contact with
woman were regarded as radically evil, it followed that in theory
and practice asceticism was the ideal ; celibacy was only the
natural consequence of this hatred of woman ; so also were the
later witch trials the natural consequence. Therefore to this
medieval misogyny, in contrast with modern misogyny, which
represents only a weak imitation, we cannot deny a certain
justification. The misogyny of the middle ages was earnestly
meant ; but it has become to-day mere phrase-making, dilettante
imitation, and ostentation. In contrast with the utterances of
the modern misogynist, the coarse abuse of women by such a
writer as Abraham a Santa Clara has a refreshing and amusing
character.1

Modern misogyny is certainly an inheritance of Christian
doctrine, and a tradition handed down from much earlier times,
but still it has its own characteristic peculiarities. Misogyny is,
however, now much more an affair of satiety or disillusion than
of belief or conviction ; whereas in the days of medieval Chris-
tianity belief and conviction were the effective causal factors of
misogyny. In addition, among our neo-misogynists we have the
factor of the spiritual pride of a man who, from the standpoint of
academic theoretical culture (which to men of this kind appears
the highest summit of existence), looks down upon women,
whom he regards as mentally insignificant, while he sympathizes
with her " physiological weak-mindedness." He smiles on her
with pity, and completely overlooks the profound life of emotion
and feeling characteristic of every true woman, which forms a
counterpoise to any amount of purely theoretical knowledge —
quite apart from the fact that women of intellectual cultivation
are by no means rare.

If, hi fact, we regard the lives of those who have reduced modern
misogyny to a system, we shall be able to detect the above-
mentioned causes in their personal experiences and impressions.
The first important modern advocate of misogyny, the Marquis
de Sade, lived an extremely unhappy married life, was deceived
also in a love relationship, and nourished liis hatred of women by
a dissolute life and a consequent state of satiety.

And as regards Schopenhauer, who does not recall his unhappy

1 Equally amusing is the misogynist " Alphabet do 1' Imperfection et Malice
des Femmes," by Jacques Olivier (Rouen, 1046), in which all the bad qualities
of woman, observed down to the year 1646, are described with effective care and
completeness.

31—2

484

relations with his mother ? For he who has really loved his
mother, he who has experienced the unutterable tenderness and
self-sacrifice of maternal love, can never become a genuine,
thoroughgoing woman-hater. But the mutual relationship of
Schopenhauer and his mother was rather hatred than love.
Beyond question, also, his infection with syphilis, to which I was
the first to draw attention, played a part in his subsequent hatred
of women.

Strindberg, in his " Confessions of a Fool," has himself offered
us the proof of the causal connexion between his misogyny and
his personal experiences and disillusions ; and in Weininger's
book we can read only too clearly that he had had no good
fortune with women, or had had disagreeable experiences in his
relations with them.

De Sade, who, perhaps, was not unknown to Schopenhauer,1
was the first advocate of consistent misogyny on principle. It
is an interesting fact, to which I have alluded in an earlier work
(" Recent Researches regarding the Marquis de Sade," p. 433),
that de Sade's and Schopenhauer's opinions on the physical
characteristics of women are to some extent verbally identical.
While Schopenhauer, in his essay "On Women" ("Works,"
ed. Grisebach, vol. v., p. 654), speaks of the " stunted, narrow-
shouldered, wide-hipped and short-legged sex," which only a
masculine intellect when clouded by sexual desire could possibly
call "beautiful," we find in the "Juliette" (vol. iii., pp. 187,
188) of the Marquis de Sade the following very similar remarks
on the feminine body : ' Take the clothes off one of these
idols of yours ! Is it these two short and crooked legs which
have turned your head like this ?" This physical hatefulness of
women corresponds to the mental hatefulness of which de Sade
gives a similar repellent picture (" Juliette," vol iii., pp. 188, 189).
In all his works we find the same fanatical hatred of women.
Sarmiento, in " Aline et Valcour " (vol. ii., p. 115), would like to
annihilate all women, and calls that man happy who has learned
to renounce completely intercourse with this " debased, false,
and noxious sex."

Quite in the spirit of de Sade, to whom the misogynists of
the Second Empire referred as an authority, Schopenhauer, in
the previously quoted essay " On Women," Strindberg, in the
" Confessions of a Fool," and Weininger, in " Sex and Character,"

1 We know that Schopenhauer was a lover of erotic writings ; a fuller account
of this matter will be found in Grise bach's " Conversations and Soliloquies of
Sc hoponhauor . ' '

485

preached contempt for the feminine nature j1 and this seed has
fallen upon fruitful soil in modern youth. Every young block-
head inflates himself with his " masculine pride," and feels him-
self to be the " knight of the spirit " in relation to the inferior
sex ; every disillusioned and satiated debauchee cultivates (as
a rule, indeed, transiently) the fashion of misogyny, which
strengthens his sentiment of self-esteem. If we wish to speak
at all of " physiological weak-taindedness," let us apply the term
to this disagreeable type of men. As Georg Hirth truly remarks
(" Ways to Freedom," p. 281), such masculine arrogance is merely
a variety of " mental defect."

Unfortunately, this misogyny has intruded itself also into
science. The work of P. J. Mobius,2 notwithstanding the esteem
I feel for the valuable services of the celebrated neurologist in
other departments, can only be termed an aberration, a lapsus
calami? But he does not stand alone. The admirable work of
Heinrich Schurtz, also, upon " Classes of Antiquity and Associa-
tions of Men " (Berlin, 1902), is permeated by this misogynist
aura ; not less so is the equally stimulating work, " The Vital Laws
of Civilization " (Halle, 1904), by Eduard von Mayer. This book,
in association with the equally thoughtful and compendious work
;< The Renascence of Eros Uranios " (Berlin, 1904), by Benedikt
Friedlander, and in conjunction with the efforts of Adolf Brand,
the editor of the homosexual newspaper Der Eigene, and Edwin
Bab (cf. this writer's " The Woman's Movement and the Love
of Friends "; Berlin, 1904), to found a special homosexual group
demanding the " emancipation of men," have been the principal
causes of the belief that the male homosexuals are the true " re-
pudiators of woman," and that from them has proceeded the in-
creasing diffusion of modern misogyny. I repeat that this con-
nexion is true only for the above-named group ; that, on the con-
trary, genuine misogyny has been taught us by the world's
typically heterosexual men, such as Schopenhauer and Strind-
berg. Benedikt Friedlander and Eduard von Mayer preached,
above all, a " masculine civilization," a deepening of the spiritual
relationships between men ; whereas Strindberg and Schopen-

1 That Nietzsche is wrongly accredited with misogyny is convincingly proved
by Helene Stocker (" Nietzsches Frauenfeindsohaft," published in Zuhunft,
1903 ; reprinted in " Love and Women," pp. 65-74; Minden, 1906).

2 P. J. Mobius, " The Physiological Weak-mindedness of Woman," fourth
edition (Halle, 1902). Nacke terms the recently deceased Mobius the " German
Lombroso," in order by this term to indicate, on the one hand, the man's in-
dubitable genius, and on the other hand the superficiality and purely hypothetical
character of his scientific deductions.

3 The grounds for this opinion were given in the fifth chapter.

486

liaucr. and even Wcininger. really leave us in uncertainty as to
what they imagine is to take woman's place. All five agree in
this, that the " intercourse " of man with woman is to be limited
as much as possible ; but only the two first-named openly and
freely advocate homosexual relationships, or at least a " physio-
logical friendship " (B. Friedlander), between men. Schopen-
hauer, Strindberg, and Weininger did not venture to deduce
these consequences. Yet this is the necessary consequence of
misogyny based on principle.

To the heterosexual men — and such men form an enormous
majority — the noble, ideal, asexual friendship of man for man
appears in quite another light from that in which it appears to
the misogynist, to whom it is to serve to replace sexual love,
whereas for heterosexual men friendship for other men is a valu-
able treasure additional to the love of woman.

Is there, then, any reason for this contempt and hatred for
woman ? Do not the signs increase on all hands to show us that
new relationships are forming between the sexes, that a number
of new points of contact of the spiritual nature are making their
appearance — in a word, that an entirely new, nobler, most
promising amatory life is developing ? I will not fall into the
contrary error to misogyny and inscribe a dithyramb of praise
to feminine nature, as Wedde, Daumer, Quensel, Groddeck, and
others, have done ; but I merely indicate the signs of the times
when I say that woman also is awakening ! Woman is awakening
to the entirely new existence of a free personality, conscious of her
rights and of her duties. Woman, also, will have her share in
the content and in the tasks of life ; she will not enslave us, as
the misogynists clamour, for she wishes to see free men by her
side. What would become of woman if men became slaves ?
How could slaves give love ?

Life has to-day become a difficult task both for man and for
woman. Man and woman alike must endeavour to perform that
task with confidence in their respective powers ; but each, also,
must have confidence in the powers of the other — a confidence
which becomes palpable in the form of love or friendship, so that
those who feel it have their own powers strengthened.

Not " Free from woman " is the watchword of the future,
but " Free with woman."

CHAPTER XIX
THE RIDDLE OF HOMOSEXUALITY

" Through Science to Justice '" — MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD.

-1*7

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XIX

Actual existence of original congenital homosexuality — Its distinction from
pseudo-homosexuality — Homosexuality an anthropological phenomenon,
not a manifestation of degeneration — Secondary origin of " homosexual
neurasthenia" — Rarity of stigmata of degeneration among homosexuals- -
Early spontaneous appearance of homosexuality — As an essential product
of personality — Homosexuality in the child — Physical and mental char-
acteristics of completely developed homosexuality — Effeminate and virile
urnings — Physical peculiarities of the homosexual — Mental peculiarities —
Diffusion — Numbers — Ethnology of homosexuality — Earlier history and
literature — Celebrated homosexual individuals — Modes of activity of homo-
sexual love — Relations between homosexual and heterosexual individuals —
Mode of sexual intercourse — Examples — Social relationships of the homo-
sexual— Places of rendezvous — The " Allee des Veuves " of Paris — An
adventure of Victor Hugo's — Urning clubs in tho Second Empire — Urning
balls at Paris — Social relationships of the homosexuals of Berlin — Meeting-
places of urnings — Men's balls in Berlin — Male prostitution — Male brothels —
Blackmail — § 175 — Criticism of this section — Demonstration of the necessity
for its repeal — Blackmail of homosexuals and suicide — Need for the diffusion
of general enlightenment regarding homosexuality — Activity of the Scientific
Humanitarian Committee — Homosexuality in women — The smaller per-
centage of genuine female homosexuals — " Thoughts of a Solitary Woman "
— Relations of homosexual women to men — The Woman's Movement and
homosexuality — Sexual relationships of tribades — The " protectrices " —
Social life of tribades — Lesbian prostitution.

Appendix : Theory of Homosexuality. — Homosexuality a heterogeneous
sexuality — Insufficiency of the theory of intermediate stages — My own
theory of homosexuality — The significance of homosexuality in relation to
civilization.

488

CHAPTER XIX

HOMOSEXUALITY — love between man and man (uranism), or
between woman and woman (tribadism), a congenital state, or
one spontaneously appearing in very early childhood — I consider
" a riddle," because, in fact, the more closely in recent years I
have come to know it, the more I have endeavoured to study it
scientifically, the more enigmatical, the more obscure, the more
incomprehensible, it has become to me. But it exists. About
that there is no doubt.

In the years 1905 and 1906 I was occupied almost exclusively
with the problem of homosexuality, and I had the opportunity
of seeing and examining a very large number of genuine homo-
sexual individuals, both men and women. I was able to observe
them during long periods, both at home and in public life. I
learnt to know them — their mode of life, their habits, their
opinions, their whole activity, not only in relation to one another,
but also in relation to other non-homosexual individuals and to
persons of the opposite sex. This experience taught me the
indubitable fact that the diffusion of true homosexuality as a
congenital natural phenomenon is far greater than I had earlier
assumed ;l so that I find myself now compelled to separate from
true homosexuality the other category of acquired, apparent,
occasional homosexuality, of the existence of which I am now,
as formerly, firmly convinced. I denote this latter by the
term " pseudo-homosexuality," and treat of it in a separate
chapter.

Formerly I believed that true homosexuality was only a
variety of pseudo-homosexuality — in a sense larval pseudo-
homosexuality. Now, however, I must recognize that true
homosexuality constitutes a special well-defined group, sharply
distinguishable from all forms of pseudo-homosexuality. From
my medical observations, which have been as exact and objective
as possible, I must draw the conclusion that among thoroughly
healthy individuals of both sexes, not to be distinguished from
other normal human beings, there appears in very early child-
hood, and certainly not evoked by any kind of external influence,
an inclination, and after puberty a sexual impulse, towards
persons of the same sex ; and that this inclination and this impulse

1 " Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. i., p. 219.

489

490

are as little to be altered as it is possible to expel from a hetero-
sexual man the impulse towards woman.

Above all, in this definition of true original homosexuality I
lay the stress upon the word " healthy "; for von Krafft-Ebing,
though he admits the existence of congenital homosexuality yet
regards it as a morbid degenerative phenomenon, as the ex-
pression of severe hereditary taint and of a neuro-psychopathic
constitution ; and this view is shared by many alienists.1 Now,
we must admit that a portion of genuine homosexuals — just as is
the case with a portion of heterosexual individuals — possess such
a morbid constitution ; and we must acknowledge that yet
another portion exhibit manifestations of nervousness and neu-
rasthenia, which, beyond doubt, have developed during life
out of an originally healthy state, in consequence of the struggle
for life, the painful experience of being " different " from the
great mass of people, etc. ; but we ascertain that a third, and, in
fact, the largest, section of original homosexuals are thoroughly
healthy, free from hereditary taint, physically and psychically
normal.

I have observed a great number of homosexuals belonging to
all ages and occupations in whom not the slightest trace of mor-
bidity was to be detected. They were just as healthy and
normal as are heterosexuals. At an earlier date, though I was
not yet aware of the relatively great frequency of true original
homosexuality, it had become clear to me, on the ground of my
own anthropological theory of sexual anomalies, that homo-
sexuality might just as well appear in healthy human beings as
in diseased. Therein I have always agreed with Magnus Hirsch-
feld, the principal advocate of this view, in opposition to the
theory of the degenerative nature of homosexuality. For me
there is no longer any doubt that homosexuality is compatible
with complete mental and physical health.

It is very interesting to note that von Krafft-Ebing himself
later came to the same view, and thus formally abandoned the
degenerative hypothesis. In his " New Studies in the Domain
of Homosexuality " he writes :2

1 Lombroso, at the Sixth International Congress of Criminal Anthropologists
at Turin, May, 1906, actually drew a parallel between congenital homosexuality
and the congenital tendency to crime ! That this parallel is utterly non-existent
and that crime and homosexuality differ toto ccdo is shown luminously by Paul
Nacke (" Comparison between Criminality and Homosexuality," published in
the Monatsschrift fiir Kriminalpsychologie, 1906, pp. 477-487).

2 Published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, edited by
Magnus Hirschfeld, vol. iii., p. 5 (Leipzig, 1901). Cf. also the account of the
newer views by P. Nacke, " Problems in the Domain of Homosexuality," pub-

491

" In view of the experience that contrary sexuality is a congenital
anomaly, that it represents a disturbance in the evolution of the sexual
life, and of the physical and mental development, in normal relation-
ship to the kind of reproductive glands which the individual possesses,
it has become impossible to maintain in this connexion the idea of
' disease.' Rather, in such a case we must speak of a malformation,
and treat the anomaly as parallel with physical malformation — for
example, anatomical deviations from the structural type. At the
same time, the assumption of a simultaneous psychopathia is not pre-
judiced, for persons who exhibit such an anatomical differentiation
from type (stigmata degenerationis) may remain physically healthy
throughout life, and even be above the average in this respect. Of
course, a difference from the generality so important as contrary sexual
sensation must have a much greater importance to the psyche than
the majority of other anatomical or functional variations. In this
way it is to be explained that a disturbance in the development in the
normal sexual life may often be antagonistic to the development of
a harmonious psychical personality.

" Not infrequently in the case of those with contrary sexuality do
we find neuropathic and psychopathic predispositions, as, for example,
predisposition to constitutional neurasthenia and hysteria, to the
milder forms of periodic psychosis, to the inhibition of the develop-
ment of psychical energy (intelligence, moral sense), and in some of
these cases the ethical deficiency (especially when hypersexuality is
associated with the contrary sexuality) may lead to the most severe
aberrations of the sexual impulse. And yet we can always prove that,
relatively speaking, the heterosexual are apt to be much more depraved
than the homosexual.

" Moreover, other manifestations of degeneration in the sexual
spheres, in the form of sadism, masochism, and fetichism, are relatively
much commoner among the former.

" That contrary sexual sensation cannot thus be necessarily regarded
as psychical degeneration, or even as a manifestation of disease, is
shown by various considerations, one of the principal of which is
that these variations of the sexual life may actually be associated with
mental superiority. . . . The proof of this is the existence of men of
all nations whose contrary sexuality is an established fact, and who,
none the less, are the pride of their nation as authors, poets, artists,
leaders of armies, and statesmen.

" A further proof of the fact that contrary sexual sensation is not
necessarily disease, nor necessarily a vicious self - surrender to the
immoral, is to be found in the fact that all the noble activities of the
heart which can be associated with heterosexual love can equally be
associated with homosexual love ... in the form of noble-mindedness,
self-sacrifice, philanthropy, artistic sense, poietic activity, etc., but
also the passions and defects of love (jealousy, suicide, murder, un-
happy love, with its deleterious influence on soul and body, etc.)."

According to my own investigations and observations, the
relationship between health and disease is among homosexuals

lished in the Allgemeine Zefachrijt fiir Psychiatrie, 1902, vol. lix., pp. 805-829
(this writer also maintains the existence of normal, healthy homosexual indi-
viduals).

492

originally identical with that among heterosexuals, and only in
the course of life, in consequence of the social and individual
isolation of the homosexual, which acts on them as a psychical
trauma, is this relationship somewhat altered in favour of the
predominance of disease. Here, however, we have, as a rule,
to do chiefly with acquired nervous troubles and disorders, with
the development of a peculiar type of "homosexual neurasthenia,"
and in these cases by superficial observers there may easily be
a confusion between post hoc and propter hoc.

Magnus Hirschfeld, who unquestionably possesses, relatively
and absolutely, the greatest experience in the domain of homo-
sexuality, maintains1 that, according to his material of investi-
gation— and this is of gigantic extent — at least 75 % of homo-
sexuals are born of healthy parents and of happy marriages, often
prolific marriages, and that nervous or mental anomalies, alco-
holism, blood-relationship, and syphilis are no more frequent
among the ancestors of homosexuals than among the ancestors
of those endowed with normal sexuality. Only among from
20 to 25 % of homosexuals was he able, in conjunction with
E. Burchard, to find hereditary taint. Only in 16 % could they
find well-developed " stigmata of degeneration "; and, indeed,
those with stigmata were throughout hereditarily tainted. This
view is supported also by the facts (to which I already alluded
in my " Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis ") that homosexuality
is universally diffused in space and time ; that it is independent
of civilization, occurs among savage races who are not exposed
to the conditions giving rise to degeneration in the same degree
as civilized races ; and that it is prevalent in the country, where
the degenerative influence of life in large towns is not operative.

The most important characteristic of genuine homosexuality,
its spontaneous appearance very early in life, which can only be
referred to natural inheritance, appears to me to be a fact proved
altogether beyond dispute. Men of the highest and most re-
spected professions — above all, judges, practising physicians, men
of science, theologians, and scholars — have described themselves
to me as having been through and through homosexual from
early childhood, so that I am thoroughly convinced that primary
homosexuality makes its appearance at any rate very early in life.

The reports of physicians are of especially great importance.
Hirschfeld (op. cit., p. 12) quotes the utterance of a leading
alienist, himself homosexual : "I can and must declare that I
have never known a case of homosexuality which I could regard

1 Magnus Hirschfeld, " Der Urnische Mensch," p. 139 et seq. (Leipzig, 1903).

493

as other than congenital," and the accuracy of this statement
has been confirmed to me personally by several homosexual
physicians. The idea " congenital " harmonizes very well with
the demonstrable casual objective cause of the first homosexual
tendencies, which we are able to learn in almost every case of
homosexuality. These can, as is well known, also occur tran-
siently in heterosexual individuals — a matter which is discussed
in the chapter " Pseudo-Homosexuality." In the case of genuine
homosexuality, however, these homosexual activities play from
the very beginning a predominant role, and remain permanent,
because they result from a natural inheritance, from a deeply
rooted impulse. This is shown in the following interesting auto-
biography of a man of letters thirty years of age :

" Prom my earliest childhood there was something girlish in my
whole nature, both outwardly and (more especially) inwardly. I was
very quiet, obedient, diligent, sensitive to praise and blame, rather
bright. I associated chiefly with adults, and was generally beloved.
Sexual activity began in me unusually early. When I was about six
years of age a tutor sat down on my bed, in which I was lying in a
fever. He caressed me, and with his hand membrum meum tetigit.
The voluptuous sensation which resulted was so intense that it has
never disappeared from my memory. At school, where I always
distinguished myself by my application and success, I sometimes
enjoyed mutual ' feeling ' with several other boys. From which side
I inherited the unusual intensity of the sexual impulse I do not know,
but I remember that when I was about twelve years old I already
suffered a good deal from sexual desire, and that it came to me as a
solution of a great difficulty when a comrade instructed me in the
practice of masturbation. It is remarkable that for some time after-
wards there was no evacuation of semen. When this first appeared I
was very much alarmed and disquieted, but I soon became accustomed
to it, and this the more readily because I had no doubt whatever that
all men regularly indulged in the same pleasure. This ' paradisaical '
state did not, however, last for long ; and after a time, when I recognized
the unnatural and dangerous nature of my conduct, I conducted a severe
and unsuccessful contest against my desires. In my life generally I
had a good deal to bear, and I can say that I have hardly preserved
a single really pleasant memory of my past ; and yet I could look
back to this past with a certain pride and satisfaction if it had not
been that the sexual side of my life has left such gloomy shadows in
my soul.

" I remember that from very early days my eyes involuntarily
turned with longing towards elderly vigorous men, but I did not pay
much attention to this fact. I believed that I only practised mastur-
bation (the influence of which I doubtless exaggerate in memory to
some extent) because it was not possible for me to have sexual inter-
course with women. I was accustomed sometimes to have friendly
association with young girls, who appeared to be extremely attracted
towards me. I always took care, however, that such love tendencies

494

were nipped in the bud, because I felt that it was impossible for me
to go any further with them. Ultimately I determined to seek sal-
vation in intercourse with prostitutes, although they were disagreeable
to my aesthetic and moral feelings ; but I got no help here : either I
was unable to complete the normal sexual act, or in other cases it was
completed without any particular pleasure, and I was always consumed
with anxiety with respect to infection. I had, indeed, often the
opportunity of forming an ' intimacy ' with a woman, but I did not
do it, and always supposed that my failure to do so depended upon
my ridiculous bashfulness and upon the excessive sensitiveness of
my conscience. But though there is some truth in both of these
suggestions, I have not taken into account the principal grounds
— namely, that I am congenitally homosexual, and that I feel no
physical attraction, or almost none, towards the other sex. This
suffices to explain the fact (which can be explained in no other way)
that when masturbating I almost always represented in imagination
handsome elderly men. In my lascivious dreams, also, such men
play the principal rdle. These longings were so powerful that it was
impossible that I should not soon have my attention directed to
them ; but as I could not understand them and would not take the
matter seriously (I knew, indeed, that man must feel drawn towards
woman, and not towards man), I continued unceasingly and despair-
ingly to fight against these fixed ideas, while at the same time with
varying success I endeavoured to cure myself of masturbation ; for
in the first place it now gave very little satisfaction, and in the second
place it destroyed my hopes of eventually procreating healthy chil-
dren. I had almost come to believe myself no longer competent for
the sexual life when I noticed one day that the view of a membrum
virile set my blood flowing fiercely. I then remembered that this
had sometimes happened before, although to a less marked extent.
I was now compelled to recognize that I was not the same as every
one else. This fact, which I had before suspected, and of which I now
became more and more firmly convinced, reduced me to despair,
which was all the greater because in other ways I felt extremely un-
happy, and because I did not dare to speak of it to any human being.
Sometimes I still thought that there must be some ' misunderstand-
ing,' and that there must be some salvation for me. Then it happened
that a simple girl fell in love with me, and I went so far as to enter into
an intimacy with her, although I openly assured her that as far as I
was concerned it was simply a matter of physical enjoyment, and that
I could not in any way make myself responsible for her future, for
which reason care must be taken that there should be no offspring.
During this intimacy, which lasted several months, I sometimes
overcame my enduring inclinations towards men, but completely to
suppress them was impossible. My association with the girl was still
continuing, when one day in a public lavatory I saw an elderly gentle-
man whose appearance greatly pleased me. He looked at me ten-
tatively. Cautiously he leaned over, in order membrum meum
videre ; he gradually drew near to me, moved his shaking hand and
. . . membrum meum tetigit. I was so much surprised and alarmed
that I ran away, and avoided for some time afterwards passing by the
same place. All the stronger, however, was the impulse to find this
remarkable man once more, and this was not at all difficult. What

495

an enigma such a man seemed to me ! How could it happen that he
dared to do that of which I had always been able only to think, to
dream, with heart-quaking and horror ? Could there, perhaps, be
another man like this — perhaps several such exceptional beings ?
A short period convinced me that I was not quite alone in my way of
feeling ; but this was a weak consolation. Rather, since that time —
that is to say, during the last five years — my inward battle has become
more unbearable, for earlier my only battle was to reject homosexual
ideas, and to overcome the habit of solitary self -abuse. Now some-
times I practise with another mutual onanism (to me the proper
' natural ' mode of sexual gratification), and yet I cannot forgive
myself for doing it because it is effected in so unaesthetic a manner,
and is associated with such dangers. Notwithstanding all my en-
deavours, however, I have never been able to resist the temptation
for a long time together ; and thus I am hunted always by my impulse
as by a wild animal, and can nowhere and in nothing find repose and
forgetfulness. I have frequently changed my place of residence, but
I always before long form new ' relationships.' The tortures which I
suffer in consequence of the incomparable power of the impulse are
greater than I can possibly express in words. I can only wonder that
I did not lose my reason, and that in the eyes of my friends and
acquaintances I am now, as before, ' the most normal of all human
beings.' In the senseless and utterly unsuccessful contest with an
impulse which, as far as I am concerned, is wholly, or almost wholly,
congenital, I have lost the best of my powers, although I have long
recognized the fact that this impulse in and by itself is neither morbid
nor sinful, for a divergence from the norm is not a disease, and
the gratification of a natural impulse, which in no respect and for no
human being leads to evil consequences, cannot be regarded as sinful.
Why, then, must I continue to strive against this impulse like a mad-
man ? Because it is very generally misunderstood, so unpardonably
condemned. What help is it that I am now surrounded by love and
respect ? I know that so many would turn away from me with horror
if they were to learn my sexual constitution, although it is a matter
which does not concern them at all. Scorn and contempt would then
be my lot. I should be regarded by the majority of human beings as
a libertine ; whereas I feel and know that, notwithstanding all the
sensuality of my nature, I have been created for some other purpose
than simply to follow my lustful desire. Who will believe that I
suffer in the struggle with myself ? Who will have compassion upon
me ? This idea is intolerable. I am condemned to eternal solitude.
I have not the moral right to found a home, to embrace a child who
would give me the name of ' father.1 Is not this punishment suffi-
ciently severe for God knows what sins ? Why, then, should the con-
sciousness be superadded that I am a pariah, an outcast from society '.
Owing to the opinion of society regarding the homosexual — an opinion
based upon ignorance, stupidity, and ill-nature — society drives these
unhappy beings to death (or to a marriage which in their case is
criminal), and then triumphantly exclaims : ' Look what degenerate
beings they are !' No, they are not degenerates, those whose lives
you have made unbearable ; they are for the most part spiritually and
morally very healthy human beings. I will speak of myself. Why
do I long for death ? Certainly not because I am mentally abnormal.

496

I am no morbid pessimist, and I know well enough that life can be
very beautiful. But, unfortunately, it cannot be so for me ; for my
life is a hell ; I am intolerably weary of my internal conflict ; it has
become horribly difficult to me to play the hypocrite, to pretend con-
tinually to be a happy man rejoicing in life ; I am bending beneath the
burden of my heavy iron mask. Recently I had myself hypnotized,
in order to have my thoughts turned away as far as possible from
sexual matters. My hypnotist said to me : ' You see, you will be at
rest now,' and involuntarily in sleep I had to swallow these words,
' Be at rest '! Good God, is that possible ? Does the ' normal ' man
know how this word sounds in our ears ? Who will understand my
intolerable pain ? Perhaps my dear parents could have done so, as
they loved me above all, as if they had a presentiment that I should
be the most unhappy of their children ; but they have been dead for
several years, and so, notwithstanding my numerous relatives and
friends, I stand quite alone in this world, and vainly seek an answer to
the questions ' Why 1' and ' Wherefore ?' '

Genuine homosexuality exhibits, like heterosexuality, the
character of an impulse arising from the very nature of the per-
sonality, which, in activity from the cradle to the grave, expresses
the continuity of the individual in respect also of this peculiar
sexual tendency. Thus there does not exist a homosexuality
limited merely to a certain age of life, as to childhood or youth,
to maturity, or even to old age. Hence we must distinguish from
genuine homosexuality the paederasty of old men described by
Schopenhauer, which does not begin till old age appears. We
must distinguish, also, the love of Greek boys for elderly men ;
these must be included in the category of pseudo-homosexuality.
An inclination which, like original homosexuality, is an outflow
of the essential nature of the individual concerned, cannot dis-
appear so long as the individual himself persists, cannot begin
or end except with the beginning or end of his life. Homo-
sexuality extends throughout the lifetime, and if by any cause
whatever — for example, enforced marriage — it is apparently
temporarily suppressed, it always reappears. It seems very
doubtful if there really exists, as von Krafft-Ebing1 assumes,
a genuine retarded homosexuality — that is, original homosexu-
ality which does not manifest itself until a comparatively ad-
vanced age. There do, doubtless, exist transient cases of pseudo-
homosexuality, which have in some cases developed in those
previously heterosexual, and which in other cases are super-
imposed upon a bisexual basis. These belong to the category of
" acquired " homosexuality, which is always a pseudo-homo-
sexuality.

1 Von Krafft-Ebing, " Retarded Homosexuality," published in the Annual
for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1901, vol. iii., pp. 7-20.

497

The course of life of genuine homosexuals is a complete expres-
sion of the results of simple inversion of the sexual impulse, and the
homosexual type makes its appearance in childhood. The fact of
the " difference " between the homosexual and others is not experi-
enced merely by the person himself, but is also noticed very early
by those who have care of him. The " girlish " (in the case of
female homosexuality, " boyish ") and " peculiar " nature is
often observed by members of the family, by comrades, and by
tutors, and gives rise to the use of nicknames. These manifesta-
tions and perceptions are a valuable objective confirmation of
the subjective sensations of homosexual children. A Protestant
clergyman whose homosexual son also studied theology remarked
to M. Hirschfeld : " He was from the very beginning different
from my five other sons." The physical and moral peculiarities
presently to be described are often manifested in very early
childhood. Hirschfeld has frequently been able to diagnose
" homosexuality " in children from ten to fourteen years of age.
He alludes, among others, to a very timid boy, twelve years of
age, who suffered from migraine, who cried frequently, who kept
himself apart from his schoolfellows, and corresponded daily with
a boy friend. He was fond of flowers and music ; he had very
little inclination to mathematics (according to Hirschfeld, a
somewhat characteristic phenomenon in cases of homosexuality).
The examination of the boy, who was extremely bashful, showed
that the genital organs were still completely undeveloped, the
penis resembling that of a boy of four years, whilst the breasts
were markedly developed like those of a girl at the commencement
of puberty.

I doubt whether the fondness on the part of boys for girls'
games, or on the part of girls for boys' games, can be regarded
as a symptom of diagnostic importance in regard to the existence
of homosexuality, for a fondness for playing with girls and for
cooking may often be observed in boys who later prove thoroughly
heterosexual. Still, these things do play a great part in the
autobiography of homosexuals, and have, in fact, great im-
portance in cases in which these tendencies persist after puberty,
when the heterosexually differentiated psyche would, after the
transitory episode of these youthful games, display activities now
corresponding to the fully developed sexual sensibility.

Puberty is the most important period with regard to the final
determination of homosexuality by means of particular physical
and mental characteristics.

The consideration of the physical and mental characters of male

498

homosexuals leads clearly to the distinction of two different types
— the effeminate and the virile urnings. With regard to the
relative numbers of these two types there exist no definite data.
Hirschfeld, in his " Urnings," describes chiefly the type of the
more or less effeminate urnings — that is, of those who show the
greatest resemblance to the feminine nature — and does not
express an opinion as to whether the number of effeminate homo-
sexuals is greater than the number of virile homosexuals — that
is, of those whose nature is predominantly masculine. Another
experienced observer of urnings, Dr. J. E. Meisner,1 is of opinion
that in the majority of cases the male type of homosexuals is
encountered rather than the female. According to my own
observations, it appears to me that the number of virile and of
effeminate urnings is about identical.2 There are certainly
numerous virile homosexuals, or rather homosexuals of a
thoroughly masculine build of body, without great deviations
from the normal type, who yet have a more or less feminine mode
of sensibility. The distinction between effeminate and virile
homosexuals would appear therefore to be only relative, and for
the majority of cases Hirschf eld's remarks (" Urnings," p. 86)
apply :

" A homosexual who was not distinguishable physically and mentally
from the complete man is a being I have not yet encountered among
fifteen hundred cases, and I am therefore unable to believe in the
existence of such until I personally encounter one."

More especially after removing any beard or moustache that may
be present, we sometimes see much more clearly the feminine
expression of face in a male homosexual, whilst before the hair
was removed they appeared quite man-like. Still more important
for the determination of a feminine habitus are direct physical
characteristics. Among these there must be mentioned a con-
siderable deposit of fat, by which the resemblance to the feminine
type is produced, the contours of the body being more rounded
than in the case of the normal male. In correspondence with
this the muscular system is less powerfully developed than it is
in heterosexual men, the skin is delicate and soft, and the com-

1 J. E. Meisner, " Uranism, or the so-called Homosexual Love," p. 11 (Leipzig,
1906).

2 Max Katte (" Virile Homosexuals," published in the Annual for Sexual
Intermediate Stages, vol. vii., p. 94; Leipzig, 1905) remarks that it is an error on
the part of recent writers in the domain of homosexuality to describe and vindicate
so prominently the effeminate type of homosexual man, and to neglect the virile
type. The same is true as regards the description of the corresponding types
of homosexual women.

499

plexion is much clearer than is usual in men. Last winter I
attended an urnings' ball, and I was much impressed, when
looking at the decollete men, with the remarkable whiteness of
their skin on the shoulders, neck, and back — also in those who
had not applied powder — and by the fact that the little acne
spots almost always present in normal men were absent in these.
The peculiar rounding of the shoulders was also remarkable,
from its resemblance to what one sees in women.

According to Hirsohfeld, the skin of the urning almost always
feels warmer than his environment. He refers the expression
commonly used among the people (in Germany), "warm brothers,"
to this circumstance, and derives the Latin homo mollis (" soft
man ") from the softness of the skin and of the muscular system
(though in my opinion this term is applied rather to the entire
eff emulate, soft nature of the urning). Of great interest is the
relation between the breadth of the shoulders and the width of
the pelvis in homosexual men. Whilst the breadth of the
shoulders of heterosexual men is several centimetres in excess of
the width of the pelvis, and in women the width of the pelvis is
greater than the breadth of the shoulders, according to Hirsch-
feld in the urning there is little or no difference between these
two measurements. This, in respect of the bodily structure,
would completely justify the expression " intermediate stage,"
and would give the homosexual man a position between the
heterosexual man and the heterosexual woman. Still, there
are, without doubt, numerous virile homosexual men in whom
this great width of the pelvis is not present. Investigations re-
garding the corresponding relationships among homosexual
women have not to my knowledge hitherto been made. Very
striking is the often luxuriant growth of hair, especially in
the effeminate types, whereas the virile homosexuals are in this
respect more approximate to normal men, baldness being common
among them.

Our attention having been recently directed by the investiga-
tion of H. Swoboda to the existence of equivalents of menstrua-
tion in men, the occurrence of such equivalents among urnings
is of interest. Hirschfeld reports the case of an effeminate
homosexual who since the age of fourteen had suffered at intervals
of twenty-eight days from migraine, associated with severe pains
in the back and loins, so that his stepmother said to him : " It
is with you just as it is with us."

The gait and the movements of effeminate urnings also have a
somewhat womanly appearance, and attract the attention even of

32—2

500

one who is not in the secret. Short, tripping paces and elegant
movements are characteristic of the effeminate.

In an earlier chapter we came to the conclusion that the fully
adult normal woman was approximate in physical characteristics
rather to the child and to the youthful human being than to the
adult man ; and in this connexion it is of interest that we must
describe as a distinctively feminine characteristic the peculiarity
of many male homosexuals, which enables them for a long time
to preserve a youthful appearance and demeanour.

Very remarkable is the behaviour of the voice. The change
in the voice may not occur at all, or does not occur till very late.
The capacity for singing soprano or falsetto is also long pre-
served. Others, in whom the change of voice had failed to
occur, were able to lower the pitch considerably by practice.
A typical and well-known example is that of the baritone singer
Willibald von Sadler- Griin, whom I had the opportunity of
hearing recently, when, under the name of " Urany Verde,"
he made a professional journey through Germany, and sang
his songs dressed as a woman. He said of himself : " My voice
has never cracked in a definite way. At twenty-three years of
age I could sing soprano, and can still do so to-day, at the age
of thirty. The deeper tones for speech and singing I acquired
only by instruction and practice " (Hirschfeld, " Timings,"
p. 65). In this typical effeminate, the breasts also had a com-
pletely feminine character, as, according to Hirschfeld, is by no
means rare in boy urnings, who at puberty experience swelling
of the breasts, associated with painful sensations.1 I must,
however, maintain, in opposition to Hirschfeld, that abnormally
marked development of the breasts is by no means rare hi per-
fectly normal heterosexual men. For the diagnosis of homosexu-
ality, the imperfect development of the larynx, and the failure
of the voice to crack, are more important than the marked de-
velopment of the breasts. I remember distinctly that in the case
of a fellow-student of mine years ago his high voice used greatly
to strike me. To-day I am able to understand how this fact

1 This occurs also in heterosexual boys. I extract the following passage from
the unpublished autobiography of a homosexual physician : " When puberty
occurred I am not able to say — I expect it was about the age of sixteen or seven-
teen— but I know certainly that I noticed at the time of puberty a swelling of the
breasts. There was only a slight forward curvature, which did not extend much
beyond the areola, and was painful on pressure. I remember distinctly that
I was anxious about the matter, and was afraid that there was some inflam-
mation beginning. However, the same seems to occur in every normal man. A
student whom I asked about the matter said that he had noticed a swelling of
the mammary glands about the age of fifteen ; recently, at the age of seventeen,
ho has had his first pollutions ; his sexual sensibility is normal."

501

was associated with his complete disinclination to sexual inter-
course with women and his insensibility to feminine charms in
general ; and I am able in his case to diagnose homosexuality
with absolute certainty.

In the case of virile homosexuals, all the above-mentioned
physical peculiarities are far less noticeable. In their outward
appearance they much more nearly resemble heterosexual men,
but still they always have comparatively more of the feminine in
then* nature than the latter. Such a typically virile homosexual,
in whose appearance the impression of femininity was entirely
absent, I was able recently to recognize during a railway journey,
in the course of which he confided to me misogynous opinions
against other fellow-travellers, and also said that in the whole
of his life — he was a man of a little over thirty — he had not had
intercourse with women more than three or four times. During
the long wait of the train at a station I took the opportunity,
having mentioned that I was a physician by profession, to ask
him if he was not homosexual, a fact which he at once admitted.
Already in very early childhood he had felt himself distinctly
drawn only towards masculine beings, and had never experienced
the least inclination towards women. In this case also any
kind of outward influence was excluded, because he had grown
up at home and chiefly in a feminine environment. As I have
already said, in appearance he was masculine, and he himself
stated that he had no physical characteristics which suggested
a feminine impression. That this is the case in numerous virile
homosexuals is proved by the distinctive fact that many of them
are professional soldiers, especially officers, in respect of whose
appearance virility is very strongly insisted on.

The mental qualities of male homosexuals correspond fully to
the physical, and occupy a middle region between the psyche of
the heterosexual man and that of woman. But every emotional
element is in them more prominent than energetic will-power
and clear-sighted reason. Something soft and pliable is charac-
teristic of the majority of urnings. This adaptability manifests
itself in good-humouredness, in inclination to self-sacrifice, but,
above all, in a most astonishing mobility of the imaginative life,
which seems to be something characteristic of the homosexual,
and to explain his frequent artistic capacity, above all his
talents for music, for which vocation, indeed, his less fixed and
more sketchy nature especially fits him, but also for poetry,
painting, acting, and sculpture. " For all the fine arts," says
Hirschfeld, " from cooking and artistic needlework to sculpture,

502

we find that urnings have exceptional talent." The inclination
to intellectual occupation is distinctly greater among homosexuals
than the inclination to bodily work. Associated with this is the
ambition to distinguish themselves mentally above those by whom
they are surrounded. Hirschfeld's assertion that homosexuals
belonging to the lower classes exhibit intellectual predominance
over their environment, I am able emphatically to confirm, after
frequent conversations with homosexual workmen and men-
servants. The peculiarity of their congenital tendencies has here
early given rise to a certain intellectual profundity, has early
taught these men to reflect about the world and about human
existence. Every homosexual is a philosopher for himself.
Most heterosexuals, especially those of the lower classes, never
arrive at thinking so much about themselves and about their
relations to the external world, as is a matter of course among
homosexuals. The imaginative, the dreamy, is much more
predominant in the homosexual than a crude sense of reality.
This expresses itself particularly in his love, which far less
frequently and exclusively than among the heterosexual takes
the form of a gross and material sensuality. On the contrary,
it permits us to recognize the inward need for tenderness and
delicacy, for a peculiar ideal colouring. Goethe has contrasted
this latter with the more sensual heterosexual love ; he speaks
of the

" remarkable phenomenon of the love of men for each other. Let it
be admitted that this love is seldom pushed to the highest degree
of sensuality, but rather occupies the intermediate region between
inclination and passion. I am able to say that I have seen with my
own eyes the most beautiful manifestations of this love, such as we
have handed down to us from the days of Greek antiquity ; and as
an observant student of human nature I was able to observe the
intellectual and moral elements of this love." 1

The ideal conception of Platonic — that is, of homosexual — love
was a non-sensual, assexual love. The psychical element also
plays an important part in modern uranism — a part overlooked
or underestimated, whereas the sensual side is exaggerated.

Homosexuality as an anthropological phenomenon is diffused
throughout all classes of the population. We find it among
workmen just as much as among aristocrats, princely person-
alities, and intellectual heroes. Physicians, lawyers, theologians,
philosophers, merchants, artists, etc., all contribute their con-
tingents to uranism. If the extraordinarily frequent occurrence

1 "Goethe's Letters," vol. vii., p. 314: letter of December 29, 1787, from
Rome to Karl August (Weimar, 1890).

503

of homosexuality in the highest classes of society, especially
in the leaders of the aristocracy, may possibly be brought into
relationship with the processes of " degeneration," still, on the
other hand, numerous homosexuals are derived from healthy
families, such as have not transmitted hereditary taint through
a long series of ancestors. Recently G. Merzbach1 has studied
the relationship between homosexuality and the choice of a pro-
fession, and has proved that this choice is usually a consequence
of the natural tendency. Thus we find an especially large num-
ber of homosexuals engaged in the production of ready-made
clothing and in other manufacturing trades ; others become music-
hall comedians playing women's parts, actors, dancers. Actors
and singers appearing on the stage as women are to a large extent
original homosexuals.2 Among hairdressers and waiters we find
also a relatively large number of urnings.

As regards the diffusion of homosexuality, the data obtainable
up to the most recent times have been extremely contradictory.
The first exact information is to be found in the work of a phy-
sician, published under the name of M. Kertbeny,3 on " § 143 of
the Prussian Criminal Code of April 14, 1851, and its Continu-
ance as § 152 in the Proposal for a Criminal Code for the North
German Bund " (Leipzig, 1869). The author enumerates in
Berlin 10,000 homosexuals among 700,000 inhabitants (equal to
1-425 %). A patient of von Krafft-Ebing, living in a town of
13,000 inhabitants, was acquainted with 14 urnings ; and in
another town of 60,000 he knew of at least 80. Many other equally
uncertain estimates are recorded by Magnus Hirschfeld. They
vary between 2 % and 0-1 % — vary, that is to say, within very
wide limits. In view, therefore, of the importance of the exact
determination of the number of homosexuals, which I myself
had earlier declared to be desirable, we owe great thanks to
Magnus Hirschfeld for having made an attempt4 to obtain some
exact data regarding this matter. He deduces from a compilation
of thirty test investigations (reports regarding homosexuals in
various classes of the population), and by means of an inquiry
made with sealed letters, that the proportion of male homosexuals

1 G. Merzbach, " Homosexuality and Occupation," published in the Annual
for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1902, vol. iv., pp. 187-198.

a C/. W. S., " Woman-Man on the Stage," published in the Annual for Sexual
Intermediate Stages, vol. ii., pp. 313-325.

3 This writer is also the inventor of the word " homosexual," which is found for
the first time in his book.

4 Magnus Hirschfold, " Result of the Statistical Investigations regarding the
Percentage of Homosexuals," published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate
Stages, 1904, vol. vi., pp. 109-178.

604

to the population is about 1-5 %. That is a very much greater
percentage than has hitherto been assumed to exist. Formerly I
doubted the accuracy of this figure, but since numerous respected,
honourable, well-behaved persons, of whom I had not suspected
it, have assured me that they have been homosexual since child-
hood, I have no longer any doubt regarding the approximate
accuracy of Hirschfeld's statistics. The enquiry made by
Dr. von Romer in Amsterdam gave similar results, for he
found the proportion of homosexuals to be 1-9 %. A third
enquiry made by Hirschfeld among the metal-workers of Berlin
gave a proportion of 1-1 %.

Normal heterosexual love was reported in about 94 to 96 % of
the three inquiries.

" An imposing recognition of the love of man for woman, a powerful
manifestation of the provision for the preservation of the species, and
a contradiction to the fear that the uranian element in the population
could ever seriously impair the well-being of the great majority "
(Hirschfeld).

As " bisexual "—that is, as exhibiting tendencies towards both
sexes — the average of the three enquiries reported 3-9 %, of whom,
however, 0-8 % were mainly homosexual.

The total number of the purely and mainly homosexual was
thus 2-2 %. Hence, according to the results of the last census of
1900, in the total population of the German Empire, numbering
56,367,178, there would be about 1,200,000 homosexuals ; whilst
of the population of Berlin, numbering 2,500,000, 56,000 would
be homosexual.

In the interest of the scientific and social study of homosexu-
ality, it is urgently necessary that these statistical investigations
should be pursued, for if it should appear that the above estimates
really apply to the whole Empire — which I do not feel justified in
assuming without further evidence, since it is naturally possible
that Berlin might contain a relatively greater number of homo-
sexuals— uranism would, in fact, have a greater social importance
than it has hitherto been assumed to possess. In any case, the
number of urnings is large enough to make them appear a
remarkable anthropological variety of our race.

The truth of this assertion is supported by the fact of the
ubiquitous diffusion of uranism in time and space. In addition
to homosexuality as a popular custom, genuine homosexuality
also played a part in antiquity ; and F. Karsch1 has proved in

1 F. Karsch, " Uranism or Paederasty and Tribadism among Savage Races,"
published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1901, vol. iii., pp. 72-201.

505

an admirable book its occurrence among all savage races, although
unquestionably numerous cases of non-genuine homosexuality
must have been included. That homosexuality is in no way a
sign of " degeneration " is proved also by the fact that it is more
widely diffused among the still thoroughly vigorous Germans and
Anglo-Saxons than it is among the Latin peoples. It is especially
frequent in the German Ostsee provinces. It existed among the
ancient Scandinavians.1 Recently F. Karsch has announced the
publication of ethnological researches on homosexuality, the
first volume of which has already been issued, under the title
" Homosexual Life among the Inhabitants of Eastern Asia : the
Chinese, the Japanese, and the Koreans "2 (Munich, 1906). In
the preface he.states expressly that he treats not only of original
homosexuality, but also of artificially produced or acquired
homosexuality — that which I call " pseudo-homosexuality."

My earlier view, that true homosexuality is rare among the
Jews, I find it necessary to revise, for recently I have made the
acquaintance of numerous Jewish homosexuals.

For the earlier history and literature of homosexuality the
most important, and, in fact, nearly exhaustive, sources are
the article " Paederasty," by Meier, in Ersch and Gruber's
" General Encyclopaedia," section iii., part 9, pp. 149-189 (Leipzig,
1837) ; Rosenbaum's " History of Syphilis in Antiquity," pp.
119-2273 (Halle, 1893); and, finally, the writings of the earliest
German student of homosexuality, containing numerous in-
teresting data, the Hanoverian official Karl Heinrich Ulrichs,4
who, under the pseudonym " Numa Numantius," published
numerous works devoted to the emancipation of homosexuals,
and to the proof of the congenital nature of homosexuality.
The general title of these works is " Anthropological Studies on
the Sexual Love of Man for Man." They were published under
various peculiar separate titles, such as : " Vindex " (Leipzig,
1864) ; " Inclusa " (Leipzig, 1864) ; " Vindicta " (Leipzig, 1865) ;

1 " Traces of Contrary Sexuality among the Ancient Scandinavians : Reports
of a Norwegian Literary Man," published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate
Stage*, 1902, vol. v., pp. 244-263.

2 Regarding homosexuality in Japan, cf. also " Paederasty in Japan," by
Suyewo I way a, published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1902,
vol. iv., pp. 264-271.

3 In the second volume, now in course of preparation, of my work on " The
Origin of Syphilis," will be found a detailed critical investigation, based upon the
most recent data, of homosexuality and pseudo-homosexuality in ancient times
and during the middle ages.

4 Cf. " Four Letters of Carl Hoinrich Ulrichs (' Numa Numantius ') to his Rela-
tives," published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1899, vol. i.,
pp. 36-9(5 (with portrait).

506

"Formatrix" (Leipzig, 1865); " Ara Spei " (Leipzig, 1865);
" Gladius Furens " (Kassel, 1868) ; "Memnon" (Schleiz, 1868) ;
"Incubus" (Leipzig, 1869); " Argonauticus " (Leipzig, 1869);
"Araxes " (Schleiz, 1870); " Uranus " (Leipzig, 1870) ; " Kritische
Pfeile " (Stuttgart, 1879). In addition, Ulrichs, whose lifetime
extended from 1825 to 1895, published uranian poetry under the
title of " Auf Bienchens Fliigeln " (" On the Wings of the Bee ") ;
Leipzig, 1875. These writings, most of which are very rare in
their original editions (although many were reprinted in the
year 1898), contained a number of new points of view for the
consideration of homosexuality, which have been recognized as
sound by recent investigators.

Important contributions to the knowledge of homosexuality
are afforded us by the studies of the life and works of celebrated
and intellectually distinguished urnings. As unquestionably
homosexual we may mention the poet Platen,1 uichael Angelo,2
Heinrich Hossli,3 Heinrich Bulthaupt,4 Johannes von Miiller
(the historian),5 King Henry III. of France,6 the musician
Franz von Holstein,7 Peter Tschaikowsky,8 the author Count
Emmerich von Stadion and Emil Mario Vacano,9 Duke August
von Gotha,10 George Eekhoud,11 and the Belgian sculptor Jerome
Duquesnoy ( 1602-1654). 12 The following celebrated persons
have also been regarded as urnings, but, as it appears to me, on

1 Ludwig Frey, " The Spiritual Life of Count Platen," published in the Annual
for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1899, vol. i., pp. 159-214 ; and 1904, vol. vi.,
pp. 357-448.

3 Numa Pratorius, " Michael Angelo as an timing," op. cit., 1900, vol. ii.,
pp. 254-267.

3 F. Karsch, " Heinrich Hossli," op. cit., 1903, vol. v., pp. 449-556. Hossli
was the author of the work " Eros : the Greek Love of Men " (Glarus and St.
Gallen, 1836 and 1838, 2 vols.), which, according to Karsch, represented for our
own time what Plato's " Symposium " and " Phsedrus " represents for anti-
quity. Karsch gives an excellent table of the contents and an analysis of the
books under consideration.

4 J. E. Meisner, "Uranism," p. 16 (Leipzig); also verbal communications by
Meisner, who was personally acquainted with Bulthaupt, to myself.

6 F. Karsch, " Our Sources for the Consideration of Reputed and Real Urn-
ings," " Johann von Miiller the Historian (1752-1809)," published in the Annual
for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1902, vol. iv., pp. 349-457.

' L. S. A. M. von Romer, " Henry III., King of France and Poland," op. cit.,
vol. iv., pp. 572-669.

7 J. E. Meisner, op. cit., p. 17.

8 Magnus Hirschfeld, " Sexual Transitional Stages," Plate XXXII. (Leipzig,
1905).

0 Op. cit., Plate XXXII.

10 F. Karsch, " Duke August the Fortunate (1772-1822)," published in the
Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1903, vol. v., pp. 616-693.

11 Numa Pratorius, " Georges Eekhoud: a Preface," published in the Annual
for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1900, vol. ii., pp. 268-277.

12 G. Eekhoud, " An Illustrious Urning of the Seventeenth Century, Jerom
Duquesnoy, the Flemish Sculptor," op. cit., pp. 277-287.

507

insufficient proofs : Frederick the Great ; J. J. Winkelmann, who
at most was bisexual, since we know of passionate letters written
by him to a woman ; and Alexander von Sternberg,1 of whom
the same is true ; the reformers Beza 2 and Calvin,3 who have
unquestionably been wrongfully accused ; and finally Byron and
Grillparzer,4 without troubling to enumerate hypotheses utterly
without foundation. It is unquestionably a fact that a large
number of intellectually prominent men were genuine homo-
sexuals, and that their abnormal congenital tendencies did not
prevent their doing important work in other spheres of activity.
But this happened notwithstanding, and not, as many talented
apologists wish to prove, because of their uranism.

When we pass to consider the activity of homosexual love, we
find that homosexuals may, and actually do, love either other
homosexual or heterosexual individuals. According to the
account given by Meisner (" Uranism," pp. 19, 20), the amatory
ideal of most homosexual men is a heterosexual man, and niter-
course between two urnings is, properly speaking, only a matter
of necessity. But by several homosexuals with whom I dis-
cussed the matter this view was declared to be erroneous ; in
the majority of cases the attraction between two homosexuals
plays the principal role. Ulrichs endeavoured to provide a
theoretical justification for the sexual relationship between two
homosexuals, and maintained (c/., for example, " Inclusa,"
pp. 64, 65) that Nature destined the heterosexual, or " dioning,"
as he calls them, by no means for woman alone, but also for the
liming, for the " fulfilment of the sexual purposes of Nature,
not directed towards reproduction." According to Hirschfeld
(" Urnings," pp. 22, 23), it is unquestionable that, whilst many
homosexuals greatly prefer to associate with those who also feel
in a uranian manner, and whilst to many also it is a matter of
indifference whether or not those with whom they have sexual
relations are themselves endowed with contrary sexuality, quite
a number of urnings feel attracted exclusively to normal, sexually
powerful natures. As a rule, it is not difficult for homosexuals
to gratify their inclinations in intercourse with heterosexual
individuals. A middle-aged urning informed me that young

1 F. Karsch, "A. von Sternberg, the Novelist," op. cit., 1902, vol. iv., pp. 458-
571. He obtained sexual gratification by masturbating while looking at mascu-
line posteriora, but also frequently had relations with women.

2 F. Karsch, " Thoodor Beza, the Reformer (1519-1605)," op. cit., pp. 291-
349.

3 H. J. Schouton, " The Alleged Paederasty of the Reformer John Calvin," op.
cit., 1905, vol. vii., pp. 291-306.

4 Hans Ran, " Franz Grillparzer and his Amatory Life " (Berlin, 1903).

508

heterosexual men almost always acceded in this matter to the
expressed wish of homosexuals — in the first place from simple
curiosity, and in the second place by no means rarely from
sexual excitement. Indeed, according to this authority, effem-
inate homosexual men often produce in powerfully sensual
heterosexual men the impression of femininity, and are seduced
by the latter to mutual masturbation, especially in a state of
alcoholic intoxication. Not infrequently does it happen — a
striking example having come to my knowledge — that a young
heterosexual has a love intimacy with a girl, and yet occasionally,
when he is for any reason unable to have sexual intercourse with
her, he very willingly transfers his affections to a homosexual
man. Male prostitutes are also, to a large extent, heterosexual
men who give themselves to homosexuals for pecuniary reward.
Occasionally, moreover, heterosexual men mistake very effeminate
urnings going about in women's clothing for genuine women,
and have intercourse with them in this belief — a belief which
these latter are clever enough to keep up until the last possible
moment.

Passing now to the consideration of the special circumstances
of sexual attraction, we find that the true love of boys,1 or rather
the love of children (paedophilia), is rare in homosexuals. The
age chiefly preferred is that between seventeen and twenty-five
years, alike by mature homosexual men and by old men. On the
other hand, it is by no means an exceptional phenomenon for
youths, or even mature men, to feel attracted exclusively by
elderly men (the so-called " gerontophilia "). There exists also
a heterosexual " gerontophilia " — that is to say, abnormal love
exhibited by young men for old women, or by young women for
old men. Thus Fer£ reports (" Note sur une Anomalie de 1'Instinct
ftexuel : Gerontophilie," published in the Journal de Neurologic,
1905) the case of a man twenty-seven years of age who was
sexually attracted only by white-haired, elderly women. He
referred this to an impression received in very early youth. When
four years old he slept in the same bed with an elderly lady, a
family friend, who was visiting the house, and he then for the
first time experienced sexual excitement. He had a dislike to
young girls and young married women. A white-haired elderly
woman whom he loved dyed her hair light brown, whereupon he
ceased to care for her. Further, effeminate urnings prefer virile
homosexuals ; whereas many of these latter have a great dislike

1 The love of boys, the " paederasty," of the Greeks related to young adult
men.

509

to effeminates and to men in women's clothing — to those male
" women " who adopt by preference feminine nicknames, such
as Louisa instead of Louis, Georgina instead of George, and who
speak to one another as " sister," just as the Roman Emperor
Heliogabalus wished to be addressed as " mistress " instead of
" lord." Many urnings love beardless men ; others love men
with a moustache or a full beard ; many homosexuals are fasci-
nated by bright-coloured cloth, just as women are. Moreover,
every possible individual detail may here have an attractive
force, just as is the case with heterosexual love (the hair, the
stature, the gait, the eyes, the intelligence, and the character).

Ideal love and the gratification of the grossest sensuality are
also the two poles between which the amatory manifestations
of male homosexuals oscillate. Many confine themselves to
simple contacts, caresses, kisses and embraces. Most frequently
sexual gratification is obtained by mutual masturbation. The
idea that the non-homosexual especially associates with the
word " paederasty " is " psedication " L — that is, immissio membri
in anum. This sexual act is, however, far less frequent than it
is commonly assumed to be by heterosexuals. According to
Magnus Hirschfeld, it occurs only in 8 %, according to G. Merz-
bach only in 6 % , of all cases of intercourse between male homo-
sexuals. In an essay on psedication which I possess, written
by a homosexual, it is represented as much commoner, and as
" the most natural and least harmful means of gratification."
According to a verbal communication made to me, the author
of this essay knew of one hundred cases of paedication in which no
harm had resulted. Frequently coitus inter femora takes the
place of psedication ; still more frequently " fellation," or coitiis
in os, and the widely diffused " tongue kiss."2 Other perverse
manifestations of the homosexual impulse also occur, such as
anilinctus, fetichism, masochism, sadism, exhibitionism, etc., just
as they occur in heterosexual individuals.

With regard to the relations of true homosexuals to women,
generally speaking they loathe sexual intercourse with woman,
but they do not dislike woman herself. Women, on the contrary,
are greatly liked by most homosexuals ; effeminate urnings more
especially gladly seek their society, in order to gossip with them

1 I have used the established spelling for this word, although probably its
more correct spelling would be " Dedication " (derived from pedex = podex).

* Cf. P. Nacke, "The Kiss of the Homosexual," published in the Archives for
Criminal Anthropology and Criminal Statistics, by H. Gross, 1904, vol. xvii.,
Nos. 1, 2, p. 177. Cf. also the reports on the tongue kiss published in the Annual
for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1905, vol. vii., pp. 757-759.

510

about all kinds of feminine belongings. Marriages are often
contracted by homosexuals who are really ignorant as to their
own condition, or who hope to conceal it from the world, or
simply for pecuniary considerations. They result most un-
happily if the wife has need of love, and understands the real
nature of the case ; or, again, if she becomes jealous of her hus-
band's male lovers ; but when the wife is frigid, they may turn
out quite happily. They are, however, always very unnatural.
Hirschfeld1 has thoroughly discussed the question of the marriage
of homosexuals, and has also alluded to the occasional marriages
between homosexual men and homosexual women. The fact
proved by him that among homosexuals the impulse towards
the preservation of the species is almost entirely wanting — not
more than 3 % have the wish to possess children — shows how
little fitted they are for the purposes of marriage.

The above-described sexual relationships may be illustrated
by a few original reports taken from the autobiographies of
homosexuals. For example, a homosexual man, twenty-seven
years of age, writes :

" When I was young, from four to six years of age, I loved to look
at the male generative organs, without knowing why they attracted me.
I liked to look at sculpture and pictures representing male nudity. I
detest woman's work and the fashions of the day : a simple costume
suffices for me. I learned the ' great secret of the world ' when I was
twelve years old, but woman had no interest for me, and I was always
asking little boys of from ten to fourteen years of age to show me their
private parts. I commenced to have carnal intercourse with boys
(aged eighteen to twenty-four) when I was myself twenty-four. Only
coitus inter femora, face to face, never from behind. I always assume
the active role. A young man from eighteen to twenty-four years of
age is to me like a woman. A woman is to me a thing (!), not so a
man. Perhaps it is original, odd for our time ; but what is to be done ?
Woman is a machine for producing children, and nothing more. I am
not married, and never shall marry."

Another homosexual writes :

" I was about five years old when, walking with a nursemaid in the
pleasure gardens, I saw a man masturbating. Although I did not
know what he was doing, the picture busied my imagination for
many years. In my dreams, up to the age of fourteen years, the
thought of living together with a companion of the same age as
myself played the principal part. At the age of thirteen I fell in love
with a schoolfellow, who was, however, but little inclined towards me.
What perhaps especially interested me in him was that he brought
sexual enlightenment to our class. Through moving to another town

1 M. Hirschfeld, " Are Sexual Intermediate Stages Suited for Marriage ?"
published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1901, vol. iii., pp. 37-71.

511

I lost sight of him. Although at that time I knew nothing of the
real sexual life, still I sought for objects which excited my sensuality.

" An unknown man of about thirty-five years of age seduced me,
and practised paederasty with me on the first occasion that he met me.
I felt that there was something altogether wrong about this practice,
but was too weak to withdraw myself from his influence. After
about three months he disappeared. Now also I knew what mastur-
bation was, for in the school this practice was common.

" At the age of eighteen I left the school, and as in my comrades
the impulse towards women now showed itself, I, for my part, felt all
the more how everything directed me towards man. I often en-
deavoured, in obedience to the urging of my friends, to form relation-
ships with women of the half- world, but this always filled me with the
greatest horror and repugnance. To me it is a dreadful feeling when
I notice that a woman is interested in me. All the more, on the other
hand, did the male sex interest me. When I love a man I do not
think (only) of sexual union, but I try to read in him what I am myself
prepared to give : a sole interest, faithfulness, unselfish surrender.
If I love a man, anyone else is nothing to me.

" Every man of standing of twenty to forty years of age is interesting
to me — every one who is not positively repulsive — but most of all
anyone who possesses a distinguished psyche. In isolated cases
sympathy has also led me to love.

" The kiss is of the highest importance to me, and precisely because
I regard love as created only for a holy purpose, so that human beings
may be mutually ennobled and morally advanced by this passion, it
has always been repulsive to me to observe how men flirt with one
another, just as is the case with heterosexuals. For this reason I am
disinclined to visit places of general resort — such as, for example, the
Casino of Dresden, where all kinds of people come together. I have
met hardly any other urning who shares my sentiments in this
respect."

A homosexual physician, thirty-two years of age, gives the
following account of his sexuality :

" I cannot tell you at what age sexual inclinations first appeared in
me. My sexual impulse is directed towards males. Before and during
the time of puberty the impulse was quite indeterminate. I believe
that at this time I even cherished the idea of some day carrying out
intercourse with a girl. But this was not love ; it was a purely
physical desire. The spiritual side of the impulse was at this time
completely wanting. The sexual impulse now extends only towards
young men. I have hitherto had sexual intercourse neither with males
nor with females, but I believe that I should be competent for the
normal sexual act. This act, however, would give me no pleasure ; it
would be nothing more than masturbation. I feel complete indifference
towards the female sex, but I do not feel hatred or disgust. Sexual
dreams1 relate always to persons of the same sex. On the stage, in

1 We owe to Nacke the recognition of the importance of sexual dreams in the
diagnosis of homosexuality and heterosexuality. Cf. his essay, " The Forensic
Significance of Dreams," published in the Archive* for Criminal Anthropology,

612

the circus, it is always the men who interest me more than the women.
In addition, I admire celebrated actresses and female singers, but my
interest in them is purely artistic. From this standpoint also I am
fully able to do justice to the beauty of young women, and have
often wished to paint a girl, but this interest is always that of a painter
— the colour of the hair, the complexion, interesting features. Social
intercourse with persons of the other sex is quite unrestrained. The
sense of shame I feel more in regard to women, but still I have also a
strong sense of shame with regard to men. I always have a great
difficulty to overcome when I have to take off my clothes in the pre-
sence of other men, and it is also very difficult to me to urinate
when other men are present.

" My love exists only towards youths from the ages of seventeen to
twenty-four, or, to speak more strictly, towards youths at the time of
puberty. One of these of whom I am fond is sixteen years of age,
but sexually he is completely mature, so that every one imagines him
to be twenty.

" The direction of my sexual impulse has first become perfectly clear
to me since reading the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages. I
was already fully aware of the fact that young men were especially
interesting to me, but had not previously understood that this interest
was of a sexual nature. I had, indeed, heard of paederasty — the case
of Krupp and others — but I imagined that these individuals had de-
veloped such a tendency in consequence of satiety. ' You,' I said to
myself, ' are purer and nobler in sentiment. Paederasty is loathsome
to you ; no human being will ever understand you.'

" Every young man at the age of puberty awakens in me a certain
sexual interest. This is especially the case when they are slender and
wiry in build, not fat, with well-developed, but not excessively power-
ful, muscles, with gentle and modest character. Roughness always
suffices to destroy completely the commencement of inclination.
Sturdy, plump youths, and those with an excessive development of fat
under the skin, or with a wide, feminine aspect of the buttocks, leave
me comparatively cold. The youthful forms embodied in Grecian
sculpture are my ideal type. It is indispensable that they should be
beardless, or at most have the merest beginnings of a beard. A youth
with a heavy moustache leaves me cold ; he is too masculine for me.
Intellectual culture plays no part in the attraction ; modesty and
gentleness are necessary to render an intimate relationship possible.
I find no preference for any particular profession. I have, indeed,
pedagogic inclinations, but these appear to me to play no part in
producing attraction, but come into action only later. One whom one
loves is one in whom one would be glad to produce spiritual perfection.
The attraction depends, in the first place, upon beauty of the body ;
beauty of the face is only of secondary importance. Smell has no
influence upon the attraction."

It will be noted that this writer, now thirty-two years of age,
has hitherto had no experience of sexual intercourse, either

1889, vol. iii. ; also P. Nacke, " The Dream as the Most Delicate Reagent for
the Detection of the Mode of Sexual Sensibility," published in the Annual Rewew
of Criminal Psychology, 1905.

513

heterosexual or homosexual. This is characteristic. Homo-
sexuals in general, in contrast to heterosexuals, often proceed
at a comparatively late age to actual experience of their sexual
impulse in action. He goes on to describe the first beginnings
of his love for a beautiful youth, eighteen years of age. He
writes :

" My eyes watched every movement of the body, which continually
displayed new beauties. I should have loved to fall upon his neck
and kiss him. For sexual intercourse he appeared to me too pure, too
noble ; I should rather have lain before him in the dust and prayed to
his beauty. I felt that I should have been a poet in order to be able
to clothe in the right words this delicate and holy sentiment. And I
must shut this all up within myself, must remain outwardly cold. It
was enough to drive me to madness ! Have compassion on us, and
allow us at least an embrace, a kiss. That certainly can do no one any
harm, and for me it would be a good action. The distressing tension
which tortures us to death would be for the time relaxed. I always
have a feeling that the process of sexual attraction must be of an
electrical nature. I seem to myself to be charged with electricity, the
tension increasing up to the highest point when the beloved is near
me, and a prolonged contact or a stroking with the hand already
suffices to bring about a certain calming of the nerves. The tension is
to some degree diminished. The various components of sexual
enjoyment appear to be developed in human beings with very different
strength. In this way it is explicable that in one person the odour of
the loved one, in another the changing tones of the voice, in a third the
taste of the kiss (the tongue kiss), is most stimulating. It is, indeed,
even conceivable that there exists a purely mental sexual enjoyment,
and that to some individuals merely to look at the beloved person, or
to read a letter from him, suffices.

" Sexual intercourse had hitherto never been practised, but I can
asseverate that the mode of my desire is rather feminine. It would be
my ideal if the loved one should feel sexual ardour for me ; I should be
a willing sacrifice. I should like to possess feminine sexual organs, in
order to appear desirable to the loved one.

" I have battled powerfully against my nature, and have felt very
unhappy. I regard myself as physically and mentally healthy. I
have received at birth a double nature (alas ! two souls dwell within
my breast). My body is that of a man, my soul rather that of a woman ;
hence the conflict, hence my sexual desires, considered outwardly and
only from the physical point of view, are contrary to nature. Alas !
my soul can be seen by no one.

" Why do I only love a young man ? Because lie in ideal fashion
enlarges my nature. My sexual sensibility is mainly feminine, and is
directed, therefore, towards the masculine, and more especially towards
the masculine in the time of youth, because the feminine sensibility
in my nature is damped by a small masculine note. The effeminate
urning probably loves the complete man as the best complement of
his own nature. The slightly masculine note of my own sexual per-
ception demands also in the man whom I love a slight feminine note,
such as we find in the youth. He has, in fact, something feminine

514

in him — beard lessness, no immoderate strength of the muscular
system, a gentle disposition, receptive emotions — and yet he is mas-
culine and sexually mature. Sexual maturity is a necessary part of
every love. The young man, therefore, is the ideal conception of my
nature. My love is as great, as holy, and as pure, as heterosexual
love ; it is capable of self-sacrifice. Believe me, for a loved one who
fully understood me in every respect, I would gladly go to my death.

" Ah ! how painful it is to us when we are regarded as debauchees
or as sick persons !"

I must say that the above account, given to me by a much
respected medical colleague, one whose nature is characterized
alike by intellectual power and ideal sensibility, has made the
deepest impression upon me, and has been an important influ-
ence in confirming my views regarding the nature of original
homosexuality. Similar oral communications have been received
by me from other physicians who have been homosexual from
childhood onwards, one a neurologist and the other an alienist,
and I attribute the greatest importance to the account given by
this colleague of mine, who has a twofold understanding of the
matter in question — as physician and as homosexual. It is
also important to note that uranian physicians declare the
majority of homosexuals to be physically and mentally healthy,
a fact which I myself had not previously doubted, and that
they contest the general validity of the degeneration theory.

Whilst in the smaller provincial towns and in the country
homosexuals are for the most part thrust back into themselves,
compelled to conceal their nature, or at most able to communicate
only with isolated individuals of like nature with themselves,
in the larger towns from early days the homosexuals have been
able to get into touch with one another. Certain meeting-places
— places of rendezvous for urnings only — have been formed ; in
certain streets and squares there have been formed urning-clubs,
boarding-houses, and restaurants, and even urning-balls, while
certain health resorts are to a degree monopolized by them.
Moreover, the individual social groups of the homosexuals form
unions. Thus, for example, Hirschfeld1 reports the existence
of an evening association consisting exclusively of homosexual
princes, counts, and barons. Such paederastic meeting-places
and unions existed in the eighteenth century in Paris. From
this time until about 1840 certain dark lateral alleys of the
Champs Elysees, the thickets from the Place de la Concorde to
the Allee des Veuves, between the Grand Avenue des Champs
Elysees and the Cour de la Reine, served from the commencement

1 M. Hirschfeld, " Berlin's Third Sex," p. 26 (Berlin and Leipzig, 1905).

515

of twilight for the rendezvous of homosexuals, not simply as a
place of masculine prostitution, but as a meeting-place of urnings
in general, who here in the dark sought and found love. The
central point of this evening activity was the Alices des Veuves
(now known as the Avenue Montaigne), the " Widow's Alley "
" widow " was at that time the term used to denote the passive
paederast. This region of the Champs Elysees was to a certain
extent monopolized by the homosexuals. They would not
tolerate here the presence of any heterosexuals ; they closed the
entrances with cords, and placed guards at the openings of the
alleys, who demanded a pass-word from every comer. Even the
police did not venture into this dark region.

" Victor Hugo, who in the year 1831 lived in the Rue Jean Goujon
in this neighbourhood, often accompanied his friends who had been
visiting him part of the way home at a late hour of the night. They
walked in groups, talking of literature and art as far as the Place de la
Concorde. There the celebrated poet parted from his guests and
returned alone homewards, composing new verses by the way. Ho
often noticed individuals who, as he passed the entrance to the Rue des
Veuves, watched him from afar off without speaking to him. He
could not believe that these people were thieves, and asked himself
what could be the cause of their always waiting in this lonely place ;
but notwithstanding the frequent occurrence of these scenes, he made
no further inquiry into the matter. But once in the midst of his
poetical reverie he was disturbed by a man who stepped forward from
the darkness of a thicket, and with a polite greeting said to him : ' Sir,
we beg you not to wait any longer in this place. We know who you
are, and we should not wish that any one of us who does not know you
should cause you any uneasiness.' ' What are you doing there, then ?'
answered Victor Hugo. ' Every evening I see people walking about here,
and disappearing among the trees.' ' Don't concern yourself about
it, sir,' was the brisk answer ; ' we disturb no one and do no one any
harm, but we shall not permit anyone to disturb us or to do us any
harm ; we are here in our own grounds.' Victor Hugo understood,
bowed, and pursued Ms way. As on another evening, walking with
his friends, he wished to pass through another alley running parallel
to the Altee des Veuves, he found that this was closed by a number of
chairs, which were fastened together with cords. ' There is no
thoroughfare,' called out a threatening voice ; but another, speaking
more quietly, added : ' We beg Monsieur Victor Hugo on this occasion
to pass along the other side of the Avenue des Champs Elyse"es.' >u

During the Second Empire the A116e des Veuves maintained
its former position as a place of rendezvous for homosexuals.
An urnings' club, the members of which belonged to the highest

1 The description of this interesting scene, with other details regarding; the
organization of the homosexuals of Paris, is found in the work of Pi&anus Fraxi
(Henry Spencer Ashbee). " Centuria Librorum Absoonditorum," pp. 406-416
(London, 1879) (based upon personal reports by Paul Lacroix).

33—2

516

classes of society, being persons of the Imperial Court, senators,
great financiers, etc., had their meeting-place in a beautifully
furnished hotel in the Allee des Veuves, in which soldiers of the
Empress's bodyguard (Dragons de I'lmp^ratrice) and of the
Hundred Guard of the Emperor served, in return for valuable
presents, as the beloved of the various distinguished urnings, for
which function the term " faire I'lmp^ratrice " came into use.
In the hotel there also lived from time to time transient unknown
persons, who were only admitted after showing a kind of medal
bearing a secret inscription. When the police made an ex-
amination of the hotel, they found a number of women's dresses
and similar articles, such as those which the Empress Eugenie
was accustomed to wear on festival occasions. Numerous letters
were also discovered which had been exchanged by the members
of the club and their favourites of the Hundred Guard or of the
Empress's guard. A report was made to the Emperor of the
results of the examination of this house. When he saw that
persons of the highest position, and bearing most celebrated
names, were involved in the affair, he at once ordered that the
matter should be dismissed, and said to the Procureur-General :
" We must spare our people and our country from such a scandal,
which would do no one any good, and would do a great deal of
harm." In fact, almost no details of this affair became public.1
Tardieu gave an account of another urnings' club of the Second
Empire, where there were concealed closets, on the walls of which
erotic pictures were displayed. The manner in which the
urnings made acquaintance with homosexuals is shown in a
police report of July 16, 1864, in which the conduct of a literary
homosexual, " un vieux monsieur fort bien et puissamment
riche," is described in the following terms :

" He enters the Cafe Truffaut, sees a young soldier who pleases him.
By the intermediation of the waiter he makes an appointment, and
departs without waiting for an answer. If the soldier agrees, he goes
to the appointed place of meeting, and never goes alone, because
Father C— — n (the elderly urning) is well known. As soon as the two
have met, other soldiers make their appearance, beat the old man, and
compel him to give them all the money which he has about him. He
does this willingly, and without ceasing prays for pardon. When he
has not a single sou left, and when he has also given up his watch, he
goes away weeping, and continually repeating the words, ' What a
miserable man I am !' '

1 Ambroise Tardieu, " Offences against Morality from the Point of View of
State Medicine," German translation by F. W. Theile, pp. 133, 134 (Weimar,
1860).

517

This elderly urning was manifestly also a masochist, and there-
fore a very suitable victim of blackmailers, whom we here see at
their work. In the police report to which we have already
referred homosexual orgies are also described, the participants
in which assumed women's names and practised mutual mastur-
bation and fellation, and also carried out obscene practices with
a bitch. When Oscar Metenier in his book " Vertus et Vices
Allemands " (Paris, 1904) states that Berlin has a monopoly in the
matter of urnings' balls, which, in his opinion, were not possible
in Paris, he is unquestionably wrong as regards the time of the
Second Empire. In this police report two typical urnings' balls
are mentioned. One of these took place in a house in the Place
de la Madeleine, belonging to E. D., a man of business, who gave
the ball on January 2, 1864. The second urnings' ball was given
by the Vicomte de M. in the Pavilion Rohan, Rue de Rivoli, on
January 16, 1864, at which at least 150 men, many of them in
woman's clothing, took part. In many cases the appearance
was so deceptive that even those who had invited the guests were
not always able to determine the sex with certainty.

It is doubtless true that there is no other town in which there
are so many social unions of homosexuals as there are in Berlin.
Hirschfeld records — in addition to private parties —dinners, sup-
pers, evening parties, five o'clock teas, picnics, dances, and summer
festivals of homosexuals, which are arranged every winter by urn-
ings, and by female homosexuals or their friends. Moreover, the
male and female homosexuals meet in certain restaurants, cafes,
eating-houses, and public-houses frequented only by themselves.1

Such localities exclusively for the use of urnings exist in Berlin
to the number of eighteen to twenty. There are also social
literary unions, such as the club "Lohengrin," the antifeministic
" Gesellschaft der Eigenen," the " Platen-Gemeinschaft," etc.
There are also cabarets (public-houses) for urnings. Hirsch-
feld, in his book " Berlin's Third Sex," written in a popular
style, but extremely valuable owing to the clearness of his de-
scriptions, gives an exhaustive account of all these institutions
for urnings, and for further details I may refer my readers to this
interesting work, the authenticity of which I am able to confirm
as the result of my own visits to the above-mentioned places of
meeting for urnings.2

1 There are also numorous places of public resort which are indeed largely
attended by urnings, but are also frequented by heterosexuals.

3 Cf. in this connexion also the remarks of P. Nacko, " A Visit to the Homo-
sexuals of Berlin," published in the ArcJiives of Criminal Anthropology, 19<)4,
vol. xv., Nos. 1 nnd 2.

518

In Paris there no longer exist places of entertainment fre-
quented solely by urnings. In this respect they are replaced by
certain Turkish baths, whose patrons are almost without exception
homosexuals — men whoseTageTVaries from about twenty years
upwards. In the industrial quarter, in the neighbourhood of
the Place de la R6publique, there existed a few years ago a
Turkish bath, visited almost exclusively by young homosexuals
between the ages of fifteen and twenty years. On the great
boulevard there is a bath of a very expensive character, visited
only by wealthy homosexuals, frequented, among others, by a
celebrated French composer.1

A peculiar species of meeting-places for the urnings of Berlin
is represented by the soldiers' public-houses in the neighbourhood
of the barracks, where soldiers are met and treated by homo-
sexuals, and where arrangements are made for subsequent
meetings. There also exists a " soldiers' promenade," where the
soldiers walk up and down and offer themselves to homosexuals.
Athletes also enter freely into relationships with homosexuals.

Urnings' balls are to-day especially characteristic of Berlin.
Von Krafft-Ebing has described them in detail, and recently also
Hirschfeld has alluded to them in the above-mentioned work. I
myself not long ago attended such a " men's ball," at which from
eight hundred to a thousand homosexuals were present, some in
men's clothing, some in women's clothing, some in fancy dress.
The homosexuals dressed as women could have been distinguished
from real women only by those in the secret. More particularly
do I recall an elegant sylph, who, on the arm of a partner, glided
across the hall — " glided " is the correct expression. During the
dance his delicate features were leaning on the shoulder of the
man, and he coquetted continually with ardent black eyes. I
really believed this was a woman, but was assured that it was a
male hairdresser. In the case of another urning dressed as a
woman the diagnosis was rendered easier by a well-developed
moustache.

The seamy side of the relationships of homosexuals in public
life is constituted by the so-called " male prostitution," which
existed even in ancient times, and in our own day was especially
well organized during the Second Empire, as we learn from the
details given by Tardieu. The ranks of male prostitution are
recruited partly from homosexual and partly from heterosexual

1 Cf. P. Nacke, "Quelques Details sur les Homosexuels de Paris," published
in the Archives d1 Anthropologie Criminette, 1905, new series, iv., No. 138.
See the reference in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1906, vol. viii.,
pp. 795, 796.

519

men of the lower and more poverty-stricken classes, who give
themselves for payment to well-to-do urnings, and are practised
in all the arts of elaborate coquetry (they use rouge, make a
coquettish display of male charms, etc.). These are the so-called
" aunts." In all large towns there exists what is called a
" Strich " (promenade), where male prostitutes are accus-
tomed to walk, in order to attract their clients. In Berlin the
principal promenades are the Friedrichstrasse, the Passage,1 and
some of the walks hi the Tiergarten. Like female prostitution,
so also male prostitution has its " houses of accommodation ";
and in France there even existed, and still exist, typical " male
brothels." From 1820 to 1826 such a brothel was to be found in
the Rue du Doyenne in Paris. In the neighbourhood of the
Louvre the male inmates of this establishment were even sub-
jected to regular medical examination, in order to protect their
clients from venereal infection. With the fall of twilight the
visitors made their appearance, and were received by young
effeminates.2 Still worse was another form of male prostitution,
at the time of the Restoration, and in the earlier years of the reign
of Louis Philippe — namely, the so-called grande montre des cuts
in the Rue des Marais, where a number of male prostitutes dis-
played and offered their charms to the homosexuals visiting the
place. A detailed account of the way in which this was done
cannot be given, but is sufficiently indicated by what has already
been said.3

Male brothels exist even at the present day in Paris. Thus,
at the end of the year 1905 in the Rue St. Martin there was a small
hotel whose homosexual proprietor not only let rooms to urnings
for a brief stay, but also kept on the premises five or six young
men between the ages of fifteen and twenty- two years, whose
services were always available for homosexuals for payment.
Besides this hotel there existed also in the year 1905 a kind of
male brothel in the house of an urning, where at midday half
a dozen young fellows were to be found, or could be fetched at
brief notice, for the .choice of homosexual visitors, for whose use
a room was available at so many francs per hour.4

1 Cf. " The Secrete of the Berlin Passage," pp. 19. 20 (Berlin, 1877).

2 Cf. I 'i -MU i us Fraxi, " Centuria Librorum Absconditorum," pp. 404-406 (London ,
1879) (according to the reports of Paul Laoroix, who himself was a witness of
the occurrences).

3 Op. cit., pp. 404-407.

4 Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1906, vol. viii., pp. 796, 797. Accord-
ing to d'Estoc (" Paris-Eros," pp. 207, 208), the male prostitutes in these brothels
are more especially men from southern countries — Italians, Orientals, Berbers,
and negroes.

520

A phenomenon intimately related with male prostitution is
blackmail, or "chantage." Tardieu (op. cit., pp. 128-130)
describes these relationships in vivid colours, and lays stress on
the close relationship between male prostitution and criminality.
Blackmail has become to-day a kind of special profession,1 which
is not directed solely against homosexuals, but also against
heterosexuals, and the punishment of which cannot be too
severe. Frequently these individuals, whose activity is a danger
to the community at large, persecute their victims for many
years in succession. Tardieu reports the case of a celebrated
literary man, " whose purse the blackmailers regarded as their
own." For more than twenty years in succession he was plucked
by successive generations of blackmailers, who considered him an
assured source of income. He was " passed on from one to
another." As a rule, blackmailers wait for their victims in public
lavatories ; they suddenly assert that they have been indecently
assaulted, and demand hush-money, which is commonly given
to them, even by heterosexuals. A case of the last-mentioned
kind recently occurred in Berlin, when a quite innocent young
merchant was being plundered in this way, and his wife, by a
courageous denunciation of the shameless blackmailer, freed him
from this tyranny. It is, however, unquestionable that blackmail
often ensues upon real advances on the part of homosexuals,
and after the performance of sexual acts ; and there is no doubt
that in Germany the existence of § 175 of the Criminal Code has
been most advantageous to professional blackmailers, has led to
numerous scandals (alike disagreeable and dangerous to the com-
munity), and has given rise to numerous suicides.

This celebrated § 175 runs as follows :

" Unnatural vice between two persons of the male sex, or between
a man and an animal, is punishable with imprisonment ; it can also
be punished with loss of civil rights."

This paragraph of the Imperial Criminal Code is identical with
§ 143 of the former Prussian Criminal Code. Similar ordinances,2
in some cases even more severe, are found in the laws of Austria-
Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Bulgaria, the
State of New York, most of the cantons of Switzerland, and
more especially in Great Britain, where the most severe punish-

1 Cf. Ludwig Frey, " Characterization of Blackmail," published in the Annual
for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1899, vol. i., pp. 71-96.

2 Cf. Numa Prsetorius, " The Criminal Character of Homosexual Intercourse,
Considered Historically and Critically," published in the Annual for Sexual
Intermediate Stages, 1899, vol. i., pp. 97-158.

521

ments are inflicted, and, at any rate logically, are inflicted also
on women who practise homosexual intercourse. On the other
hand, punishment for homosexual intercourse has been com-
pletely abolished in France, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Turkey,
Italy, Spain, the Swiss Cantons of Genf, Wallis, Waadt and
Tessin, the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, the Principality of
Monaco, and in Mexico.

§ 143 of the Prussian Criminal Code was adopted as the basis
of § 175 of the German Criminal Code, in view of " the conscious-
ness of right of the people," who " condemn such practices not
only as vicious, but also as criminal." But this consciousness
of right is based upon defective knowledge, and upon an erroneous
view of homosexuality. As soon as we recognize that in homo-
sexuality we have to do with a primary natural disposition, and
as soon as this view has permeated wide circles of the population,
the old consciousness of right will be replaced by a new one,
which will demand the repeal of a criminal law, by which a natural
phenomenon is regarded as a vice and a crime, and is esteemed
as infamous. My studies in recent years having convinced me
that in homosexuality we have to do with a typical biological
phenomenon, I feel that I must unhesitatingly approve of the
efforts of the Scientific and Humanitarian Committee, founded
by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, which aims at making the people
understand the nature of homosexuality, and demands the repeal
of § 175 of the German Criminal Code. All the more is this
reform demanded because real homosexual crimes can be very
readily dealt with by means of the sections of the Criminal Code
relating to sexual delinquencies in general.

Apart from this general codification of the injustice of § 175,
and apart from the above-mentioned tragical consequences of
the existence of this section, it is also necessary to point out that
the expressions used therein are absurd and illogical.

1. Unnatural vice between men is punished, whereas that
between women is left impune. But why should this latter be
the case, if we adopt the standpoint (which we have, indeed, seen
to be untenable) that homosexual intercourse is in itself vicious
and criminal — why should homosexual intercourse between
women be less vipious and criminal than homosexual intercourse
between men ?

2. The idea " unnatural vice " is equally absurd and incon-
sequent, and makes justice in respect of these offences absolutely
impossible. By this term is understood not merely paedication
(immissio membri in anuni), but also &ny kind of intercourse

622

between men "resembling sexual intercourse " —that is, coitus
in os, coitus inter femora, even simple frictio membri — whilst
mutual masturbation and other perverse practices are not
punishable.

3. § 175 does not safeguard any citizen,1 for the sexual freedom
of the individual is not disturbed in any way by the intercourse
between two adult men who fully understand what they are
doing, nor is the general moral sense injured in any way if the
act is not seen by any third person. In this latter respect, how-
ever, § 183 of the Criminal Code, which punishes annoyance to the
public by improper conduct, already affords sufficient protection.

4. If § 175 is maintained with especial reference to the exist-
ence of professional male unchastity, von Liszt has rightly replied
to this contention that the latter form of unchastity can be
rendered harmless by a modified reading of § 3616 of the Criminal
Code, just as the protection of virtue can be safeguarded by other
sections of the Code.

5. The effectiveness of § 175 is extremely limited. According
to Hirschfeld (" Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages," vol. vi.,
p. 175), no more than 0-007 % of the existing punishable homo-
sexual practices of the present day are detected and punished.
Therefore a few isolated individuals are punished for an offence
which thousands of others commit with impunity.

6. When § 175 of the Criminal Code was drawn up, the law-
givers knew absolutely nothing about the homosexual impulse
as an essential outcome of the personality ; they merely wished
to punish heterosexuals who committed homosexual practices,
not to punish genuine homosexuals (c/. Numa Prsetorius, " The
Question of the Responsibility of Homosexuals," published in
the Monthly Review of Criminal Psychology, edited by G. Asch-
affenburg, 1906, p. 561).

The worst and most tragic consequence of § 175 is the perma-
nent infamy and social contempt suffered by persons who, without
any blame to themselves, have a mode of sexual perception diverg-
ing from that of the great majority. The state itself commits a
crime when it enrols in the category of vice and crime a biological
phenomenon which has recently been recognized as such even
by the Evangelical and Catholic Churches,2 and has been freed

1 Cf. Z. Richter, " Does § 175 afford any Protection ? A Criminalogical
Study," published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1900, vol. ii.,
pp. 30-52.

2 " Opinions of Roman Catholic Priests on the Attitude of Christianity
towards the Criminal Prosecution of Homosexual Love " (Annual for Sexual
Intermediate Stages, 1900, vol. ii., pp. 161-203) ; " What Position should the

523

by these Churches from the stigma of immorality. The con-
tinuance of this greatjinjustice is the frequent cause of the
suicide of homosexuals, especially of such as are men of excep-
tional spiritual and moral cultivation, and frequently before
they have actually indulged in their homosexual impulse, the best
proof that we have to do, not with vicious, but with unhappy
men, who are unable to bear the misery of being socially despised
and unjustly misunderstood by their associates. How many
suicides from homosexual grounds occur it is impossible to
establish exactly. We can only suspect the cause from certain
attendant circumstances. A highly respected literary man
writes to me regarding this question of the suicide of homo-
sexuals : " When a fine young fellow, suffering frightfully as a
result of his inherited disposition, shoots himself, his family will
rather suggest that the cause was a chancre (which he has never
had), than they will admit his homosexuality." Several such
cases have come under his notice. " A better cause," he suggests,
" for the suicide would have been unhappy love, for that is the
actual truth." Zola,1 speaking of the letters of a homosexual,
says that they exhibited " the most heart-breaking cry of human
agony " that he had ever known.

" He earnestly resisted yielding to such shameful, lustful love, and
he longed to know whence came this contempt of all men, whence this
continuous readiness of the law-courts to crush him down, when in his
flesh and blood were inborn a disgust towards womcin, wMlst he had
brought into the world with him a true feeling of love towards man.
Never had one possessed by a demon, never had a poor human body
given up to and tortured by the unknown powers of the sexual im-
pulse, so painfully expressed his misery. Have we not here a truly
physiological case definitely displayed before our eyes — an inversion,
an error, on the part of Nature ? Nothing, in my opinion, is more
tragical, and nothing demands more urgently investigation and a
means of cure, if such can possibly be found."

The complete enlightenment of the people would give rise to a
spontaneous change in their conception of homosexuality, to
which, moreover, the greater number of homosexuals belonging
to the better classes could contribute, if they would freely and

Church Assume towards Homosexual Love and ita Criminal Prosecution ?" by
an Evangelical Theologian (op. cit., vol. iii., pp. 204-210) ; Caspar Wirz, " Urnings
before the Church and Scripture " (Orthodox-Evangelical) (op. cit., vol. iv.,
pp. 63-108) ; " Homosexuality in the Bible," by a Catholic priest (op. cit., vol. iv.,
pp. 199-243); "From the Memoirs of a (Catholic) Priest" (op. cit., pp. 1172-
1178).

1 A letter from Emilo Zola to Dr. Laupts on the problem of homosexuality ;
translated, with an introduction, by Rudolf von Boulwitz (Annual for Sexual
Intermediate Stages, 1905, vol. ii., pp. 371-380).

524

openly admit their tendencies. The secrecy and hypocrisy of
many urnings is partly responsible for the hitherto prevailing
false views on homosexuality. We cannot spare them this
reproach.

Finally, § 175 is not merely an injustice to homosexuals, but it
is also a danger to heterosexuals, in consequence of the blackmail
which is so intimately associated with the existence of this section.
It is not enough that these criminals of the most debased kind,
who to a small extent only are recruited from the ranks of male
prostitutes, reduce numerous unhappy urnings to social and
financial ruin, and drive many others to suicide or to crime, of
which the remarkable case of a County Court Judge a few years
ago afforded a typical example. These wretches also dare with
ever-greater success to make use of § 175 for the purpose of black-
mailing completely normal heterosexuals. In fact, they often
succeed better with these latter than they do with homosexuals,
because to the normal man the idea of being regarded as homo-
sexual is so repulsive.

A remedy for all these evils — for the suicides as well as for the
blackmailing — can only be found in the enlightenment of the
whole people — the first and most important thing to do — and
in the unconditional repeal of § 175 of the Criminal Code.

It has been a most useful service on the part of the Scientific
and Humanitarian Committee — a service the value of which has
not yet been sufficiently recognized — that it has endeavoured,
above all, to bring about the enlightenment of the people by
means of popular writings,1 and of the learned by means of
scientific publications, such as the most successful Annual for
Sexual Intermediate Stages (8 volumes, 1899-1906), and by
means of lectures, by the convocation of public meetings, by
petitions, etc.

The petition of the committee to the legislative bodies of the
German Empire, asking for the repeal of § 175 of the Criminal
Code, was signed by 5,000 persons belonging to the circles of men
of science, judges, physicians, priests, schoolmasters, authors,
and artists, among whom were some of the most celebrated
names of cultured Germany. I cite here a few only : Ferdinand
Avenarius, Hans von Basedow, Woldemar von Biedermann,
H. Bulthaupt, Professor Crede, Albert Eulenburg, Theodor
Gaedertz, Rudolf von Gottschall, Franz Gorres, O. E. Hartleben,
Gerhart Hauptmann, S. Jadassohn, Hermann Kaulbach, R. von

1 " What should the People know about the Third Sex ?" An instructive
work, published by the Scientific and Humanitarian Committee (Leipzig, 1904).

525

Krafft-Ebing, Joseph Kiirschner, H. Kurella, Walter Leistikow,
Leppmann, Max Liebermann, G. von Liebig, Detlev von Lilien-
eron, Franz von Liszt, Berthold Litzmann, Ph. Lotmar, John
Henry Mackay, Mendel, Friedrich Moritz, P. Nacke, Paul Natorp,
Albert Neisser, Max Nordau, A. von Oechelhauser, A. von
Oppenheim, J. Pagel, Pelman, R. Penzig, Placzek, Felix Poppen-
berg, Rainer Maria Rilke, 0. Rosenbach, Wilhelm Roux, Max
Rubner, Benno Riittenauer, Johannes Schlaf, Arthur Schnitzler,
A. von Schrenck-Notzing, Alwin Schulz, Moritz Schwalb, Georg
Schweinfurth, Adolf von Sonnenthal, K. von Tepper-Laski,
H. Unverricht, Max Verworn, A. Vierkandt, Richard Voss, Hans
Wachenhusen, Felix Weingartner, Adolf Wilbrandt, Enst von
Wildenbruch, F. von Winkel, E. von Wolzogen, Ernst Ziegler,
Theobald Ziegler, Theophil Zolling.

In addition, we might mention that in the year 1904 not less
than 2,800 German physicians, as well as 750 head masters and
masters of higher schools, signed the petition to the Reichstag
for the repeal of § 175. Owing to certain scandals by which the
highest circles were sympathetically affected — I need recall only
the cases of Hohenau, Krupp, Israel, von Schenk, etc. — the
conviction has been forced upon members of the most influential
political circles that the repeal of the paragraphs of the Criminal
Code relating to urnings is an unconditional necessity. We may,
therefore, expect that the repeal will be effected within the next
few years.

Compared with true original homosexuality in men, the same
condition in women is of considerably less importance, because
in women homosexuality is undoubtedly much less common than
it is in men. In comparison with the number of urnings, the
number of female homosexuals — of " urnindes," "Lesbian
lovers," or " tribades " — is relatively small; whereas in many
women, even at a comparatively advanced age, the so-called
" pseudo-homosexuality " (see the next chapter) is much more
frequently met with than it is in men. In the case of hetero-
sexual men it is usually impossible to induce a homosexual
mode of perception or to give rise to any kind of taste for homo-
sexual activity ; whereas in heterosexual women the correspond-
ing change certainly occurs much more easily. Tendernesses
and caresses play, indeed, among normal heterosexual women a
role which makes it easier for us to understand how readily in
woman pseudo-homosexual tendencies may arise. Still, it is
impossible to doubt the existence also of original homosexuality

526

In wo»en. These are the cases in which, jusi as in urnings,
homosexual impulse appears in very early childhood, often long
before puberty, in which case also the girl is distinguished from
her heterosexual comrades in external appearance, exhibitir
indications of a masculine build of body (slight development
the breasts, narrowness of the pelvis, development of a mous-
tache, a deep vofce, etc.) ; but such indications may be entirely
absent, and the girl may not be distinguished from others in
any respect beyond the perverse direction of the sexual impulse.
These true tribades are much rarer than the false tribades, the
pseudo-Lesbian lovers. For example, when visiting an urnings'
ball we may be quite sure that 99 % of the male homosexuals
assembled there are true homosexuals ; but at a tribades' ball —
such, also, are given in Berlin — certainly a much smaller per-
centage are " genuine "; the bulk of the women present are
pseudo-homosexuals. I here append the interesting reminis-
cences of a genuine urninde, by which this relationship between
original homosexuality and pseudo-homosexuality in women is
very clearly shown :

THOUGHTS OF A LONELY WOMAN !

" Born in the country, the daughter of a merchant, I grew up as
a very dreamy being, with an unceasing yearning after something
unknown, beautiful, great — with a longing to become a singer or an
artist. At the age of twelve I was already completely ' woman,' very
luxuriantly developed, although still half a child, filled always with
an uncontrollable longing for a beloved feminine being who should
kiss me and caress me, whom I was to regard with love and with a
sentiment of self-sacrifice. At the age of thirteen I came to live with
relatives in a provincial town, where for a year I attended a young
ladies' school. Of my dreams no single one could be fulfilled. My
mother, who was widowed when I was only three years old, had a
severe economical struggle, being encumbered with six small children.
After my elder brothers and sisters were married, I myself, being then
twenty-four years of age, had to go out into the world to seek my own
living, ignorant of the world and its dangers, delivered up to common-
ness and intrigue. I got a position in the house of a widow, filling the
post of ' companion.' My ' principal,' a woman sixty years of age,
was at first unsympathetic to me, but she treated me in a loving and
motherly manner, which pleased me, for I was of a pliant and receptive
disposition. Gradually I became her confidante. Every evening I
had to get into bed with her (I slept close by) ; I must touch her with
my hands. I did not then really understand why I had to stroke her
legs ; but one evening this sexagenarian guided my hand into a for-
bidden place. Now it became clear to me that this woman still had
erotic perceptions. I felt how she quivered under my touch, pressed
me firmly to herself, etc. ; but I, for my part, felt nothing. It might

527

been diffeiei- -utw- she been a friend of my own age. I had not
at that time any idea that ' psychically ' I was different from other
girls. I had an unceasing yearning for love, not directly sensual
love, but spiritual love, out of which sensual love might later develop,
^^mong the inmates of our house was a young merchant, a fine-looking
,1, who besieged me with his love, and, after long hesitation, I at
length one day consented to give him the best that woman has to
give. He took possession of my body with brutal voluptuousness. I
was under the delusion that he would make me nis wife. I had in
the sexual act no perception at all, and was disillusioned. One day
my seducer told me that he was going to be married, asking me to
return him the ring he had given me, and offering me money. Moved
to the inmost soul, without any human being to give me counsel or
help (from a feeling of shame I had not disclosed the matter to my
principal), I threw the ring at him, resigned my position, and made
myself independent. I will only say hi a few words how I had to struggle,
to fight for my existence, how I was lied to and deceived by rascally
men. When I came to Berlin I heard and read of homosexual love,
but could not find what I dreamed of — namely, spiritual love, out of
which sensual love might spring. I learned to know homosexual
women, but they exhibited to me such elemental passion, brutality,
sensuality, that, notwithstanding all my yearning for ' homosexual '
love, I remained unresponsive. Only in kissing the lips of a woman
sympathetic to me I have experienced an agreeable sensation, but
that sweet state which I was able to induce in others by contact with
them was in me not forthcoming. I began to wonder whether Nature
had denied me this sensation, though I was myself also a normally
developed woman. For years I lived ' ascetically,' since I regarded
myself as a ' psychological ' problem — I avoided every kind of inter-
course— I only had a desire for tenderness and caresses. I often loved
handsome women, feeling the wish to kiss them and to touch them,
and I had learned to know women of the kind who prostitute themselves
to other women for money. These were hateful to me, and never could
I form a friendship with such, because they knew only common brutal
sensuality, towards which I was not responsive.

" Some years ago I suffered from a severe abdominal and nervous
disorder. I have already passed my fortieth year. After an illness
lasting two years, I still feel the desire for homosexual love. Hitherto
I have lived unhappily, continually asking myself why Nature has
treated me so cruelly. Is it not possible once at least to enjoy this
perception ? A few weeks ago I made the acquaintance of a married
woman, whose husband has been impotent for years, whilst she, on
the other hand, is a very passionate character. Unfortunately, this
woman, although in other respects she is very sympathetic to me, is
upon a comparatively low plane of culture, and, what frightens me
more, she has an intimacy with a female friend who is quite uncultured,
but who resembles her in respect of sexual love, and who night after
night lies with her in bed beside the husband, and the two women indulge
their perverse voluptuousness, the friend playing the ' man's ' part. I
have seen many strange things in my course through life, but such a
marriage is a new experience to me. The man terms himself an artist,
a painter, and allows his wife free play in bisexual love. I believe that
this man himself experiences ft titillation of the senses when he sees

528

the two women together, and also that he makes drawings of ' acts,'
out of which he makes a profit. In this house I have seen into a deep
abyss, yet other bisexual women visit it. Although 1 \av« found my
peaoe disturbed by these women, although I have been to a certain
extent intoxicated, the condition*, are too repulsive to me — since this
woman is sunk into a morass deeper than she herself understands.
Only through me does she begin to understand it. But a longer
intercourse with her is impossible, for she lacks all the qualities that I
look for in a woman whom I could love. In actual fact I envy this
creature, for she is happy, since she experiences to the full those
sweet sensations which Nature denies to me. Are there any more
beings unhappy like myself ? Perhaps the acquaintanceship with a
woman whose feelings were similar to my own would be a happiness,
if Fate would only have so much pity upon me as to throw a sorrowful
companion in my way. I hope for it, but I do not believe that it will
happen.

" To what sex do I really belong ?"

In the love-history of this genuine urninde the ideal element
is especially manifest ; likewise the instinctive disinclination to
man, which, remarkably enough, is often more powerfully de-
veloped in strongly feminine characters than in the more mascu-
line tribades, as the prototype of which latter we may mention
the painter Rosa Bonheur. During childhood Rosa Bonheur
felt herself to be a boy, and preferred the society of boys to that
of girls.1 Throughout her life, notwithstanding her homo-
sexual love, she felt strong sympathy with men. Such a double
relationship occurs also among urnindes of the first kind. Even
the true urninde, I may say, is not so extremely homosexual as is
the true urning. Take, for example, the following account2 of
an original homosexual, and you will see the difference :

*' ITiave not lost any of the valuable tilings of life — far otherwise.
Many-sided, many-shadowed intellectual sympathy leads any man of
lofty mind into harmony with me. There emanates unconsciously
from my soul a profound, tender charm. My friends find me necessary
to them. I share their interests. In our relationship there pass
between us'ttis most wonderful shades of sympathetic feeling — what
the French so expressively speak of as Vamiiii amoureuse. Thus my
mode of being becomes absorbed into that of my friend, a peculiar
melody passes to and fro between us, and a peculiar melody sounds in
the stillness of my own soul. All the fine and delicate sensations which
I have received from my friends become in me transformed into
poietic force — the ecstasies of my spirit assume form and substance.
From the spiritualization of the impulse there springs a stream clear
as crystal, there arise passion and ardour ; my exceptional soul lifts
me upwards, above all sorrows and vexations. In this way is a talent
conceived, and amid ecstasy it is born."

1 Cf. "The Truth about Myself: Autobiography of a Contrary-Sexual,"
published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, vol. iii., pp. 292-307.

2 M. F., " How I See the Matter," op. cit., pp. 308-312.

The need for a spiritual cont^ ,. a men is among homo-
sexual women much stronger than the corresponding inclination
on the part of urnings for spiritual contact with woman natures.
For this reason there is no doubt that *n the " Woman's Move-
ment " — that is, in the movemer directed towards the acquire-
ment by women of all the attainments of masculine culture —
homosexual women have played a notable part.1 Indeed,
according to one author,2 the " Woman's Question " is mainly
the question regarding the destiny of virile homosexual women.
I find it necessary to doubt whether, as Hammer maintains,3 the
raging hatred of men — the converse quality to the anti-feminism
of the male urnings — really proceeds from the uranian group of
the Woman's Movement, for there exist no literary documents of
importance to prove the suggested connexion. Homosexual
women of intellectual weight have also assured me that among
them there does at times exist an enmity to men on principle,
just as, mutatis mutandis, misogyny has been developed as a
system both from the heterosexual and from the homosexual
side. For the diffusion of pseudo-homosexuality the Woman's
Movement is of great importance, as we shall see later.

The individual and social relationships of feminine uranism are
nearly the same as those of male uranism. In both cases there
exists an entire scale, running from pure Platonism to ardent
sensuality. One kind of Platonic tribades are those described
by Catulle Mendes in his sketch " Protectrices." These are
ladies of position who allow themselves the luxury of a " pro-
tege," generally a girl employed at the theatre, with whom
during the performances they exchange glances, whose expenses
they pay, with whom they go out driving, without the matter
proceeding to actual sexual relations. In other cases, however,
sensual gratification is the desired goal, which is attained by
kisses, embraces, friction of the genital organs,5 or e^rjiilinctus
(the so-called " Sapphism "). In this intercourse one party — the
" father " —plays the active part, the other — " the mother "
the passive part. There exist passionate and intimate relation-
ships of long duration — true " marriages " — among tribades.
Thus, d'Estoc reports (" Paris-Eros," p. 68) relationships of this
kind which have lasted thirty years. Still, as a general rule,

1 Cf. Anna Rilling, " What Interest has the Woman's Movement in the
Solution of the Homosexual Problem ?" (Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages,
vol. vii.. pp. 131-151).

8 Arduin, " The Woman's Question and Sexual Intermediate Stagos " (op. cit.,
1900, vol. ii., pp. 211-223).

3 W. Hammer, " Tribadisra in Berlin," p. 97 (Berlin, 1900).

530

feminine homosexuals change their relationships more frequently
than male homosexuals. An elderly tribade, whose correspon-
dence lies before me, had within four years three love relation-
ships. In these relationships jealousy plays an even greater
part than in heterosexual liaisons. Two sympathetic urnindes
who lived together described to me very vividly the joys and
sorrows of the amor lesbicus. The cause of the troubles is always
a tertia, never a tertius gaudens.

Like the urnings, the tribades also have their meeting-places,
jour fixes. One such meeting, at which four genuine female
homosexuals and one male homosexual assembled, I had the
opportunity of attending. They have their parties, and even
their balls, at which the virile tribades appear in men's clothing,1
and (as also when at home)«use male nicknames. There also
exist female prostitutes who devote their services entirely to
urnindes. This tribadistic prostitution is especially widespread
in Paris. Such prostitutes are called gouines, or gougnottes, or
chevalieres du dair de lune. Theatrical agents are said to be
especially occupied with tribadistic procurement. There also
exist tribadistic brothels in Paris.2

APPENDIX
THEORY OF HOMOSEXUALITY

Original, congenital, enduring homosexuality would appear to
be an exclusively human peculiarity. It is very doubtful whether
a similar condition exists among animals. We recognize among
the lower animals homosexual acts, but no homosexuality.3
Thus we have no philogenetic starting-point for the explanation
of homosexuality. Moreover, homosexuality is fundamentally
different from the other sexual perversions, sadism and
masochism. These represent quite extreme forms of biological
phenomena, an abnormal increase of physiological impulsive
manifestations that occur in the normal heterosexual life, as
part of sexuality in general. But homosexuality is an alteration
in the direction of the very impulse itself — a change in the very

1 Of. " A Description of an Urnindes' Ball," given by M. Hirschfeld, " Berlin's
Third Sex," pp. 56, 57.

2 Cf. Martial d'Estoc, " Paris-Eros," p. 59 et seq.

3 Cf. F. Karsch, " Paederasty and Tribadism among Animals as recorded in
Literature," published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1900, vol. ii.,
pp. 126-160 ; P. Nacke, " Paederasty in Animals," published in the Archives
of Criminal Anthropology, 1904, vol. xiv., pp. 361, 362.

531

nature of sexuality. To put the matter shortly, it is the appear-
ance of a sexuality heterogeneous to and not corresponding with
the bodily structure. To define homosexuality as the appearance
of a feminine sexual psyche in a masculine body, or of a masculine
sexual psyche in a feminine body, does not apply to all cases —
for example, it does not apply to virile urnings or to tribades who
remain womanly. The definition of homosexuality as a sexuality
which does not correspond to the bodily structure embraces both
these possibilities.

Whenever homosexuality in men is associated with a marked
development of feminine secondary sexual characters, or in
women with a marked development of masculine secondary
sexual characters, the homosexual sensibility may be said to
have to some extent a physical basis, but not completely so.
For the " intermediate stage theory " proposed by Hirschfeld—
the intermixture of feminine and masculine characters — may
apply satisfactorily to " bisexuality," to indeterminate sexual
sensibility ; but it does not apply to the thoroughly one-sided,
monistic sexual sensibility, directed only towards members of
the same sex, and often appearing very early, before the days of
puberty. Moreover, in heterosexual male individuals the ex-
ternal appearance may at times suggest that there is a strong
intermixture of feminine characters. These men, though hetero-
sexual, have a womanly appearance.

The " intermediate stage theory " of Hirschfeld, which von
Krafft-Ebing also appears to have recognized in his last work
(" New Studies in the Subject of Homosexuality "), a theory
which explains homosexual phenomena as dependent upon the
existence of transitional stages between the sexes (" sexual
links " of Hirschfeld), and which, moreover, erroneously includes
the typical hermaphrodite states — this, interesting theory ex-
plains a portion only of original homosexuality. It fails in cases
in which homosexuality occurs in the absence of any divergence
from type — for example, in those cases in which male individuals
with thoroughly normal masculine bodies exhibit marked homo-
sexual sensibility in early childhood, long before puberty. But
these are the cases which offer the greatest possible difficulties
to a scientific explanation. Hie Rhodus, hie salta !

Ulrich's " feminine soul in a masculine body " applies to
effeminate urnings, such as he was himself. But is the mode of
sensibility of virile homosexuals " effeminate "? Why do we
speak of a third sex ? Here lie difficulties which we cannot
overcome without further assistance.

34—2

532

How does it come to pass that the central organs in homo-
sexuals do not correspond to the peripheral sexual organs,
although the latter are formed embryologically long before the
former, so that the central organs should properly be guided in
their development by the peripheral organs ? But they are not
so guided. That is only explicable in this way — that the associa-
tion between the central organs and the peripheral organs is
interrupted by a third influence, and that this last influence has
a peculiar effect upon the central organs altogether independent
of the nature of the reproductive glands.

I will formulate this new theory of homosexuality in the
following terms :

1. The so-called " undifferentiated stage " of the sexual im-
pulse (Max Dessoir) may often fail to appear in cases in which the
sexual impulse, either in heterosexuals or homosexuals, is defi-
nitely directed before puberty unmistakably towards the members
of one particular sex. Especially in homosexuals do we often
see before puperty the clear and unmistakable direction of the
sexual impulse towards members of the same sex.

2. A critical theory of homosexuality must also explain the
extreme cases ; above all, it must also explain male homosexuality
associated with complete virility.

3. The sexual organs and the reproductive glands cannot be the
determining cause, because homosexuality makes its appearance
in association with thoroughly typical male reproductive organs ;
nor can the brain be the determining cause in cases of true homo-
sexuality, for, notwithstanding the intentional and unintentional
operation of heterosexual influences on thought and imagina-
tion, homosexuality cannot be eradicated, and continues to
develop.

4. Since this homosexuality often makes its appearance as an
inclination (not as the sexual impulse) long before puberty, and
before the proper activity of the reproductive glands is developed,
it appears a reasonable suggestion that in homosexuality some
physiological manifestation associated with " sexuality," but
not directly associated with the reproductive glands, undergoes a
change which results in an alteration of the direction of the sexual
impulse.

5. The most obvious influences to think of in this connexion
are chemical influences, changes in the chemistry of sexual
tension, which latter is certainly to a large extent independent of
the reproductive glands, since it may persist in eunuchs. But
the nature of this sexual chemistry is still entirely obscure.

533

Such a way of conceiving the process is thoroughly reason-
able and tenable on scientific grounds, as was shown by E. H.
Starling and L. Krehls1 in their communication to the Scientific
Congress at Stuttgart in the year 1905, regarding disturbances of
chemical correlation in the organism, especially disturbances of
the chemical influences proceeding from the reproductive organs.
All minuter details regarding these " sexual hormone " (to use
Starling's own phrase) are still unknown, but the experiments
to which we alluded in an earlier chapter have proved their
existence. In my view, the anatomical contradiction, the natural
monstrosity, of a feminine — or, at any rate, an unmanly — psyche
in a typical masculine body, or that of a feminine or unmanly
sexual psyche associated with normally developed and normally
functioning male genital organs, can only be explained in this
manner by taking into account this intercurrent third factor.
This can be deduced very readily from some early embryonic
disturbances of sexual chemistry. This would also explain why
it is that homosexuality so often occurs in perfectly healthy
families, as an isolated phenomenon which has nothing to do either
with inheritance or with degeneration. When von Romer, on
the contrary, describes homosexuality as a process of " regenera-
tion," we must maintain that for this view there are no sufficient
grounds. Here begins the riddle of homosexuality ; for me, at
any rate, it is one. My own theory only attempts to explain the
proper physiological connexions of homosexuality better, and,
above all, more scientifically than earlier theories. With regard
to the ultimate cause of the relatively frequent occurrence of
homosexuality as an original phenomenon, this theory has,
however, nothing to say.

I do not suggest that I am able for a moment to find the
ultimate reason of the being and nature of homosexuality. There
remains here a riddle to be solved. But from the standpoint of
civilization and reproduction homosexuality is a senseless and
aimless dysteleological phenomenon, like many another "natural
product " — as, for example, the human caecum. In an earlier
chapter I drew attention to the fact that civilization has entailed
an increasingly sharp sexual differentiation — that is, the anti-
thesis between " man " and " woman " has become continually

1 L. Krehl, " The Disturbance of Chemical Correlations in the Organism "
(Leipzig, 1907). Here, on p. 3, we find : " If we are compelled to assume that
many varieties of cells in their rudimentary condition already boar the imprint
of a masculine or feminine nature, still this masculine or feminine nature
doubtless only undergoes its real development under the enduring chemical
influence of the ovaries and the testicles.

534

clearer. The distinction between the sexes is a product rather of
civilization than of primitive nature. All sexual indifference,
all sexual links, are primitive characters. Eduard von Mayer
rightly believes that in the earliest days of the human race
homosexuality was much more widely diffused than it is at
present, that, in fact, it came into being side by side with hetero-
sexual love. Civilization by means of inheritance, adaptation,
and differentiation, has continually more and more limited the
extent of the homosexual impulse. Unquestionably the homo-
sexual human being, as human being, has the same right to exist
as the heterosexual. To doubt it would be preposterous. Also,
as a sexual being, in so far as only the individual aspect of love
comes under consideration, the homosexual has an equal right.
But for the species, and also for the advancement of civilization,
homosexuality has no importance, or very little. It is obvious
that, as a kind of enduring " monosexuality," it contradicts the
purposes of the species. Equally obvious is it that the whole of
civilization is the product of the physical and mental differentia-
tion of the sexes, that civilization has, in fact, to a certain extent,
a heterosexual character. The greatest spiritual values we owe
to heterosexuals, not to homosexuals. Moreover, reproduction
first renders possible the preservation and permanence of new
spiritual values. In the last resort the latter are not possible
without the former. However obvious it may appear, we must
still repeat that spiritual values exist only in respect of the
future, that they only attain their true significance in the con-
nexion and the succession of the generations, and that they are,
therefore, eternally dependent upon heterosexual love as the
intermediary by which this continuity is produced. The mono-
sexual and homosexual instincts permanently limited to their
own ego or their own sex are, therefore, in their innermost nature
dysteleological and anti-evolutionistic. In speaking thus we
leave entirely out of consideration the possibility that tern
porarily and for the purposes of individual development they
may possess a relative justification.1

Moreover, the majority of homosexuals have a deeply rooted
sentiment of the lack of purpose and the aimlessness of their

1 This latter view has been maintained especially by Max Katte, in his treatise
" l"he Purpose of the Existence of Homosexuals " (Annual for Sexual Interme-
diate Stages, vol. iv., pp. 272-288), but he completely ignores the evolutionary
points of view. In the same way, Hans Freimark neglects them (" The Meaning
of Uranism," p. 14 ; Leipzig, 1906) ; he regards homosexuality as a transition
to a state in which " mankind will no longer need gross material contact for
purposes of reproduction."

535

mode of sexual perception, and this often gives them a very
tragical and pitiable expression. Especially in the case of noble,
spiritually important homosexuals, true carriers of civilization,
is this sense of the incongruity between homosexuality and life
most plainly felt. Even the talented Numa Praetorius (Annual
for Sexual Intermediate Stages, vol. vi., p. 543) recognizes that—

" The love of the majority of men towards the other sex, based upon
heterosexual impulse, has undergone a development and refinement,
and has obtained a significance which makes homosexual love, in
comparison with it, play quite a subordinate part."

CHAPTER XX

PSEUDO-HOMOSEXUALITY (GREEK AND ORIENTAL
PEDERASTY, HERMAPHRODITISM, BISEXUAL VARIETIES)

" Nous sommes les en f ants des anciennes Sodomes ;
Puisque Von nous voit beaux, laissons-nous nous aimer.
Notre sort est le plus desirable : charmer,
Nous sommes adores des femmes et des hommes /"

RACHILDE.

["We are children of the ancient Sodom ;

Since people regard us as beautiful, let us continue to love one

another ;

Our lot is the most desirable : to charm,
We are adored both by women and by men."]

687

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XX

Connexion between pseudo-homosexuality and bisexuality — Great antiquity of
the idea of bisexuality — Magnus Hirschfeld's treatise on bisexuality — Bi-
sexuality of the time of puberty — Pseudo -homosexual tendencies at this
period of life — Examples (Gutzkow, Grillparzer) — On the large scale-
Analogy to the pseudo-heterosexuality of youthful homosexuals — Per-
sistence of bisexuality — The " Junoros " — Delusion of sexual metamorphosis
— Cultivation of paederasts — Women -men and men -women — Brouardel's
type of effeminate Parisian street-arab — Homosexuality in the state of
trance — Pseudo -homosexuality owing to the lack of heterosexual intercourse
— Anal masturbators — Pseudo -homosexuality of prostitutes — Temporary
pseudo-tribadism in Paris — Pseudo -uranism as a popular custom — Explana-
tion of the Greek love of boys — Its fundamental difference from modern true
homosexuality — Value of the noble asexual friendship of men for men — A
letter of Gutzkow' s — The Platonic Eros and Graeco- Oriental paederasty —
Bisexuality in German romanticism — Explanation of this — Hennaphro-
ditism — Previous under -estimation of the importance of hermaphroditism —
Recent researches — True hermaphroditism — Pseudo-hermaphroditism —
Male and female apparent hermaphrodites.

538

CHAPTER XX

THE dispute whether homosexuality is a congenital or an acquired
phenomenon was one hitherto impossible to settle, because the
whole province of those homosexual manifestations for which I
suggest the name of " pseudo-homosexuality " had not been
separated with sufficient clearness from true homosexuality for
the essential difference between the two classes to receive accurate
expression. True homosexuality is congenital. It is an original,
permanent, essential outflow of the personality : pseudo-homo-
sexuality, on the contrary, is either a homosexual sensibility
suggested from without, transient, and not associated with the
essence of the personality ; or else it is merely apparent homo-
sexuality, the illusion being dependent upon hermaphroditism
or upon some other physical or mental abnormality.

The pseudo-homosexuality of the former category is explicable
only by means of the fact of " bisexuality," the existence of which
has been scientifically proved only within recent years. By
bisexuality we understand the possibility of two distinct modes
of sexual perception occurring in one and the same person ; and
this, again, finds its explanation in the bisexual germinal vestiges
which exist in every individual. There rema'ns in every man a
vestige of woman, in every woman a vestige of man, in a sense
in a state of potential energy, which, however, is capable, by the
action of various external influences, of being transformed into
kinetic energy ; but this vestige always plays a small part in com-
parison with the true specific sexual nature. This bisexuality
was discussed in an earlier chapter of this book (pp. 39, 40 and
70, 71), and was there characterized as a phenomenon secondary
in every respect, to which no great importance could be attached.
The idea of bisexuality is not new ; neither Fliess nor Weininger
was its discoverer. It was already known to the ancients.1
Heinse, in " Ardinghello," gives expression to the idea in almost
the same words as Weininger (see p. 40). Recently Magnus
Hirschfeld2 has collected the historical and literary details of the
subject of bisexuality.

1 Cf. L. 8. A. M. von Romer, " Regarding the Androgynous Idea of Life,"
Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1903, vol. v.f pp. 707-940.

3 M. Hirechfeld, " The Theory and History of Bisexuality," published in " The
Nature of Love," pp. 93-133 (Leipzig, 1895). Cf also P. Nacke, " Some Psychi-
atric Experiences in Support of the Doctrine of Bisexual Vestiges in Mankind,"
published in The Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1906, vol. viii., pp. 583-
603.

539

640

Bisexuality manifests itself more especially at the period of
puberty, during the time of obscure yearnings and impulses — the
so-called indifferent period which precedes the awakening of the
sexual impulse. Physical bisexuality, therefore, often enough
corresponds to psychical bisexuality. In the boy there is a
trace of girlishness, in the girl a trace of boyishness ; we have the
two types of the dreamy youth and of the tomboy. Then there
readily arise delicate inclinations between individuals of like
sexes, especially as the result of continuous companionship, so
that an obscure impulse of transient homosexual perception
manifests itself between two boys, or between two girls, of the
same age ; or, again, this transient homosexuality may take the
form of a worshipful admiration of an older person of the same
sex. Gutzkow distinguished these two forms of pseudo-homo-
sexuality, of which he had had experience in his own person.
In his "Secular Pictures," vol. i., pp. 50, 51 (Frankfort, 1856),
he remarks :

" The feeling of love originates in most feminine natures, not from
the quiet consideration of the secrets of love, but from a magnetic
attraction towards other individuals, whom they regard as being
better and more beautiful than themselves. Commonly the love for a
man is preceded by an often illimitable love for a woman. Young girls
fall in love with older girls — a phenomenon which often occurs also in
boys, as I myself experienced when a boy, feeling the most ardent
passion for one of my comrades, who now is extremely disagreeable
to me."

A similar explanation suffices for the transient tender love
exhibited by Grillparzer towards Altmuller (c/. Grillparzer's
" Diary," edition of Glossy and Sauer, pp. 24-26 ; Stuttgart).
In boarding-schools, barracks, and training-schools we often
find these pseudo-homosexual liaisons. The prison is said by
Parent-Duchatelet to be a high-school of tribadism. He and
other French authors report the epidemic diffusion of homo-
sexual practices in prisons for women. Whenever homosexuality
appears suddenly in an epidemic manner, affecting large numbers
of individuals, we have to do, not with genuine original uranism,
but with pseudo-homosexuality. As regards boarding-schools,
which exhibit a lascivious environment extremely open to mani-
festations of this kind, Hans von Kahlenberg, in his " Nixchen,"
p. 41 (Vienna, 1904), has vividly described the matter.

Youthful bisexuality is to be found in slighter forms in almost
every human being, but it is a typical phenomenon of puberty,
and disappears with the passing of this epoch, to make room for

541

the completely developed heterosexuality of the adult. There
occurs also in homosexuals, in whom homosexual sensibility first
makes itself definitely manifest after puberty, a quite analogous
inclination to the other sex before and during puberty. Thus, a
typical homosexual twenty-three years of age, who now exhibits
horror femince, related to me that at the age of sixteen or seventeen
years he was very fond of girls, and pursued them a great deal, but
without definite sexual desire. This transient obscure attraction
of homosexuals towards the other sex is a kind of " pseudo-
heterosexuality . "

Sometimes bisexuality will continue after the period of puberty,
and in exceptional cases will persist throughout life. According
to Hirschfeld, this occurs especially in men of genius, and in
those inclined to become priests or schoolmasters. But in
most cases even then one or other impulsive tendency — the
heterosexual or the homosexual — is predominant. These indi-
viduals have been called " psychical hermaphrodites " (von
Krafft-Ebing). These bisexual varieties may manifest them-
selves in very various ways, in most cases gynandry or androgyny
is purely spiritual, and finds expression only in association with
particular tendencies, especially fetichistic tendencies. The two
following very remarkable cases throw a clear light on this
peculiar form of bisexuality. We may as well accept for the
more or less specific form of bisexuality described in these cases
the suggested name of " junores."

1. The case of a psychical hermaphrodite :

N. N., an American journalist, thirty-three years of age, writes :
" From earliest youtii I had an impulse to appear dressed in women's
clothing, and whenever I had an opportunity I had elegant body linen
made for me, silken chemises, and whatever was the fashion. Even
as a boy I used to borrow my sister's clothing and wear it secretly.
Only later, after my mother's death, was I able to give free rein to
my wishes, and I came into the possession of a wardrobe resembling
that of the most elegant lady of fashion. Although compelled in the
daytime to appear as a man, still I wear, under these clothes, a com-
plete outfit of women's underclothing — stays, open-work stockings,
and everything proper to a woman, a bracelet also, and patent-
leather women's boots, with elegant high heels. When the evening
comes, I breathe more freely. Then I can throw off the burdensome
mask, and feel wholly woman. Wrapped in a tea-gown of an elegant
cut, and wearing the finest underclothing, I am able to occupy myself
in my favourite employments, among which may be mentioned the
study of the primitive lustory of mankind, or I give myself up to some
routine duties. A feeling of repose takes possession of me, such as is
impossible during the day, when I have to wear men's clothing.
Although fully woman, I do not feel any need to give myself to a man.

542

I feel flattered, certainly, if, when appearing in women's dress, I please
others, but I have no definite sexual desire towards my own sex. It
may be that I have not yet discovered my alter ego. Notwithstand-
ing all my well-developed feminine customs, I married, and am the
father of a powerful, beautiful girl, who exhibits no tendencies what-
ever resembling mine. My wife, an energetic, cultured lady, was
fully aware of my passion, but hoped in the course of time to wean me
from it. In this, however, she was not successful. I performed my
marital duties, but I gave myself up all the more to my customs. My
wife obtained a separation, and at the time at which I now write she
is intimate with another man, and is pregnant. My physique is
thoroughly masculine, with the exception of the pelvis and of the
calves of the legs, which are feminine in form. Summary : Outward
appearance masculine. When wearing women's dress I have com-
pletely the corresponding figure— waist, 20 inches ; chest measurement,
34 inches ; height, 176 centimetres (5 feet 9 inches) ; weight 125 pounds.
Hands long and narrow, sensibility feminine. When wearing men's
clothing I feel a certain uneasiness. When I see an elegant lady or
actress, I think how well I should appear hi her dress. I have an
abundance of earrings, pearls, lace scarves, and similar articles of
adornment, and at a dance I give myself up to the idea of how delightful
it would be to appear in women's dress. If it were possible, I should
completely abandon men's clothing."

2. "At about the age of fifteen and a half years I began to take an
interest in women's dress. I felt an inward impulse, which drove me
to the windows of the shops displaying articles of women's dress —
corsets, etc. In shoemakers' windows it was the women's boots and
shoes which attracted my attention rather than the men's. The same
was the case with dress fabrics, among which self-coloured materials
for women's dress pleased me best. Beautiful blue stuffs (satin)
especially attracted me ; also, I had an ardent love for blue velvet.
As time passed, I felt a desire to possess such things, and to wear
them. But since at home I had no means to spend in this way, whilst
the desire sometimes was so violent as to give me no rest, I endeavoured
to resist it with all the religious and rational grounds I could call to
mind ; yet tliis was of little help to me, for whenever I met a woman
clothed to my taste, the longing was immediately reawakened. If I
met a woman whose appearance aroused this desire (which henceforth
I will call my ' costume-stimulus '), I looked round, in order to over-
come this costume-stimulus, to try to find a woman who displeased
me. Within me there raged a conflict (which at that time was obscure
even to myself) between the masculine nature and the feminine. One
day the feminine hi me gained the victory, as it impelled me (when
my parents were absent from the house) to try on some of my sisters'
clothes; but as soon as I had put on the corset I had an erection,
immediately followed by an ejaculation of semen. This gave me no
gratification ; on the contrary, I was very angry that putting on the
corset should have given rise to an ejaculation of semen. At varying
intervals I repeated this attempt to dress myself as a woman, and in
doing so always endeavoured to avoid anything that could give rise
to an erection. Gradually I succeeded in this matter of dressing ;
but I was now consumed also with the desire for caressing a feminine
being, and therefore the dressing alone failed to satisfy me. Moreover,

543

this dressing-up also failed to give me real pleasure, because I did not
possess any costume wliich really suited me ; but still, apart from
sexual excitement, it produced a feeling of well-being. After I had
dressed up as a woman, my imagination always busied itself with the
idea of how beautiful it would be if I had a beloved before whom I
might display myself unrestrainedly, just as I then was. In these
fancies I always pictured to myself a girl of my own age, with long
hair and well-developed breasts and hips. This imagination generally
resulted in a pollution, which I sometimes endeavoured to prevent by
taking off the articles of clothing as rapidly as possible.

" By a colleague I was initiated into the practice of masturbation.
He explained to me that if I had no woman who would give herself
to me, I was in a position to satisfy myself. The first time I resisted
the impulse ; but the costume-stimulus tormented me, and I had
discovered that after a seminal emission I was at peace for a time ;
moreover, when dressing up, I was always exposed to the danger of
being discovered, and so I began the practice of self-abuse. Mastur-
bation did not give me proper gratification, and therefore, after prac-
tising it, I always experienced a great feeling of regret and also a
feeling of exhaustion ; moreover, it did not produce the feeling of
well-being which resulted from dressing up as a woman.

" I was shy, and was very readily embarrassed in the presence of
the female sex ; I therefore avoided seeing much of women ; I avoided
it, also, on account of my costume-stimulus. It would have been
preferable to me if, physically, Nature had made me a woman, so that
I could have gone about freely among girls of my own age. For the
reasons already given I did not learn to dance ; moreover, the turning
round made me very giddy, and from the age of seventeen and a half
to nineteen years I suffered from attacks of syncope. At about the
age of twenty-two years I fell in love with my present wife, who
attracted me on account of her grace, her figure, and her character. My
wife was even more bashful than myself. My inclination drew me
towards her, but on account of my costume-stimulus, I avoided being
alone with her. From now onwards I began to consider what I could
possibly do in order to explain to my betrothed my true nature, but
all the attempts which I made were failures. After six months' engage-
ment, I left the place where my betrothed was living. The engagement
lasted seven years before we were married. The principal reason for
the delay was that we were both impecunious. When I was alone
with my betrothed, I was always thinking of my costume-stimulus.
Shortly before we were married I told my betrothed in a letter of my
peculiar tendency, for I felt it was my duty to do so. She could not
understand how I could find pleasure in dressing myself up as a
woman. At first she was indifferent regarding my costume-stimulus ;
later she thought it was morbid, an impulse bordering on the insane.
I often had to call my imagination to my help hi order to produce an
erection. My marriage became more unhappy year by year. My
wife, on account of my morbid tendency, suspected me of all possible
perversities, and was of opinion that an individual predisposed as I
was could not be capable of true, upright love for a woman. How I
was to get woman's clothing to my taste I did not know. In my
marriage I was no better off as regards the costume-stimulus, but
rather worse. I had more sleepless nights on account of this costume-

544

stimulus than I had had before I married. As time passed, I became
continually more ill-humoured, and was occasionally cross to my wife,
which afterwards made me very sorry. In the sleepless nights 1
puzzled how I could possibly manage that my wife should not concern
herself any more about the costume-stimulus, and how I could possibly
fulfil my wishes in this respect. Gradually I succeeded in winning my
wife to my side to this extent, that she agreed to make a costume for
me, but I must not have many such.

" My wife was always looking for a reason. She believed that
dressing up must have some cause, or must produce in me some effect,
which I was unwilling to tell her. She was continually tormenting
me about this ; she would not believe that I spoke the truth, and she
no longer felt any confidence in me. She believed that every one
must perceive that I had this morbid impulse. She endeavoured to
learn something about the matter from other women. Those whom
she asked could only tell her evil and common things about men with
tendencies like mine ; some said I must be unconditionally an urning ;
others that I must have intercourse with other women behind my
wife's back ; others that I wanted to lay aside men's clothing in order
to please girls under age, and so on. I suffered horribly from these
false accusations.

" I endeavoured once again, in an essay I composed, which I entitled
' The Junores,' to make the matter clear to my wife. By junores I
indicated men who wished to assume, or who did assume, the outward
appearance of women in the matter of clothing, demeanour, and
figure, but who sexually were masculine. All this was of no help to
me. Our life together became continually more unbearable with the
lapse of time ; often there were scenes which had the most depressing
effect on my mind. After violent scenes there occurred in me nocturnal
pollutions, accompanied by no sensation of pleasure ; also after these
scenes erections were for a long time incomplete, so that a kind of
impotence ensued.

" After every new accusation which my wife made against me I
avoided going home in the evening. I wandered for hours in by-
streets, overwhelmed by a feeling of futility and vacuity ; my nerves
all vibrated ; sometimes I could not keep my limbs still. If I had had
no children, or if I had known that they would be properly cared for, I
should have known what to do in such a mood. One thing still tor-
ments me. Will my children be hereditarily tainted ?"

I have myself seen both of these cases. The men concerned
appear somewhat nervous, but they are otherwise quite healthy
and manly, and both deny that they feel any sexual inclina-
tion towards men. The desire to wear women's clothing,
and to feel as a woman, may also make its appearance as a
morbid phenomenon later in life, in the form of the " delusion of
sexual metamorphosis " (metamorphosis sexualis paranoica) ; or it
may be artificially induced, as among the ancient Scythians and
among the Mexican " mujerados." These latter are selected as
men originally most powerful, and entirely free from any feminine
appearance, and by incessant riding on horseback and by excessive

545

masturbation they are made impotent (through atrophy of the
genital organs) and effeminate, so that there may even occur a
secondary development of the breasts (Hammond). All this
belongs to the category of pseudo-homosexuality.

With regard to numerous historical women-men and men-
women — such as, for example, the celebrated Chevalier d'Eon,
Mademoiselle de Maupin (immortalized by Gautier in the romance
of this name), and many other women going about in men's
clothing, or men going about in women's clothing — it is, as a
rule, no longer possible to determine whether they were genuinely
homosexual, pseudo-homosexual, or bisexual.

I regard, however, the interesting type of effeminate Parisian
street-arab, described by Brouardel at the Second Congress of
Criminal Anthropologists at Berlin in the year 1889, as charac-
teristically and originally homosexual.

" At the age from twelve to sixteen years the lad is still small,
grasps ideas very slowly, and has little will-power. At the time of
puberty he has experienced an inhibition of development, and his
bodily growth has remained stationary. The penis is thin and flaccid,
the testicles are small, the pubic hair is scanty, the skin is smooth, and
the beard is very thin ; the skeleton does not develop fully, like that of
the normal male ; the pelvis becomes wide, and the general outlines of
the body become rounded (potelees) because there is an undoubted
deposit of fat in the subcutaneous tissues, so that the breasts also
become enlarged."

This state persists. Brouardel found it still present in indi-
viduals of twenty-five to thirty years of age. These children of
great towns are characterized by intellectual sterility and by
incapacity for procreation. This type is found also among the
well-to-do middle classes, and from such, according to Brouardel,
the decadents are recruited, while the effeminate gamins either
become professional paederasts, or undertake the preparation of
articles de Paris.1

It is not difficult, in this description, to recognize true homo-
sexuality.

Magnus Hirschfeld gives an account of a peculiar form of
pseudo-homosexuality occurring in an individual who in ordinary
life was asexual.2

The person concerned was an extremely effeminate and neu-
rasthenic member of a spiritualistic club, who in his normal
condition felt sensual attraction neither to woman nor to man,

1 Cf. C. LombroBO, " Recent Advances in the Study of Criminality," pp. 109-
111 (Gera, 1899).

2 M. Hirschfold, " Berlin's Third Sex," p. 13.

546

but who in the trance state felt himself to be an Indian woman,
and then became inspired with an ardent passion for one of his
fellow-members.

Also in chronic intoxications, especially in alcoholism, pseudo-
homosexuality may make its appearance, in some cases as an
enduring and in others as a transient condition.

An important category of pseudo-homosexuality is consti-
tuted by persons in whom it arises owing to insufficient oppor-
tunity for sexual intercourse with members of the opposite sex—
as, for example, in the absence of women on board ship, in mon-
asteries, in prisons for men, in the French foreign legion ; and as
regards lack of men in nunneries, and in the case of unmarried
or unhappily married women, who supply a large contingent to
pseudo-tribadism.1 An account of paederasty in prisons is given
by Charles Perrier, " La Pedeiastie en Prison " (Lyons, 1900).

In this category we must also mention the " debauchee paede-
rasts " for which truly existent kind of pseudo-homosexuals I
propose the name of " anal mast urba tors." These are hetero-
sexual individuals in whom either primarily the anus plays the
part of an erogenic zone, or in whom this region becomes erogenic
in consequence of the exhaustion of all other varieties of sexual
stimulus. Hammond, von Schrenck-Notzing, and Taxil have
proved the existence of these anal masturbators and the frequent
occurrence in them of pseudo-homosexual tendencies.2

An interesting phenomenon is the pseudo-homosexuality of
female prostitutes. We certainly encounter among prostitutes a
number of genuine tribades, who owe their adoption of profes-
sional prostitution to the existence of this original tendency to
homosexual love, because in their relations with men the heart
plays, and can play, no part (see above, p. 434). Prostitutes
who are heterosexual by nature may become homosexual for two
reasons : first, by intercourse with, and owing to the influence
of, truly Lesbian associates, in whom the inward sense of soli-
darity possessed by all prostitutes is especially strong ; in the
second place, in consequence of the antipathy to intercourse with
men, created by their experience of life, and striking always
deeper roots, for they learn to know man only hi his brutal
sexual coarseness. The continuous compulsion to which they
are subjected to satisfy the animal sensuality of worn-out rou6s

1 These pseudo-tribades, belonging mainly to the aristocracy and to the upper
middle classes, are known in Parisian slang as " Sapphos," in contrast to the
genuine " Lesbian lovers."

2 Cf. my " Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. i.,
pp. 224-227.

547

by the most disgusting procedures ultimately produces in them
the most unconquerable antipathy to the male sex, so that all the
delicate sensibility of which they are capable is directed towards
their own sex. The homosexual union appears to them, as
Eulenburg rightly points out (" Sexual Neuropathy," pp. 143, 144),
to be something "higher, purer, and comparatively blameless."
They regard it in a more ideal light than sexual intercourse
with men. Women owners of brothels also favour tribadistic
love, because thereby they safeguard the prostitutes in their
houses from the influence of souteneurs.1

As J. de Vaudere describes in his " Demi-Sexes," pseudo-
tribadism is especially diffused in Paris as a fashionable practice,
and manifests itself here in the form described by Martineau,2
of a temporary homosexuality, which is subserved by an extensive
prostitution, and which clearly exhibits its pseudo-homosexual
characteristics by its intermittent appearance in the form of
spiritual epidemics.

Unquestionably we have to do with pseudo-homosexuality
also in all those cases in which homosexual love makes its appear-
ance as a national custom among a percentage widely exceeding
the usual percentage of ordinary homosexuality. The typical
example of this kind is the love of boys of ancient Greece—
" paederasty," in the better sense of the word. Since in this work
I am discussing the sexual life of the present day, I do not propose
here to deal at length with this interesting topic, and must refer
the reader to the second volume (in course of preparation) of my
work on " The Origin of Syphilis," in which I have discussed the
subject at considerable length.

Since the Hellenic love of boys was a widely diffused custom,
the origin of which may be directly referred to Crete, indirectly
to the Orient, it is evident that only a fraction of the paederasts
can have been true homosexuals. The majority were pseudo-
homosexuals. It is possible that the custom was first introduced
by original homosexuals, and also that it was subsequently main-
tained by these. But soon it became a general practice for a
man to regard his wife simply as a " procreative machine," and
to seek for true spiritual love from a youth. Since to the men
of antiquity woman had no soul and no individuality, the love
of boys appeared to them something natural and morally justi-
fiable. It would, however, be completely unnatural if for the

1 Cf. L. Martineau, " Logons aur lea Deformations Vulvaires et Analea,'' p. 21
(Paris, 1885).

2 Op. cit., pp. 29-31.

36—2

548

heterosexual community of our own time we wished to re-
introduce the antique love of boys, since we modern men have
learned that woman also has a soul ; that she also has the same
justification as man for the development of her human nature ;
that she can be, and ought to be, the object of individual, spiritual,
profound love. I rejoice, that those who are fighting for the
rights of the genuine congenital homosexuals, that men like
Magnus Hirschfeld, Numa Praetorius, and other investigators,
have recently expressed themselves in energetic terms as opposed
to those whose aim is a sort of propaganda for the diffusion of
the love of men among heterosexuals — whose endeavour it is,
in fact, to introduce a formal cult of uranism. This movement
can do nothing but harm to the just cause of homosexuals.

No one can prize more highly than I do myself a noble friend-
ship between men, which at the present day is far too little prac-
tised ',l no one can wish more heartily than I do that men, could
speak to one another of love, without being exposed to the
suspicion of homosexuality.2 In a certain sense I am in thorough
agreement with the beautiful demonstrations of Heinrich Schurtz
and Benedict Friedlander on masculine friendship as a normal
fundamental impulse of humanity and as the foundation of social
intercourse.3 But this friendship between heterosexual men,
based upon natural sympathy and community of occupation, has
not the least sexual admixture, whereas only in the beautiful
dialogues of Plato can the Greek love of boys, which some advo-
cate at the present day, be ascribed to the spiritual Eros.4 In

1 Karl Gutzkow writes in a beautiful letter to Max Ring : " Our time is so
separative, our hearts beat in so solitary a manner, and yet the need of intimate
bonds is there, but who dares to tie them ? Any intimate friendship formed
between men in early youth disappears like dust before the wind. Then comes
the love of woman, which fills the whole of our heart ; then follows the care for
material existence, which increases our egoism ; and the danger that our heart
will shrink makes its appearance all too soon. Who draws near to another
human being ? Who admits that he has need of others, and that his life is a life
without love ? We all suffer in this way ; we should form warm friendships
between man and man " (" Berlin in the Time of Reaction," reminiscences by
Max Ring, published in Deutsche Dichtung, 1898, vol. xxiii., pp. 51, 52).

2 Such a noble love between men shines, for example, from the letters of
Count Arthur Gobineau to Prince Philipp zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld. Cf. Prince
zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld' s " Eine Erinnerung an Graf Arthur Gobineau,"
especially pp. 22, 23 (Stuttgart, 1906).

3 Cf. H. Schurtz, " Classes in Antiquity and Associations of Men " (Berlin, 1904) ;
B. Friedlander, " Physiological Friendship as a Normal Fundamental Impulse
of Humanity and as the Foundation of Social Intercourse," in the Annual for
Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1900, vol. vi., pp. 179, 214 ; and the same author's
" Renascence of Eros Uranios,' pp. 163-211 (Berlin, 1904).

* 0. Kiefer, "Plato's Attitude towards Homosexuality," Annual for
Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1905, vol. vii., pp. 107-126. Cf. also "Lyrical and
Bucolic Poetry," op. cit., 1906, viii., pp. 619-684.

549

reality, however, the Greek love of boys degenerated into the
grossest sensuality, since the youth stimulated sexual desire like
a woman, and was used as such,1 so that the originally ideal
character of the relationship disappeared.

In the Oriental love of boys2 this ideal element was probably
never present, and sensual relationships played the principal
part from the very first. The boys' brothels of the Mohammedan
East were visited by heterosexual men just as much as by homo-
sexuals. The same men derived pleasure from intercourse both
with women and with boys. Bisexuality was in this case put
into practice as a matter of course.

German civilization also passed through an epoch in which
bisexual activities of feeling were clearly manifest in both
sexes, without, however, leading at any time to the physical
practice of pseudo-homosexuality. This remarkable period was
the time of transition between the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.

The " Sturm und Drang " had quieted down ; its fiercely active
forces had been controlled ; its vigorous will had been pacified,
and guided in concrete directions ; its kinetic energy had in a
sense become potential in two new formative and emotional
tendencies of the time, which progressed side by side, and, not-
withstanding all the differences between them, influenced one
another mutually to a considerable extent — classicism and
romanticism. Classicism, under the stimulating influence of
Winckelmann, looked back to the " noble simplicity and quiet
greatness " of the antique, to the beauty exhibited simply in
form, whose wonder Goethe more than any other has made
manifest to us. Romanticism, on the other hand, was the term
employed to indicate the boundless enlargement and increasing
profundity of the emotional life, of which the formless is especially
characteristic. This appears most clearly in the work of Novalis,
Tieck, and Wackenroder ; but both tendencies meet in the
sphere of the sexual. I need only mention the name of Winckel-
mann to indicate how markedly the purely aesthetic contempla-

1 This connexion was recognized, although in the inverse direction, by
Heinrich Laube. In a passage of " Junge Europa " (vol. i., p. 72 of the new
edition; Vienna, 1876) we read: "Constantia is the most beautiful woman I have
ever seen. Outline, muscles, figure, eyes, speech, mind, feeling — everything in
her is beautiful ; she is the ideal of a man found in the feminine form. I love
this power in woman above everything ; the soft, the non -resisting, does not offer
me enough opposition. Perhaps such icomen as these form the transition to the
Hellenic love of boys.'

3 C/., in this connexion, also P. Naoko, " Homosexuality in thOjOrient," pub-
lished in the Archives for Criminal Anthropology," 1904, vol. xvi., pp. 333 et seq.

550

tion,1 and the purely aesthetic enjoyment, of the beautiful human
form must have favoured the development of homosexual modes
of perception. We may in this connexion speak of the " Greek
Renascence." On the other hand, the romantic mood, the
deepening of the individual life of feeling, the eternal searching
for new, peculiar sensations, was very apt to awaken those
activities of feeling slumbering so deeply beneath the threshold
of consciousness, which we to-day denote by the term " bisexu-
ality." In Friedrich Schlegel's " Lucinde," for example, we find
frequent allusions to this bisexual mode of perception, as in the
place in which he speaks of a confusion of the masculine and
feminine roles in the love contest. When, in so much of the
published " Correspondence " of this period, kisses, embraces,
caresses, and tendernesses between two men or two women
appear to fly to and fro, it may be that this is neither to be re-
garded as purely homosexual perception, nor as a simply con-
ventional contemporary custom, but rather as the very char-
acteristic expression of a tendency to bisexual imaginations and
dreams induced by the hypertension, overdriving, and artificial
increase, of the emotional life. Thus only, for example, can we
explain the passionate profusion of tenderness which appears in
many of the letters of Jean Paul, written by him to men ; for
Jean Paul was unquestionably heterosexual.2

The same is true of the women of this time. According to
Welcker, the friendships of the women of the romantic period
exhibited this character of a Platonic love. Since the dominion
of romanticism " influenced emotional young men in very
various ways, in more than one morally strict circle, two women
friends were so inseparable and so indispensable to one another
that those round them used sometimes to laugh at this amative-
ness, of which, however, a serious suspicion was impossible."3

An interesting proof of the existence of pseudo-homosexuality

1 Goethe confirms this in a conversation with Chancellor von Miiller, in which
he deduces the " aberration " of Greek love from this, " that, according to his own
aesthetic judgment, man has always been more beautiful, more perfect, more
complete, than woman. Such a feeling, when it has once originated, easily passes
over into the animal and the grossly material." Cf. Annual for Sexual Inter-
mediate Stages, 1905, vol. vii., p. 127.

2 Especially instructive is his correspondence with Christian Otto (cf. " Jean
Paul's Correspondence with his Wife and with Christian Otto," edited by Paul
Nerrlich ; Berlin, 1902). For example, he writes once to this friend : " Ah, my
friend, if I could only once more clasp your form to my breast." Cf. also the
interesting remarks on the peculiarly intimate masculine friendship of this period
given in the last (eighth) volume of the " German History " of Karl Lamprecht
(Freiburg, 1906).

3 F. G. Welcker, " The Odes of Sappho," published in the Rheini&che Museum
fiir PhUologie, 1856, vol. xi., p. 237.

551

among the women of that time is afforded by a passage1 from a
romance by Ernst Wagner (1760-1812), one of the scholars of
Jean Paul. The book is entitled " Isidora," and in it the Lesbian
love-scene between the Princess Isidora and her friend Olympia
is very plainly described, although both of them at the same time
are passionately in love with men.

The last and not unimportant phenomenal form of pseudo-
homosexuality is hermaphroditism. It is a remarkable fact that
only in recent years has science attempted a serious study of
hermaphroditic states, which previously, as Blumreich2 points
out, were to a large extent ignored, both as regards their social
importance and their frequency. It was the great service of
Neugebauer3 and Magnus Hirschfeld4 that they drew general
attention to these remarkable sexual intermediate stages, and
proved their eminent practical importance, which had previously
been suspected by no one. How completely the matter had been
ignored is proved by the remarkable fact that the new Civil Code
for the German Empire completely ignores the juridical deter-
minations of the former Prussian Civil Code regarding herma-
phrodites, alleging that there existed no persons whose sex was
indeterminate or indeterminable !

The so-called " true hermaphroditism " — the condition in which
male and female reproductive glands (testicles and ovaries) are
met with in a single individual — is one of the greatest rarities.
By the investigations of Salen (1899), Garre-Simon (1903), and
Ludwig Pick (1905), the existence of such individuals with mixed

1 I reproduce this passage in the eighth volume of The Annual for Sexual
Intermediate Stages, pp 609, 610.

2 L. Blumreich, " Diseases of Women, including Sterility," being chapter xx.
of Senator and Kaminer's " Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage and the
Married State," published by Rebman Limited (London, 1906).

3 Franz Neugebauer, " Seventeen Cases of the Coincidence of Mental Anomalies
with Pseudo-Hermaphroditism, selected from a Collection of Seven Hundred
and Thirteen Observations of Pseudo-Hermaphroditism," published in The Annual
for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1902, vol. ii., pp. 221-253 ; same author, "Interesting
Observations in the Department of Pseudo-Hermaphroditism," op. cit., 1902,
vol. iv., pp. 1-176 ; same author, "Surgical Surprises in the Domain of Psoudo-
Hermaphroditism, containing One Hundred and Thirty-four Observations of
Cases, with Fifty-four Instances of Erroneous Determination of Sox, in most
Cases proved by the Scalpel," op. cit., 1903, vol. v., pp. 205-424 ; same author,
" One Hundred and Three Observations of more or loss marked Development of a
Uterus in the Male (pseudohermaphroditismus masculinus internus), in addition to
a Compilation of Observations of Regular Periodic Bleeding from the Genital
Organs, Menstruation, Vicarious Menstruation, Pseudo-Menstruation, Molimina
Menstrual i.i. etc., in Pseudo- Hermaphrodites," op. cit., 1904, vol. vi., pp. 215-326 ;
same author, " Compend of the Literature of Hermaphroditism in Human Beings,"
op. cit., 1905, vol. vii., pp. 471-670, and 1906, vol. viii., pp. 685-700.

4 Magnus Hirschfeld, Sexual Links : Intermixture of Masculine and Feminine
Sexual Characters (Sexual Intermediate Stages)," Leipzig, 1905.

552

reproductive glands (" ovotestes ") has been proved as an actual
fact. Walter Simon, in the one hundred and seventy-second
volume of Virchow's Archives, has described the rare case of
true hermaphroditism observed by Garre. In a person twenty-one
years of age, brought up as a man, and having thoroughly mascu
line feelings, there suddenly occurred, associated with swelling
of the breasts (gynecomasty), monthly recurring haemorrhages,
proceeding from the supposed intertesticular fissure ; also from
time to time, associated with voluptuous erection of the penis,
there was discharged whitish mucus, and the libidinous ideas
connected with this discharge referred always to women. The
physical structure and facial expression of this individual were
feminine ; the build of the thorax, the shoulders, and the shape
of the arms exhibited male characteristics. In a right-sided
swelling, resembling an inguinal hernia, were found a testicle-
ovary (Ger. Hodeneierstock), an epididymis, a parovarium, a
spermatic cord, and a Fallopian tube.

More frequent than these cases, in which naturally the deter-
mination of sex is practically impossible, are cases of pseudo-
hermaphroditism, which also possess the greatest importance in
connexion with the problem of pseudo-homosexuality. In these
cases of pseudo-hermaphroditism the reproductive glands are,
in fact, distinctively male or female, but the characteristics of
the excretory organs and of the external genital organs do not
enable us to determine the sex, for they are in part male, in part
female, and in part completely undifferentiated, which is to be
explained as dependent upon an incomplete or entirely wanting
differentiation of the primitively identical rudiment of the ex-
ternal genital organs of the two sexes (inhibition of the pro-
cesses of growth at some stage of development). Thus there
arises pseudo-hermaphroditismus masculinus, in cases in which
the genital fissure is not completely closed, so that the urethra
possesses a fissure below (hypospadias) ; also the two halves of
the scrotum may fail to join, so that a fissure is left between them,
simulating a vaginal inlet. Since in these cases the testicles are
commonly retained within the abdominal cavity, or else appear
in the inguinal region, simulating an inguinal hernia, the penis
is believed to be a kind of enlarged clitoris, and the individual
is mistaken for a woman (erreur de sexe). If it further happens
that, on account of«the supposed inguinal hernia, the individual
is ordered to wear, and continues to wear, a truss, the testicular
tissue disappears completely as a result of pressure atrophy, and
the correct diagnosis becomes more difficult than ever. I

553

recently saw a case of this kind in a male hermaphrodite, twenty-
two years of age, who had been brought up as a woman. He had,
however, always felt attraction towards women, and, having a
large membrum, he was able, notwithstanding the existence of
hypospadias, to complete regular coitus. In the ejaculated
semen the examining physician had not found any spermatozoa ;
but in this case the testicles had doubtless atrophied in con-
sequence of the wearing of a truss. This pseudo-hermaphrodite
has recently published the history of his upbringing as a
" woman." The work is of great interest from the psychological
point of view, and is entitled " A Man's Years as a Girl," by
" Nobody " (Berlin, 1907).

Where the reproductive glands are female there results a
pseudo-hermaphroditismus femininus in cases in which the
external genital organs of this female pseudo-hermaphrodite
exhibit a certain similarity with the genital organs of the male —
for example, when the clitoris is exceptionally large, and the
labia majora have grown together, so that the vaginal inlet
appears to be wanting. In this case also there may be a mistake
in diagnosis, and, consequently, the individual having been
educated as a man, apparent homosexuality may result when the
natural sexual inclination towards the male manifests itself in
due course.

In both varieties of pseudo-hermaphroditism there exist very
various anatomical and physiological possibilities in respect of
the relationship of the secondary sexual characters to the ana-
tomical character of the reproductive glands, in respect of the
menstrual equivalents in male pseudo-hermaphrodites, in respect
of the relationship of the sexual impulse to the reproductive
glands, in respect of the greater or less strength of the impulse,
in respect of periodic genital haemorrhages in male pseudo-
hermaphrodites, in respect of possible sexual aberrations, etc.
For more exact details I must refer the reader to the works of
Neugebauer and Hirschfeld. Here I will only refer to a case
described by the last-named author, of a male pseudo-herma-
phrodite, forty years of age, Friderike S., who had been brought
up as a " woman," who at a very early age had exhibited an
inclination towards women only, and an antipathy to sexual
intercourse with men. In this individual a reproductive gland
resembling a testicle could be detected, out of which there issued
a structure resembling the spermatic cord. In the left inguinal
canal was an atrophied reproductive gland of indeterminate
character. The membrum was something between penis and

554

clitoris. The labia majora and minora bounded a short caecal
vagina. Internal female reproductive organs could not be
detected. On the other hand, there appeared to be a prostate
gland. In the sexual secretion, which was discharged by a
different opening from the urine, H. Friedenthal was able to
detect very numerous completely normal spermatozoa, whereby
the male character of this pseudo-woman was completely proved,
and whereby also the alleged " homosexual " tendencies were
now shown to be heterosexual.

CHAPTER XXI
ALGOLAGNIA (SADISM AND MASOCHISM)

' We must continually keep before our minds the fact that in no
other department of life so much as in the sexual life do we find side by
side, and closely associated each with the other, thenoblest and the basest,
the superhuman and the subhuman, because the finest and the deepest
roots of our spiritual and bodily existence spring, for the most part,
from this subsoil ; and we must remember that man would not be
able to sink so deep, far beneath the level of animality, if he had
not first raised himself by his own powers, in conflict with Nature
and with himself, through an immeasurable height of civilization." —
ALBERT EULENBURG.

566

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXI

Algolagnia, or painful voluptuousness — Biological roots of algolagnia — Its r61e in
the civilized life of mankind — Connexion between pain and voluptuousness —
Pain in the vita sexualis — Sadism and masochism — Physiological algo-
lagnistic phenomena — The sexual enjoyment of spiritual pain — Philoso-
phical views on this subject — Weltschmerz and pessimism as sources of
pleasure — The joy of grief — Cruelty as intermediator in the production of
algolagnia — Theories of cruelty — The enjoyment of power — Nietzsche's
justification of cruelty as a factor in civilization — Sadistic and masochistic
phenomena of civilization — Examples from the present day — Increase of
sexual desire by means of emotional concussion — Evolutionary theory of
algolagnia — Cruelty of woman — Debauchees and prostitutes — " Tropical
frenzy " as an especial form of sadism — Various explanations of tropical
frenzy — Influence of sexual differences between man and woman — Genesis
of the " hen-pecked " state and of "mistress-rule " — Coquetry and flirtation
— Frequent association with sadism and masochism — Flagellation as the
principal form of algolagnia — Imitation of physiological algolagnia — Excit-
ing influence of massage and friction — Various factors of the sexual influence
of passive flagellation — Active flagellation — Chance occurrences leading to the
development of flagellomania — Sexual influence of whipping upon children —
Examples — " Schoolmaster's fiagellantism " (Dippoldism) — Examples —
Flagellation and prostitution — Flagellation brothels — Inclination of woman
to flagellation — A Parisian " school " — " Corset discipline " — Sadistic
bodily injuries and lust-murder — Characteristics of lust-murder — " Girl
slabbers " — Other forms of sadistic bodily injury — Sexual vampirism —
Offences against property committed from sadistic motives — Vitriol throw-
ing— Sadistic arson — Sexual kleptomania — Symbolic forms of sadism —
Verbal sadism — Erotic dictionaries — Verbal exhibitionism — Example —
Other varieties of symbolical algolagnia — Satanism — Wide diffusion of
passive algolagnia, of masochism — Passive algolagnia — Examples — Maso-
chistic instrumentarium — A masochistic " torture-chamber " — Masochistic
prostitution — Letter of a masochist — A " elave " — Characterization of male
masochists — A very typical case of masochism — Masochism in women —
Letter of a female masochist.

Appendix : A contribution to the psychology of the Russian revolution
(History of the development of an algolagnistic revolutionist).

656

CHAPTER XXI

THE homosexual and pseudo-homosexual phenomena described
in the preceding chapters constitute a far from universal variety
of sexual impulse, but " algolagnia " is much commoner. This
name was introduced by Schrenck-Notzing as a general term for
the phenomena of sadism and masochism, since these two sexual
aberrations are closely related one to the other.

Algolagnia, or painful lasciviousness, if we exclude from con-
sideration its most extreme manifestations, such as lust-murder
and suicide from lust, belongs unquestionably to the most widely
diffused of sexual aberrations ; indeed, in its slighter forms it is
almost universal. An experienced woman told Havelock Ellis1
that she had known only one single man who was entirely free
from sadistic lust ; and, on the other hand, there are few women
in whose sexuality no algolagnistic phenomena are demonstrable.
This is natural, for algolagnia, differing in this respect from other
sexual aberrations, has the deepest biological roots. Its nucleus,
pleasure in the pain of others or in one's own pain (the term "pain "
being here used in the very widest significance, both physical
and mental), is an elementary phenomenon of amatory activity.
" Love is in its very nature pain," we read in the " Divan " of
the Persian poet Rumi. It is certain that we have here to do with
an anthropological phenomenon, one that is normal within wide
limits. Algolagnia plays the greatest role in the individual life
of single human beings and in the civilized life of humanity at
large. It enables us to get a view into the hidden depths of the
human spirit, and displays to us the remarkable phenomenon of
the association of primeval animal instincts with the highest
spirituality. It at the same time debases love, and renders it
more profound, and it touches the most secret aspects of our
nature.

"Der Schmerz beseelt
Und er entfesselt nied're Triebe,
Die sonst deni Menschenherz gefehlt. . . .
Der Schmerz betaubt — er kaun begliicken,
Im Schmerz liegt ein geheimea Fleh'n ;
Er lasst rait feurigem Beriicken
Ein frevelhaftes Bild ersteh'n,"

1 Havelock Ellis, "Studies in the Psychology of Sex," vol. iii., "Analysis of
the Sexual Impulse."

057

658

[" Pain animates

And unchains lower impulses,

Which had otherwise been absent from the human heart. . . .

Pain benumbs — but may also give happiness,

For in pain is hidden a secret prayer ;

With an ardent charm

It gives rise to a wanton idea "]

sings Joseph Lauff in his " Geisslerin " (Cologne, 1901). Is there
any pleasure without pain ? is there any love without sorrow ?
He who is familiar with the history of civilization will answer these
questions in the negative. Pain is a civilizing factor of the first
rank ; it is the necessary pre-condition and the inevitable accom-
paniment of pleasure and the affirmation of life. This is the
central idea of the philosophy of Nietzsche. The pain of love is
only a special case of the great immeasurable Weltschmerz and
Weltlust (world-pain and world-joy), which move us so deeply
in the powerful descriptions of Schopenhauer, and have always
been the most lofty objects of contemplation to philosophers
and to students of civilization.1

That love-pleasure and love-pain, the forces of creation and
destruction — yes, indeed, that love and death (which Leopardi
in a wonderful poem celebrated as twin brothers) — are separated
only by a " thin veil " (Havelock Ellis), was an idea first ex-
pressed in the celebrated work of the formidable Marquis de Sade,2
whose books, taken as a whole, are merely a paraphrase of the
idea of the connexion between pain and voluptuousness ; and,
moreover, de Sade does not recognize this connexion only in active
algolagnia — that is, in the infliction of pain, the voluptuousness
of cruelty, the so-called " sadism " — but he recognizes it equally
in passive algolagnia, in the suffering of pain, the voluptuousness
of being tortured, in the state named after the author Sacher-
Masoch, " masochism." De Sade, who was the first consistent
advocate of the anthropologico-ethnological theory of psycho-
pathia sexualis, himself collected almost all the facts regarding
the biological roots of painful lasciviousness, and regarding
algolagnistic phenomena in ethnology and in the history of
civilizatioD.

1 A special account of this matter is found in an interesting work by G. H.
Schneider, " Joy and Sorrow of the Human Race : a Social and Psychological
Investigation of the Fundamental Problems of Ethics " (Stuttgart, 1883).

2 Cf. Eugen Duhren (Iwan Bloch), " Recent Researches regarding the Marquis
de Sade and his Time " (Berlin, 1904). I refer the reader to this, my second,
work on the Marquis de Sade, as a critical description of the true de Sade based
upon contemporary sources. My former work upon this subject I now regard as
inadequate, youthful, and containing numerous errors.

559

The foundation for the understanding of active and passive
algolagnia is constituted by the fact that we have here, in the first
place, to do with a purely biological phenomenon, which makes
its appearance in every normal love. The sexual act exhibits
to us pain and pleasure in an indissoluble association. Love's
embrace is a " sweet pain," a painful pleasure.1

The nature of the sense of voluptuousness is still rather obscure,
but it is certain that painful sensations make their appearance
as its accompaniment, probably indeed as an actual part of
voluptuousness. I may remind the reader of the interesting
remarks of Edmund Forster, mentioned on p. 44, regarding the
conception of sexual tension as a stimulation of the pain-per-
ceiving nerves of the genital organs. Still more clearly is pain
reflected (pain both active and passive) in the love-embrace itself,
in the phenomena2 which we previously (pp. 50-51) described, such
as fierce embraces, convulsive seizures, grinding of the teeth,
screaming and biting, both on the part of the man and on the
part of the woman. Lucretius (" De Rerum Natura," iv., verses
1054-1061) gave a vivid description of the normal sadistic and
masochistic accompaniments of coitus. In this association
sadism certainly predominates on the part of the man, though
not exclusively ; and, contrariwise, masochism predominates,
though not exclusively, on the part of the woman. The sadistic
" love-bites," for example, are more frequently given by the
woman, especially among savage races,3 but among the Slavonic
peoples it7 is the man rather who practises the " biting-kiss "
during the sexual act.4

" Es brausen mir wie Wirbelwind
Ira Busen namenlose Triebe :
Ich mochte dich beissen, einzig Kind,
Du siisse Frucht, vor Lust and Liebe,"

[" Nameless impulses are raging
Like a whirlwind in my breast :
I should like to bite you, little one,
Sweet little fruit, to bite you from desire and love "]

writes Karl Beck in his " Stille Lieder."

How closely these phenomena are connected with the ideas of
blood and cruelty, and how this connexion is favoured by the

1 See the description of this in G. Hirth's " Ways to Love," p. 638.

2 They are still more clearly to be observed in animals.

3 Havelock Ellis, " Eroticism and Pain," in his " Analysis of the Sexual
Impulse."

4 Friedrich S. Krauas, " Procreation in the Morals, the Customs, and the
Beliefs of the Southern Slavs," published in Kryptadia, vol. vii., pp. 208, 209
(Paris, 1899).

560

redness and the flow of blood during sexual excitement, are
matters previously discussed (p. 51) ; and in my " Contributions
to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis " (vol. ii., pp. 39-41)
I have considered the question at greater length. In the same
category must also be placed the sexually stimulating influence
of red colours.

In association with these algolagnistic manifestations, so long
as they remain within physiological bounds, we do not so much
see actual physical pain, the actual infliction of suffering or
cruelty, as the idea thereof, as mental pain ; indeed, actual pain
is often not lustful, as such, but only in idea. Eulenburg,1
especially, has rightly drawn attention to this mental intensifica-
tion of algolagnia. Mental pain and tears give a wonderful depth
to love, increase passion, as Goethe describes in his " Stella."
Love needs pain, in order to be perceived as love. Why ?
Because pain is something new, a contrast to pleasure, whose
eternity would be unbearable. This is described very clearly in
the " Letters of Ninon de L'Enclos," which, though apocryphal,
are not less psychologically interesting (German edition, pp. 220,
221 ; Berlin, 1906).

" Change in the spiritual state is important to the happiness of both
the lovers. And what could better provide this advantage than a
separation ? Have you never experienced the sweetness of a tender
separation ? The disquiet, the commiseration, the tears which ac-
company the departing lover, are they not something most valuable
to a delicate, sensitive soul ? Commonly, lovers regard separation
for a few days as an evil. But if they examined the nature of their
reputed pain a little more closely, they would soon perceive that this
pain does not make a purely disagreeable impression on the soul ; on
the contrary, an entrancing joy lies hidden therein. The pain enfolds
a delightful charm ; and we learn that the heart, however much it
may be moved with sympathy, always finds itself in an agreeable
mood as soon as it is able to exercise its sensibility."

Similarly, G. H. Schneider remarks (op. cit., pp. 126, 127),
that in all love relationships there arises a need for becoming
aware of

" the contrast between the pain and the ecstasy of love, by misunder-
standings, by transient mental torment, by momentary jealousy on
the part of the woman, or by sportive or earnest threats ; and this need
is gratified instinctively by man, because he feels instinctively that
love without it disappears or will disappear."

1 A. Eulenburg, " Sadism and Masochism," published in " Borderland Ques-
tions of Nervous and Mental Life," No. 19, pp. 9, 10 (published by Loewenfeld and
Kurella, Wiesbaden, 1902).

561

He explains this necessity for pain and sorrow in love as dependent
upon a degree of exhaustion, a fatigue of the nerve-centres con-
cerned, which demand a period of repose. In the ancestors of the
human race, and in the lower animals, this repose was obtained
by the alternation of quite opposite feelings, such a§ love and
hate ; thus the occasional stimulation of those centres also by
which pain is perceived is a physiological necessity for the
nervous system.

Nothing, in fact, is harder to bear than a succession of beauti-
ful days ; this is true even of love. Why is it that the very best,
unalterably tender wives or husbands are so frequently deceived ?
Certainly it is because they often forget that with the sweetness
of love it is necessary to intermingle a little bitterness, and so to
allow their partner now and again to experience the "joy of grief."

" Frau Venus, meine schone Frau,
Von sussem Wein and Kiissen
1st meine Seele worden krank,
Ich schmachte nach Bitternissen."

HEINRICH HEINE.

[" Madame Venus, beautiful lady,
Of sweet wine and kisses
I am sick unto death —
I yearn for a taste of bitterness."]

Mental pain as a general sociological, literary, and philosophical
phenomenon, manifests itself as Weltschmerz and pessimism.
Both modes of perception conceal intense feelings of pleasure.
Schopenhauer, who was well aware of this fact, remarks ("Works,"
ed. Grisebach, i., 508) that the recognition of the sorrows of
existence, of the misery which extends itself over the whole of
life, is accompanied by a secret joy, which by the " most melan-
choly " of all nations was termed the " joy of grief." Admirably
also has Kuno Fischer, in his account of Schopenhauer's philo-
sophy, described the pleasure to be found in the pessimistic mode
of perception ; and 0. Zimmermann has written an interesting
psychological work upon the " Joy of Grief " (second edition ;
Leipzig, 1885).

The pleasure anyone experiences in his own pain, or in that of
another, constitutes the nucleus of all algolagnistic phenomena, and
to cruelty as an intermediator in this painful lasciviousness there
belongs only a secondary role. The deeply-rooted instinct of
cruelty, which first manifests itself in early childhood, is bio-
logically associated with the perception of pain. Various theories
of cruelty have been propounded. Thus, according to Sohopen-

562

hauer, cruelty gives rise to pain in another, in order to diminish
its own pain ; and, according to this view, it is only a means of
treatment for the relief of one's own pain. More illuminating
is the explanation of the English psychologist Bain, who derives
cruelty from the consciousness of power and the enjoyment of
power, from the delight felt in dominating the tortured indi-
vidual. Nietzsche is the most celebrated apostle of this diffusion
of power, this enjoyment of power in the " superman," and by
means of the " masterful morality." He formally does homage
to cruelty as a means of advancing towards higher civilization.

" Almost everything," he says, " which we call higher civilization
depends upon the spiritualization and deepening of cruelty. . . . That
which constitutes the painful pleasure of comedy is cruelty ; that which
is agreeable to our senses in the so-called tragic sympathy — fundamen-
tally, indeed, whatever is pleasurable to us up to the most intense and
delicate metaphysical horror — obtains its sweetness only from the
intermingled ingredient of cruelty. That which the Romans enjoyed
in the arena, that which Christ enjoyed in the Passion of the Cross,
the Spaniards regarding an auto-da-fe or a bull-fight, the Japanese of
to-day, with his love for the tragic, the Parisian workman who has a
passion for sanguinary revolutions, the Wagnerian rejoicing in the
spectacle of Tristan and Isolde — all alike enjoy, all alike are suffused
with secret ardour as they drain the Circe's cup of ' cruelty.'

" We must therefore," he continues with justice, " for ever deny the
absurd psychology which attempted to teach regarding cruelty that
it arose only from the view of another's pain ! There exists an abun-
dant— over-abundant — joy also in one's own pain, in making one's
own self suffer ; and whenever man persuades himself — it may be only
to self-denial in the religious sense, or to self- mutilation like the
Phoenicians and the ascetics, to self-torment in religion, to the puritanic
convulsive penitence, to the vivisection of conscience, and to Pascal's
sacrifice of the intellect — in all these alike he is lured onwards and im-
pelled forwards by his cruelty alone, by that dangerous emotion of
cruelty directed against himself."

With a few brilliant words Nietzsche thus describes the prin-
cipal phenomena of algolagnia. Ethnology and the history of
the world offer us in equal measure numerous interesting proofs
of the primitive tendency of human nature to sadistic and maso-
chistic manifestations. We must learn to recognize the diffusion
throughout the entire world of active and passive algolagnia,
making its appearance in the most diverse forms, in order to
understand many occurrences of the present day. In my " Con-
tributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis " (vol. ii.,
pp. 43-75, 95, 96, 109-113, 120-157, 228-240) I have collected
these anthropological and ethnological data, regarding the
universal diffusion of algolagnia in all epochs and in all countries ;

563

and I have referred to the occurrence of sadism and masochism
as affecting mankind in the mass, a fact of particular importance
in this connexion. To give some examples : Campaigns, gladia-
torial combats, man-hunts, beast-baiting, bull fights,1 sensational
dramas, public executions, inquisition and witch trials, lynch-
law as practised to-day in North America,2 in the behaviour of
the crowd of onlookers at the former punishment of the pillory,
especially also in revolutions, of which to-day once more we have
the most horrible examples in Russia (cf. also the appendix to
this chapter), in the primeval custom of marriage by capture, in
cannibalism, the belief in witches and werwolves, in slavery,
flagellantism, and the scourgers of the middle ages, the horrible
" satanism " of the same period, gynecocracy or the dominion
of woman, the service of women of the Minne epoch, the Italian
cicisbeato, and the Slavonic sexual slavery of men, asceticism and
martyrdom, the ethnological diffusion of skatological, kopro-
logioal, and urolagnistic practices, etc. These facts suffice to
prove that in all times, and among all nations, sadism and maso-
chism, in all the forms we still observe to-day, were most widely
diffused ; and to show that they arise from certain instincts
deeply rooted in the soul of the people, whose existence even
to-day manifests itself everywhere. Take, for example, the
following extract from the Vossiche Zeitung, No. 475, October 10,
1906:

" A great automobile race which took place in Long Island at the
beginning of the month presented certain features reminding us of
the old gladiatorial games. Three men were killed during the race,
a woman and a boy were so seriously injured that at the time of
writing they are at the point of death, and from twenty to thirty
persons suffered fractures and other grave injuries. From all parts
of the United States as many as half a million persons had assembled
to see the races. At the very outset the huge crowd was in a state of
hysterical excitement. The Automobile Club had taken the utmost
care in its preparations for the safety of the course, and had shut it
off on both sides by a net 8 feet in height. This protecting wall was,
however, torn down by the crowd, which pressed in everywhere,
especially at those places which the cars were to pass at their highest
speed. Notwithstanding all the warnings of the police, those in
search of sensation only tried to get out of the way when the cars
were close upon them. At a turning in the course there were assem-
bled 1,000 persons belonging to the best circles of New York society.
Every time when, at this dangerous point, one of the cars had an

1 Ch. Fere, " Sadism in the Bull-fight," published in the Revue de Mtdecine,
1900, No. 8.

2 The sadistic element in lynch law has recently been most vividly described
by Feliz Baumanr in his interesting book, " In Darkest America : Manners and
Customs in the United States " (Dresden, 1902).

36—2

564

accident, these people rushed forwards, in order to see as closely as
possible what was going on ; the women screamed and fainted from
excitement, while the police bludgeoned the people blindly, in order
to make room for the following cars, and in order to prevent worse
evils. The spectators were as if mad with the desire to see blood. A
lady who was pressing forward with the crowd, when one of the oars
had upset, expressed her disappointment plainly, ' Oh dear, there is no
one killed !' '

In an essay entitled " Russia as It Now Is," regarding the
Russian punitive expeditions against the revolutionaries, the
St. Petersburg correspondent of a German paper reports :

" These expeditions have long forgotten the political purpose of
their ' mission ' ; they murder simply out of congenital lust to murder,
from racial love of blood, from plainly perceptible morbid perversity.
The shooting of boys, the flogging of women, without mentioning the
still worse ' punishments ' which we cannot even venture to describe,
which take place in the presence of, or with the actual assistance of,
the greater and lesser provincial satraps, and regarding which I have
collected extensive material — all produced in me, who have been a
student of criminal psychology, very remarkable reflections."

In these cases, no doubt, the principal cause of the actions in
which cruelty becomes pleasurable is the powerful emotional
disturbance, the violent excitement, which, again, increases
sexual desire. De Sade himself was familiar with the fact that
excitement produced by strong emotions had a powerful in-
fluence upon sexual processes ; that it increased them, changed
them, and led to abnormal manifestations. " All sensations
increase one another mutually." Anger, fear, rage, hatred,
cruelty, increase sexual tension, and therewith also increase the
pleasure of the discharge of that tension. Bouillier1 drew atten-
tion to the fact that frequently in men, who otherwise have
exhibited in their life very genial and sympathetic natures, it
is not the desire of blood and suffering in itself which evokes
sexual cruelty, but it is the desire for this associated increase in
emotions. Similarly, Horwicz2 explains the joy of martyrdom
also as dependent upon the powerful sexual stimulation which it
produces.

A peculiar form of sexual excitement associated with emotional
disturbance has been described by Charles F6re, under the name
of ergophilia (" Note sur une Anomalie de 1'Instinct Sexuel : Ergo-
philie," published in Bdgique Medicate, 1905). The case was that
of a woman, twenty-six years of age, who when a child of four

1 Francisque Bouiller, Du Plaisir etdela Doideur, p. 72 (Paris, 1865).

2 A. Horwicz, " Psychological Analysis on Psychological Grounds," p. 361
(Magdeburg,^1878).

565

had first experienced sexual excitement at a fair while watch-
ing a little girl juggler of her own age playing with three
balls. Subsequently every time when this scene occurred to her
memory she had a sexual orgasm ; also when once at a circus she
was watching some gymnasts whose performance was character-
ized by elegance and ease, she had the same experience. The
same also occurred when she saw a man use a scythe. In a
frigid marriage she always returned to these imaginations, as the
only means of obtaining sexual gratification. Fe>e is right in
distinguishing from sadism this form of sexual excitement in-
duced by the view of elegant bodily exercises. The generally
exciting view of movement had in this case a special exciting
influence upon the genital organs of an obviously hysterical
person. Perhaps also the case reported by Amrain (Anthropo-
phyteia, vol. iv., p. 242) is similar to this — a case in which a man
fifty-three years of age was sexually excited by the spinning
round of prostitutes on rapidly rotating stools.

Helvetius, Bain, Lully, James, Herbert Spencer, Steinmetz,
and many other psychologists and anthropologists, have en-
deavoured to explain on evolutionary grounds this intimate
association between the emotions, and to establish an association
between cruelty and sexuality. They suggest that the gratifica-
tion of sexual needs is for the individual a love-battle, involving
the sacrifice of numerous opponents in order to gain the favour
of the beloved being. In this way there arose an association
between the shedding of blood and sexual enjoyment ; and the
rage of battle, as Marro very rightly insists, may sometimes be
suddenly transferred from the rival to the female herself, and
thus assume a sadistic character. Definite traces of this connexion
may still be observed among the popular customs of many nations,
as, for example, in New Caledonia, where the girls are pursued
by their lovers into the bush, and, after they have been over-
powered, and after sexual intercourse has taken place, " they are
brought back, bitten, bruised, scratched, covered with bites on
the shoulders and the back of the neck."

I regard the emotional theory of cruelty as the best, because it
provides the easiest explanation of all the facts ; and above all,
because it also explains the frequently observed cruelty of woman,
who, as the more easily excited creature, displays a higher, more
artificial kind of cruelty than man, whose balance is not so
easily disturbed by his emotions. Montaigne1 makes the acute
observation that cruelty is usually accompanied by a feminine

1 Michel Montaigne, " Kssnis." p. 35 (I'aria, 1880).

506

softness. Havelock Ellis1 also remarks that the most extreme,
most elaborate degree of sadism is commonly associated with a
somewhat feminine organization.

We might explain the cruelty of women, and that of enervated,
effeminate voluptuaries from fear and cowardice, from the
debasing consciousness of the weakness of their own personality,
which by means of cruelty takes revenge on the strength of another,
and transiently luxuriates in the associated intoxication of power,
in the mere idea of superiority. It is certainly in this way that
we must explain the horrible cruelty of worn-out debauchees,
such as is described by de Sade in his romances. Such types
also were Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Heliogabalus, and
Caesar Borgia ; among women, Catherine de Medici and those
" delicate Creole women who, after enjoying voluptuous pleasure
in intercourse with a negro slave, proceed to enjoy the further
pleasure of seeing the man unmercifully flogged."2

In addition, the blunting of the senses which results from long-
continued sexual excesses demands the stronger stimulus of
cruelty. Just as in the debauchee, so also in the prostitute,
this blunting of the senses induces a predisposition to sadism.
Many prostitutes and masseuses become sadists quite as much
from inclination as from custom (the latter from intercourse
with masochistic clients) ; and they find sexual pleasure in tor-
menting men, regarding themselves as incorporate ideals of
" mistresses."

Among Europeans, residence in hot climates gives rise to a pecu-
liar form of tropical cruelty, the so-called " tropical frenzy."
The psychology of this condition is complex. Various predis-
posing causes must concur in order to produce tropical frenzy.
In the first place, it occurs almost exclusively in Europeans who
fill official positions giving them very extensive powers, such as
they did not enjoy before leaving home. Those who become
affected live usually in regions in which all the limitations of
conventional morality and of social relationships with their fellow-
countrymen are laid aside, so that the civilized man is in a
position which enables him to follow without restraint his own
inward impulses ; also he finds himself in contact with an " in-
ferior " race, which he regards and treats as half or completely
animal.3 The influence of climate is also of great importance,
as Hans von Becker assumes. Owing, it may be, to the intense

1 Havelock Ellis, " Analysis of the Sexual Impulse."

2 J. J. Virey, " Woman," p. 347.

3 This point of view has been especially insisted on by Felix von Luschan.
C\. Politsch-anthropohgische Revue, 1902, No. 1 p. 71.

567

heat, disturbances of metabolism ensue, and by the formation
of toxins, the central nervous system and the psyche are injured,
and thus there is induced a " tropical moral insanity," a morbid
impulsiveness, associated with complete loss of understanding
of ordinary ethical and moral principles. Or, again, it is possible
that, as Plehn believes, the abnormally high temperature gives
rise to acute outbreaks only in chronic alcoholists, taking the form
of tropical frenzy. In any case, this disorder is with especial
frequency characterized by marked sadistic practices, as is proved
by the colonial scandals of every country. In connexion with
this, we do not need any further demonstration of the manner in
which the institutions of slavery and serfdom have always induced
and furthered sadistic instincts, and, speaking generally, the
same is true of all relationships by which isolated individuals
are given uncontrolled powers over the bodies and lives of their
fellow-men.

A chief cause of algolagnia, of active algolagnia, but more
especially of the passive form, is to be found in the diverse sexual
demeanour of man and woman respectively, and this, again,
depends upon the difference between the masculine and feminine
natures. Opposed to the stormy, eager activity of the man, we
have the quiet passivity of the woman. The latter has aptly
been compared to a magnet which, notwithstanding its own
apparent immobility, still irresistibly attracts and holds fast
the iron (the man), making the latter in a sense her slave ; upon
this passivity depends the unmistakable superiority of woman in
purely sensual love. Physical nature alone gives her an advantage
over man, just precisely in the point to which she outwardly
appears subordinated to him. Thus, among the Indians of
Central Brazil man is officially lord and master of woman — and
does what she wills.1 Thus it has always been in the highest
grades of civilization also, wherever sensual relationships have
been solely effective in determining the relative positions of men
and women. The true " henpecked husband " (I say " true,"
because there also exist such in appearance only) of our European
civilization is the man who, from the beginning, has been sub-
jected to the domination of his wife in consequence of his own
immoderate sexual needs ; by these needs he has been perma-
nently placed under her control, and this control has secondarily
been extended to other relationships. This is the psychological
secret of the henpecked state, just as it is also of the " mistress

1 K. von den Stcinen, " The Savage Races of Central Brazil," p. 332
(Berlin, 1894).

rule," which, beginning as a purely sexual relationship between
king or prince on the one hand and his mistress on the other, later
extends also to the domain of political activity. The greater the
sexual passivity and coldness of the woman, the more readily does
she gain dominion over the man. A favourite means for this
purpose is the practice of " coquetry " (a matter previously dis-
cussed), which can also be defined as the activity of women in
fettering men to themselves and in bringing them under feminine
dominion. The Anglo-Saxon " flirt " is only a lighter shade of
" coquette," representing rather spiritual-resthetic coquetry,
whilst the true coquette makes use of purely sensual means, and
speculates upon sex only, without reference to the intellectual
qualities. " A truly coquettish woman listens with pleasure to
the rankest flattery of the most insignificant individual ; she takes
the trouble to stimulate the desires of the most contemptible
being, although she is daily surrounded by longing admirers." l
Joseph Peladan relates in one of his romances how a distinguished
lady, while getting into her carriage, intentionally displayed her
leg +o a poor man standing by, although at the very same moment
she was coquetting audaciously with a gentleman of her own
rank. Woman instinctively aims at the subjection of man, and
voluptuous stimulation serves her as the best-tried means of doing
this. In so far as man becomes the " slave " and victim of his
sensuality, does he exhibit a masochistic disposition ; but, in so
far as by his force and his intelligence he overcomes this sexual
dependency, and by means of his natural activity and energy
displayed also in sexual relationships, behaves heedlessly and
brutally to the woman, who has now become completely passive,
does the sadistic element preponderate in him. From this we
are able to understand how it is that sadism and masochism
may often appear in the same person ; they are only the active
and the passive form respectively of the algolagnia which
lies at the basis of both of them, and in which the true essence of
both these phenomena subsists.

When in the following paragraphs we briefly describe the
individual phenomena and types of sadism and masochism, we
do this always with the tacit implication that the majority of
types are not pure forms either of sadism or masochism, but re-
present a mixture of both. This is especially true of the most
widely diffused of all algolagnistic perversions, the so-called
flagellomania (sexual desire for flagellation or flagellantism) — that

1 S. R. Steinmetz, " Ethnological Studios regarding the First Development of
Punishment," vol. i., p. 23 (Leiden and Leipzig, 1894).

569

is to say, flogging and whipping, or being flogged and whipped
in order to induce sexual excitement. An elaborately critical
account of sexual flagellantism in its physiological, psychological,
literary, and historical relationships is to be found in the second
volume of my work on " The Sexual Life in England," pp. 336-
481 (Berlin, 1903). In this passage there is a fairly complete
collection, alike of the older and of the newer literary material
devoted to this topic.1

Flagellation is, therefore, the principal means by which sadistic
tendencies become active, because in this manner all the physio-
logical sadistic accompaniments of sexual intercourse unite, and
make their appearance with a stronger potentiality. It is an
imitation and a conscious synthesis of these sadistic accompani-
ments, which in their most primitive form are to be seen in the
lower animals. Especially in the case of tritons and salamanders
we can observe a typical flagellation, effected by means of the tail,
prior to coitus. The voluptuous gratification during flagellation
varies in character according as the flagellation is active or passive.
The nature of the latter is as follows : by vigorous friction and
blows, especially in the region of the genital organs, and more
particularly on the buttocks, a peculiarly increased voluptuous
stimulus is induced by the painful sensations. Simple massage
and friction of the skin suffices to produce such an effect, especially
after warm baths, as has long been known in the East, and is
employed in the so-called " Turkish baths." More especially,
the rubbing of the buttocks evokes a purely physical reflex
stimulation of the spinal and sympathetic ejaculatory centre ;
still more rapidly is this produced by flogging and whipping of
these parts (the so-called " lower discipline "). The painful
sensations are said ultimately to undergo complete transforma-
tion into voluptuous sensations ; unquestionably the imagination
must here render much assistance, and the masochistic element
is especially marked in those who undergo passive flagellation.
The increased flow of blood to the genital organs, to which the
flagellation necessarily gives rise, must also obviously play a
part in evoking and strengthening the voluptuous sensation.
Simultaneously also this congestion gives rise to erection of the

1 C\. also Albert Eulcnburg, " Sadism and Masochism," pp. 57-68 (with a good
bibliography ; Wiesbaden, 1902) ; Iwan Bloeh, " Contributions to the Etiology of
Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. ii., pp. 75-97 ; Pierre Guenole, " L'etrango Passion.
La Flagellation dans lea Moeurs d'Aujourd'hui. Etudes et Documents " (Paris,
1904) ; Don Brennus Alera, " La Flagellation Passionollo " (Paris, 1905) ; Lord
Drialys, " Lea Delioes du Fouet. Prec£d£ d'un Essai sur la Flagellation et le
MaHochisme par Jean de Villiot " (contains numerous interesting details ; Paris,
1907).

570

penis ; hence the very ancient employment of flagellation to re-
lieve impotence, alluded to by Petronius in a celebrated passage
of his " Satyricon."

In the case of active flagellation, the voluptuous stimulation
is mainly of a sadistic nature ; the view of the parts quivering
under the lash, becoming red or even bleeding, the cries of the
person who is being whipped, the erotic influence of the kalli-
pygian charms, here play the principal role.

The inclination to flagellation, both passive and active, is
generally aroused by some chance occurrence, such as looking at
a flogging, when the spectator finds himself to be in a state of
sexual excitement and recognizes its cause — as, for example, in
consequence of the official and ritual practice of flogging in schools,
prisons,1 barracks, monasteries, etc., also by whipping and giving
blows in social games. Especially dangerous is the whipping of
children, whose sexual impulse is only too often aroused by
blows upon the buttocks, and then, unconsciously, this excite-
ment is in their minds permanently endowed with a causal
connexion with whipping, from which ultimately a perversion
(flagellomania) is induced. Well known is Rousseau's description
of this connexion in his " Confessions." I append the following
description by a patient of this tendency to flagellation :

" In a similar way to that which you describe, flagellantism was un-
fortunately awakened in me in early youth. This was first developed
in me by the fact that my parents allowed the maidservants to exercise
a far-reaching right of chastisement. When I was fourteen years old,
I still received whippings from the servants, with my father's knowledge
and consent ; and these whippings, since my father had forbidden any
other kind of chastisement as harmful to health, took place on the
buttocks, and were always effected after this region of the body had
been bared. I still remember most vividly that when I was at the
age mentioned a maidservant who was hardly two years older than
myself switched me in this region with especial zeal. I remember
also that when I was in my ninth year, owing to the free use which the
maidservants commonly made of their privilege, I had entirely ceased
to dread this chastisement ; indeed from that time I often intentionally
incurred a wliipping by the maids, which was not difficult ; and from
the age of fourteen years I personally gave the maidservants my per-
mission to chastise me in the above manner without the knowledge of my
parents, and was always thrown by it into a state of sexual excite-
ment. Such excitement was also produced in me by merely witnessing
the chastisement of my two sisters, who were somewhat younger than

1 Especially at the time when flogging as a judicial punishment was still prac-
tised in Germany. The sadistic influence of this punishment is described by
W. Reinhard in his celebrated book " Lenchen im Zuchthause " (" Lenchen in
the Penitentiary "), reprinted 1901 (Karlsruhe, 1840). In Russia these conditions
remain unaltered.

571

myself, both of whom were still beaten with a switch when they were
fifteen years of age. As regards my two sisters, this did not lead to
desire on their part that this procedure, which was always disagreeable
to them, should be frequently repeated, but they were always glad to
see me whipped ; and, as a matter of fact, my own sensation of pleasure
was greatly increased by their being present, and moreover, especially
in later years, I always enjoyed it more if the maidservant whipped
me in the presence of her friends or if one of them let me hold her
hand during the process. I especially preferred being struck with
the bare hands, although occasionally I endured severe whippings
with the stick or with the dog- whip at my own special request."

In a second case which came under my own observation, the
person affected being a lawyer, then twenty-eight years of age,
the cause of the development of his flagellomania was different
and more indirect.

At the age of eleven or twelve years he was lying on the top of a
dog-kennel and masturbating, and he had tied his feet to the top of
the kennel, lest, when in a state of sexual excitement, he might fall
off. Since then he had always felt an impulse to have himself tied, which
he sought to satisfy in boyish games (robbers, police, etc.) ; tliis always
induced in him agreeable sexual feelings, which were further increased
by onanistic friction. At the age of fifteen there became associated
with this desire to be tied a further need to be whipped while he was
tied up. This patient has a disinclination to normal coitus and to
the female genital organs, but he desires to receive flagellation only
from women. Two successive attempts at normal sexual intercourse
were unsuccessful. The patient induced in a maidservant the in-
clination to passive and active flagellation, and this woman, although
she resisted at first, was subsequently, six months later, a passionate
flagellant. In other respects the patient is thoroughly healthy, and
has been through his one-year term of military service in the cavalry.

With regard to the origin of " schoolmaster's sadism," which
is, unfortunately, very widely diffused, the well-known case of
the schoolmaster Dippold recently gave a horrible example.1

The teacher or schoolmaster may, at the commencement of his
activity, be entirely free from any flagellantic tendency. This
tendency makes its appearance in the course of the customary
exercise of his duties of physical chastisement. This gradually
induces in him a sense of sexual pleasure. As long as these
chastisements are kept within normal bounds, and only occasion-
ally undertaken, we have to do merely with a tendency, with an
aberration of sexual gratification, such as occurs in numerous
healthy individuals, even when they are not teachers or school-

1 P. Nacke, " Forensic, Psychiatrical, and Psychological Aspects of the Trial
of Dippold, especially in Connexion with Sadism," published in the Archive* for
Criminal Anthropology, 1903, vol. xiii., No. 4, pp. 350-372.

572

masters, persons who seek and find an opportunity for the exer-
cise of these tendencies in the brothel or with " masseuses."
When, however, a systematic flagellomania develops, and the
person affected no longer merely chastises, but maltreats and
tortures, and does this habitually and with bestial cruelty, as in
Dippold's case, we certainly have always to do with sadism
developed in the soil of a morbid predisposition. The following
cases appear to be of this nature :

1. A case which reminds us of that of Dippold recently appeared
before the Second Criminal Chamber in Hamburg. The accused was
a man belonging to the cultured classes, who had had a University
education, had become a reserve officer, and had filled many other
positions, finally that of the editor of a journal published by an adver-
tising firm. The accused lived in Berlin in the years 1900 to 1903.
There he formed an intimacy with a woman, whom he induced to en-
trust him with her son, for the continuance of his education. Going
himself to live in Hamburg in July, 1903, the boy was sent to him
in that town in January, 1904, and was placed in a boarding school.
" In order not to be disturbed in his teaching," the man also rented
a room in the neighbourhood of the school. When engaging this room
he asked the landlady if there were curtains to cover the windows.
On the first day on which she visited the room the landlady noticed
that the accused flogged the boy, and as she did not wish to allow
this in her dwelling, she reported the matter to the police. After
some time the woman learned by questioning the boy certain remark-
able facts, especially with regard to the " educational methods "
which the accused had carried out in Berlin, and in her report to the
police she added certain details, which led to the arrest of the accused.
The accused admitted that he had caned the boy severely, and lie
declared that he had done this only for educational reasons, as the
boy was of a bad character. In this respect the statement of the
accused was confuted by the evidence of the boy's teacher in Berlin,
that of his teacher in Hamburg, and that of the inmates of the pension
in which he lived ; all of these gave him a very good character.
With respect to the mode of chastisement, the details of which were
heard in camera, the court held that there was no doubt that the
accused had chastised the boy, not for educational reasons, but on
account of perverse tendencies of his own, and condemned him to
imprisonment for one year and loss of civil rights for two years. It is
a noteworthy fact that the accused, during the latter part of this
period of association with the boy, had lived in a happy marriage with
a young woman.

2. A disciple of Dippold. The following remarkable case was
published in the Berliner Tageblatt, No. 629, December 11, 1903 :
A furniture-polisher of this town accosted boys whom he met in the
street, gave them some trifling commission, and so arranged matters
with them that they must ultimately return to him at his room. Here
he gave himself out to be a detective officer, showed the boy a token
which he pretended was his official commission, and then gave the
boy a severe lecture. " He regretted," he said in conclusion, that,
owing to the misconduct of the lad, it would be necessary to fine his

573

parents, unless the offences were condoned by the immediate chastise-
ment of the boy. The " detective " easily persuaded his victims that
it would be better to accept the immediate flogging. After he had
stretched his victim across his knees and beaten him with a stick,
he looked to see that the blows had not made too obvious marks, and
sent the lad away with a further brief admonition. In most instances
the boys who had been whipped concealed what had happened from
their parents ; but still the matter came to light, and this new Dippold
is to be tried for causing grievous bodily harm, and for the false pre-
tence that he occupied an official position. The accused is a young man,
twenty-five years of age, and, with his small and slender figure and with
a blonde moustache, he makes rather the impression of a young man
of eighteen.

Very frequently the tendency to flagellation is at first artificially
evoked in brothels. Hogarth, in his "A Harlot's Progress," has
rightly depicted the switch as a necessary requisite of the interior
of a brothel, and this simple instrument of flagellation is rarely
absent from a prostitute's dwelling. It appears to be England
alone, the classical country of flagellomania, in which actual
" flagellation brothels " have existed.1 A historical example is
that of the celebrated establishment of Theresa Berkley, the
inventor of an especial apparatus for the whipping of men, the
so-called " Berkley-Horse." It appears that in England the
female sex has a taste for active and passive flagellation ; and we
find that a German author2 attributes to woman a greater inclina-
tion towards flagellomania than that exhibited by man. This
tendency is encouraged by certain male flagellants, who obtain
sexual gratification by the flagellation of women. Guenole
(op. cit., pp. 151, 152) reports the existence of secret places in
Paris where young women and girls combine to form a kind of
" school," in which male sadists carry out " instruction " with the
switch !

In connexion with flagellation we must consider the peculiar
tendency to the fettering of the individual to be flogged, who
desires to be rendered defenceless. For this purpose various
apparatus exist of the same kind as the " f ettering-chair " invented
in the eighteenth century by the Duke of Fronsac.3 Of the same
nature also is the impulse to wear very tight shoes and gloves

1 Regarding the English flagellation brothels, and regarding Theresa Berkley,
see my work, " The Sexual Life in England," vol. ii., pp. 429-443.

2 H. Lawes, " Die Weiblichen Reize," p. 180 (Leipzig, circa 1877).

3 Siegfried, Tiirkel (" Sexual Pathological Cases," published in the Archive*
for Criminal Anthropology, vol. xi., pp. 219, 220) reports the case of an actor, who,
known under the name of " The Raviaher," induced prostitutes, whom he paid
liberally, to resist him sometimes for hours, and then apparently to yield to his
superior force. He once took a young girl into his dwelling, bound her suddenly,
and violated her in this state.

574

and very small corsets, the so-called " corset discipline," in which
the person affected, who may be of either sex, is laced up very
tightly in a very small corset. This is met with chiefly in England,
especially in association with sexual flagellation.

In comparatively rare cases flagellomania is a morbid condition
by which responsibility is entirely abrogated ; but from the
medico-legal point of view responsibility is impaired or suspended
in the majority of cases of well-marked sadism, which we have
now to describe. To this category belong :

1. Sadistic Bodily Injuries and " Lust-Murder." — The main
types of this category are the " girl-stabbers " and the " lust-mur-
derers," who simply for the purpose of producing sexual excite-
ment, or when already under the influence of such excitement,
inflict on women more or less severe injuries with a knife or other
murderous instrument. The actual intention to kill is present
only in very rare cases. The lust-murder is, as a rule, only a
murder as a sequel of a sexual act committed by force, the murder
being done from fear of discovery, etc. ; thus the murder has not
in these cases anything directly to do with the sexual act. In
other cases we have what appears to be a lust-murder in which
death has resulted, contrary to the wish of the offender, from a
sadistic bodily injury. Killing from a purely sexual motive is
a very rare occurrence, of which, however, some very widely
known cases are on record — like those of Andreas Bickel,
Menesclou, Alton, Gruyo, Verzeni,1 and " Jack the Ripper," the
Whitechapel murderer. [Regarding the Whitechapel murders,
see E. C. Spitza, " The Whitechapel Murders : then* Medico-
Legal and Historical Aspects," published in the Journal of
Nervous and Mental Diseases, December, 1888. Great attention
and alarm was aroused in Paris in the years 1818-1819 by a girl-
stabber (piqueur). In numerous caricatures, popular songs, and
vaudevilles these assaults were " celebrated," of which a very rare
pamphlet, "La Piqure a la Mode" (Paris, 1819), gives evidence.
Cf. J. Grand-Carteret in " Les Images Galantes " (1907, No. 7).
Much alarm was caused in July, 1902, by the crimes of a new
" Jack the Ripper " in New York, and by the horrible child-
murders committed in Berlin by an obviously insane sadist,
not yet arrested. In a single day he ripped up the abdomens
of several small children with a pair of scissors.] Many " murder
epidemics" (manie homicide), such as the murders recently
committed in Sweden by Nordlund, who, though indubitably

1 In this case, according to von Krafft-Ebing, the life of his victim depended
on the fact whether ejaculation occurred soon or late.

575

insane, was executed for them, are certainly connected with
sexuality. The two following cases from German experience
relate to typical " girl-stabbers " :

Ludurigshafen am Rhein, March 26, 1901. — After the manner of the
Whitechapel murderer, an unknown criminal had for several weeks
made the parts of the town lying in the direction of the suburb of
Mundenheim unsafe. Not less than eleven girls were seriously injured
after nightfall by stabs in the abdomen. To-night the police suc-
ceeded in arresting the criminal, who is a drover, Wilhelm Damian
by name, twenty-eight years of age. Five years ago he was suspected
of having committed a lust-murder on a servant-girl ; he was arrested
at this time, but was discharged owing to the lack of sufficient proof.
Now the suspicion is aroused that Damian is responsible also for the
lust-murder committed two years ago near Mundenheim on a little
girl seven years of age, because the circumstances of that case suggested
that the murderer was a butcher by occupation, and this applies to
Damian.

Kiel, November 29, 1901. — It is not yet possible to arrest the
stabber who, during the last week, has been active in the poorest
quarter of the town. At first he limited himself to the northern dis-
tricts, and there wounded only women and girls ; but in the last day
or two he appeared, not only in the central parts of the town, but
also in the southern quarter, where, the day before yesterday, in the
evening, he wounded a girl by two stabs, one in the neck and one in
the hip. Since then a man has been stabbed, apparently by this same
evil-doer, but was not seriously hurt. This happened in one of the
busiest streets of the town, so that the escape of the criminal is very
remarkable.

Other peculiar sadistic injuries sometimes occur. Thus, in
the year 1902 a printer, twenty-two years of age, was condemned
by the criminal court of Breslau, because in thirteen cases he
had thrown oil of vitriol at young ladies ! Here also we have
probably to do with a sadistic tendency. In the end of October,
1906, in Berlin, a case came under notice in which a young girl
took another girl to the dentist (!) and (after previous anses-
thetization) had two teeth drawn unnecessarily ; but whether this
case was or was not of a sadistic nature remains undetermined.
But we certainly have to do with sadism in those cases in which
men or women inflict slight injuries on their love-partner for the
purpose of sucking blood, which gives them sexual gratification
(sexual vampirism). Many murders by poison (women murderers
commonly prefer the use of poison to that of any other instru-
ment) also arise from sadistic tendencies. At any rate, the
majority of professional female prisoners, such as Jegado,
Brinvilliers, Ursinus, Gottfried (the celebrated poisoner of
Bremen), and others, were unquestionably women given to sexual
excesses or sexually very excitable, so that here voluptuous-

576

ness and the lust for murder appear to have an intimate causal
connexion.

The following remarkable case of sadistic deprivation of free-
dom is reported by Kiernan (" A Remarkable Case of Fetishism,"
published in The Alienist and Neurologist, 1906, p. 462) :

" Two citizens of good position, of Wladikaukas, in Russia, had re-
peatedly carried off girls of good family, and had treated them in an
extraordinary way. On account of senile dementia they were ac-
quitted of criminality, and were sent to an asylum. The last victim
was a young heiress, who was kept prisoner by them for an entire year.
Two masked elderly men fell upon her by night, gagged her, put a
bandage over her eyes, and drove away with her in a carriage. When
the bandage was taken off, she was in a well-furnished drawing-room.
The two old men, without saying a word, gave her a scanty dress of
feathers, and shut her up in a great gilded cage, which stood in the
drawing-room. One of them — she never saw the other again — came
in silence to visit her every morning, looked at her through the bars
of the cage, often threw her lumps of sugar, and every morning brought
her a can of hot water, which he emptied into a vessel inside the cage,
saying, ' Take a bath, little bird.' These were the only words which
she heard. After a year had passed, the man let her out of the cage,
put a bandage over her eyes, and drove her in a carriage to a place near
her house. No similar case is known to me in medical literature.
Everything was conducted Platonically ; there was no coitus, no exhibi-
tionism or masturbation, either before or after looking at this peculiar
bird. Certainly there must have been some land of abortive sexual
gratification, of a sadistic character, and with the limitation that only
young girls of good family, dressed as birds and kept in a cage, could
excite libido. But why must they have the appearance of a bird ?
Possibly in the subconsciousness the idea of the bird as a lascivious
animal played a certain part. But why did one only come and
see the ' bird ' every day ? That they must be young girls is natural
in the case of old men : extremes meet ; but that they must be of
good family suggests a sadistic element, and still more is this suggested
by the imprisonment."

2. Offences against Property committed from Sadistic Motives.—
To this class belong all sadistic injuries not of the person, but of
property. For example, pouring vitriol over the clothing, of
which the following case ( Vossiche Zeitung, No. 574, December 7,
1905) is an example :

At the present time an unknown man is making the south-eastern
districts of Berlin unsafe by the use of oil of vitriol. This dangerous
criminal pours the liquid upon women's clothing, selecting by prefer-
ence light-coloured fabrics. Yesterday evening he almost completely
ruined the new light-coloured dress of a young lady who was passing
along the Hermannstrasse. The offender, who apparently derives
pleasure from injuring women's clothing, is of middle height, about
twenty-five years of age, has fair hair, and wears a fashionable over-
coat.

577

To the same category belongs arson from sexual motives, which
was formerly1 attributed to a "passion for fire" (pyromania) ;
but when sexual motives play a part, it is unquestionably of a
purely sadistic nature.2

Of the same character is sexual kleptomania — theft from sexual
motives. Lichtenberg was familiar with this, for he says " the
sexual impulse very frequently leads to thefts," and he alludes
to the proposal which has been made in England to castrate
thieves.3

The organic causation of the kleptomania so often seen at the
present day in large shops is very frequently of a sexual nature,
dependent upon puberty, the climacteric, menstrual anomalies,
etc. Cases of this character have been reported by Worbe,
Gonner, Schmidtlein, Unzer, Haussler, Lombroso, and Ferrero.
The suspicion of sexual sadistic grounds for kleptomania may
always be justifiably entertained when rich ladies repeatedly
steal articles of small value of which they have no need.

A typical case of sexual kleptomania is reported by H. Zingerle
(" Contributions to the Psychological Genesis of Sexual Per-
versities," published in the Annual for Psychiatry and Neurology,
1900) :

A woman, twenty-one years of age, who from childhood had been
psychopathic, had from her school-days onwards had a definite desire
to appropriate certain objects, especially such as were made of brown
leather (brown shoes), umbrellas, money. Only the act of stealing gave
her any gratification, not the keeping of the stolen objects, which she
usually destroyed or gave away. During the act of theft she had a
well-developed sense of voluptuousness, accompanied by a discharge
of secretion from the genital organs. She performed these thefts as
the result of an irresistible impulse, and after them she felt remorse.
She preferred large objects such as were difficult to hide, and it was
precisely when there were great hindrances to be overcome and dangers
to be run, and when in the pursuit of her aim she was subjected to
emotional disturbances, that the accompanying voluptuous sensations
were most prominent. The psychopathic basis of this condition is
unquestionable.

In addition to these two categories of sadism, which for the
most part depend upon morbid conditions, we meet also with a
symbolic form of sadism, where this manifests itself rather in
idea than in reality, and where the person thus affected luxuriates

1 Cf. Santlus, " The Psychology of Human Impulses," published in the
Archives for Psychiatry, 1864, vol. vi., p. 255.

2 Cf. regarding sadistic arson my " Contributions to the Etiology of Psycho-
pathia Sexualis," vol. ii., pp. 116-118.

3 Q. Chr. Lichtenberg, Miscellaneous Writings," edited by L. Chr. Lichten-
berg and Friedrioh Kries, vol. ii., p. 447 (Gottingen, 1801).

578

in all possible fantasies of the infliction of pain and of abase-
ment.1 This mitigated sadism is certainly to some extent
connected with physiological sadism. Thus the so-called verbal
sadism is nothing more than an increase in, an emphatic instance
of, the physiological voluptuous sighing and crying in coitu,
whose influence in verbal sadism is increased, and exercises a
stronger stimulus, by the accentuation of the animal, the brutal,
the coarse, and the obscene. Verbal sadism is not a peculiar
refinement of modern debauchees, but a phenomenon belonging
to folk-lore and ethnology, an extraordinarily widely diffused
mode of expression of the primitive sadistic instinct of the genus
homo. In the popular speech of all countries we find that
abusive terms and curses are intermingled with extraordinary
frequency with sexual matters and ideas. The naivete of this
sexual depravity and cursing, with its thousandfold variations,
shows its origin from the purely instinctive sources of the popular
soul, as the celebrated brothers Grimm recognized when they
devoted a careful, critical investigation in their well-known
dictionary to the obscene verbal treasury of the Germans. A
rich material for the study of the sources of verbal sadism is
offered by the vocabularia erotica of Hesychios ; also by the
collections of local and provincial riddles and proverbs.2 A
typically developed verbal sadism is found among the Hindus,
especially the women. The Indian erotist Vatsyayana rightly
deduces it from the various sounds which are uttered in normal
coitus. In European brothels the verbal sadists and verbal
masochists are well-known phenomena — men who find sexual
enjoyment in the expression of the coarsest, commonest, obscene
words, curses, and abusive language ; in some cases by doing this
themselves (verbal sadism), in other cases by listening to it when
done by others (verbal masochism). Such verbal sadists, also,
are the individuals described by A. Eulenburg (" Sexual Neuro-
pathy," p. 104) as " verbal exhibitionists," people who gladly
indulge in lascivious conversation in the presence of women, or
who whisper obscene words in women's ears. Many men visit

1 To this category belongs also the peculiar case reported by Siegfried Tiirkel
(" Sexual Pathological Cases," published in the Archives for Criminal Anthro-
pology, 1903, vol. xi., pp. 215-218) of a historian who became sexually excited by
the view of a woman suffering from sexual deprivation, and of her mental trouble.
Another man (ibid., p. 222, 223) obtained sexual excitement and gratification only
by watching the anxiety of women — for example, of such as he had himself falsely
accused of theft 1

2 Cf. the reference to erotic dictionaries in my " Contributions to the Etiology
of.Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. ii., pp. 104, 105. Recently F. S. Krauss, in his
" Anthropophyteia," has devoted special attention to this peculiar manifestation
of the popular soul.

579

prostitutes, not for the purpose of having sexual intercourse
with them, but merely for the opportunity of such lecherous
conversation. The following case, complicated by bisexual or
masochistic features, is characteristic of this :

A leading merchant of middle age visits a cocotte from time to
time, and puts on the girl's silken clothing, whilst she must put on
man's dress ; they then go out walking arm-in-arm in dark, unfre-
quented streets, and converse meanwhile in an extremely obscene,
indecent manner ; this alone suffices him for sexual gratification.
During the whole time he does not touch the girl.

This sexual depravity and obscene language can also be con-
ducted by correspondence. Thus we have a kind of " epistolary
sadism " and " epistolary masochism." The former, especially,
is frequently employed in the circles of the " masseuses " and
" strict governesses," in relation to their masochistic clientele,
whilst the answers belong to the second category.

A remarkable symbolic form of sadism or masochism is repre-
sented by inunction and lathering, for the purpose of sexual
gratification. Lathering with soap more especially is a pheno-
menon with which those who have to do with brothels are
especially familiar. Either the man finds sexual pleasure in
lathering the prostitute or he experiences gratification in the
passive attitude when she lathers him. Some time ago, in a
trial in which a man belonging to one of our leading mercantile
houses was accused, I referred in my evidence to analogous
occurrences in brothels and among prostitutes. This testimony
was disputed by another physician, who stated that this " lather-
ing " for the purpose of inducing sexual excitement was " un-
known " to him. It is, however, a well-known phenomenon
whose existence has been confirmed to me by colleagues in Berlin,
and more especially in Hamburg. According as it is active or
passive, it is respectively sadistic or masochistic. Whether, in
such cases, a defilement of the woman's person is effected, as in
a case reported by von Krafft-Ebing, in which a man blackened
his mistress with charcoal, is indifferent. The larval sadism
consists in the act of manipulation, in the inunction or lathering.

As a last form of symbolic sadism may be mentioned blasphemy
based on sexual motives, the so-called " satanism." which played
a great part more especially in the middle ages, and as the
" black mass " constituted a peculiar cult, in which the Christian
Mass was profaned by sexual practices, and was insulted to the
uttermost. According to Schwaebl6, these obscene masses are
still celebrated at the present day in two places in Paris. He

37—2

580

gives a detailed description of such a black mass which was cele-
brated in a house in the Rue de Vaugirard.1

Passive algolagnia, masochism, the desire to endure pain and
degradation and abasement of every kind, for the purpose of
inducing sexual excitement, is perhaps to-day more widely
diffused even than its converse.2 The cause of this, which is to
be found in the conventionality of our time, is a matter to which I
have previously more than once alluded (vide supra, pp. 322-324,
467-469). This view is supported also by the remarkable fact
that, above all, lawyers, leading State officials, and judges,
constitute a disproportionately large contingent of masochists —
that is to say, persons whose professional life gives them a certain
unusual exercise of power, and whose profession imposes on them
a strict official demeanour. Precisely these conditions, perhaps,
arouse masochistic tendencies to activity, as a kind of liberation
from conventional pressure and the professional mask.

The connexion between love, voluptuousness, and the suffering
of pain, has already been discussed. In masochism there also
comes into play the important element of abasement, a complete
self-surrender of body and soul, self-sacrifice. The union of these
perceptions and their voluptuous tinge has been beautifully
described by Alfred de Musset :3

" My passion for my mistress had become extremely unruly, and my
whole life had assumed a kind of monastic savagery. I will give
only one example of this : She had given me her miniature likeness
in a medallion. I wear it on my heart — many men do this. But one
day in the shop of a second-hand dealer I found an iron scourge on
the end of which was a small plate covered with little spines. I had the
medallion fastened on to the plate and wore it in this way. The
spines, which at every movement pierced the skin of my breast, pro-
duced in me the most peculiar ecstasy, so that I sometimes pressed
my hand on the place in order to drive them deeper. I am well
aware that this was folly ; but love makes us commit many such follies."

In masochism physical pain plays an important part. The
" mistresses " have at their disposal an extensive instrumen-
tarium for producing such pain, for masochists often have the

1 R. Schwaeble, " Lea Detraquecs do Paris," pp. 3-10.

2 The typical literary advocate of masochism, who in actual life was a pas-
sionate worshipper of the whip, was Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895).
Cf. regarding him, his life, his sexual perversions, and his writings, C. F. von
SchlichtegroS, " Sacher-Masoch and Masochism " (Dresden, 1901) ; Wanda von
Sacher-Masoch, " Confessions of my Life " (Berlin and Leipzig, 1906) ; C. F. von
Schlichtegroll, " ' Wanda ' without Fur and Mask. An Answer to ' Wanda ' von
Sacher -Maseeh's ' Confessions of My Life,' with extracts from Sacher-Masoch's
Diary " (Leipzig, 1906).

3 A. de Musset, " Confessions of a Child of his Time."

581

most peculiar ideas regarding the mode in which their pain
should be caused. Probably unique in their kind are the two

following authentic cases, which my colleague, Dr. D , in

Hamburg, was so good as to report to me :

1. A rich Hamburg merchant, known among the prostitutes by the
name of " Nail William," had sexual intercourse only with certain
prostitutes, who had to allow their nails to grow quite long and pointed.
They had to scratch him on the scrotal raphe and on the penis until
the blood flowed in streams. One day he consulted a physician on
account of extensive oedema of the scrotum and the penis.

2. Another man had his scrotum sewn to the sofa-cushion with
thick sail-maker's needles. He sat for a while in this " fettered " con-
dition, after which the strings were cut !

All possible cutting and stabbing instruments and burning
substances are used for the gratification of the masochist's lasci-
vious love of pain ; they have themselves scratched, bitten,
pinched, burned, their hair torn out ; they are trodden upon,
whipped with switches or ox-whips ; they have themselves
"put to the question " in every possible way in special " torture
chambers " or " punishment rooms." Such a genuine torture
chamber, in the house of a Hamburg prostitute, was recently
described by the public prosecutor, Dr. Ertel, in Hamburg.1
Of the dwelling of this prostitute the following account is given
in the testimony of the examining judge :

To the side of the flat towards the bath-room is the door of entrance
to the so-called " black room."

The walls of this room, lighted by one window only, were covered
with a coal-black material of the nature of calico, and the plaster of
the ceiling was similarly covered ; to the middle of the ceiling, pro-
ceeding from the centre of a black rosette, was attached a pulley,
consisting of the usual rollers and blocks, made in this instance of
metal, and furnished with a strong twisted cord.

In the dark corner between the window and the wall there stood
a peculiar scaffold, made of roughly hewn planks, consisting of two
similar parts placed side by side ; the back of this scaffold was placed
against the wall beside the window.

The purpose of this scaffold was not immediately apparent. Seen
sideways, the form of this wooden structure was somewhat like that
of a heavy, coarsely-made armchair ; the upper parts of the arms were
about the height of a man's shoulders. To the framework along the
upper edge there were attached five fairly strong iron rings, which were
screwed into the wood. The framework ran on rollers, so that it could
be moved about.

1 Ertel, " A ' Slave,' " published in the Archives for Criminal Anthropology,
issued by Hans Gross, vol. xxv., New. 1 and 2, p. 107 (Leipzig, 1900). Hamburg
appears to be the chief centre of masochistic prostitution. See also the report
given by D. Hauaen, " The Cane and the Whip," second edition, pp. 1C4, 165
(Dn-sden, 1902).

582

On the wall was hung on a nail a leather girdle with buckles ;
there was also a rope about the thickness of the finger, ending in a
loop ; there were also two dog-collars, part of a sword-stick, leather
reins, and fetters for wrists and ankles, the former being heavy iron
handcuffs.

The window in the wall separating the " black room " from the
bathroom, the glass of which was frosted, was covered with special
hangings. The inner side of the door of the room was also hung with
black.

In respect to this " black room " A. testified :

" Z. insisted that one room should be entirely draped with black,
as the ' hall of judgment.' He sent me pulleys from Cologne, by which
he was to be drawn up and hanged.1 This excited him, his face got
quite blue, and it made him ' ready ' for intercourse. I was afraid
that it might kill him, and I only allowed him to have it done once.

" To the wooden framework in the ' black room,' Z. was securely
fastened, so that he had the illusion that he was on the scaffold."

In all large towns widely diffused masochistic prostitution
subserves the desires of male masochists, and frequently also
those of female masochrists. These priestesses of Venus flagellatrix
hide themselves commonly under the cloak of a " masseuse "
an " educationalist," or " governess," adding to this professional
title the expressive adjective " severe " or " energetic."
" Wanda " is also a favourite pseudonym, which corresponds to
the masochistic nickname of " Severin " (the principal char-
acter of Sacher-Masoch's " Venus im Pelx ").

These women, the " mistresses," treat their masochistic clients
as "slaves" or "dogs," and maintain this fiction not only in
personal association, but also in correspondence — masochists are
all passionate correspondents. The relationship also of the " lady "
to her " page " is a favourite one (the so-called " pagism "). The
nature of the relationship is clearly shown in the following original
letter of such a masochist :

" BERLIN,

" June 7, 1902.

" GRACIOUS LADY,—

" First of all I must sincerely ask your pardon for daring, most
honoured lady, to write to you. I saw recently a lady with a glorious
figure and magnificent hips enter your house, and I suspect that you
are this lady. If you, gracious lady, desire a servant and a slave,
who will blindly obey all your commands, and upon your order, as a
slave, without any will but your own, will perform the basest and

1 Regarding the voluptuous sensations connected with hanging, see my
" Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. ii., p. 173, and
more especially my " Sexual Life in England," vol. iii., pp. 94-99 (Berlin, 1903) ;
also Havelock Ellis, " Analysis of the Sexual Impulse."

2 Cf. Castor and Pollux, " The Masseuse Improprieties of Berlin " (Berlin,
1900).

583

dirtiest services, I should be happy if you would be so gracious as to
make me that slave, if I might visit you from time to time in order to
serve you, my strict mistress and commander. If at any time I
should fail to obey you absolutely, you can treat me most cruelly and
chastise me most severely.

" Will you, gracious lady, deign to answer me, your basest servant,
and to make use of the enclosed envelope to tell me if you, this
evening, will go for a walk, and how, and where, in what cafe you
may chance to spend the evening, and if you will be my strict mistress,
and if I may venture to be your slave. Perhaps, most honoured
lady, you could be at the Oranienburger Tor at eight o'clock pre-
cisely on Friday evening, with a rose in your hand. Full of subjection
and abasement, obedient to your strict commands, and slavishly
kissing your feet and hands, I am your most abject servant and
your basest slave."

Such a slave luxuriates voluptuously in the lowest services, in
the most loathsome abasements, such as are indicated sufficiently
in the names " coprolagnia " and " urolagnia." I have in my
possession a series of letters by masochists full of such things,
described with the utmost particularity, some even in a poetic
form ( ! ), which I cannot print on account of their loathsome
contents. A sufficient idea of the slavery of the masochist is
given in the above-mentioned report of the public prosecutor,
Dr. Ertel, in which a " mistress " states :

" When I took my meals he lay either under the table, or in a
corner of the room ; I threw him bones, and gave him the remains of
my own food. He often barked, and usually had a dog-collar round
his neck, with a chain attached to it. He had given himself the name
of Nero, so this is what I called him. When anyone wished to come
near me without permission, he bit him in the leg ; this was the first
step in a slave's duty. He swept out my room, boiled potatoes,
roasted meat for me, and did other work of the house. He also
wanted to be my horse ; I had to ride on him ; he carried me in this
way from one room to the other.1 When he disobeyed me in any
way, I had to use the whip. He related to me that formerly he had
corresponded with a music-hall comedian who played woman's parts,
and subsequently had associated with him, but he got weary of this,
and disappeared for a long time to get free from the man. He told
me also that he was accustomed to make appointments in the Schaarhof
(a street in Hamburg in which the prostitutes visited by the lowest
classes of the population live). On Sunday evenings these women
have many visitors, when the workmen have got their week's money.

1 This is a favourite masochistic situation. Hans Bnldung has immortalized
it in a picture, in which Phyllis rides upon Aristotle. I owe to the kindness of
my colleague Dr. Kantorowicz, in Hanover, the knowledge that J. von Falke
describes an ivory relief representing the same scene. King Alexander looks on,
and " rejoices at the scene — how the boarded old man, controlled by the beauty,
with the bit in his mouth, is crawling about on all-fours, carrying the lady, armed
with a whip." In Semrau-Liibko's " Elements of the History of Art," vol. iii.,
p. 532 (Stuttgart, 1903), a picture on gloss, from the Ralm Colloction in Zurich, is
described, which represents the same history.

584

" Often I had to shut him up in a wardrobe, with a chain round his
neck, fastened to the wall of the wardrobe, so short that he could
hardly move ; the door of the wardrobe was shut upon him.

" In my flat I had to give Mm a slave's dress to wear, in order
that he might feel himself to be fully a slave. I took away all his
money, all the keys of his house, of his office, and of his safe, and
returned them to him only after a night and two days. Z. only does
this occasionally, when he is utterly beside himself ; often he is quite
reasonable. He does not associate with any decent people ; the
society in which he feels happiest is that of whores and other obscure
persons ; he has himself said this to me. Even the people who make
use of him avoid him in the street.

" He would also learn to dress hair, and how to paint the face, if I
ordered him. Painted faces stimulate him.

" Once he said to me that I might have another slave ; this I did.
First of all I had to bind Z. hand and foot, and to wrap up his head
in cotton- wool, in order to give the new slave the idea that he had been
very badly treated, and had been sent to the hospital. When, later,
the new slave came, and I explained everything to him as Z. had told
me to, and led him in to see Z., the new man was very much surprised
to see Z. tied up in this way, became frightened, and soon went ho me."

Another prostitute reports :

" I made the acquaintance of Z. in No. 8, Schwiegerstrasse. He
has three or four times had intercourse with me. He had himself
whipped by me. Z. once asked me to fetch a man, which I did.
This man got into bed with me, and satisfied himself manually, with-
out having intercourse with me. Z. on this occasion lay under the
bed : he wished to do so ; I believe he had arranged this in order to
obtain sexual excitement in this way. Z. and the other man did
not see one another.

" When the other man had gone away, Z. did the most disgusting
things.

" When Z. had himself whipped, he first had his hands fastened
with iron handcuffs."

It would be quite erroneous to assume that in the case of these
masochistic " slaves," whose human worth has been lowered to
the depths, who seem completely to discard their humanity and
to sink below the level of animals, that we always have to do with
effeminate, degenerated weaklings. No ; much more frequently
they are healthy, powerful men, of an imposing appearance and
distinguished demeanour, who find pleasure in playing such
tragic roles, and who obviously obtain sexual gratification by
this complete reversal of their nature. The " slave " just
described was " by nature tall and stately. His features were
energetic and sympathetic, and he had a large beard. His eyes were
clear and bright. In actions and appearance he was a thoroughly
masculine being."1 In Berlin there exist masochists in high
official positions, in appearance and in profession true manly

1 Ertel. op. cU., pp. 105, 100.

585

natures — " supermen " — who only become " slaves " in relation
to their "mistresses." According to Sacher-Masoch, Germans
and Russians especially are inclined to masochism ; but, as a
matter of fact, this tendency is also widely diffused in France
and England. Zola describes such a type in " Nana."

The slave type is not always completely developed ; more
commonly masochism manifests itself in a less marked degree.
There are many and various shades : sometimes there is only a
spiritual abasement, exhibited in apparently trifling procedures
and practices (symbolic masochism). A few authentic cases
will serve to illustrate this — they sound incredible, but are in
fact true :

1. A handsome and fine-looking officer, married to a beautiful wife,
continually associates with an elderly, robust washerwoman, with
whom he also has sexual intercourse. Since he refuses to leave this
woman, his wife has separated from him.

2. A State official of high position, fifty years of age, visits a prosti-
tute from time to time, and puts on her clothing, with corset and
stockings, while she wears man's clothing. Then for two hours they
play cards. At eleven o'clock he lays himself, still clothed, in her
bed, whilst she must lie down naked upon the bed covering. Nothing
else happens. He does not make the least attempt to touch her ;
and after a time he goes away, first paying her fifty marks.

3. An active Minister of State ( ! ), now deceased, used often
to visit a cocotte, who had to sit upon him, and then in corpus
totum ei minxit. This was sufficient to give him sexual gratification
(urolagnia).

4. Aii engineer meets a prostitute (who has been previously instructed
what to do) in the street, and asks her if he may go home with her for
twenty marks (shillings). Having reached the home of the girl, he
suddenly declares with tears that he has only five marks with Mm.
The prostitute overwhelms him with abuse, takes the five marks
from him, and then carefully searches his clothing, until somewhere
or other she finds a hundred- mark piece ! The moment of the
discovery of this piece of money is precisely the moment when the
man has the sexual orgasm. In answer to his prayers and whining,
to his pitiful request that she shall at least give him back half the
money, lie only receives scornful abuse. Finally, she presses one
mark into his hand, and gives him his conge. This procedure is
repeated regularly every fortnight — an expensive amusement for a
man who is by no means wealthy. But he is unable to give up this
peculiar passion, which for him is the only way of obtaining sexual
gratification.

5. A man of the upper classes, thirty years of age, frequents only
prostitutes with artificial teeth. They must take these teeth out, and
he puts them in his mouth and sucks them. He then stretches himself
upon the covering of the bed, and the prostitute must lay one of her
dirty chemises upon his face, whilst he at the same time holds one of
her shoes in eacn hand. This is for liim the critical moment. To

586

the girl herself during the whole procedure lie does not direct a single
glance ; for liim there exist only the teeth, the chemise, and the shoes.
Thus we have to do with a case of masochism with mental fetishistio
associations. The previously described medieval " cure by disgust "
(the exhibition of a dirty chemise) would in this man have had the
opposite effect to that intended.

Masochism is much commoner in men than in women, because
the latter have more command over their sexual impulse, and
are not so readily subordinated and enslaved thereby as are
men. The physiological masochism of woman is of a more
spiritual nature. Still, in women who are very excitable sexually
a similar " sexual obedience " may appear to that which we
encounter in men. Shakespeare, in the " Midsummer-Night's
Dream," when he makes Helena feel herself to be Demetrius'
little dog, gives her definite masochistic characteristics.

Masochistically inclined, also, are women of good position who
play the part of prostitutes, either in brothels or in the streets,
such as have recently been described by d'Estoc in " Paris-
Eros " ; we may regard the celebrated Messalina as their proto-
type. Similarly disposed are women of good position who have
enduring sexual relationships with men of the lower classes,
such as workmen, coachmen, etc., and who even seek sexual
enjoyment with any casual member of the rabble they may meet
in the streets — a practice of which Lombroso has collected
examples. Passive algolagnia also occurs in women, as is proved
by the following letter of a typical masochist :

" BERLIN,

" November 9, 1902.

" HONOURED LADY, —

" I allow myself to make the polite inquiry whether you will
consent to visit me once a week, in my dwelling in the Kurfursten-
damm, after your reception hour. I have a peculiar wish from time
to time to be chastised in the most severe and energetic manner, until
the blood flows. I am twenty-eight years of age, and widowed, and
have a very large and luxuriant figure. For the flagellation I would
pay fifty marks (shillings). If you accede to my wish, I beg you to
describe how you intend to carry out the chastisement. On what
part of the body will you wliip me ? In what way should this be
clothed, if clothed at all ? What instrument will you use for the
whipping ? In what position should I receive the whipping ? How
many blows should I receive the first time ?

" After the sixth blow my voluptuous sensations increase to such
a degree that my whole body trembles with sensuality. Are you
yourself inclined to sensuality, and do you carry out this chastise-
ment from purely voluptuous motives ?"

587

We cannot determine whether in this case homosexuality plays
any part. In my " Contributions to the Etiology of Psycho-
pathia Sexualis " (vol. ii., p. 183), I have printed a letter of
another unquestionably heterosexual masochist woman to an
" energetic " man.

APPENDIX1

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION (HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN
ALGOLAGNISTIC REVOLUTIONIST).

The author of the following sketch, the Russian anarcliist N. K., was
arrested in Warsaw in the early months of 1906. Like all those who
at this time were considered to be members of the revolutionary party,
the intention of the authorities was to shoot him immediately, without
any elaborate inquiry, after a drum-head court-martial.

His demeanour during the shooting of his companions, who preceded
him to death, and also during the court-martial, showed that his
psychical individuality was so profoundly abnormal that the Colonel
in command of the firing-party suspected him to be a psychopath,
and on his own authority postponed his execution pending further
examination in the citadel. While imprisoned K. wrote his reminis-
cences, which are here given word for word and without comment :

My parents were opposite elements : my father, strong, coarse,
brutal, egotistic, material to excess ; my mother, suffering, delicate,
sensitive, ethereal. From such a cross, a masochistic character must
necessarily be produced. My father brought me up with storms,
chastisements, and fear ; my mother counteracted all this with
caresses, kisses, and tears. ... I trembled with secret anxiety and
exulted inwardly at the same moment when my father stretched me
across his knees. As soon as the punishment was over, he immediately
proceeded to box someone's ears — anyone's, a footman's, a maid's,
anyone's. I ran with a smarting posterior to my mother. By her
first my injuries were inspected, then I was cried over, embraced,
kissed, and finally laughed at and with. This scene repeated itself
at irregular intervals. To these years belong my first memory of the
masochistic principle of life. This was based upon the following
observations :

1 The following extremely valuable contribution to the psychology of the
Russian revolution now in progress was sent in September, 1906, from Russia
to my colleague Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. He most kindly gave me this extremely
interesting sketch for publication in this place. It throws a very clear light
upon the nature of algolagnia. We have here a unique psychological document,
which deserves the attention of politicians and sociologists no less than that
of anthropologists and psychologists.

588

All my companions, boys and girls alike, endeavoured to play tricks
on one another ; to tell tales of one another to their parents, tales true
and false ; in every way to cause suffering, in order then, by redoubled
love, to make all right again. On the other hand, I noticed that no
child loved another unless it was tormented by that other. Those who
did not torment one another were mutually indifferent.

This mutual tormenting and being tormented must therefore, in
the nature of things, produce a certain charm, gives rise to a pleasure.
This pleasure consisted in increasing, mentally realizing, sympathizing
with, the pain of another. This is not sadism — generally speaking,
sadism does not exist — it is only refined masochism ; for we prepare pains
in order to sympathize with them — that is, in order that we may free
ourselves.

I especially enjoyed teasing girls, destroying their toys, tearing
their dolls to pieces, dirtying their clothing, etc. When, thereupon,
they wept bitterly, I fought against their tears, until finally they were
consoled. Then I went close to them, embraced them, caressed them,
kissed them, and cried with sympathy. What pain and what pleasure
did I experience when they pushed me away, struck me, and spat in
my face ! I bought them once more finer toys, and was so happy when
their tears gave place to laughter !

How often I told false tales of other children to their parents, in
order to be able to sympathize with the mental pain of an undeserved
chastisement ! But I was no exception in this, because most of my
playmates were the same. I remember how a girl of eleven calum-
niated a boy of twelve : she declared that he had put his hand on her
private parts when she was out walking ! The happy, poor lad was
frightfully beaten at school and at home. All the children baited him,
despised him, and avoided him like the plague. . . . He became quite
afraid of his fellows.

What did I live through at that time ?

Moody and spiteful, he lay under a tree ; the girl who had told this
false tale about him softly drew near, stood by him, and with a pleading
voice called his name. Furiously he jumped to his feet, and wished
to run away ; but she seized his hand, fell upon her knees, and begged
for his forgiveness. It was useless for him to abuse her, to strike her,
and to tread upon her toes. She threw her arms round him, cried as
if her heart was broken, and spoke tenderly to him for so long a time,
until at last he sat down beside her, and allowed himself to be caressed.
Thus they sat together for a long time, and wept and laughed and wept.
Suddenly she seized his hand and pressed it violently between her
thighs. . . .

This contact formed the last link of a long logical chain. . . .
These were the facts which first made me feel instinctively how,
like every fundamental thing — everything which is of a primeval
character : primeval force, primeval matter, primeval impulse, etc. —
all represent the union of two extremes ; the primeval impulse " love "
can also be the coalescence of two opposites. These two opposites
in this case are pleasure and pain ; as in the case of electricity we have
the union of the two opposites, positive and negative electricity ; in
the case of magnetism, we have the union of positive and negative
magnetism ; in the case of the atom, the positive and negative ion ;
in the case of sex, man and woman, etc.

589

II.

My years of school and University life were spent at St. Petersburg.
Tempestuously I threw myself upon simple physical " love " (!), upon
the orgies, upon all the varieties, of physical love. Bodily- sexual
masochism, with all its artificial sensual charms, was a cup which I
drained to the dregs ; but I was never able to explain to myself why
humanity was satisfied with so crude a definition of the idea of
" masochism." Sexual masochism is indeed one of the most obvious
facts of life. But the same is true also of sexual love ; and yet we do
not maintain that love is only sexual impulse.

I passed beyond this physical masochism ; it was for me a necessary
phase of development. The spiritual element within me began to
sway my existence. At this time I learned to love a girl of a wonderful
character. She loved me to a similar degree of insanity.

Had I been a beggar or a tramp, she would have followed me through
the streets. She would have accompanied me to forced labour in
Kara, Kamtchatka, or Saghalien. For me she would also have
mounted the scaffold ; to save me she would even have become a
prostitute. It was a blessedness to love her and to be loved by her.

How can we wonder that in conformity with this interminable love
accompanying sorrows should also extend into infinity, and ultimately
lead to a catastrophe ?

Every night we slept together, although for months at a time we
did not have sexual intercourse ; we embraced one another so closely
and slept so gently ! . . .

To separate from one another only for a few hours was a torment.
If I went out alone, I must tell her the precise moment at which she
might expect me to return. If I remained away a quarter of an hour
longer, Mascha at once pictured to herself that I had been run over
by a tram, that I had fallen down in an epileptic fit, that I had suddenly
become insane and jumped into the Neva, or that some other disaster
had befallen to me. Thus she stood continually at the window, in
order to see what was passing in the street. If anyone came up to
our floor, she ran quickly to see who it was. If it was not I, then she
felt horrible anxiety. When at length I came, she stood waiting for
me in the doorway, laughing and crying at the same time. Then
there followed embraces and kisses as if I had returned from a journey
to the North Pole ; but also reproaches, such as, " You do not love
me at all ; if you did you would not torture me so ! You know how
anxious I always am about you when you are away !"

Gradually I began to understand this condition, as an inevitable
consequence of the masochistic principle of love.

This martyrdom of the soul, which lovers prepare for themselves in
the unceasing dread of losing one another, or of losing one another's
love, is intimately connected with the very nature of love. Without
anxiety of this kind, love would be unthinkable. He who loves must
continually torment himself with this anxiety ; and the stronger the
love, the greater is this torment. When the torment is increased by
the other's participation in it, the mutual love is also increased thereby.

This necessity we also felt, and we resolved to procreate an illegiti-
mate child.

590

What this step meant to us — members of leading families — can
readily be understood ; but wo proudly resolved to defy society at
large, in order to consecrate our love by the sorrows which this would
entail.

III.

As soon as Mascha became pregnant, I felt an irresistible impulse
to increase our mutual torments ! To increase them ! ! To increase
them ! ! ! For our love did not appear to me sufficiently great, nor
yet sufficiently worthy, nor yet sufficiently holy, for us to crystallize
ourselves in a new living being.

This idea racked me continually. In vain I sought to convince
myself that our love was a million times greater than the love of
ordinary mortals, that it was unique ! . . . Again and again my con-
science said to me : " How can you use for yourself the measuring rule
of ordinary men, even if they are the leaders of men ? You are the
conscious masochist ! Your ideals must be suited to this fact ! Is it
anything so much out of the common to have an illegitimate child ?
You must increase your sorrows ! Increase them ! !

(He proceeds to describe how in every possible way he tormented his
beloved.)

At length, in consequence of my continued vexation, Mascha
became as nervous as I was myself. . . . Now she really began to
take everything perversely.

" Leave me in peace ! It is your fault ! You are driving me quite
out of my mind ! !"

On account of the most trifling matters we became furious with rage,
mutually making one another more wretched and more bitter. Ten,
twenty times a day, we stood facing one another, leaning forwards,
shaking with wrath, our mouths gaping with anger, our eyes sparkling,
our fingers widely separated, like tigers ready to spring ; many times
she struck me in the face or spat at me !

" Oh, you wretch ! How I hate you ! ! ! I should like — I should
like !"

Then we said to one another calmly and quietly that we did not
suit one another ; that we had been deceived ; that everything was
now at an end ; we begged one another for forgiveness, and separated.

Soon came the pangs of conscience, the question, " Who is to
blame ?" Now the pains began : " What have I done ? It is impos-
sible that it can be so ; I will beg her forgiveness upon my knees. She
must be mine again — must be, must be !"

" Oh, love, love ! How interminable is your pain !"

Now I began with nervous haste to say to myself, " Where will she
be ? With Katja ? Up ! Go to her and ask her !"
' Has Mascha been here ?"
' Yes — she has just gone away !"
' Did she not say where she was going ?"
'No ! ... Have you quarrelled once more ?"
' H'm ! . . . A little, but it was my fault ! . . . I must find her ! . . .
Good-bye !"

At the house of A, B, C, and D she was not to be found. Is it
possible that in her pain ? No, no ! Not that ! Not that ! !

591

This pulsed in my temples, whilst I ran up and down the stairs !

Six o'clock ! now she will go out walking on the Newsky-Pros-
pekt ! ! . . .

At last I reach the Newsky-Prospekt ! I rush up and down looking
for her ! Is that she ? No ! Or there 1 It is not she ! That must
be she ? No — yes — no — yes, yes ! . . . It is she. . . . Now walk
a little more slowly. . . . Now she sees me. . . . She turns as if to pass
by on the other side. . . . She changes her mind and stays on this
side. . . .

" Have you been out walking long ?" . . .

Mascha lies in my arms. We cry and laugh — cry and laugh. . . .
Never, never, never again ! ! . . . Forgive, forgive ! ! . . . We embrace
one another, press one another, kiss one another, as if we could be ab-
sorbed into one another. . . . We abuse one another, pull one another's
hair, and playfully box one another's ears. . . . Then we rub our
cheeks together, and give one another the maddest pet names. . . .

Oh, paradise of love ! Why did I quarrel with my fate which
imposed upon me such unheard-of torments ? . . . Nothing else could
have brought me such blessedness as this ! !

Oh, fate ! More, more, still more martyrdom ! . . . In this way
let my love grow !

IV.

Our life together became continually more intolerable, and yet we
could not bear to be away from one another a single hour. A terrible
fate chained us together, and threw us into the maelstrom of this
furious impulse, irresistible in its elemental force. To tear ourselves
apart was rendered impossible by the fetters that chained us together.

Continually more frightful, continually more insane, became our
scenes, and the love-eruptions which broke out from time to time.

(After mutual spiritual torments, becoming ever worse and worse,
K. begs his beloved to procure abortion !)

She wept quietly, then kissed me and went out. . . .

The key grated in the lock. . . .

" Mascha ! Mascha ! For God's sake ! Mascha ! What are you
going to do ? ..."

I shook the door like a madman. ... It would not give way. . . .
I tore open the window. ... " Help ! Help !" . . . The door was
burst open. . . . Break open Mascha's door ! . . . It was quickly
forced. . She lies there. . Dead. . . . Poison. . . .

Finally — after weeks — I was once more somewhat calmer, and was
able to think a little. I had so utterly lost all power that I was only
able to get from my bed to the sofa, or back again, with assistance.
They had been afraid that I should not get over it at all. ... Week
after week to endure the most shattering, superhuman sorrows, to
oscillate between death and madness ! . . .

Butj superhuman love had also been mine ! The statue of Sais
had been unveiled to me ! ... I had quaffed the cup of love to the

592

last dregs ! . . . But he only will have had this experience who has first
drunk to the dregs the draught of sorrow ! . . .

Oh, short-sighted world, which will call the murder of Masoha
" sadism " ! . . . Had not her pains cut twice as deeply into my own
heart ? Has not my soul been convulsed by her torment ? . . . I
wished only to torture myself ! . . . Am I to blame that it was only
possible to do so through her martyrdom ? . . . Has not she shared
also all my superearthly blisses ? . . . He who has experienced this
does not regret — even if he must pay double the price in sorrows ! !

Is not that " masochism " ?

Have you who wished to pass judgment on me learned that ? No !
Who will set up to be a judge of a case of which he knows nothing ?

Oh, crude psychology, which teaches that out of an inhuman im-
pulse— out of cruelty — we commit " crimes " on those nearest to us !
Only from a purely human impulse — from " love " — do we do to the
nearest to us what you call " crimes," in order that he may share
that unnamable happiness which we ourselves feel. Thus the in-
fluences which move us are purely ethical.

Do you believe that we only are masochists ? Or do you believe
that those only are masochists who have themselves trodden on by a
prostitute, have had their ears boxed, have been whipped, befouled,
and have let the prostitute spit in their faces ?

Oh, idiots ! I say to you all love is masochistic, and all which leads
to it is associated with it, or results from it, bears the imprint " pleasure
and pain."

Nature never fails. Who, then, believes that it was caprice, chance,
or irony, on Nature's part, when she associated love with so much
torment ?

Who does not think of all the tragedies of unhappy love, with its
murders and suicides, all its physical and spiritual martyrdom, which
every day brings to us ?

Who does not think of the tragedy of sexual love which is offered
to us in the hospitals ? all the hundreds of thousands who have to pay
for the licentiousness which results from sexual lust — all the tabetics,
syphilitics, general paralytics, etc. ?

Who does not remember the torments which the sexually perverse
have brought on themselves and on humanity ? All the lust-murders !
And all the punitive measures ? The lust-murders which we commit
— to prevent lust-murders ! . . .

Who does not think of the torments of pregnancy ? its risks of
life and death ?

Are all these mistakes of Nature ? No ! No ! ! The accompani-
ment of pleasure by pain must have some definite purpose. This
purpose is : That pleasure, without its opposite, pain, would not be
perceptible, would be unthinkable, would be inconceivable — just as
cold could not be apparent to our consciousness without heat, or light
without darkness. Thus pleasure, in the absence of pain, would not
be perceived as pleasure. Therefore, by increase of pain, pleasure
becomes of greater value, for the greater the contrast the more readily
do we perceive it.

" Masochism is thus a natural law."

The more fully it is developed in any individual, the higher, the more
superhuman is that person.

593

VI.

Through the recognition of the masochistic natural law, I passed
into a peculiar condition. Individual love and sorrow no longer made
any particular impression on me. I began to observe masochism in
the life and work of Nature, in the history of humanity, in social life,
and in civilization.

Is not the great developmental principle of Nature based upon this —
that the existence and progress of the species is dependent upon
pressure exercised on it by its environment ? The more difficult the
conditions of existence, the harder the pressure of the environment,
the more suffering the species has to bear, the stronger must be the
reaction against these, the more strongly will the powers and capacities
of that species become active, and by this the species will be elevated
to a higher level.

" Thus suffering is the driving force of Nature. Nature is therefore
masochistic !"

Within the species itself the same law holds. Within the " human "
species have not those varieties developed to the highest which have
had to overcome the hardest environment ? Those who by nature
have been troubled with the greatest difficulties in providing for their
food-supply ? Those who have suffered most ?

Is not the existence of the living being dependent upon the
" struggle for existence," upon the mutual hostility of the species,
striving for one another's annihilation ?

It is a characteristic trait of human nature that all religions are
based upon the same fundamental principle : " Only by suffering canst
thou become happy !"

Is not this true masochism, when humanity, by means of modern
science, has also been robbed of the hope of a beyond, of the hope for
eternity and blessedness, and is offered nothing in its place ? Look at
universal history !

Was not the birth of that great idea associated with frightful suffer-
ings, with the influence of fire and sword, blood and death ? Has
not humanity crucified its greatest benefactors ? Has it not re-
warded them with the gallows, the torture-chamber, the wheel, the
stake, the prison, and the asylum ?

And all out of love for humanity !

All the persecutions of Christians and Jews, the inquisitions and
burnings of heretics, witch-trials, the religious sorrows of all times —
all were outflows of the love for humanity. Their aim was to safe-
guard mankind from the robbery of its happiness by heresy !

The love of humanity begat our Neros, our Torquemadas, our Ivans
the Terrible, and Schdanows !

Why did these men torture other men ? . . . In order themselves
to realize in imagination the others' torments, to sympathize with
them, to feel with them. In order in their own spirit to endure these
martyrdoms ; that is to say, to torture themselves with the representa-
tion of the pain of another. ... " Thus in its motives sadism is nothing
else than masochism."

The love of humanity erected the cross of Christ, lighted the faggots
with which Huss and Bruno wore burned, tortured Thomas Miinzer,

594

stabbed Marat, decapitated Hebert, and built the gallows of Arad,
St. Petersburg, Chicago, etc. !

The love of humanity built the Bastille, the Tower of London, the
Spielberg, BlackwelTs Island, and the Schliisselburg, built the torture-
chambers of the Inquisition, constructed the medieval penal system,
and those of Montjuich, Alcalla del Valle, Borissoglebsk, and many
others.

Remarkable ! That precisely your " love of humanity " was the
most cruel tormentor, the most inexorable executioner, the most
bloodthirsty butcher of men, and the greatest of all criminals.

Do you not see in all this the wise rule of the masochistic principle ?
That it was only persecution which diffused these ideas ? All the
progress which man makes in civilization must be paid for by means of
enormous sacrifice. The superhuman sorrows of millions of slaves
created the civilization of antiquity — the Phoenician, the Babylonian,
the Persian, the Assyrian, the Greek, and the Roman ! (With regard
to this often disputed fact, see Mommsen : " In comparison with the
sufferings of the slaves of antiquity, all the sufferings of modern
negro slaves are simply a drop in the ocean !")

Indian civilization is the product of the most horrible suppression
and plunder of the lower castes by the higher. The soil of the Southern
States of America was cultivated through being manured with the
sweat, blood, and bones of negro slaves.

The soil of Europe, again, was made fertile by the sufferings of
slaves and serfs, and so on !

Amid the most horrible birth-pangs, amid the slave rebellions,
peasant wars, and revolutions, in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and
twentieth centuries, mankind was enabled to throw off the shell of the
feudal system. Therewith capitalism was born. This newest form
of civilization, once more, is based upon horrible plundering, oppres-
sion, and misery of millions and millions of proletarians.

What a devastation of humanity results from the acquirements
of civilization in respect of engineering and the practical arts ! . . .
Every invention and discovery demands its victims ! . . .

How often have chemists been destroyed by an explosion in the
creation of new compounds, or killed by the development of poison-
ous vapours !

Count the engineers who have been sacrificed to their profession, or
bacteriologists who have been killed through infection in the study
of zymotic diseases !

Count all the victims of professional diseases, of tuberculosis,
phosphorus necrosis, lead poisoning, mercurial poisoning, etc. ! . . .
Count all those who have fallen from scaffoldings, all the sailors who
have been drowned, all the railway employees who have been run over,
all the factory hands who have been torn to pieces by machinery, all
those who have been destroyed in mines by explosions, etc. !

Think of the hunger and misery of the widows and children of these
victims of industry and science, of the loss of work and other social
injuries resulting from capitalism !

The rebellion of the victims of this system, again, gives rise to the
class war, with new tortures, new sufferings ! . . . In order ulti-
mately, by the creation of a new social system in the future, to free
mankind from these sufferings ! . . . People believe it ! But that is

595

nonsense ! The sufferings will only assume a new form, and will
increase ! !

Do you, then, believe that all the miseries of mankind at the present
time have been the result only of chance, not of foresight ?

Oh, no ! These sufferings were only the stimulus which drove
mankind forward to new construction, to greater progress, in order
to avoid suffering ! . . . Progress brought new suffering, and so on.

" Thus suffering is the civilizing factor of mankind ! To free man-
kind from suffering would mean to rob mankind of civilization."

Can we represent to ourselves a life of complete satisfaction ?

No ! Without suffering, the needs would be wanting which alone
provide the stimulus to progress ! . . . Without suffering, we should
also be without enjoyment. For everything reaches our consciousness
only by means of its opposite.

•'• To free us from torment means to rob us of pleasure. . . . But
then we should no longer have any interest in life !"

" Civilization is a union, a hermaphrodite structure, of pleasure and
pain — that is, masochism ! ! . . . The progress of mankind is only
possible by means of the masochistic principle."

Oh, cruel-sweet philosophy of Golgotha ! ! Eternally shalt thou
remain the Moira and Kismet of humanity ! ! !

VII.

" Always the more, always the better of your kind shall perish, for it shall
always be worse for you. So only — 80 only — does man grow upwards "
(Nietzsche, " Zarathustra," ii., p. 126).

Magnificent Nietzsche !

Now first do I grasp your " superman "! . . . Now I share your
hatred of the every day and the average !

Away with the philistine cowardice which says, " Above all, do not
go too far ! ... Do everything with moderation and for a definite
end ! . . . Never go too far, and never fall into extremes !" . . .

No ! . . . Go forward with courage into the extreme ! . . . Only
slothfulness, comfortableness, and cowardice are afraid of a Turkish
bath, with the subsequent cold douche !

But how the body softens under this laisser faire et laisser passer,
how it loses its power of resistance, accumulates substances which are
superfluous, and therefore harmful ! In the same way that part of
humanity which follows this device will perish from the philistine
disease named " moderation " !

Let mankind get into its Turkish bath — and then get under the
cold douche ! Thus it will be steeled, rejuvenated, and invigorated !
Thus it will be freed from superfluous matters !

" Let things be made continually worse and harder for mankind,
then the reaction will step in and drive them forward !"

According to this device I acted henceforward. To increase pain,
in order that pleasure might become greater !

An immeasurable love for humanity took possession of me now that
I had at length attained the point of view which so perfectly harmon-
ized with my individuality. ... I myself became equivalent to
humanity ; I felt the heart-beat of millions in myself. Their contra-

38—2

506

dictory feelings were united in my own person. I felt equally capitalist
and proletarian ; equally orthodox Christian and Catholic, Jew and
atheist ; equally man and woman.

All the sorrows and joys in humanity I felt in myself, and I plunged
myself in them to the depths.

I wished to experience them all in my own spirit. ... I studied
universal history, but with what perception ! . . . I did not confine
myself to facts, but I turned to the persons of those who were acting ;
I represented to myself all the misery of the crowd and the thought of
the crowd.

What intolerable pain all these provided for me ! How I began to
love glorious humanity which suffered all that !

Now the moment had come ! Now was the time quickly to plunge
into the extreme of life ! . . . To plunge into all the sorrows of the
millions, and to increase them tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold !
To drink the voluptuous sensation which all experience in the paroxysm
of frenzy, and thus to become thorouglily man ! !

VIII.

Prom now onwards I threw myself with enthusiasm into the arms of
the most extreme section of the anarchist movement. I gave up the
whole of my property to the support of newspapers, to the publication
of pamphlets, to the support of agitators, and so on. But, at the same
time, I remained in touch with the " upper ten thousand." I travelled
through the principal countries of Europe and America, everywhere
forming associations, everywhere developing amid the receptive ele-
ment of the movement my most radical tendencies — in most cases
with good result.

(He now describes in detail his propagandist destructive activity,
especially in Spain.)

IX.

Meanwhile, in my home in Eastern Europe the revolutionary
tendency was continually gaining force ; anarchism also became more
influential. I felt that there was the proper field for my further
activity.

Henceforward I lived partly in Paris and partly in Genf and
Zurich, in order from these places to guide the movement in my
direction.

Among my own countrymen I soon found adherents to whom nothing
seemed too fantastic, nothing too radical.

Soon we were in possession of a small printing-office, with the aid
of which we issued leaflets, pamphlets, and newspapers.

These generally contained the same ideas : the working classes
should not bother themselves with political demands, such as " uni-
versal suffrage," " individual liberty," and the like. For, even if all
these were to be gained, social oppression and exploitation would
remain unaltered : these are what they feel most deeply, and from
these evils all the others result. The working classes should rather
aim at the " social revolution," they should undertake the " expro-
priation of the expropriators."

597

In the newspapers and pamphlets we proved in a scientific manner
the justice of all forms of individual expropriation — robbery with
violence, theft, extortion, etc. ; we conducted an attack on property ;
we demanded the destruction of wealth, whether in private hands or
in the hands of the State, in order that its possession might be more
easily gained.

When the war between Japan and Russia broke out, we all felt that
the time for increased activity had now arrived — most of us moved to
Poland, Lithuania, or Bessarabia. A few only remained in Switzer-
land, in order to keep a grip upon the organization in these parts.

For me there now began a period of frightful sufferings. . . .
With frenzied haste, I seized all the possible news from the seat of
war ; greedily I consulted the reports of great battles lasting for entire
weeks ; I read of the dreadful storming of Port Arthur. All the horrible
details passed plainly before my eyes.

All the frightful tortures of the masses I represented in my imagina-
tion. I saw how they stood in battle day after day ; how they had
lost consciousness in consequence of hunger and thirst and fatigue,
and so went on fighting as mere automata. Ultimately they even
forgot to take nourishment, to drink, and to rest — they actually did
not any longer understand that they could free themselves from their
torture of hunger and thirst, could save their lives, by eating and
drinking — so they went on in a frenzy until they fell.

I was no longer capable of doing anytliing else than, with a swim-
ming head, with temples pulsating with fever, studying war reports.
Day and night these pictures were before me. Oh, if I could only
stand with them in this hell ! . . . How I loved them, these people
who were capable of such grand actions ! . . . I wished to call out
to them : " Be embraced, 0 millions ! Receive the kiss of the whole
world !" . . . Yes, these are the true civilized nations ! . . . To
what progress must these horrible sufferings give rise ? What a
future for mankind ! What joys to come !

XI.

Meanwliile the whole of my property had been used up in the
revolutionary movement. The little money that was still available,
that we were still able to scrape together here and there, was neces-
sarily used for party purposes. I therefore suffered the most horrible
poverty — now in Warsaw, now in Lodz, Bialystok, Kiew, or Odessa.
. . . Most of our adherents were among the poor Jewish quarters of
these towns.

My earnings consisted of occasional work and occasional theft.
When there was nothing doing in either of these ways, I moved on
with a few of my own kind from one of our supporters to another. . . .
These people divided with us the little they had.

It was a voluptuous joy to me, finally, to plunge into the uttermost
depths of misery which it is possible to reach.

It was an enormous victory to be able to live in such surroundings.

598

What glorious torments I suffered, until I had overcome the disgust
and loathing which the whole environment produced in me ! Every-
where we were amidst horrible dirt.

Notwithstanding all the dirt and misery in which I saw these people
wallowing — or, precisely, because of these things — I began to love
them as hitherto I had loved no others. . . . When they told me of
the frightful persecutions wliich their people had endured as no other
had done, then I experienced an unnamable yearning to be one of
them ; then I wondered at the enormous power with which, notwith-
standing all persecutions, amidst the most frightful misery which I
saw around me, yet they were able to be the most ardent revolu-
tionists.

XII.

Everywhere now the revolution was in flood. We developed a
feverish activity in all our centres. ... At first we had no very
great influence, but our emissaries were actively at work everywhere,
in order to convert our movement from a political one to a social
one, or at least to an economic one.

For this purpose we had provided a secret printing-press in Warsaw,
where we prepared the necessary leaflets. They were written by a
student, who was a genius in this speciality. No one understood as
well as he how to appeal to the instincts of the crowd. The moving
power of his style was incomparable. . . . He put the facts side by-
side, illuminated them from the side that seemed to him most suitable,
and then drew his conclusions, which, in their simple convincing
logic, seemed irresistible. Then he turned to inflame fanaticism,
reminded us how, then and there, and there, and there, so many victims
had been sacrificed to the same idea ; how, there and elsewhere, on
the barricades men had died for it, and had rather rotted in prison
than abandon their just demands. In this way he always succeeded
in moving the crowd.

It was very efficacious, also, to remind the people of all the little
tricks which had been played upon them by the manufacturers and
by the authorities ; he drew their attention to the fact how they, who
had created everything, were actually not recognized as human beings,
far less as human beings with equal rights. . . . These proofs most
readily infuriated the proletarians to frenzy, and in some places, as
in Lagonsk, Tiflis, and Baku, we succeeded in turning the movement
in the economic direction. It was a great advantage that we had
associates everywhere, and we were quickly notified when the rain
was likely to begin, so that we could speedily move to another place.

In Tiflis the affair did not go as I wished ; here the people were
only too practical. . . . They began neither to strike, nor to demolish,
nor to attack the soldiers. . . . No. . . . They simply said : " So
much wages do we want ; then we shall work only for such a time ;
and no commodity must rise in price. . . . Every one who will not
take part with us we shall shoot." . . . All the inhabitants joined
them. . . . After a short time all this came to nothing.

Baku was more pleasing to me. . . . Here the petroleum-borers
made their demands, and as these were not agreed to within two days,
they set fire to 140 wells. . . . Then, to my great regret, the pro-

599

prietors agreed to everything which had been demanded. I had been
so inhumanly glad to see my life-ideal fulfilled. It seemed as if the
situation was going to be such as I had often imagined. . . .

A long time already had the religious and racial hatred between
the Armenians and the Tartars been inflamed to the uttermost. In
the whole of the Caucasus there was a bubbling as if in a witch's
cauldron. . . . Naturally, I remained in Baku, hi order to be ready
for what I hoped would happen there.

The whole population was at the uttermost point of tension ; every-
thing seemed painfully uncertain ; would the dance begin or not ? . . .
I felt that it would only be necessary to throw a grain of sand into
the machine, and in an instant it would lead to an avalanche. : . .
I was possessed by a frightful excitement ; this mental tension was
intolerable. . . . From minute to minute the horrible anxiety of
the undetermined increased in me, and the hellish desire still burned
within me ; I longed that it might start at this very minute, so that,
at last, my nerve-destroying tension might be relieved.

Then I became possessed with a demoniacal idea : one only needed
to give the slightest little push at the right place, and the storm
would break.

Inwardly I shuddered at the idea of the horrible consequences ;
and yet something within me drove me forward with an irresistible
force — finally, to close the switch, and to allow the current to pass
which must give rise to the explosion. ... " It is only a kind of
benevolent midwifery," something seemed to whisper in my ear.
" It must happen, in any case ! . . . The sooner the storm breaks,
the better !"

Thus I was subjected to a conflict of perceptions, which made me
quite irresponsible. I was hurled to and fro by momentary feelings
like a football. A single word from the other side would have pro-
duced in me such a suggestion that I should have blindly done any-
thing I might have been asked to do.

My state resembled that of those people of whom Blanqui says :
" Paris at any moment contains 50,000 men who are ready at a wave
of the hand to shed blood for any cause." It is indifferent to them,
he might have added, if it is for the cause of freedom or for the cause
of reaction.

This " destroy-everything mood," which had so long been to me
a psychological riddle, I was now able to study in my own person,
as the result of an intensified masochistic predisposition. ... At
the foundation of the whole hermaphroditic state, there lay nothing
else than the love of humanity. . . . An everyday humanity offers
us no new sensations. . . . We are only able to love when it is out
of the ordinary. . . . For this reason, we strive to see mankind in
pain and poverty — in order that we may love men more ardently ;
to love them for that reason, because their misery provides for us
intense pain.

For days I wandered about, fighting within myself a frightful
spiritual battle. ... I felt that the only alternatives were either to
bring about a catastrophe or suicide. To wait any longer was beyond
my powers. A chance must decide. . . .

A kind of trance state had taken possession of my organism. . . .
I_knew nothing rightly : I did not know if everything around mo was

600

reality or only a dream ! . . . Yes, I even doubted my own exist-
ence ! . . . At no moment did I know where I was, how I had
come there, what I had just been doing, what I really was. ... I
remember only that suddenly I was walking in the street in deep
conversation with a man entirely unknown to me. . . . Our con-
versation turned round the question, What was going to happen ?
. . . Both of us were reserved, both on the watch ; each seemed to
have the feeling — " He is seeing through me ; I must not betray
myself ! . . . Perhaps I shall be able to get something out of him !"
. . . Thus, we spoke with the most extreme caution about that which
each of us read in the soul of the other. . . .

The passers-by stared at us ; possibly we had been speaking rather
too loudly. It appeared to me that someone was following us in
order to listen to our conversation ; we stopped, in order that this
person might be compelled to walk past us. It was an impudent
lad, in the years between boyhood and manhood ; he stopped also,
with his hands in his trousers pockets, a few paces distant, and
listened to us with interest. . . . My companion was as mucli taken
aback as I was myself, and we both began to stammer. At the
moment a crowd of gapers had collected around us, hoping to hear
something of interest. We both became continually more confused ;
my head began to swim, and I began to say something. It must
have been nonsense that I spoke, for my companion looked at me,
half astonished and half alarmed, and several persons in the crowd
began to titter. This made me suddenly lose my head more even
than before, and I began to get angry. Suddenly I shouted out to
my companion : " That will have the most frightful results ; they
have cut off the Tartar's feet and hands, and now the Tartars will
massacre the whole town !" . . . All those around me began to
talk to one another at once. " Cut off feet and hands !" . . . I had
turned the switch and the current had passed. . . .

I do not know how I got home. . . . My landlady rushed to me
with the news : " The Tartars are going to burn the town to ashes,
and to murder all the Armenians. Some of them have had their feet
and hands cut off ; their noses have been slit, their eyes cut out ;
boiling oil has been poured into their ears. . . . The people are all
running away, or barricading themselves in their houses !"

XIII.

I did not see the beginning of the drama, for immediately after my
return home I fell into a death-like slumber, which lasted more than
fifty hours. No one could have kept about after such a spiritual
storm. . . . When I awoke, I was so weak that only with labour
could I move a few paces ; my whole body trembled unceasingly. . . .
I had absolutely no other desire but for repose. . . . After I had
somewhat recovered, I went to sleep again until the next morning.

Now I once more felt comparatively strong, although my arms and
legs still trembled. My hostess — a German woman, long ago deserted
in this town — gave me an account of the atrocities perpetrated by the
Tartars. As I went out, the town seemed to be dead. In the streets
there still lay numerous horrible, mutilated corpses ; the shops were

601

closed ; here and there houses were demolished. As far as I could
learn, in Tiflis the Tartars had done even worse. . . . Here in Baku
they had fired the boring-wells of the Armenians ; from these the fire
had spread to the rest, so that the entire petroleum industry was
ruined, and 10,000 men were out of work.

All this, however, made no impression on me. A frightful relaxa-
tion and apathy had taken possession of me ; I felt neither pain, nor
pleasure, nor sympathy. It was the reaction following the previous
hypertension of the nerves.

I cared no longer to stay here, and I resolved to return to Kiew,
and later to Warsaw or to Lodz.

XIV.

After a short stay in Rostow, on the Don, I reached Kiew, and
was received by the group with much joy. They had believed that I
had fallen in the massacre at Baku or Tiflis.

Our successes in Tiflis and Baku in the economic province, by
means of the economic terror, were now utilized at every opportunity ;
they only regretted that, owing to the racial conflict, everything had
been once more destroyed.

During my absence there had been many changes here. In Odessa,
Kiew, Warsaw, Lodz, and Bialystok, successful " expropriations "
had been effected. These " new tactics " had not only been strikingly
successful in almost every case, but they had also attracted towards
us the sympathies of those who had hitherto not taken in much earnest
our influence upon the revolution.

These "expropriations" were carried out in various ways. For
example, by one of our associates, who was an official in the postal
service, we were kept informed when, anywhere in the neighbourhood
of the town, the post-office coach was to pass an isolated place, carry-
ing anything of considerable value. We then attacked it and
plundered it.

Or we sent out spies to learn when, in any great person's house, or
in any bank, large suras of money would be on hand, and at what time
the fewest employees would be there. Armed to the teeth, we
crowded in, and demanded the surrender of the money, leaving in its
place a receipt with the dreaded imprint of our organization. It also
happened — as in Odessa — that a bomb was exploded in a business
locality. Every one ran up to see what had happened. Meanwhile,
one of our bands entered the place of business from behind and
plundered the safe.

What a quantity of intelligence, energy, perseverance, and know-
ledge had to be employed, to render such enterprises possible ! How
we had to watch for weeks, to form plans and reject them ; how our
arrangements must be altered at the last moment, or the enterprise
entirely abandoned ! Of this every one and no one can form an
idea for himself.

Here, at any rate, I do not propose to give a detailed description
of these affairs, because my sketches do not aim at giving a description
of the revolution, or of those who participated in it, but simply and
solely to represent the motives of my own activity: Therefore I describe

602

my own environment, only in so far as it is necessary to do so for
the understanding of these motives.

These " expropriations " were, moreover, not an anarchist speciality,
for they were also undertaken by the other terrorist parties.

He, however, who believes that the revolutionaries employed this
money for their personal needs is grossly deceived. After, as before,
they remained in their miserable holes, eating rotten herrings and
going barefoot, in order not to destroy their union with the workmen,
and not to lose the latter's confidence. The money was used solely
for revolutionary purposes — for providing weapons and printing-
presses ; for the erection of laboratories for making bombs ; for the
expenses of the journeys of smugglers and propagandists ; for bribery ;
and for the support of those who had been arrested, and of their
families — also the families of those who had been killed or wounded.

XV.

Soon after my return from Baku, I was transferred to Warsaw, in
order to take part in the May-day celebrations of 1905 — these May-
day celebrations taking place according to the calendar of non-Russian
countries.

The war, the unceasing extensive strikes and disturbances, had
resulted everywhere in giving rise to horrible misery, which was
further increased by the political crisis and by the arrest of all branches
of industry.

All the misery of which I had always dreamed I now saw un-
ceasingly around me. It might be believed that at length my desires
would have obtained satisfaction ! But this was not so. In the
same degree as that with which the poverty around me increased did
my sensibility, too, become blunted ; I became accustomed to its
appearance ; I regarded it as an everyday occurrence, as something
easily comprehensible.

Somewhat more did I love and honour humanity on account of this
misery ; but not to the extent of something beyond force, something
" superhuman," which would have been necessary for my complete
satisfaction. Perhaps in Baku I should have experienced this super-
human feeling, had it not been that at the decisive moment my body
gave way under the strain. Was that, perhaps, prearranged by
Nature ? Has Nature imposed these limits upon an individual, in
order to prevent him from raising himself above the human standard ?

Can it be that the state into which I fell at Baku resembled a
" syncope of the soul," which ensued when my psychical state began
to verge upon the superhuman, in consequence of the torments around
me, just as bodily syncope renders us unconscious when physical pain
exceeds the limits of human capacity ?

These questions now began to occupy me. I could only attain
certainty by means of experiment ; and I must obtain certainty, even
if the hah* of humanity had to be sacrificed, as one sacrifices a rabbit
in an experiment.

Impatiently I awaited the first of May. . . . Perhaps that day
would bring me a solution of the riddle ! . . . The workmen were
still undecided : should they demonstrate or not ? . . . I began to

603

urge them in favour of the demonstration ; my reason is easy to under-
stand. . . .

It was unquestionably one of the largest demonstrations that
Warsaw had ever witnessed. In the narrow streets there was packed
an innumerable crowd. Suddenly from all sides the soldiers charged
the demonstration. ... A frightful panic — such as I have never
before seen — seized the crowd. Resistance was not to be thought
of — it was a sauve qui pent !

In mad fear of death, every one began to scream, and to seek refuge
in the houses. ... At the doors of the houses there ensued a frightful
pressure. Many were thrown to the ground ; these were trodden to
pulp. On the ground- floor the windows were broken in, and people
crawled through them into the houses. Meanwhile, the Cossacks
were raging up and down, cutting people down with their sabres.
There were deafening screams of fear, and with these and with the
groans of the wounded there mingled the bestial " Siiiy " of the
Cossacks, so as to produce a nerve-lacerating concert of hell. And
around one could see the unnaturally dilated pupils, the widely opened
eyes, and the faces distracted with anxiety, of those who were seeking
safety in flight.

The same excitement had seized on me also ; with a wildly beating
heart, and an unbearably distressing feeling of contracture in the
loins, which produced in my entire organism a kind of " anxious
ecstasy," I began to hope. . . . But it would not come. . . .

XVI.

In Odessa, which was exhausted by unceasing fights and strikes,
the strength of the reaction began to make itself felt, and there were
fears of a " pogrom " (an attack on the Jews). The forces of the
reaction in these pogroms always made use of the Lumpenproletariat
(the blackguardly element of the mob).

Since the most trustworthy of our Odessa associates were Jews, and
thus had no influence with the Lumpenproletariat, they urged me to
go to Odessa, and, as a non-Hebrew, to use my influence to prevent
the pogrom. It was not possible for me to refuse, although in secret
I rejoiced at the prospect of the pogrom.

In Kiew, where I had some business, I met by chance an acquaint-
ance belonging to my more prosperous past. This man knew nothing
of my revolutionary activities. He, for his part, was an arch anti-
Semite. In consequence of the disturbances, his business had been
completely ruined. He described the whole revolution as the work
of the Jews, and also abused the Government, which, in his opinion,
was to blame for the weakness which it exhibited in dealing with
the revolutionary forces.

" But," he continued, with a wink, " if the Government does
nothing, we shall know how to help ourselves a little !" I pretended
to be entirely of his opinion, and he told me in confidence that there
already existed in Odessa a secret committee, which was to take the
matter in hand. He also was a member. A large sum of money had
already been collected, in order to pay certain persons who were
to arrange the entire " Hetze." If I wished, I could be his guest,
and he would make me a member of the committee. I agreed.

604

The next day I was actually enrolled in the committee. Who the
members really were I did not learn. One characteristic was common
to them all — a frightful indolence. . . . Everything was ready.
They would arrange for patriotic demonstrations, and would then
throw proclamations amongst the people, to tell them that the Jews
had sworn an oath to combine with the Japanese for the destruction
of Holy Russia ; that the revolution had been begun by the Jews
in order that the Little Father's army must meet enemies on both
sides at once. Thus, for all the present misery the Jews only were
to blame, etc. . . . Everything had been arranged already, and was
in the hands of people who were prepared to undertake the whole
affair. The only thing now wanting was the proclamation.

My acquaintances now began to praise my genius as an author, and
they all pressed me to begin immediately to compose the required
leaflet. The proposal suited me ; I do not need to say why. With
zeal I threw myself upon the task, and the proclamation was a master-
piece of demagogic art, and a crowning example of the " appeal to
the beast in man," as it is ordinarily called.

The diffusion of this " document of civilization," as it is called by
the revolutionists, took place in connexion with the planned demon-
stration. The day passed without an outbreak, although the im-
minence of the storm could, as one may say, be felt in the air. Not
until the evening were a few Jews beaten here and there.

On the second day our people arranged for a second demonstration.
From the other side they endeavoured to form a counter-demonstra-
tion, and the two came in conflict. The Black Hundreds (drawn from
the Lumpenproletariat), who fought in the name of " patriotism,"
dispersed the counter-demonstrators, and began to demolish and to
plunder in the Jewish quarter of the town.

The breaking of the panes of glass, and the destruction of the goods
in the shop-windows and of the furniture in the houses, seemed to
inflame the crowd more and more ; they must have experienced a
sort of voluptuous sensation in connexion with these activities.
Finally, they found some Jews who had hidden themselves. A
horrible yell was now raised. The Jews were dragged out into the
street ; they were struck with everything available — with cudgels,
hatchets, and knives — until they were completely unrecognizable.
The crowd found more and more of them. Most of them threw them-
selves on their knees and begged for life ; it was most horrible to see
them, beaten till their features were no longer distinguishable, still
pleading for mercy. Now the mob really began to smell blood,
and to display its whole true human nature. Each began to murder
according to his own individual fancy. Here a man cut the breast
from a nursing mother ; there they tore the clothes from some girls,
and flogged them naked through the streets. In another place they
dragged a Jewess, naked, from her house into the street, tied her hand
and foot, and fastened her by the hair to the axle of a cab ; then they
drove off at a gallop until she was battered to death. Behind the
cab there ran street-arabs, striking at her body. . . . But to what
purpose is it to describe these scenes, at which one's heart is con-
vulsed in one's body with sorrow, and simultaneously one wishes to
exult with joy and triumph ?

Here I saw once more, in their proper environment, the 50,000 of

605

whom Blanqui speaks. A wave of the hand would have sufficed —
although 99 per cent, of them unquestionably felt no hostility towards
the Jews — to produce in all of them the most infernal anti-Semitic
excesses. If the police would allow it, as they allow the pogrom,
another wave of the hand would direct the mob with no less ease
to make an attack on another human variety — for example, on the
capitalists.

What psychological factor drove them on ? ... Was it simply a
tendency to cruelty ? . . . No ! . . . A love of cruelty considered by itself,
without a nobler motive, is inhuman, inharmonious to human nature,
and man cannot escape his own nature. There must therefore be
other motives at the basis of such actions, motives of a nature more
humanly comprehensible.

But look at all those slaughterers ! Regard their physiognomy !
Not a trace of cruelty — only suffering, unheard-of suffering, is re-
flected on these faces ! . . . The fear of death and the pain of their
victims prepares for themselves incredible torment ! . . . Do you
not believe that these people will return to their houses, and will
suffer intense mental pain ? . . . They will continually see, in
imagination, the last beseeching glance of their victim, full of com-
plaint and reproach, directed upon them ! . . . What hatred, what
contempt, will they feel for the animal which has awakened within
them ! They will feel a longing to spit in their own faces, to strike
themselves, to strangle themselves ! . . . Before every one whom
they meet they will lower their eyes : " He knows that I have
murdered people, amid the most cruel tortures, against whom there
was no hatred in my heart — murdered only for this reason : because I
had within me the instinctive demand for spiritual torment ; because
by the situation in which I suddenly found myself one pole of my
hermaphrodite nature was suddenly discharged !"

" They are masochists, only they do not know it."

Self-contempt suddenly seized me amidst this satanic orgy of
suffering on the part of such unconscious, instinctive masochists. The
remembrance that all these persons were being led onwards by a blind
animal impulse, and that to-morrow they would fall on their knees
before their God and pray to Him for pardon, filled me with disgust.
I began to hate this stupid mass. I wanted to see them grovel in the
dust themselves, and howl for mercy.

For this purpose it was only necessary to organize the Selbstschutz
(a union for the prevention of persecution of the Jews). In order to
effect this, I tried to get into the Jewish quarter. I succeeded in
doing so by means of some side passages. Hardly had I reached
this quarter, when I came across masses of these " Self -Protectors."
Finally, I found among them some acquaintances, and I joined them.

A heated contest now began to rage. ... As the Black Hundreds
were now so energetically attacked, all their heroism was speedily at
an end : they took to flight. At this moment the soldiers appeared —
not, as one might have imagined, to attack the Black Hundreds, but
to attack the " Self- Protectors."

My arm, which was stretched out in front of me, was traversed
longitudinally by a rifle-bullet in a peculiar manner. I sank to the
ground at first, but soon recovered sufficiently to get up and run
away.

606

That inexpressible sense of complete satisfaction by means of
suffering, for which I was continually searching — which, so to say, I
felt to slumber within me — once more appeared in actual experience.
I always had the impression that there was something wanting, that
it was necessary to awaken something within me which hitherto had
existed in my consciousness only in a dormant state. ... At the
same time, a voice whispered to me that I was demanding something
superhuman ; that the attainment of such a thing must logically over-
whelm my purely human powers, and that it would involve my
annihilation.

Day and night these thoughts tormented me : " You must gain this
experience — even if it involves your destruction ! . . . But what if,
at the last moment — as at Baku — a further incapacity, a ' spiritual
syncope,' ensues ?"

One thing I knew — " When you reach it, it will only be by yourself ;
all others will break to pieces before you !"

XVII.

I no longer had any interest in the development of revolutionary
affairs, since for my own purposes they were no longer serviceable.

The new questions which now arose — as, for example, the propa-
ganda among the Lumpenproletariat — left me cold. ... In the
pogrom we had seen what an unawakened force — reputed as revolu-
tionary, but in reality masochistic — was slumbering in the Lumpen-
proletariat. That this force could also be used in the service of
reaction was ascribed to the fact that all these thieves, criminals,
and prostitutes, came into contact only with the working classes.
But since they earn from the latter nothing but contempt, their
sensibility was turned against the working classes.

This unfortunate state of affairs it was proposed to counteract by
going among the criminals, just as in earlier years they had gone
among the working people. An endeavour was made to organize the
Lumpenproletariat, in order to win their sympathies.

The movement was in part successful, although it brought with it
much corruption. Thus it happened that the criminals endeavoured
to turn the matter to their own advantage, and began to pursue
their profession in the name of anarchism. For example, in Warsaw
they visited the house of an enormously rich Jewish banker, whose
father had recently died, and, under the mask of anarchism, demanded
from him 10,000 roubles, with the threat that if he did not give the
money, they would dig up the corpse of his father and bury it in
unconsecrated ground. When we remember there is nothing more
horrible for an orthodox Jew than to rest in unconsecrated soil, we
shall understand that the banker gave the money ; but this occurrence
aroused a great sensation, and people began to identify anarchists
with common criminals.

Now the anarchists had to endure the persecution, not only of the
Government, but also that of other revolutionary parties and of the
Lumpenproletariat — the latter for this reason : because they did not
wish their names to be associated with actions which were undertaken
for personal advantage, and not for revolutionary aims.

607

This campaign against the anarchists from three different sides
must soon bring about disaster.

During this time I was perpetually puzzling over the problem :
" Will the idea you have dreamed of be realized within you ? . . .
Will it lead to your destruction ? . . . Or will it overwhelm your
powers, and lead once more to spiritual syncope ?"

By means of an experiment, the matter could be determined ! . . .
Supposing one were to distribute broadcast plague bacilli ! . . . If
entire towns were to suffer from this disease ! . . . If the fear of
death was to seize the whole crowd of those who, in their cowardice
at every strike, every demonstration, every fight at the barricades,
had hidden behind the stove or crept under the bed ! . . . If this
fear of death were to increase to a general panic, affecting entire towns,
entire countries, as happened in the middle ages ! . . . If the people,
in their despair, should look for the disseminators of the trouble, and
should proceed to hew one another to pieces ! . . . Would my relief
come then ? . . . Will there be an answer for me ?

I shudder to think of the suffering which this would entail for me !
I feel that I am not equal to this ! . . . I suffer, on the other hand,
inexpressibly, because I have no answer, no recognition, no satisfac-
tion ! . . . I will — and I cannot. To endure longer this herma-
phroditic state — this is death or lunacy ! . . . What to do ? ...
How to free oneself from this horrible dilemma ?

Oh, why am I not like others ? . . . Why cannot I simply accept
that which is ? ... Why do I torment myself to climb the moun-
tain, in order to stand before a bottomless abyss ? . . . Before an
abyss whose secret depths will be manifest to me only if I hurl myself
into it ! ...

What to do «... What to do ? ... Shall I, or shall I not ?
... I will ! ... I must ! . . .

As I was about to do it, I was arrested ! Chance or foresight ?

Oh, fate, fate ! That is too much of suffering ! . . . Oh, mankind,
mankind, what have you done ? . . . A single one wished to see. A
single one wished to tear a veil from the image — and you have hindered
it ! ... Eternally you will have darkness around you ! . . . But
why will you not allow me to see the light ?

Is it thus that you thank me, who have loved humanity as no other
has loved !

Yes ; that is once over again the cruel, the pitiless philosophy of
Golgotha —

" He who will love — must suffer !"

CHAPTER XXII
SEXUAL FETICHISM

" With respect to the evolution of physiological love, it is probable
that its germ is always to be sought and to be found in an individual
fetichistic charm which a person of one sex exercises upon a person
of the other sex." — R. VON KBAFFT-EBING.

609 39

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXII

Physiological foundation of sexual fetichism — Definition — " Partial attraction "
— Theory of fetichism — Psychological process by which it originates —
Idealization and accentuation in love — The ideal isolation of certain parts —
" Lesser " and " greater " fetichism — The most frequent forms of sexual
fetichism — Racial fetichism — Peculiar inclinations towards exotic individuals
— Hair fetichism — Various forms of this — The " plait-cutters " — Trial of a
plait-cutter — Hair fetichism in women — Baldness fetichism — Fetichism for
other parts of the body — Breast fetichism — Genital fetichism — The phallus
cult — Cunnilinctus and fellatio — A case of genital fetichism — A hermaphro-
dite fetichist — Hand fetichism — Buttock fetichism — Smell fetichism — Red
hair and the odour of the body — A passage from d' Annunzio's " Lust "-
Axillary-odour fetichism — The odour of the entire body as a fetich — Influence
of specific genital odours — Skatological fetiches — " Skatology " in folk-lore —
The " muse latrinal " — The " renifleurs " and " epongeurs " — Sexual per-
fumes— Influence of flowers and scents — Sexual taste fetichism — Priapistic
means of enjoyment — Examples — Fetichism for horsewomen — For bodily
defects — For old men — Voice fetichism — Object fetichism — Shoe fetichism,
or " retifism " — Explanation of these — Peculiarities of shoe fetichism —
Corset, stocking, and handkerchief fetichism — Fabric and costume fetichism.

CHAPTER XXII

LIKE algolagnia, sexual fetichism rests upon a physiological basis,
and is merely a more or less abnormal increase of fetichistic
ideas and perceptions, which are rooted in the very nature of
the sexual attraction.

By fetichism (derived from the Portuguese feitico Italian
fetisso — magic, charm) we understand the limitation of love,
its transference from the entire personality to a portion of this
personality, or, it may be, to some lifeless physical object related
to the personality.1 This fascinating " portion " of the beloved
personality, or the " object " associated with this personality,
is the sexual " fetich." Within physiological limits, the part
concerned exercises a particular attraction, and is especially
exciting, but in the ideas of the lover it remains associated
with the entire personality to which it belongs. Fetichism first
becomes abaormal, or pathological, when the partial representa-
tion becomes completely divorced from the general representa-
tion of the personality, so that, for example, a plait of hair or a
pocket-handkerchief is loved alone and by itself, disconnected
from the person to whom it belongs.

The development of love can always be referred to fetichistic
ideas, for when we examine critically the first general impression
which the beloved makes upon the lover, we always find that
there are certain parts or functions which have made the greatest
impression, and have exercised a greater erotic influence than
other portions. To the former of these, therefore, the imagina-
tion and the sensibility more especially cleave. In my " Con-
tributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis " (vol. ii.,
p. 311), I defined sexual fetiches as peculiar symbols of the
essence of the beloved personality, with which the idea of the
entire type is most readily associated. M. Hirschfeld later
enunciated the same views.

As sexual fetiches we may have : ( 1 ) Portions of the body ;
(2) functions and emanations of the body ; and (3) objects which
have any kind of relation to the body.

Under (1) we may enumerate the hand, the foot, the nose,
the ears, the eyes, the hair of the head, the hair of the beard,

1 M. Hirechfeld has therefore suggested the apt name " partial attraction "
for fetichism ; unfortunately, no adjective can be formed from this term, so that
for practical purposes the foreign word is more applicable.

611 39—2

612

the throat and the back of the neck, the breasts, the hips, the
genital organs, the buttocks, the calves. All these parts may
constitute sexual fetiches.

The same is true of all the influences enumerated under (2)—
viz., gait, movement, voice, glance, odour, complexion.

Under (3) we may enumerate the clothing as a whole (as
costume) and in its individual parts, upper-clothing and under-
clothing, hat, eyeglasses, way of dressing the hair, necktie, bodice,
corset, chemise, petticoat, stockings, shoes or boots, apron, hand-
kerchief, clothing materials (fur, satin, silk), the colour of
clothing (mourning, parti-coloured blouses, white clothing,
uniform), fashion (cul de Paris, decollete and retrousse, tricot) ;
indeed, clothing fetichism goes so far that a particular shape of
the heel of the shoe, a particular mode of ornamentation of some
particular part of the clothing, and, finally, any striking part of
the clothing, may become a sexual fetich.

This fetichistic influence is further increased by a peculiar
characteristic of human love. This is its tendency towards
idealization, beautification, and enlargement of those parts which
especially affect the senses. This beautification and idealization
extends from the body to the clothing, and to articles in general,
used by the beloved person, but normally remains associated
with the entire personality. It is first by means of the enlarge-
ment and accentuation of a distinct part that this becomes
separated from the general idea, and thus its removal and con-
version into a " fetich " is prepared for. In the chapter on
clothing we drew attention to this general anthropological
phenomenon of the enlargement and accentuation of many parts
by means of such measures as painting, articles of clothing,
exposure, way of doing the hair, etc.

Inasmuch as now, by the ideal and actual accentuation of the
part under consideration, it is projected as a more independent
structure, and separates itself from the personality as a whole,
it is involuntarily isolated in idea by the fetichist, and becomes
generalized to constitute an independent stimulus, which may
now, temporarily or permanently, completely take the place of
the personality as a whole.

This physiological process embraces both the " lesser " and
the " greater " fetichism of Binet.

The lesser fetichism consists in this : that the lover, without
going so far as to lose sight completely of the entire person of
his beloved, still directs his attention to individual special charms,
or is in general first attracted to the beloved woman by means

613

of quite distinct qualities, such as the shape and smallness of
the hand, the colour and sparkling of the eyes, the abundance
and softness of the hair, the complexion, a distinct odour, a
melodious voice, etc. In the " lesser " fetichism the partial
representation plays, indeed, a very prominent part in the
general picture, but does not entirely obliterate this picture.

In the " greater " fetichism, on the other hand, a particular
portion, or function, or quality, or an article of clothing, or an
object of customary use belonging to the beloved person, is
isolated from this latter, and in a sense becomes transformed
into the latter, and assumes wholly and completely the character
of a being capable by itself of exercising a sexually exciting
influence. This is genuine sexual fetichism.

Binet and von Schrenck-Notzing have referred the genesis of
fetichism, as a rule, to some chance occurrence during childhood —
to a fetichistic impression which chanced to coincide with sexual
excitement, and thus obtained a permanently sexual coloration.
The time of puberty and the first sexual relationships are
especially dangerous for the formation of such associations of
ideas. Von Schrenck-Notzing rightly draws attention to the
fact that this perverse associative connexion, as a reaction to
powerful external impressions, does not occur only, as Binet
assumes, in predisposed individuals, but is also quite peculiarly
characteristic of the childish mental life at the time when the
brain is undergoing growth, as well as of the less-developed intel-
lectual powers of savage races, among whom at the present time,
in quite other provinces than the sexual, fetichism is cultivated in
the most excessive manner ; thus, fetichism is often manifested by
persons with perfectly normal brains. Such chance occurrences
for the origination of sexual fetichism occur in games, in reading,
in solitary and mutual masturbation. Nearly always, in con-
nexion with the genesis of fetichism, we can prove that there has
been some such actual predisposing cause.

In numerous cases of the " greater " fetichism, especially in the
category of the hair fetichists (" plait-cutters "), shoe fetichists,
and handkerchief fetichists, there is also associated a more or
less severe psychopathic constitution, on the foundation of which
the fetichistic impulse has developed as a kind of " coercive idea "
(obsession). These are the cases which have the greatest forensic
importance, and which gain publicity.

We shall now proceed to give a brief account of the most
important forms of sexual fetichism, and those most frequently
encountered.

614

First of all, parts, functions, and qualities of the body may
constitute sexual fetiches ; the possibilities in this respect,
extending from head to foot, have been enumerated above.
Moreover, odd as it may sound, the entire human being may also
become a sexual fetich, not as a whole personality — that would
be normal love — but as a national or racial individual. In such
a case we have the so-called " racial fetichism." The European
newspapers are full of interesting reports of the peculiar attractive
force exercised by exotic individuals, female or male, such as
negroes, Arabs, Abyssinians, Moors, Indians, Japanese, etc.,
upon European men and women respectively. Whenever
members of such races come to stay in any European capital,
we hear of remarkable love affairs between white girls and these
strangers, of romantic abductions, and other mad adventures.
The novelty, peculiarity, piquancy of the strange races has the
effect of a fetich. The size, the figure, the physiognomy, tint of
skin, smell, tattooing, adornment, costume, speech, dance, and
song, of these savage men exercise a fascinating influence.
White men have from very early times had a peculiar weakness
for negroes and for mulatto women and girls. As early as the
eighteenth century there existed in Paris negro brothels ; and
somewhat later, after Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, negroes
and negresses came in large numbers to Paris, and were utilized
for the gratification of the lusts of both sexes.

Notwithstanding the deeply-rooted racial hatred, even in
America racial fetichism gives rise to numerous connexions of this
kind. The " coloured girl " exercises a powerful attractive force
upon the American man ; and even the proud American woman
manifests, with an especial frequency in Chicago, a certain prefer-
ence for the male negro.1 But much greater is the alluring force
exercised by the white upon the negro. More especially among
civilized negroes does the white woman play the part of a fetich.
This is the explanation of the frequent rape, or attempted rape,
of white girls on the part of negroes — one of the principal causes
of the Southern lynchings.

Among the parts of the body which act as fetiches, we
have especially to mention the hair of woman's head. " Hair
fetichism " is widely diffused, both in the physiological " lesser "
form and in the pathological " greater " form. The abundance
and the colour of the hair have an equal influence in normal
love also as a " fetich." Hair, " of sweetest flesh, the tenderest,
frweetest growth," as Eduard Grisebach terms it in his " Neue

1 Cf. Felix Baumann, " From Darkest America," pp. 10, 41.

615

Tanhauser," has a profound sexual significance ; with primitive
man, also, it probably played the same role of a sexually stimu-
lating " veil " which was later played by tattooing and clothing.
The hair of the head, and special modes of arranging that hair,
play an important part in sexual selection among the savage
races. The odour of the hair also has a sexually stimulating
influence, and remains persistent in the imagination. The softness
also of the hah*, the waving, curling movement of woman's
loosened hair, and the rustling of the hair, excite the imagination.
But most important of all is the colour of the hair ; and in this
respect blonde or reddish-blonde hair unquestionably takes the
first rank as a sexual fetich. Blonde hair exercised such an
influence in the days of the Roman Empire. The demi-monde
of all times has utilized this form of hair fetichism, felt by men,
for its own purposes, either by dyeing the hair a fair colour, or by
the wearing of fair-haired wigs. There exist, also, fetichistic
impulses towards brown, black, and red hair respectively. Jon
Lehmann tells (Breslauer Zeitung, August 24, 1906) of a great
libertine who was happy with any or all pretty girls, as long as
they had not red hair and were not the daughters of clergymen.
Innumerable times had he made this assertion. Many years
later Lehmann found him as the happy husband of — a red-haired
clergyman's daughter! "C'est 1'amour qui a fait cela," he
answered laconically to the astonished question why he had been
so unfaithful to the principles of his youth.

Hair fetichism manifests itself in various ways. Many people
are, properly speaking, rather smell fetichists than hair fetichists ;
they content themselves simply with smelling the hair, and this
constitutes their only, or their principal, sexual gratification.
Other hair, fetichists obtain sexual enjoyment by looking at the
hair, or by passing the fingers through it. The following case,
reported by Archenholtz (" England and Italy," vol. i., p. 448 ;
Leipzig, 1785), is typical :

" I was acquainted with an Englishman who was an honourable
man ; but he had a very peculiar taste, which, as he frequently assured
me, was deeply rooted in his soul. His greatest pleasure, which alone
oould intoxicate liis senses, was to comb the hair of a beautiful woman.
He kept a very handsome mistress for this purpose only. Love and
woman did not, in the ordinary sense, come under consideration ; he
had nothing to do except with her hair. In the hours that suited him,
she must take down her hair and let him pass his hands through it.
'Lliis operation produced in him the most intense degree of physical
voluptuousness."

616

The most remarkable class of hair-fetichists are the so-called
" plait-cutters." The transition to this morbid state depends
upon the custom, widely diffused in earlier times, of cutting off
and preserving locks of hair as erotic fetiches. This sexual
reliquary cult flourished especially in the eighteenth century,
during the period of "sentiment." Friedrich S. Krauss reports
(" Anthropophyteia," vol. i., p. 163) that among the Southern
Slavs young men and women gave one another tufts of pubic
hair as sexual fetiches. The " wig-collectors " also belong to
the category of harmless hair fetichists. More serious are the
genuine " plait-cutters " —persons who are accustomed to cut
plaits of hair from the heads of girls, who are happy in
the possession of these plaits, and who obtain sexual gratifica-
tion simply by looking at and touching them. These plait-
cutters are almost unquestionably pathological individuals, who
act under the influence of coercive impulses. Recently, in
Berlin, two such cases attracted public attention. The judicial
proceedings connected with the former of these cases elicited
such interesting details regarding the development, psychology,
and activity of plait fetichism that it is worth preserving, and is
therefore given here at length, quoted from a report in the
Berliner Tageblatt, No. 118, of March 6, 1906.

PERVERSITIES BEFORE THE LAW COURTS.

The plait-cutter whose arrest attracted so much attention appeared
yesterday in the Assessor's Court, under the presidency of the judicial
assessor Forster. The accused, Robert S., was a student of the
Technical High School at Charlottenburg. The accused was prose-
cuted and defended by counsel. He was born at Valparaiso in the year
1883. The accusation was that, between the months of November
and January last, he had, in sixteen cases, in the public streets,
cut plaits of hair from the heads of young girls, taking also the
ribbons with which their hair was tied ; this charge was one of theft.
In twelve cases also he was accused of bodily maltreatment and actual
injury. Two medical experts were present to advise the court.
During the inquiry the public was excluded from the court, but the
representatives of the Press were admitted.

The accused replied to the inquiries of the President, that he had
come to Germany in the year 1888, and that he had been at school in
Thorn, Bergedorf, and Hamburg. In Hamburg he had passed his
final examination, and had received a good report on leaving. He
had always had a special fondness for mathematics ; he had studied
for one term at Munich. He had always worked very hard. He
admitted that in sixteen cases he had cut plaits of hair from the
heads of girls in the streets of Berlin. In his rooms thirty-one plaits
had been found. — President : Had you such tendencies in earlier

617

years ? — Accused : Yes ; at the age of sixteen years I secretly, one
evening, cut some hair from the head of my sister, thirteen years of
age, and kept it. I have always had a desire for beautiful long hair ;
finally, this desire became so strong that I was unable to resist it any
longer. The first time that I cut some hair from the head of a girl
was the day of the entrance of the Crown Princess. I do not know
why I suddenly was unable to resist the impulse. It became
more powerful after I returned from a journey to South America,
which I made as a voluntary machinist. The voyage lasted
five months. I had worked very hard while on board. During the
whole voyage I was in a gloomy mood, and when I returned the
impulse became continually greater. — President : In what way did the
impulse affect you ? — Accused : I frequently ran after little girls
without being able to gratify the desire to possess their hair. Then
I succeeded, amid the crowd at the entrance festivities Unter den
Linden, to cut some loose hair from the head of a girl with a pair of
scissors, without the girl becoming aware of it. — President : What did
you do with the hair ? — Accused : Nothing at all. — President : What
did you think about while you where doing it ? — Accused : Nothing.
I simply put the hair into my pocket. — President : And afterwards ?—
Accused : Several times Unter den Linden I cut loose hair from girls'
heads. — President : When did you begin to cut off entire plaits ? —
Accused : In November, at the entrance of the King of Spain. Then,
in the " Opernplatz," I cut a plait from the head of a child ; the girl
did not notice it, and I remained quiet. The plait was fastened with
ribbon. — President : What did you do with the plait ? — Accused : I
took it home, combed it, and put it in a box on my writing-table, on
which was the inscription " Mementoes." I afterwards frequently
took the hair out and kissed it. Often I laid it on my pillow and rested
my head on it. — President : Were you not fully aware that you were
doing something wrong, and that you were interfering profoundly
with the rights of another individual ? — Accused : I did not think
about it. — President : If the proceedings were now to come to an end,
and if you weje discharged, would you do the same thing again ? —
Accused : I do not think that I should do it again, now that I have
experienced what the consequences are. — President : Can you give
security that in the future your will will be stronger than the impulse ?
— Accused : I cannot give any guarantee. — President : Have you never
read in the papers that the citizens of Berlin were very much agitated
by this cutting off of girls' hair ? — Accused : I have read nothing of
the kind. — President : When were you arrested ? — Accused : On
January 27. From a girl whose hair was plaited in two plaits I cut one
plait ; when she came near me again, I wanted to cut off the other
plait, and then I was arrested. — President : Is it true that you put a
ribbon round each plait of hair, and marked it with the date you had
cut it off ? — Accused : To some extent I did so. — President : Have you
ever had sexual relations with woman ? — Accused : No, never. I have
only had a strong impulse to gain possession of beautiful long hair. —
President : Would not long beautiful men's hair have satisfied you as
well ? — Accused : Yes. — Counsel for the Defence : Did you not have
this morbid impulse in quite early youth ? You told me that you
remembered the hair of many girls from the time that you were at
school in Thorn. At that time you were eight years old. You said

618

to me that you had thought no more about the persons to whom the
hair belonged, but only, and all the more, about their hair. — Accused :
That is correct. It is indifferent to me whether the person to whom
the hair belonged is young and beautiful or old and ugly : my only
interest is in the hair. — President : Have you the same interest in
white hair ? — Accused : My attraction is only to fair hair. — In reply
to a further question on the part of the President, the accused declared
that he had been a very active member of the academic gymnastic
club, and that he belonged to a students' purity alliance.— -Counsel
for the Defence : The accused has stated that, while he is at work, it
often happens that suddenly plaits of hair seem to appear before his
eyes. He often has reveries in which it seems to him that in all
countries women and girls with beautiful hair are at his disposal,
and that he is able to rob them of their hair. Among his colleagues
the accused has always felt himself to be thrust into the background.
He had the feeling that he was destined for great things, and that his
comrades would not recognize this. The accused, whose father is dead,
had received assistance for his studies ; his brother is an officer at sea ;
one of his sisters is mentally disordered. — Of the witnesses who had
been summoned to attend, three only were examined. Captain
von W., whose daughter, when walking in the Leipzigerstrasse, had
been robbed of part of her hair by the accused, gave evidence that
the affair had had very disagreeable consequences to his daughter.
Since that time the child had suffered from a terrible feeling of anxiety ;
she had experienced a nervous shock, and frequently cried out
anxiously in the middle of the night, because she was dreaming of the
plait-cutter. — The next witness, Frau Gall, an old acquaintance of
the family of the accused, described his character as exceptionally
good. All who knew him had been astonished to hear of his actions ;
no one who knew him had ever observed this passion for hair. Recently
he had obviously been overstrained mentally, and very distrait ;
generally speaking, he was not high-spirited and happy, like other
young fellows. According to further evidence given by this witness,
regarding the family history, it appeared that the accused was affected
with congenital taint. — Undergraduate Schmeding, President of " the
Alliance for the Maintenance of Chastity," had become intimately
acquainted with the accused, in consequence of their holding similar
views. He described him as having a good character, but as dreamy,
melancholy, and reserved, and unfamiliar with harmless cheerfulness
and joy. — Dr. Hoffmann, one of the medical advisers to the court,
said : We have in this case to do with a peculiar mode of activity of
the sexual impulse. Although such an impulse does not completely
abrogate responsibility, still, in this case, normal responsibility is greatly
limited from early youth onwards. The accused has an imaginative
belief that he is not sufficiently esteemed ; he believes that he could
make himself invisible ; he believes that he could build a great castle,
and furnish the rooms of this castle with innumerable plaits of hair.
Moreover, he is hereditarily tainted with insanity, and bodily examina-
tion shows that he has numerous stigmata of degeneration. § 51 of
the Criminal Code should apply to this case. Since the accused can
hardly be supposed to have the power of controlling his impulse, it
would appear necessary that he should be treated in a lunatic asylum.
— Dr. Leppmann, the other medical adviser, said : The case before us

619

is one of extreme rarity. The accused suffers from severe congenital
taint, and exhibits a number of stigmata of degeneration. At the
time his offences were committed the accused was certainly emo-
tionally disturbed, and at the present time is still ill. Von Krafft-
Ebing reports only a few such cases, and the same is true of Dr.
Moll. The accused was incapable of free voluntary determination ;
he is still unhealthy, and must be treated as a sick man. — Counsel for
the Prosecution : If the accused had been in possession of normal
mental health, it would have been necessary to punish him with
exceptional severity, for such offences as his profoundly endangered
public security ; it would not be right for any gaps to exist in our
Criminal Code which made the punishment of such an offence im-
possible. We may dispute in detail under which paragraph the
offence comes, but there can be no question but that it is a punishable
offence. The medical experts had, however, shown that the accused
was not fully sane, and he must be dealt with from this standpoint.

The President summed up as follows : The public sense of justice
naturally demands severe punishment for such an offence. The
accused, however, is not criminally responsible. In view of the
evidence given by the medical experts, the accused must be dis-
charged, on the understanding that his family will immediately
take steps to have him confined in an asylum. It was possible
that this decision would not satisfy every one, but in view of the
evidence before the court, no other course was possible.

This case appears to have had a suggestive influence, for
shortly afterwards a cashier, Alfred L., was arrested, who had cut
plaits of hair from the heads of two young girls. In his home
were found, in addition, seventeen plaits of hair, which he had
bought, among these the queue of a Chinese ! Already when a
schoolboy L. had been affected with this morbid impulse.

There exist also homosexual or pseudo - homosexual hair
feticbists, especially among women, to whom the hair of another
woman's head becomes a fetich. Remarkable is the following
passage in Gabriele d' Annunzio's romance " Lust " (pp. 210-212 ;
Berlin, 1902) :

' Do you remember,' asked Donna Francesca (of her friend Donna
Maria), ' at school, how we all wished to comb your hair ? how we
used to fight about it every day ? Imagine, Andreas, that blood
used actually to flow ! Ah, I shall never forget the scenes between
Carlotta Fiordelise and Gabriella Vanni. It was maniacal ! To comb
the hair of Maria Bandinelli was the one ardent desire of all the girls,
great and small alike. The infection spread through the whole school.
There followed prohibitions, warnings, severe punishment ; we were
even threatened with having our own hair cut off. Do you remember,
Maria ? All our heads were bewitched by the black snake which hung
from your head to your heels. What passionate tears every evening !
And when Gabriella Vanni, from jealousy, made that treacherous
cut with a pair of scissors ! Gabriella had really lost her wits. Do
you remember ?...''

" Andreas remarked that none of his lady friends had had such a
growth of hair, so thick, so dark a forest, in which she could conceal
herself. The history of all these young girls, in love with a plait of
hair, filled with passion and jealousy, who burned to lay comb and
hands upon this living treasure, seemed to him a most stimulating and
poetic episode of cloistral life."

There exists also a negative hair fetichism. Hirschfeld reports
the case of a prostitute who was a well-developed fetichist for
baldness. Among many races, removal of the hair is a means of
sexual stimulation.

Nose, lips, mouth (cf. Belot's novel, " La Bouche de Madame
X."), and ears, can all become the objects of sexual fetichism,
though in most cases only of the lesser fetichism ; the eyes also,
which as fetichistic charms play an important part, and are
effective especially through their colour. It is uncertain if, in
this relationship, clear blue eyes or sparkling black eyes have the
greater importance. The female breast is a natural physiological
fetich for the male sex. But over and above this there exists a
remarkable variety of breast fetichists, who employ the isolated
breast, separated from the body, for the binding of books.
According to Witkowski (" Tetoniana," p. 35 ; Paris, 1898),
certain bibliomaniacs and erotomaniacs have books bound with
women's skin taken from the region of the breast, so that the
nipple forms a characteristic swelling on the cover ! A further
account of these human skin fetichists is given by Dr. Picard in
the Gazette Medicale de Paris, July 19, 1906.

Von Krafft-Ebing contests the existence of a, special " genital
fetichism "; but the universal diffusion of the phallus-cult con-
tradicts his opinion ; the phallus-cult is unquestionably con-
nected with fetichistic ideas, which are embodied in the symbols
of the lingam and the yoni. According to Weininger,1 woman,
speaking generally, is only a phallus fetichist ; man exists for her
only as a sexual organ.

" I think people have been unwilling to see — or they have been
unwilling to say ; they have hardly formed accurate idea for them-
selves— what the copulatory organ of a man is for a woman, as wife,
even as virgin ; what it psychologically signifies ; how it dominates to
the uttermost the entire life of woman, although she herself may be
completely unconscious of the fact. I do not mean at all that
woman regards the male penis as beautiful, or even pretty. She
regards it as man regards the Gorgon's head, as the bird regards
the snake — it exercises upon her a hypnotizing, magical, fascinating
influence."

1 " Sex and Character," pp. 340, 341.

621

Goethe lays stress on the beauty which the male penis has
in woman's eyes, when, in the paralipomena to the first part
of " Faust " (Weimar edition, vol. xiv., p. 307), he makes Satan
say in his address to women :

" Fur euch sind zwei Dinge
Von kostlichem Glanz,
Das leuchtende Gold
Und ein glanzender. ..."

Georg Hirth also (" Ways to Love," pp. 566, 567) speaks of
an instinctive belief on the part of woman in the " beauty and
the paradisaical force of the phallus," and he regrets " the un-
natural depreciation and mendacious concealment of this portion
of the male body " by the conventional morality discovered by
the world of men.

The wide diffusion of the genital fetichistic tendencies in man
and woman is clearly manifested by the extremely frequent
occurrence of isolated adoration of the genital organs in the
practices of cunnilinctus and fellatio, which in numerous -indi-
viduals completely replace normal coitus.

Very rare is a case, which came under my own observation, of
isolated penis-foreskin fetichism in a heterosexual man. He is thirty
years of age, and a student of natural science, in whom at the age of
four years the first manifestation of sexual excitement occurred ;
later, towards the age of puberty, sexual excitement became always
associated with the mental representation of a male penis, and more
especially of the foreskin of that organ, whilst he felt antipathy to
the idea of actual sexual intercourse with men, and felt attracted to
women. Still, from time to time the imaginative representation of
the membrum virile takes possession of his mind as a sort of coercive
idea, and when this happens the patient masturbates, at the same
time often making sketches of a penis.

A singular case of exclusively genital fetichism is reported by
P. Gamier (" Les Fetichistes," pp. 170-174 ; Paris, 1896).

This case was that of a man, forty-eight years of age, who in normal
sexual intercourse was almost completely impotent, and who could
obtain sexual gratification only by the observation of the genital
organs of human beings and animals, and who, as in the case just
mentioned, was sexually excited by making sketches of genital organs.
This person exhibited obvious symptoms of nervous disorder.

We might regard it as hardly possible that cases should exist
in which the fetichism related to genital organs of a dubious
character — " hermaphrodite fetichism " ; and yet a veritable
case of such hermaphrodite fetichism has come under my own
observation.

622

The case is that of an officer, who is always searching for herma-
phroditic formations of the genital organs. He is pretty well known
in this respect among the prostitutes of Berlin, who make use of his
inclination for their own advantage, by a demonstration to him of
reputed hermaphrodites. He has had the good fortune to discover
several real hermaphrodites ; but notwithstanding all his endeavours,
his affection has never been returned.

The hand, especially a woman's hand, is not simply an object
for cheiromancy, but is also the occasion of a sexual fetichism by
which the hand is spiritualized. The beautiful, finely-formed
hand is a powerful love-charm. Binet reports the case of a young
man in whom sexual excitement was exclusively produced by
a woman's hand, and he was always on the look-out for oppor-
tunities of touching the beautiful hands of women. Isolated
foot fetichism is rarer ; it is generally associated with the very
common shoe fetichism (vide infra). The buttocks, the kalli-
pygian charms of women, have always been a sexual fetich for
men. Among flagellants this may become isolated as a fetich, and
completely divorced from the personality as a whole. For such
individuals, in sexual relationships, only the posteriora exist.

Among the bodily functions which are capable of acting as
fetiches, the smell, the emanation of the body, unquestionably
takes the first place. Smell fetichism is a very frequent pheno-
menon. Regarding the intimate relationships between the sense
of smell and the vita sexualis, and regarding the existence of
certain specific sexual odours, I have already recorded the most
important facts in the first chapter of the present work (pp. 16-
18). As sexual odours, the emanation from the hair of the head,
the emanation from the armpits, the smell of the genital region,
and the general emanation from the skin, come under considera-
tion.1

The fetichism for red hair is frequently no more than an
apparent hair fetichism ; much more often it is really a smell
fetichism, because since early times red-haired individuals have
been supposed to emit an emanation having a powerful sexually
exciting influence. In the Romance countries, France and
Italy, this belief is universally diffused. I quote another passage
from d' Annunzio's " Lust " (p. 66) :

1 In the second volume of " Anthropophyteia " (1905, pp. 445-447), under the
title, " The Sense of Smell in Relation to the Vita Sexualis," I have published a
contribution to this interesting theme. I addressed questions regarding the
matter to various authorities ; and among the answers I obtained, I must mention
more especially those of Dr. Th. Petermann and Oscar A. H. Schmitz, to whom I
owe valuable accounts and observations, which are in part utilized in the present
chapter.

623

" ' Have you noticed the armpits of Madame Chlysoloras ?' The
Duke of Beffi indicated the dancer, upon whose alabaster forehead a
firebrand of red hair was shining, like that which we see in the
priestesses of Alma Tadema. Her bodice was fastened on the shoulders
by very narrow straps, and in the armpits one could see two luxuriant
tufts of red hair.

" Bomminaco begins to speak at large regarding the peculiar odour
which is diffused by red-haired women."

Binet tells of a student of medicine who one day, when sitting
on a bench reading, suddenly had an erection of the penis, and
on looking round he saw sitting on the same bench a red-haired
woman, whom he had not before consciously observed, from
whom a powerful odour emanated.

The odour of the armpits also appears in France to find
fetichistic lovers. The French cocotte commonly assumes
during coitus a position in which the man has his nose in one of
her armpits, and sometimes spontaneously offers this position.
At the unrestrained dances in the Parisian winter season, more
especially at the very free bal des quafz arts, held in the spring,
we frequently see the men sniffing at the armpits of the girls.

It is unquestionable that the odour of the body at large may
in certain circumstances act as a sexual fetich. Many peculiar
love relationships prove this fact. From very early times
among the common people the odour of sweat has been regarded
as a powerful aphrodisiac. I may allude to the case, reported
by von Krafft-Ebing, of King Henry III., who dried his face
with the chemise of Maria of Cleves, dripping with sweat, and
thereby was inspired with a passionate love for her. I may
refer also to the case of a peasant who, when dancing, was
accustomed to dry the face of his partner with his handker-
chief, which he had carried in his own armpit, and thus
produced in her voluptuous excitement. An Indian king,
when choosing his beloved, did so simply by smelling the
clothing moistened by their perspiration, and selected the
woman whose clothing was most agreeable to his sense of
smell.1 Oscar A. H. Schmitz informed me that an English
traveller in India related to him that in India lovers
sometimes changed underclothing. Each wears the shirt im-
pregnated with the perspiration of the other. The love of
Princess Chimay for the gipsy Rigo is stated to have been a
typical " smell-love " of this kind. It is said that the odour of

1 Witmatett, " Man and Woman in Conjugal Union," p. 48 (Leipzig and Stutt-
gart) ; J. P. Frank, " System of a Complete Medicinal Polity," vol. ii., pp. 78, 79
(Frankenthal, 1791).

624

negresses and raulattresses has an especially powerful exciting
influence upon Frenchmen, of which the poet Baudelaire is
mentioned as an example ; this writer declared that smell was the
third and highest degree of voluptuousness. Recently Peter
Altenberg, in " Prodromes," has described the sexual importance
of the odour of the body at large. Such typical smell fetichists,
luxuriating in the general emanation of the feminine body, are
mentioned by Mac6, the chief of the Parisian police. He describes
very vividly how, in the larger shops, such men move about
among the feminine customers, in order to intoxicate themselves
with the odours proceeding from them.

In opposition to these general bodily odours, the specific
genital odours play in the human species a subordinate part ;
they are for the most part perceived as unpleasant. Falck1 is
of opinion that this antipathy only becomes apparent after
sexual intercourse, whilst before such intercourse the odour of
the genital organs has a slight erotic stimulating influence.
Many cases of cunnilinctus and fellatio are certainly referable
to olfactory impressions. The following case is plainly indica-
tive of the sexual influence of genital odours :

An Italian woman loved, after sexual intercourse, to retain on her
hands the odour of the genital secretions, and on such occasions,
although usually a scrupulously clean person, she avoided washing
her hands. She was especially fond of mingling tliis odour with that
of cigarette smoke. She was entirely free from stigmata of degenera-
tion ; on the contrary, she was an extremely robust, well-developed
person.

One of the most remarkable and monstrous phenomena in the
domain of sexual perversities is that by which the processes and
products of the ultimate stages of metabolism become associated
with libido sexualis, become true sexual fetiches, and can more
especially give rise to a formal speciality of smell fetichism.
The position of the orifices of the alimentary canal and of the
urinary apparatus in the immediate neighbourhood of the genital
organs gives rise to a certain associative conjunction between
the functions of these parts, and this association is rendered
more intimate by various circumstances (cf. my " Contributions
to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis," vol. ii., pp. 224, 225).
In addition, the idealizing influence of libido sexualis plays a
part here ; the identification of the desired individual with the
lover's own ego leads the disagreeable and disgusting character
of those processes and parts to disappear, and ultimately brings

1 N. D. Falck, " Treatise on Venereal Diseases."

625

about a comparison between the real aesthetic charm of the
beloved person and the coarsely material processes in question,
which takes the form of a sensually stimulating contrast. There
is not in this case any quite unusual association of ideas on the
part of a completely degenerate individual ; we have rather to
do with a general anthropological and ethnological phenomenon.
I was myself the first to give an elaborate proof of this fact
("Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,"
vol. ii., pp. 223-240) ; and I illuminated more especially the
remarkable role of the so-called " ska to logy " — that is, the
sexual influence of the ultimate products of human metabolism,
and of the processes associated therewith — in folk-lore, in myth-
ology, in superstition, and in the literature of all nations and
times. In this way do we first arrive at an understanding of
the possibility of an erotic influence exercised by defsecation
and micturition, which is so often observed at the present day ;
above all, in the so-called " muse latrinale " — in the widely
diffused practice of scribbling obscene inscriptions on the walls
of public lavatories1 — which finds expression also in sexual
" copralagnia and urolagnia."

Compare, in this connexion, S. Soukhanoff, " Contribution
a 1* Etude des Perversions Sexuelles," published in Annales
Medico -Psycologiques, January and February, 1901 — a case of uro-
lagnia and copralagnia in a habitual masturbator, twenty-seven
years of age. A remarkable case of sexual excitement produced
by the odour of newly made hay, in a lawyer, twenty-five years
of age, is reported by Amrain (" Anthropophyteia," vol. iv.,
p. 237). This person took off all his clothes, and rolled as if
intoxicated in the hay, until ejaculation occurred. He called
his impulse a " vis major."

It is clear that masochistic and sadistic elements play an
important part in many cases of urolagnia and copralagnia. But
there are pure forms of smell fetichism in this category, as we
see in the case of those persons who become sexually excited in
consequence of the smell of the urine and faeces of the beloved
person ; or, speaking generally, by the smell of those excrements,
the person from whom they are derived being a matter of indif-
ference. These are the renifleurs and epongeurs of the French
observers, who haunt public lavatories in order to obtain sexual
excitement from the smell of the excrements of persons of the
opposite sex. There even exist individuals who have the acts

I* l Martial alludes (" Epigrams/' xii. 61, verses 7-10) to the obscene " carmina
< I tin- legunt cacantes."

626

of defalcation and micturition performed by others on to their
own bodies ; in this case the masochistic element is associated
with the element of smell fetichism.

A greater role than that of the natural sexual odours is at the
present day played by artificial perfumes, which, as a fact, are
frequently employed as sexual fetiches. Their origin, and the
cause of their use, has been already explained (p. 17). From
early times prostitution and the demi-monde have made the
most extensive use of these artificial scents for the sexual allure-
ment of men. Men are, in general, more sensitive to sexual
stimulation by means of perfumes than women are. These
perfumes are partly derived from plants ; in fact, the simple
odour of certain flowers produces sexual excitement — a fact well
known to many peasant girls.1 Other sexually stimulating
scents are derived from the animal kingdom, such as musk, civet,
and ambergris. A French firm of perfumers advertises a perfume
— " charme secret"- — the local employment of which is clearly
suggested in the advertisement. But in most cases only a portion
of the clothing or underclothing is perfumed. There exist
typical perfume fetichists, who can, as a rule, be sexually excited
only by means of some definite perfume, in the absence of which
they are impotent.

In comparison with smell, taste plays a very minor part.
Still, a primevally old popular custom, the use of " priapistic
flavouring agents," rests upon fetichistic ideas of this kind.
Cunnilinctus and fellatio are perhaps also committed with the
desire to taste the genital organs ; just as the same must be the
case with those not very rare practices in which flavouring agents
or beverages are brought into contact with the genital organs,
are impregnated, as it were, with their essence, and then
swallowed. To this belongs also the following original case :

A man obtains sexual gratification only in this way : by introducing
a cigar, small end first, into the female genital passage, leaving it
there a long time, and then smoking it, with the end thus impregnated
in his mouth.

There exist many other forms of fetichism. It is impossible
to enumerate all these varieties. I shall, for example, refer only
to the not uncommon fetichism of women for athletes and

1 Many women are sexually excited by the flowers of the garden chestnut-tree,
the smell of which resembles that of the semen of the male. A correspondent
has communicated to me several observations of this nature from the Taunus
district. G. d 'Annunzio (" Lust," p. 10) also describes the awakening of b'bido
sexualis in woman by the smelling of a bouquet of flowers.

627

acrobats, or for singers and actors ; and to that of men for dancers,
and especially for horsewomen, whose appearance has quite a
fascinating influence on many men, more particularly when they
are actually on horseback.

Analogous to the previously described hermaphrodite fetichism
is fetichism for other bodily defects, as for obese, lame, and
hunchbacked persons.

Von Krafft-Ebing reported the case of a man who loved only girls
with a limp, which I can parallel by an observation of my own. A
merchant, thirty-two years of age (with slight stigmata of degenera-
tion— Darwinian pointed ears, slight asymmetry of the skull — but
in other respects with a very powerful build of body, and having
performed his year's service in the cavalry), who since ten years of
age has been addicted to excessive masturbation, is potent only in
intercourse with a girl who limps. He cannot state when this per-
version first manifested itself in him. In any case, it has developed
into a typical fetichism.

To this category belong, also, the abnormal love towards
elderly individuals, heterosexual " gerontophilia," and the
fetichistic influence of certain peculiarities of character. Thus,
it is an old experience that a Don Juanesque, bold, and self-
assertive appearance on the part of men, and even depravity
and sexual lawlessness, exercise a fascinating influence upon
many women. This is, as it were, homologous to the previously
described influence of prostitutes and fast women upon men.

A peculiar fetich is constituted also by the human voice. A
sympathetic voice has often been the cause of a violent love
passion. Singers, both men and women, know something of
this powerful fetichistic charm of the voice.

Finally, sexual fetichism can extend to objects in relationship
with the beloved person, or with any human individual (" object
fetichism "), and this is very readily accounted for by the
personification and spiritualization of these objects of human
use, and especially of clothing, which appears to be a part of
the personality itself, and so quite naturally becomes a sexual
fetich. (See the detailed description given on p. 140 et seq.)

Among the various forms of clothing fetichism, by far the
commonest is shoe fetichism, or " retifism." After the Marquis
de Sade, who in his writings described the most important sexual
perversions, active algolagnia has been termed " sadism "; and
after Sacher-Masoch, passive algolagnia has been termed
" masochism." I consider, therefore, that with the same and
even greater justification, as I have already suggested in my

40—2

628

work on R6tif de la Bre tonne,1 foot and shoe fetichism may be
denoted by the term " retifism," for it is this sexual perversion
which manifests itself most markedly in R6tif's life (1734-1806),
and in him, also, this perversion found its first literary inter-
preter and apostle, in exactly the same manner as sadism was
made known in wider circles by de Sade and masochism by Sacher-
Masoch. R6tif first described typical foot fetichism and shoe
fetichism, and also wrote the first history of this subject. In
him this tendency appeared at the early age of ten years, as
he relates (vol. i., pp. 90-93) in his celebrated autobiography — a
work greatly admired by Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and other
heroes of our classical literature. In this place, also, he gives a
very good explanation of the genesis of foot fetichism and shoe
fetichism :

" Tliis fondness for beautiful feet, which in me is so strong that it
unfailingly arouses my most powerful lust, and leads me to ignore any
ugliness in other respects — does it arise from any physical or emo-
tional predisposition ? In all those who have tliis peculiarity it is
very strong. Is it connected with any preference for an easy gait,
for a gracious, voluptuous, dancing movement ? The peculiar
attraction which the foot-covering exercises is only the reflex of the
preference for beautiful feet, which stimulate even an animal. Thus
a man comes to prize the covering almost as much as the thing itself.
The passion which, since childhood, I have felt for such beautiful foot-
coverings was an acquired inclination, wliich, however, rested on a
natural preference. But the love for a small foot has a physical basis,
wliich finds expression in the Latin proverb, " Parvus pes, barathrum
grande.' '

R6tif was a typical shoe fetichist. He trembled with desire
on viewing a woman's shoe ; he blushed when he saw it, as if it
were the girl herself. As a true fetichist, he collected the slippers
and shoes of his mistresses ; he kissed them, and smelled them,
and sometimes masturbated into them. Especially fascinating
to him were the high heels of women's shoes, a sight of which
sufficed to produce in him intense sexual excitement.

Shoe-fetichism existed in ancient times, and long ago it was
assumed that there was a relationship between the foot and the vita
sexualis. References to this matter will be found in my earlier
work, " Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,"
vol. ii., pp. 323-325. In modern shoe-fetichism masochistic ideas
(ideas of being trodden on, of placing the beloved's foot on the
back of the neck) or sadistic ideas (ideas of treading upon the
beloved's feet, etc.) played a part ; also there were associated

1 Eugen Duhren (Iwan Bloch), " Retif de la Bretorme: the Man, the Author,
and the Reformer " (Berlin, 1906).

629

sensations of smell proceeding from the leather ; the colour of
the shoes is likewise of importance. The " foot-wooers " — thus
are the shoe feticliists named in the speech of prostitutes — have
the most varied inclinations in respect of different shapes and
fashions of shoes. One loves ladies' boots, another riding-boots,
a third dancing-shoes, a fourth slippers, a fifth actually loves
coarse wooden peasants' shoes. Also, in respect of ornamentation,
colour, heels, etc., fancies vary. In one case known to me, a
clergyman was purely a heel fetichist. Hirschfeld records (" The
Nature of Love," p. 148) the case of a man who was sexually
excited only by means of the ankle-wrinkles in boots ; also the
case of a woman who was fascinated by the dusty boots of men, etc.1
Of other articles of clothing, the corset, petticoat, chemise,
apron, and, more especially, stockings and handkerchiefs, form
objects of sexual fetichism. Felicien Hops appears to have been
at once a corset fetichist and a stocking fetichist, for he fre-
quently draws feminine figures naked, except in respect of their
wearing corset and stockings. There are many men who are
able to complete intercourse with a woman only when she keeps
on her stockings or shoes. Others are excited only by the
articles of clothing ; for instance, they represent in imagination
corset shops, in order, by looking at the corsets, to produce
orgasm and ejaculation ; or they collect or steal2 feminine under-
clothing, especially handkerchiefs, in order to obtain sexual
excitement from smelling or looking at these, or to masturbate
with them. Finally, there exist fetichists for particular materials,
such as fur (loved especially by masochists), satin, silk, or even
entire costumes, such as a woman's riding-dress, tights, mourning,
etc. D'Estoc describes, under the name " la course des araig-
n6es " (" the spider race "), the appearance of twenty women
in a brothel, who were clothed only in long black gloves reaching
to the shoulders and long black stockings. In the Berlin news-
papers there recently appeared an account of the fetichism of
a prince for long " gants de suede " on slender women's arms.
Unique in its kind would appear to be the case of the spectacle
fetichist, of which Hirschfeld gives an account (op. cit.,
pp. 145, 146).

1 C/., regarding shoe fetichism, also the work of P. Nacke, " Un Cas de
Fetichisme do Souliors, etc.," published in the Bulletin de la Socittc de Medicine
Mentale de Belgique, 1894. f ;

3 The Berlin newspapers, a few years ago, were full of accounts of such a thief,
who stole underclothing (cf. Berliner Tageblatt, No. 405, September 13, 1903).
He was the terror of all housewives in the western suburbs of Berlin. Ulti-
mately he was caught, and proved to be a workman, K. W. by name. In his
house the police found a varied assortment of underclothing.

CHAPTER XXIII

ACTS OF FORNICATION WITH CHILDREN, INCEST, ACTS OF
FORNICATION WITH CORPSES AND ANIMALS (BESTIALITY),
EXHIBITIONISM, AND OTHER SEXUAL PERVERSITIES.
APPENDIX : THE TREATMENT OF SEXUAL PERVERSITIES.

" But what a source of devastation is a public or private teacher
of youth, when his heart is impure / . . . What a tragic example of
misleading is he who, himself in a position imposing upon him the
duty of leading others towards virtue, is animated by the most
detestable of all passions." — JOHANN PETER FRANK.

631

CONTENTS OP CHAPTER XXIII

Aota of fornication on the part of adults with children — " Paedophilia erotica "-
Superstitious motives — Shunararaitism — As a popular custom — Opportunity
as a cause of paedophilia — Its frequency among menservants and school-
masters— Acts of fornication with children less than six years of age —
Examples — With children between the ages of six and fourteen years —
Alluring influence of fruits verts upon debauchees — Causes — The mania for de-
floration— Other causal factors of act* of fornication with children — Examples.

Early appearance of the sexual impulse in children — Causes — In the

country — The demi-vierge type — Early puberty in girls — Examples of sexual

, intercourse between children — Child prostitution — Parisian flower-girls —

Match-selling girls and " music pupils " of Berlin — Blackmail — Causes

of child prostitution.

Incest — Causes — Incest in France — Sexual relationship with a third indi-
vidual on the part of two persons closely related to one another.

Acts of fornication with animals (zoophilia, bestiality) — Genuine zoophilia
— A remarkable case thereof — Causes of bestiality — Its frequency in the
country — Pveport of cases — Bestiality on the part of a woman — Reputed
seduction of human beings by animals.

Acts of fornication with corpses (necrophilia) — Motives — Symbolic necro-
philia— Love of statues — Influence of museums on uncultured individuals —
Sexual intercourse with statues — Pygmalionism — Acts of fornication with
objects resembling the human body — " Dames et hommes de voyage "-
Exhibitionism — Morbid foundation of this — Other motives — Masturbation
as a cause — A remarkable case of exhibitionism — " Frotteurs " — Example —
Voyeurs — Secret sexual clubs — " Essayeurs " — " Stercoraires platoniques " —
Paedication — Opium, hashish, and ether employed for sexual purposes —
Use of these drugs in Paris — Sexual fantasies of the opium-smoker.

Appendix : The Treatment of Sexual Perversions. — Importance of psycho-
logical factors in the treatment of sexual perversions — Management of the
primary trouble — Psycho-therapeutics and suggestive therapeutics — Verbal
suggestions — Confidence in the knowledge of the physician — Sexual perver-
sions as diseases of the will — Need for the education of the will — Suggestion
in the waking state — Suggestion by means of letters — By moans of hypnosis
— Special prescriptions.

632

CHAPTER XXIII

ONE of the most tragic, but unfortunately one of the most fre-
quent, of occurrences is premature sexual intercourse on the
part of children — partly resulting from acts of fornication by
adults with children, partly resulting from premature awakening
of the sexual impulse in children, and premature sexual activity on
their part. These two varieties of premature sexual intercourse in
children must be sharply distinguished each from the other.

The alleged increase of sexual offences in which children are
concerned is by von Krafft-Ebing wrongly associated with the
more widely diffused nervousness of recent generations. As a
matter of fact, such offences have occurred at all times and among
all peoples, with no less frequency than at the present day.
" Erotic paedophilia " is a very widely diffused phenomenon. It
arises from superstitious1 grounds ; as, for example, from the
belief which prevails in many countries that venereal and other
diseases are cured by copulation with an intact child. The
primeval belief that intercourse with immature girls prolonged
life, that an emanation from them rejuvenated old men (the so-
called " Shunammitism "2), led in former times, and leads even at
the present day, to acts of fornication with children. Less com-
monly do timidity and impotence on the part of adult men, render-
ing intercourse with adult women difficult or impossible, give rise
to the seduction or rape of defenceless and unsuspicious children.
The act of fornication with children as a popular custom is a symp-
tom of a primitive degree of civilization, and is therefore met with,
even at the present day, among savage nations, a matter regarding
which Ploss-Bartels gives detailed accounts.

Passing to consider the cause of acts of fornication with children
at the present day, and the means by which such acts are effected,
unquestionably opportunity plays an important part in their
production. All those persons who by their occupation are
brought into prolonged diurnal and nocturnal association with
children, and are frequently alone with them, such as men-

1 The Public Prosecutor Amschl reports in the Archive* for Criminal Anthro-
paloffy, 1904, vol. xvi., p. 173, a gross case of this character, in which a peasant
affected with venereal ulcers, having boon advised that a cure could only be
obtained by intercourse with a pure virgin, had sexual intercourse with his own
daughter, and — was cured ! !

2 See 1 Kings i. 14.

633

634

servants, nursemaids, governesses, housekeepers, schoolmasters
and schoolmistresses, the directors and other officials of orphan
asylums, etc., constitute a disproportionately large contingent of
those who commit offences under § 1763 and § 182 of the Criminal
Code. This does not arise from exceptional criminality on the
part of these persons as compared with those belonging to other
professions, but simply and solely from the fact that they are
continually alone with children, and that any sexual excitement
which may arise is thus directed towards these, because no adult
is there. Sometimes a morbid neuropathic or psychopathic
constitution plays a part ; but more commonly we have to
do simply with lasciviousness and sensuality, which avails itself
of the opportunity thus offered.

Retif de la Bretonne warned parents regarding menservants
and nursemaids as seducers of children. These persons are apt
to execute unchaste acts with children in the very first years of
life ; in order to gratify their own voluptuousness, they play with
the genital organs of these poor innocents, and thus prematurely
awaken sexual sensibility, and of ten give rise to premature onanistic
habits. These acts of impropriety carried on with small children
—which must be sharply distinguished from those with older
children, the cases being classified as relating in the first place
to children under six years of age, and in the second place to chil-
dren between the ages of six and fourteen years — are far commoner
than is usually imagined, and perhaps even more dangerous in
respect of the bodily and mental development of the child, than
the second variety of unchaste acts, with older children. In most
cases it is persons of the female sex who misuse small children in
this way, and often this arises from the fear of impregnation
resulting from intercourse with an adult man. Generally we
have to do with a lascivious disposition, as, for example, in the
following cases, which came under my own observation :

In one of these cases a woman seduced a boy four years of age to
the performance of systematic improper acts ; in the other case, a boy
of five years of age was taken (horribile dictu) by his own mother into
her bed, and taught to perform coitus with her, in so far as this was
possible, and also to perform manipulations with her genital organs.
The little boy repeated this practice with his sister, three years of age,
and, being caught in the act, he confessed the whole history.

A boy aged four played freely with his own genital organs, and also
made peculiar coitus-like movements in bed, and in contact with
his mother. When the latter, greatly alarmed, asked him how he had
learned to do this, he explained that a young woman twenty years of
age, living in the house, had performed these manipulations with him.

635

Magnan also reports (" Lectures on Mental Disorders," Nos.
2 and 3, p. 41) the case of a lady, twenty-nine years of age, who
performed sexual acts with her nephew, aged five.

These cases rarely attain publicity, because they usually re-
main undiscovered. Fornicatory acts with children, such as are
frequently alluded to in the newspapers, chiefly concern children
between the ages of six and fourteen years. In these cases the
offences are most often committed by schoolmasters and school-
mistresses, or by private tutors and governesses. We further
often find other women undertaking such acts, displaying a sexual
activity which they have no opportunity of satisfying in inter-
course with full-grown men. In the third place, debauchees and
exhausted roues seek new and piquant excitement by intercourse
with such fruits verts. Of such Laurent writes :x

" They have used and misused woman ; they have explored all the
stages of natural and unnatural love ; they have visited Lesbos and
Paphos ; and they have experienced every possible sexual artificiality.
Their sexual desires have become torpid, their manliness is on the
decline, and sexual deatli approaches. But the more exhausted they
are, the less willing are they patiently to acquiesce in their loss. It
is with them as with inebriates who are full to the throat and still
continue to drink. One day they notice a little girl in the street and
feel stimulated by her youthful charms. Thus their love begins."

The blameless, the natural, and the pure, in the essence of the
child and of the intact virgin, has a stimulating influence upon such
perverted individuals : it acts as a contrast to their own sexual
shamelessness and artificiality. The contrast, in fact, has the
effect of a most powerful stimulus. Nor can we fail to recognize
the existence in such cases also of a sadistic element in the per-
formance of coitus with a defenceless child, and in the sanguinary
act of defloration of an immature individual. In the eighties
there flourished in England such a " mania for defloration," the
scandalous details of which were illustrated in a lurid light by
the revelations of the Pall Mall Gazette.2 With regard to this
sadistic element in acts of fornication with children, we must take
into account the possibility that in the corporal punishment of
children by the teacher may have originated the awakening of
the latter's sexual activities,3 and that in this we may find the

1 E. Laurent, " Morbid Lovo : A Psycho- Pathological Study," pp. 183, 184
(Leipzig, 1895). ' '/• also P. Bernard, " Des Attendants a la Pudeur BUT lea
Petites Filles " (Paris, 1886).

3 A detailed description of this affair is given in my " Sexual Life in England,"
vol. i., pp. 350-381 (Charlottenburg, 1901).

3 Compare in this connexion more especially the apt remarks of J. P. Frank,
" System of a Medical Polity," vol. vi., pp. 94, 95 (Frankenthal, (792):

cause of the beginning of sexual relationships between teacher
and pupil.

Other not infrequent causes of the sexual misuse of children are to
be found in alcoholic intoxication and in senile dementia. Tramps,
also, who have for a long time been deprived of the opportunity
of intercourse with women, are apt to gratify their long-repressed
libido on the body of the first child they meet. Child labour in
factories also offers opportunities for fornicatory acts with children.

A few especially striking instances of acts of fornication with
children are appended :

1. The son of a greengrocer, A., twenty years of age, living in the
Keibelstrasse, had for a long time immoral intercourse with the eight-
year-old daughter of the milkman W., in the same street. He had not
only violated her, but had committed other injuries. The young
fellow continued his immoral conduct after lie had become infected
with venereal disease, and therefore naturally infected the girl.
She became so ill that she had to be confined to bed, and the doctor
who was called in diagnosed venereal infection. Notwithstanding
this, the little girl continued to lie about the matter, and only after a
whipping did she admit having had intercourse with A. The latter,
a man with a crippled foot, as soon as he saw that liis misconduct had
been discovered, concealed liimself in an outhouse, and was only arrested
by the police after a prolonged search. He is now in prison.

2. The model and friend of a painter, during the absence of the latter
from home, seduced his son, twelve years of age, after preliminary
repeated masturbation, to coitus and cunnilinctus.

3. A celebrated actress, now in advanced age, in the case of a boy
who sought a situation in her house, gave rise by various manipulations
to an erection of the penis, and seduced liim to coitus ; she invited him
repeatedly to visit her, and continued this scandalous practice with
him for eight years.

4. The governess Friederike B. was accused of improper conduct
and seduction of the little boy Szepsan, and was condemned to six
months' rigorous imprisonment. In April, 1900, Szepsan disappeared
through her connivance ; she had him confined under false names in
various cloisters. The accused denied all blame, and declared that
she was the benefactress of Szepsan, whom she intended to bring up
as a priest. The evidence, however, sufficed for her conviction.

5. A very scandalous affair is reported by Le Matin. Some time
ago the Parisian police arrested a young fellow on account of an
offence against certain civil and natural laws. The accused thereupon
denounced an old Count W., and others of his friends, and also Baron
A., who daily waited the coming out of the boys from certain Parisian
schools, and then took them in his automobile to his own house or
to that of Count W. The police, having received information, kept
under observation the sons of certain distinguished families attending
the school in question, and ascertained that the statements were true.
The Count and his friends carried off the boys, among whom were
three sons of an engineer, the eldest thirteen years of age, to the
Avenue MacMahon or the Avenue Friedland. A., who is engaged to

637

a young lady belonging to the Parisian aristocracy, was arrested ;
Count W. has escaped. The examination of their dwelling disclosed
all kinds of compromising materials.

In view of the wide diffusion of acts of fornication with children,
we must always keep one point clearly before our minds, on
account of the great forensic importance of the matter. That is
the question whether the initiative to the improper act proceeded
in the first place from the child, in consequence of a premature
awakening of the sexual impulse. [See, for example, Emil
Schultze-Malkowsky, " The Sexual Impulse in Childhood," in
the periodical Sex and Society, 1907, No. 7, pp. 370-373. He
reports five sexual scenes dating from the year 1864, the heroine
of which was a little girl seven years of age !]

In a certain proportion only of such cases have we to do with
a degenerative, morbid, inherited state ; in many instances this
sexual perversity occurs in children who in other respects are
perfectly healthy,1 and is evoked by seduction, bad education,
and chance causes, such as intestinal worms, etc. This is to be
observed also in children of savage races, among whom this
phenomenon of sexual prematurity is perhaps more frequent, in
part owing to climatic conditions. In the country the observa-
tion of sexual acts on the part of animals, frequently occurring
under their very eyes, makes children early acquainted with the
fact of sexual intercourse. In large towns prostitution and over-
crowded dwellings, in ways to which we have already alluded in
detail, give rise in many cases to a very early initiation of children
into a knowledge of the facts of sexual life.

Apart from the question of child prostitution, to which we shall
allude presently, we can observe such early mature types of chil-
dren also in every class of the population of large towns. Among
the circles of the middle classes, and among the " upper ten
thousand," we have the type of the demi-merge, which recently
Hans von Kahlenberg has so admirably described in his " Nix-
chen." In the female sex this early sexual maturity is much more
clearly manifest. In an essay entitled " The Zoo as an Educator,"
in the weekly newspaper Der Roland von Berlin (No. 27, July 5,
1906), we find a striking description of such a type :

" We find definite types of early-ripe girls, which we must regard as a
peculiar acquirement of the twentieth century. We distinguish without
difficulty the simple, hot-blooded, sensual variety from the thoroughly
developed perverse types. A short-legged, buxom type is the most

• • / Cf. Sollicr's remarks on this subject in Von Schrenck-Notzing'a " Die Sugges-
tions-Thorapio," p. 7.

638

predominant. Such girls seem extraordinarily energetic, and appear
also to excel in mental powers their pale-cheeked and half-alive male
companions. Their dress is extremely conspicuous, and they wear
highly ornamented hats. Whilst, when we look at them from behind,
their whole figure suggests the age of fifteen or seventeen years, the front
view suggests that they are at least eight years older. They prefer
to lace very tightly, in order to display their rounded hips, and to make
their already strongly developed breasts all the more imposing. But
this development displays their mental and physical corruption,
especially when undeveloped shoulders and tliin arms show beyond
question that they are really of a very tender age. The sharply-cut
features, with the sparkling black eyes, which at once fascinate us,
plainly indicate the lines which the passions are about to engrave on
their features ; we discern, also, that by the age of thirty they will
already be old women."

Sexual intercourse on the part of children with one another, or
with grown persons in cases in which the invitation has proceeded
from the child, are by no means rare occurrences. The following
remarkable cases may illustrate this :

1. Some years ago a schoolboy, K. J., thirteen years of age, was
accused in Berlin of several acts of sexual intercourse with girls of
from six to eight years. The guilt of the accused was fully proved.
He was sent to a reformatory.

2. A young man made the acquaintance of a girl sixteen years of
age. Although greatly impassioned, he did not dare to touch the girl,
because he was deceived by her sweet and blameless demeanour, and
did not wish to be her first seducer. Soon afterwards he learned that
this angel had had sexual intercourse for several years with a married
man forty years of age !

3. Legroux showed in 1890, at the weekly meeting of the physicians
of the Hospital St. Louis, a boy, eleven years of age, who, after three
months' sexual intercourse with a syphilitic girl aged seven years,
had been infected in the ordinary manner, per vias naturales (refer-
ence in Unna's Monatsheft fur Dermatologie, 1890, vol. x., p. 335).

4. In Paris, in December, 1906 (according to the Vossische Zeitung of
December 15, 1906, No. 558), a band of youthful street and shop
thieves, ten in number, of ages varying from eleven to fourteen years,
were arrested. Their leaders were a boy of twelve and a girl of thir-
teen years, the latter, Eliza Cailles by name, known generally by the
nickname of " Beautiful Aliette." This Aliette, a strikingly pretty
little person, in a long dress of extremely fashionable cut, with a
wonderful hat and most elegant gloves, ruled her band with the most
exemplary self-confidence. They were all smart fellows ; they were
all of them her lovers, and with these ten husbands she was the happiest
of wives."

Acts of fornication with children also explain the melancholy
phenomenon of the existence of a widely diffused child prostitu-
tion in all large towns of the old and new world, regarding which,
in the previously mentioned works on prostitution in these

639

towns, detailed accounts will be found.1 The little flower-girls
of Paris, the Berlin match-sellers and wax-candle-sellers or
" music pupils " — all these provide a large contingent to child
prostitution. To a great extent they are associated with equally
youthful criminals and souteneurs, and avail themselves for black-
mailing purposes of the existence of § 1763 and § 186 of the
Criminal Code. Among them there are even individuals given
to peculiar sexual " specialities," who gratify perverse lusts in
various artificial ways. Social misery, bad example, and seduc-
tion are, indeed, often to be blamed as causes of this early sexual
depravity, but it is precisely in respect of child prostitution that
Lombroso's doctrine of the born prostitute has considerable
justification.

In exceptional cases only does incest — sexual intercourse be-
tween those nearly related by blood, either in the same generation,
as between brother and sister, or in the ascending and descending
line — depend upon pathological causes. The origin of the dread
and horror inspired by incest remains " a moot question of histori-
cal research."2 Within historical times and among savage peoples
incestuous intercourse was permitted and widely diffused.
Without doubt, racial hygienic experience regarding the pernicious
effects of this extreme form of incest gave rise to the recognition
of the fact that incest must be forbidden. At the present day
incest occurs almost exclusively as the result of chance associations
— as, for example, in alcoholic intoxication, in consequence of
close domestic intimacy in small dwellings, in the absence of other
opportunity for sexual intercourse. In such circumstances not
infrequently among the lower classes of the population we ob-
serve, as a favouring factor, a complete absence of any conception
of the immorality of incest.

Remarkable is the tendency to incestuous unions in certain
epochs — as, for example, in the period of the French Rococo,
when it was introduced by suggestion on a large scale, and
manifested itself with alarming frequency. Numerous credible
historical examples of this I have recorded in my " Recent
Researches concerning the Marquis de Sade " (pp. 165-168).
Mirabeau, and especially R6tif de la Bre tonne (see my work on
Retif, pp. 381-382), luxuriated in horribly blasphemous incestuous

1 Regarding child prostitution in Berlin, numerous details are to be found in
the work, " Child Prostitution in Berlin : Unvarnished Revelations and Moral
Pictures by an Initiate " (Leipzig, 1895).

8 G. Schmoller, " Elements of General Political Economy," vol. i.. p. 233
(Leipzig, 1901).

640

ideas.1 , According to Theodor Mundt, who speaks of these
tendencies in his sketches of " Paris during the Second Empire "
(vol. i., pp. 141, 142 ; Berlin, 1867), it appears that the French
nature is not repelled to the same degree as the German by the
idea of sexual union between those nearly related by blood.
Eugene Sue relates, in his " Mysteries of Paris," that among the
lowest strata of the population fathers often have intercourse
with their own daughters.

But such things also happen in Germany. In August, 1907, a
manual labourer, forty-seven years of age, was condemned to three
years 'imprisonment because he had had incestuous intercourse with
his daughter, now twenty-seven years of age, during the previous
fifteen years (!), and had continued this incestuous relationship
after he had himself remarried. The girl had been for several
years living in intimate sexual relationship with her father, who
watched jealously to prevent his daughter having anything to
do with another man. Among many Indian tribes of Central
America incest is said to be always practised when the eldest
daughter accompanies the father for a few days into the moun-
tains, in order to prepare his maize bread for him.

Relations somewhat analogous are those in which parent and
child have sexual intercourse with the same person — when, for
example, mother and daughter have the same lover. Other
peculiar combinations are possible, and are actually observed.
Unique, however, would appear to be the case reported by d'Estoc
(" Paris-Eros," p. 209), in which a young man had sexual inter-
course with a woman, with her two daughters, and also utilized
the father of this family as a passive paederast ! In a manuscript
novel, which I once saw, a man was made the lover of both husband
and wife.

One of the most remarkable of sexual aberrations, in the reality
of which, as Mirabeau2 remarked, it is hardly possible to believe,
is fornication with animals — zoophilia and bestiality.3

1 Such relations can become actual, even at the present day, as we learn from
the case reported by the Public Prosecutor, Dr. Kersten, in the Archives for
Criminal Anthropology (1904, vol. xvi., p. 330), of a Moor, sixty-five years of
age, who, in intercourse with his step-daughter, procreated a daughter, and later
with this daughter of his own, when she was thirteen years of age, had sexual
intercourse !

2 G. Mirabeau, " Erotika Biblion," p. 91 (Brussels, 1868).

3 German authors use the word Sodomie to denote sexual relationships
between human beings and animals. Mr. Havelock Mills informs me (in a
private letter) "the German use of 'sodomy' to include 'bestiality' is quite
ancient, and no doubt had a theological origin. I imagine the confusion was
made with the idea of throwing on to ' bestiality ' the same reprobation as the
Bible metes out to ' sodomy.' " There is, of course, no mention of bestiality in

641

We will first describe zoophilia, a sexual inclination towards
animals without actual sexual intercourse. Genuine zoophilia, or
" animal fetichism," as a perversion monopolizing the human
being's circle of sexual ideas, is very rare. Until recently, only a
single case has been published — that recorded by Dr. Hanc in
1887, in the Wiener Medizinische Blatter, and quoted also by
von Krafft-Ebing. But I myself, in the year 1905, observed a
second case of genuine zoophilia, and have recorded it else-
where.1 This extraordinarily rare case may as well be once
more detailed here :

The person concerned was a farmer, forty-two years of age, of a large
and imposing appearance, a healthy aspect, and normal conformation.
His family history did not show any points of importance throwing
light on the peculiar development of Ms vita, sexualis. In the family
several unhappy marriages had occurred. The patient's parents had
also lived in such an inharmonious marriage. His mother had a master-
ful manner ; he felt no love for her. He knew nothing of any sexual
abnormalities in his family. He lays especial stress upon the fact that
when an infant he was brought up on the bottle, and that in tliis
way he missed the first unconscious natural sexual stimulations
which, according to the theory propounded by S. Freud, proceed
from the suckling at the maternal breast. To this he mainly
ascribes his lack of sexual sensibility towards the female sex. When
he was a boy twelve years of age, the patient experienced sexual
excitement for the first time when riding on a fine horse. Since that
time his sexual sensibility as a whole has been closely connected with
the idea of fine horses, in this way, that merely to look at them
produced libidinous excitement, so that for years, once a week, while
riding, he had an ejaculation, accompanied by intense voluptuous
sensations. It is, however, remarkable that he never had any erotic
dreams connected with horses. As already stated, Ms sexual sensi-
bility regarding the human female, and also the human male, is non-
existent. His views regarding women are Schopenhauerian. The
few attempts he had made at intimate intercourse with women — in
most cases these were jwellce publicce — were repulsive to Mm ; he had

connexion with the destruction of Sodom. The sin for which the city was
destroyed was the desire for carnal knowledge of the two angels in the house
of Lot (Gen. xix. 5). The signification of the various terms used to denote
unnatural intercourse is thus defined by Mann, in his work on "Forensic
Medicine " : Sodomy means unnatural sexual intercourse between two human
beings, usually of the male sex. . . . Tribadism, the gratification of the sexual
instinct between two human beings of the female sex. . . . Pederastia is that
form of sodomy in which the passive r61e is played by a boy, the active agent
being man or boy. Bestiality means sexual intercourse between mankind and
the lower animals." Generally speaking, in this translation the terms mentioned
are used as above defined. If there is any variation from that use, tha
context will manifest it. In any case, Sodomy has never been employed in the
translation as an equivalent of the German Sodomie, the latter term having
been invariably rendered by Bestiality. — TRANSLATOR.

1 Iwan Bloch, " A Remarkable Case of Sexual Perversion (Zoophilia)," pub-
lished in Medizinische Klinik, 1906, No. 2.

141

on these occasions no erection at all, or only a very slight one. The
vita sexualis of the patient is, speaking generally, by no means an
active one. He does not experience nocturnal pollutions, and is com-
pletely satisfied sexually by the weekly ejaculations and libidinous
excitement which occurs when riding on horseback. For several years
the patient has suffered from frequent insomnia, the cause of which
he considered to be material troubles combined with gloomy thoughts
about his abnormal sexual condition. Bromides, veronal, and other
hypnotic drugs, are of little use to him, for habituation soon sets in ; on
the other hand, cold foot-baths have a better effect. The patient, who,
as he himself says, has a strong antipathy to normal sexual intercourse,
which he regards as a " bestial act," believes that he might perhaps
attain a normal sexual condition if he could meet with a wife who
would be sympathetic, and would be in harmony with him mentally and
physically. He is, however, in this respect extremely sceptical, since
he is well aware of the rarity of that complete harmony which is the
indispensable prerequisite of a happy marriage. The patient exhibited
no symptoms whatever of " degeneration." The genital organs were
normal, and nervous sleeplessness in a man forty-two years of age,
dependent upon material cares and emotional depression, cannot be
regarded as a symptom of degeneration, when we reflect how frequently
in persons who are otherwise quite healthy such nervous insomnia
may make its appearance, as a result of the struggle for life, at or near
the age of forty years.

True zoophilia is a typical sexual perversion, and appears to
occur principally in men. The use of animals (dogs) for purely
onanistic purposes, in the way of licking the female genital organs,
cannot be included in this connexion. In French novels and
moral studies of recent times such types of zoophilous women are,
indeed, described ; thus, for example, in Octave Mirbeau's
" Badereise eines Neurasthenikers " (1902) we find a description
of Princess Karagnine as such a perverse woman, endowed with
a peculiar " passion for animals," especially for stallions, who
caresses them with obvious signs of sexual excitement. And in
the de Goncourts' " Diary " I find the following remark :

" Every time I visit the Zoological Gardens, I am struck by the
number of bizarre, remarkably eccentric, exotic, indefinable women
we meet here, to whom the contact with the animal world of this
place appears to constitute an adventure of physical love " (Edmond
and Jules de Goncourt, " Leaves from a Diary," 1851 to 1895).

R. Schwaebl6 also gives an interesting account of the zoophilous
tendencies of Frenchwomen (" Les Detraquees de Paris," pp. 203-
212).

Unquestionably, modern zoological gardens offer even more
than country life opportunities to women of zoophilous instincts,
and can in this respect become dangerous. I remember from my
own schooldays in Hanover remarkable scenes in the much-

643

visited zoological gardens of that town — scenes which at that time
we naturally did not really understand, but on which the above
remarks and observations throw a clear light.

Thus we shall no longer be surprised by the following extremely
remarkable case of zoophilia in the female sex :

Kleptomania in a Girl aged Thirteen. — A girl thirteen years of age, who
is incurably affected with kleptomania, and who at the same time
has a morbid inclination towards horses, is the most recent phenomenon
in the province of decadence. The unfortunate child is the daughter,
Frida, of a married couple living in the Hochstestrasse. She had com-
mitted a number of thefts of vehicles, which might have been attributed
only to skilled professional thieves. The morbid tendency compels
the child to take the horse by the bridle and lead it away. She does
not appear to have any tendency to sell the animal, or to steal any-
thing from the carriage. Her love for horses led her in earlier years
to unusual acts. Thus she took the horse of a dairyman in the Elbin-
gerstrasse out of its stall, mounted it, and rode away. The child has
been under medical treatment for a long time on account of her ex-
tremely unusual tendency, and we understand that the medical evi-
dence shows that she cannot be held legally responsible for the offences
she has committed (Berliner Tageblatt, No. 352, July 14, 1906).

Passing now to consider definite acts of fornication with
animals (Sodomie — see note 3 to p. 640, bestiality),1 there is hardly

1 Oi the recent literature on this subject I may refer to G. Dubois-Dessaulle,
" £tude sur la Bestialite au Point de Vue Historique, Medical, et Juridique "
(Paris, 1905) ; F. Reichert, " The Significance of Sexual Psychopathy in Human
Beings, in Relation to Veterinary Practice," Inaugural Dissertation (Bern and
Munich, 1902) ; Franz Hora, " A Case of Unnatural Fornication with a Goose,"
published in the Tierarztliches Zentralblatt, 1903, No. 13, p. 197 ; R. Froehner,
" Sadistic Injuries to Animals," published in the Deutsche Tieraintliche Wochen-
schrift, No. 1, 1903, p. 153 ; same author in Der Preussische Kreistierarzt, vol. i.,
pp. 487-491 (Berlin, 1904) ; Grundmann, " A Case of Bestiality and Sadism,"
published in the Deutsche Tiertirztliche Wochenschrift, 1905, No 45. A very pains-
taking and critical study of unnatural fornication with animals is published by
Haberda in the Viertdjahraachriftfiir Oerichtliche Medizin, 1907, vol. xxxiii., supple-
mentary number. It deals with 162 medico -legal cases. Among these, two only
concern girls of sixteen and twenty-nine years of age respectively, persons who
have had improper relations with dogs. Most of the male offenders were persons
whose occupations brought them much into contact with domestic animals ;
about half of them were under twenty years of age. The animals concerned were
cattle, goats, horses, dogs, pigs, sheep, and hens. In the majority of cases there
were fornicatory acts — acts analogous to sexual intercourse — less commonly
other sexual contacts. The girl of sixteen was caught in the act of intercoures
with a dog. The majority of male offenders made use of female animals. In
two cases young men allowed dogs to have intercourse with them per anum, the
dogs having been trained to do this, and in both of them were found lacerations
of the anus and rectum. Only in a few of the 172 cases of bestiality was there
any reason to doubt the mental integrity of the person concerned. In those
cases there was senile dementia, epilepsy, or alcoholism. The principal causes
for the practice of bestiality were enhanced opportunities, the lack of possibility
in the country for conjugal or extra -conjugal normal sexual intercourse, or,
finally, superstition (belief in the possibility of curing of venereal disease by
intercourse with animals).

41—2

644

any animal which has not been in some way and at some time
utilized for the gratification of human lust ; but naturally in
most cases the animals always available were employed, such as
dogs, cats, sheep, goats, hens, geese, ducks, horses. Martin
Schurig, as early as 1730, in his " Gynsecologia " (pp. 380-387),
recorded a large number of cases of bestial aberrations in which,
in addition to the animals above mentioned, apes, bears, and
even fishes were employed. In antiquity snakes were often the
objects of unnatural lust on the part of women, playing the part
of the modern lap-dog. Bestiality is very widely diffused.1
Countries especially celebrated for the frequency of this practice
are China and Italy ; in the former country geese, in the latter
goats, are preferred for sexual malpractices. In India, and also
among the Southern Slavs, horses and donkeys play the principal
part as objects of bestial love.2

Acts of fornication with animals are due to various causes ; in
exceptional cases only can they be referred to morbid predisposi-
tion. In the lower classes of the population, and among many
races — as, for example, among the Southern Slavs and among
the Persians — the superstitious belief that venereal disease can
be cured by intercourse with animals occasionally gives rise to
bestiality. More frequently the lack of opportunity for normal
gratification of the sexual impulse is the cause of bestiality ; and
it is naturally of more frequent occurrence in the country, for the
reason that there human beings live in closer association with
animals than they do in the town. The herdsman alone with his
herd in a solitary place, the groom who in the stable suddenly
finds himself in a state of sexual excitement, the peasant whose
wife is perhaps ailing — all these indulge in bestiality simply from
opportunity. Friedrich S. Krauss learned from a trustworthy
authority that in. the Austrian cavalry Slavonic soldiers fre-
quently gratified their sexual impulse upon mares. When they
are caught doing this, they excuse themselves by saying that they
are too poor to pay a woman. Commonly these fellows escape
punishment. In brothels, also, bestial practices are common ;
in some cases debauchees themselves take part in these practices,
in others prostitutes make a display of bestial intercourse. Fre-
quently, also, sadistic impulses, similar to those which find
expression in the torturing or slaughtering of animals during
coitus, play a part in bestial intercourse.

1 Regarding the ethnology of bestiality, consult my " Etiology of Psychopathia
Sexualis," vol. ii., pp. 272-276.

2 Cf. F. S. Krauss, " Bestial Aberrations," published in " Anthropophyteia,"
vol. iii., pp. 265-322.

645

An eyewitness describes such a brothel scene, which took place in the
Via San Pietro all' Orto at Milan. An old roue played the principal
part in this ; he had become so depraved that he had sexual intercourse
with a duck, the throat of which was cut during the bestial act !

Some forty years ago, in the Karntnerstrasse in Vienna, a
prostitute was found in her room, murdered, and her chamber-
mate and professional companion was condemned to imprison-
ment as guilty of the murder. After some years, however, the
real murderer was discovered, and he was detected by the fact
that he was only able to have an erection of the penis when he
killed a hen. He was known among the prostitutes as " the
hen-man."

Another case of sadistic bestiality was recently reported by the
veterinary surgeon Grundmann, at Marienburg in Saxony (the
reference will be found in the Berliner Tierdrztliche Wochen-
schrift for September 14, 1906) :

A man, thirty-eight years of age, of bad reputation, one night found
his way into a byre in order to gratify his sexual desires by intercourse
with a cow. First he introduced his penis into the vagina of a heifer
nine months old ; then he tried the same thing on a cow, which threw
him off, and he fell to the ground. In a rage at this, he seized a pitch-
fork and forcibly thrust one of the prongs, first into the anus of the
heifer, and then into that of the cow. The cow died speedily, whilst
the heifer had to be slaughtered next day. In the cow, in addition
to a laceration of the rectum about l| inches in length, there
was found laceration of the capsules of the right and left kidneys,
perforation of the mesentery, of the colon, of the liver, and of
the diaphragm, also a laceration 1£ inches long and equally
deep in the right lung. These extensive injuries showed that the
pitchfork must have been thrust in repeatedly. The appearances in
the body of the slaughtered heifer were similar to those found in the
cow. The accused was condemned to imprisonment for two years
and three months, part of this term being for the offence against
morality and part for the injury to property.

The following extremely rare case of bestiality on the part of
a woman was seen by Krauss (op. cit., p. 281) :

" If I can venture to credit the reports I have so frequently heard
(and it is difficult to believe that they are pure inventions), among the
Southern Slavs intercourse between women and horses or asses is
comparatively common. How they go to work in this matter I do
not know from personal observation. I did, however, once see a
Chrowot woman of ideal beauty, who stood at night completely naked
in front of a lighted lamp, and in this position had intercourse with a
torn cat. She experienced so intense an orgasm that she did not
notice me, although I watched the scene barely two paces from the
window."

646

The part played by lap-dogs in the case of many ladies has been
previously mentioned.

Formerly the question was quite seriously discussed, whether
a human being could be seduced or violated by an animal, and
Hufeland relates a fantastic story of copulation between a dog
and a sleeping little girl, which I have criticized in another
work ;L but there are, as a matter of fact, no proofs of such
an occurrence, or of its possibility. In brothels, certainly,
dogs are from time to time trained to have intercourse with
prostitutes.2

Much rarer than acts of fornication with animals are similar
acts with corpses, the so-called " necrophilia." In the works
of de Sade, we find references to the algolagnistic factor
of this rare sexual aberration, to the sadistic or masochistic
element in necrophilia, inasmuch as in the case of the dead
individual we have to do with a completely helpless and defence-
less being, who is totally unable to resist the act ; sadism is also
manifested in the not uncommon mutilation of the corpses ;3 and
the sadistic impulse further obtains gratification from the idea of
decomposition, from the smell, the cold, and the horror. In the
case of necrophilia opportunity also plays a part. Soldiers and
monks who are occupied in watching the dead, and who chance
to be seized with sexual excitement, have gratified themselves with
female corpses.

Sexual acts with corpses are, indeed, not so rare as was formerly
assumed, but they belong to the class of sexual aberrations re-
garding which we have but few authentic observations, most of

1 Iwan Bloch, " The Origin of Syphilis," part i., p. 22 (Jena, 1901).

2 The following authentic case, which occurred in the year 1902, appears
to be unique. A man compelled his wife, who was amiable but somewhat
weak-minded, to have intercourse with a male pointer, which he himself prepared
for the act, and in course of time he made the animal complete coitus with his
wife five or six times whilst he looked on ("A Horrible Case," published in
the Archives for Criminal Anthropology, vol. xiii., pp. 320, 321). A case of
bestiality with a rabbit is reported by Boeteau (" Un Gas de Bestialite," published
in France Medicale, 1891, vol. xxxviii., p. 593). Regarding passive bestiality
with dogs, cf. A. Montalti, " La pederastia tra il cane a 1' uomo," published in
Sperimentale, 1887, vol. lx., p. 285 ; Delastre et Una-. " Sodomie Bestiale "
(Societe de Medecine Ltgale, 1873-74, vol. cxi., p. 165) ; Brouardel, " Pederastie
d'un Chien al'Homme," published in the Semaine Medicate, 1887, vol. vii., p. 318);
Fere, " Note sur un Cas de Bestialite chez la Femme " (published in Archives de
Neurologie, 1903, p. 90).

3 The belief in vampires is in part dependent upon necrophilia. In Southern
Slavonic countries the corpses of young women and girls were sometimes found
which had been disinterred. The necrophilist had misused them sexually, and
had then cut off the breasts and torn out the intestines (F. S. Krauss, " Anthro-
pophyteia," vol. ii., p. 391). In the fifth decade of the nineteenth century the
notorious necrophilist Sergeant Bcrtrand performed similar acts.

647

these derived from French authors. Remarkable is the following
recent case, which occurred in April, 1901 i1

The following hardly credible case of necrophilia is reported from
Schonau : In the cemetery of that place Frau Maschke, thirty years
of age, was buried in the morning, but the grave was not completely
filled in. In the evening an inhabitant visited the grave of a
relative, winch was close to that of Frau Maschke, and she noticed
with alarm that the top of the coffin in which the corpse of Frau
Maschke was lying was moving up and down. The discoverer of this
alarming occurrence hastened to the sexton, and reported the fact.
The sexton hurried to the cemetery with several workmen, and there,
to their horror, they surprised an inmate of the poorhouse named
Wokatsch as he was in the act of violating the woman's corpse. The
bestial criminal was at once arrested. Soon afterwards a judicial
investigation took place, for which purpose the corpse was removed
from the grave and taken to the mortuary in order to determine how
far the criminal had actually proceeded in his attempt on the body.

In folk-lore, mythology, and belles-lettres, necrophilia plays a
large part, a matter to which I have referred at greater length
in another work (" Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia
Sexualis," vol. ii., pp. 288-296). The idea of intercourse with a
dead body, and also that of intercourse with an insensible human
being, somewhat frequently gives rise to peculiar forms of sexual
aberration. First of all in this connexion we have to consider
symbolic necrophilia, in which the person concerned contents
himself with the simple appearance of death. A prostitute or
some other woman must clothe herself in a shroud, lie in a coffin,
or on the " bed of death," or in a room draped as a " chamber of
death," and during the whole time must pretend to be dead,
whilst the necrophilist satisfies himself sexually by various acts.
Cases of such a nature are reported by de Sade, Neri, Taxil,
Tarnowsky, etc.

Closely allied to these necrophilist tendencies is the remarkable
" Venus statuaria," the love for and sexual intercourse with
statues and other representations of the human person. Here
also, apart from certain aesthetic motives,2 which may predominate
in the case of statues of exceptional artistic perfection, we have to
do, for the most part, with the same motives that give rise to

1 Reported by A. Eulenburg, " Sadism and Masochism," p. 56. Another case
of necrophilia, with subsequent mutilation, occurred during the night of
December 21-22, 1901, in the mortuary at Weiher, on the corpse of the wife of a
day-labourer. The offender, who was arrested, had, on account of intense
sexual hyperaasthesia, committed other sexual offences, among them bestiality
(c/. " A Case of Necrophilia," published hi the Archives of Criminal Anthropology,
104, vol. xvi., pp. 289-303).

3 These aesthetic motives wore predominant in the cases of statue-love reported
from antiquity.

648

necrophilia — sadistic, masochistic, and fetichistic. In the case
of individuals who are sexually extremely excitable, a walk
through a museum containing many statues may suffice to give
rise to libido. Of this we have examples. Generally, however,
we have to do with immature, youthful, and, above all, un-
cultured individuals, who are devoid of all aesthetic sensibility,
and have grown up also in a state of prudery and horror of
the nude. It is of similar persons that the Catholic moral
theologian Bouvier speaks, when, in his " Manuel des Confes-
seurs " (Verviers, 1876), he discusses the case of masturbation
before a statue of the Holy Virgin. We have previously
given examples of the fact that direct sexual intercourse with
a statue occurs as part of a religious fetichism and phallus cult
(p. 101). In such cases the statue is taken for the divinity,
but in a profane statue-love it is taken for the living human being,
as in the celebrated case of the gardener who attempted coitus
with the statue of the Venus of Milo. The idea of the life of the
statue is even more distinctly manifest in the so-called " pygma-
lionism," an imitation of the ancient legend of Pygmalion and
Galatea, and a utilization of this legend for erotic ends. Naked
living women, in such cases, stand as " statues " upon suitable
pedestals, and are watched by the pygmalionist, whereupon they
gradually come to life. The whole scene induces sexual enjoyment
in the pygmalionist, who is generally an old, outworn debauchee.
Canler has described such practices as going on in Parisian
brothels, on one occasion three prostitutes appearing respectively
as the goddesses Venus, Minerva, and Juno.1

In this connexion we may refer to fornicatory acts effected with
artificial imitations of the human body, or of individual parts of
that body. There exist true Vaucansons in this province of
pornographic technology, clever mechanics who, from rubber and
other plastic materials, prepare entire male or female bodies,
which, as hommes or dames de voyage, subserve fornicatory pur-
poses. More especially are the genital organs represented in a
manner true to nature. Even the secretion of Bartholin's glands
is imitated, by means of a " pneumatic tube " filled with oil.
Similarly, by means of fluid and suitable apparatus, the ejaculation
of the semen is imitated. Such artificial human beings are
actually offered for sale in the catalogue of certain manufacturers
of "Parisian rubber articles." A more precise account of these

1 Cf. L, Fiaux " Les Maisons de Tolerance," pp. 176, 177 (Paris, 1892). More-
over, the well-known tableaux vivants of the variety theatre can be regarded as
a lesser form of such pygmalionistic spectacles.

649

" fornicatory dolls " is given by Schwaeble (" Les Detraqu^es de
Paris," pp. 247-253). The most astonishing thing in this depart-
ment is an erotic romance ("La Femme Endormie," by Madame
B. ; Paris, 1899), the love heroine of which is such an artificial
doll, which, as the author in the introduction tells us, can be em-
ployed for all possible sexual artificialities, without, like a living
woman, resisting them in any way. The book is an incredibly
intricate and detailed exposition of this idea.

A comparatively common sexual aberration is " exhibitionism,"
first described by Lasegue,1 the exposure of the genital organs,
or other naked parts of the body, or the performance of sexual
acts in public places, either in order, by the public exposure, to pro-
duce sexual excitement, or else as a result of the blind yielding to
sexual impulse, regardless of the fact of publicity. In these cases
we have almost always to do with a morbid phenomenon, dependent
upon epileptic or other mental disorders. Thus, Seiffer, among
eighty-six exhibitionists, found eighteen epileptics, seven-
teen demerits, thirteen " degenerates," eight neurasthenics, eight
alcoholics, eleven " habitual " exhibitionists, and in ten cases
various other morbid conditions. Of the eighty-six cases, eleven
concerned persons of the female sex.2 Recently, Burgl, in a
careful and critical work upon exhibitionism,3 has suggested the
terms " exhibition " and " exhibitionism," the former to be
employed to denote an isolated act of exhibition, the latter to
denote the repeated or customary act of exposure of the genital
organs coram publico. This distinction is important, because
exhibition occurs in mentally healthy persons, as well as in those
suffering from mental disorder ; exhibitionism, on the other hand,
is, if we except extremely rare instances in debauchees not suffer-
ing from mental disorder, met with only in insane or mentally
defective individuals.

In the case of these latter we have always to do with the actions
of weak-minded persons ; or with impulsive actions in persons in a
state of epileptic or alcoholic confusion ; or, finally, with coercive
ideas in neurasthenic or hysterical persons, in paranoia, in general
paralysis of the insane, or in some other form of insanity. But
cases of exhibition or exhibitionism may sometimes occur from
other motives in more or less healthy persons. Among the Slavonic

1 Ch. Laseguo, "Lea Exhibitionistes," published in U Union Afedicale, 1877,
No. 50.

3 Cf. A. Hoche, " Elements of a General Forensic Psycho -Pathology," pub-
lished in tho " Handbook of Forensic Psychiatry," p. 502 (Berlin, 1901).

3 G. Burgl, " Exhibitionists before the Law-Courts," published in tho Z> it-
thrift fiir Psychiatric, 1903, vol. lx., Nos. 1, 2, pp. 119-144.

650

peoples, exposure of the genital organs or of the buttocks is fre-
quently an expression of contempt towards some one, or also an
act of superstition (Krauss). Exhibitionism as a popular custom
occurred at medieval festivals, and also in connexion with the
"obscene gestures " of the ancients.1 Uy habit nation in early
childhood the tendency to exhibitionism can be favoured, we
learn from the case reported by von Schrenck-Notzing,2 in which
the person concerned had as a boy taken part in childish games
in which the children passed by one another with bared genital
organs. In his monograph upon the anomalies of the sexual
impulse, which abounds in fine touches, Hoche (op. cit., p. 488)
very rightly refers to the manner in which the exhibitionist ten-
dency is favoured by habitual masturbation. Through the prac-
tice of masturbation the sense of shame in respect to one's own body
is certainly destroyed, and thus, in the case of an onanist, when
some unusual impulse impells him, for example, to expose his
genital organs in the presence of a person of the other sex, certain
powerful inhibitory impulses are lacking, which, in non-onanists,
would immediately overcome this impulse.

Of the two following cases of exhibitionism, that of a homo-
sexual officer, twenty-five years of age, is certainly the most
remarkable. In youth this patient had also masturbated to
great excess, and he gives the following report of his exhibitionist
tendencies :

" As a boy seven to ten years of age (that is, before I began to mas-
turbate), it was a pleasure to me to go barefoot, and to show myself
to others in this way. This impulse suddenly disappeared. But at
about the age of fifteen or sixteen years (the time when I began to
masturbate) this impulse reappeared, and has continued down to the
present time. Inasmuch as time and opportunity were generally
wanting, I could only satisfy these desires in my own home, when I
went home on furlough. Since in the neighbourhood of my home I
was very well known, I endeavoured by taking extremely long walks,
or by little journeys to neighbouring parts, to reach places where I
might hope to remain unrecognized. I was accustomed on these
occasions to wear a shooting jacket and knickerbockers ; the knicker-
bockers were wide and loose, and of as thin cloth as possible, so that
I could easily roll them up in order that my thighs might be bare
(for if the thighs remained covered the whole affair would have given
me no pleasure). Further, on these occasions I was accustomed to
wear no ordinary underclothing, but only a nightshirt. As soon as I
reached the desired place, and had hidden the jacket, stockings, and

1 Regarding this custom of obscene gestures, which is extremely remarkable
from the point of view of the history of civilization, see the second volume, now
in course of preparation, of my work on " The Origin of Syphilis."

3 Von Schrenck-Notzing, " Crimino-Psychologioal and Psycho- Pathological
Studies," pp. 60-57 (Leipzig, 1902).

651

shoes in a suitable place, the nightshirt was arranged as a blouse.
Usually I had beforehand tried the arrangement of the dress at home.
Often I went up to people who were engaged in field labours (I
was especially fond of haymakers), and begged them to allow me to help
them, which they were usually willing enough to do. I then took off
my coat and bared my feet, and then, although there seemed no
apparent reason for that, I took off my knickerbockers, until ultimately
I was in the costume above described. I must, however, as already
said, be seen ; common people or workmen had usually to suffice me ;
but when people of education (for example, visitors at health resorts)
saw me, this was what I greatly preferred. When once one gentleman
said to another, ' Look at his beautiful legs ! what lovely legs he has !'
and I heard this by chance, I was extremely happy. I was then
eighteen years of age, but even now I look back upon that incident
with great pleasure. I also loved to show myself entirely naked ; in
such cases I always remained quite close to a pond or a stream, in order,
if necessary, to be able to make the excuse that I had just been bathing.
Frequently, however, I lay down close to a railway in a suitable place
quite naked in an artistic posture, and enjoyed the pleasure of seeing
the trains go by.

" I commonly did this only in warm, fine weather ; but I also did it
sometimes in snowy weather. When going about like this in very
little clothing, or entirely naked, I had extremely agreeable sensa-
tions. The affair usually ended in my masturbating until ejaculation
occurred ; after which I returned, as it were, to reality. Other-
wise I believe I should never have been able to bring myself to resume
my normal clothing. For in this state I was almost insensitive to
hunger, thirst, fatigue, heat, etc. ; it was, in fact, a trance-like, extremely
happy state.

" The desire to be photographed naked came later. I should have
been extremely delighted to play the part of a naked model. I tried
with great energy in various places (Vienna, Leipzig, and Hamburg)
to get such a photograph as I wanted ; but I was always turned away
with a shrug of the shoulders or a shake of the head. Finally I suc-
ceeded in Erfurt, at a small photographer's, in having my wish ful-
filled." (The patient sent a copy of this photograph.)

As the description clearly shows, we have here to do with ex-
hibitionism upon an epileptic or neurasthenic basis. The patient
describes the " confusional state," out of which he awakens to
" reality," very vividly. An objection, however, to the idea of
epilepsy is to be found in his very complete memory of these
transactions.

Without doubt, in the following case, reported by von Schrenck-
Notzing (op. cit., p. 96), we have to do with a case of neurasthenic
exhibitionism :

The patient, a portrait-painter thirty-one years of age, was accused
in the law-courts of repeated acts of exhibitionism. The imagination
and sensuality of the accused have been abnormally excitable since
earliest youth. For the last twenty years he has masturbated to excess

652

almost every day, with imaginative representation, when masturbating,
of male and female genital organs. In coitus he obtained no gratifica-
tion. He preferred to expose his own genital organs to persons of
the female sex, in the belief that he would in this way produce in them
sexual excitement. This exhibitionism is a central point in his sexual
life, and has acquired the character of a coercive impulse. He is
profoundly neurasthenic, and exhibits extensive changes of character,
loss of energy, lachrymosity, ideas of suicide, etc. Exhibits signs of
mental weakness. Exhibitionism is to him a complete equivalent to
ordinary sexual enjoyment, and is performed owing to an organic
compulsion. Ethically, his personality is weakened. The accused
was discharged on account of greatly diminished criminal responsi-
bility.

As a sub-variety of exhibitionists, we must refer to the so-called
" frotteurs," individuals who rub their genital organs, either bared
or covered, against persons of the opposite sex, and thus obtain
sexual gratification. In their case also we almost always have
to do with morbid conditions. The following case (Vossische
Zeitung, No. 258, June 6, 1906) was recently observed in Berlin :

The architect, Eduard P., was accused of offences committed in
the opera-house of Berlin. In February and March, 1906, he had
repeatedly soiled ladies' clothing in a disgusting manner. At a time
when the ladies had their whole attention directed to the stage, the
offender, standing or sitting behind them, contaminated their clothing,
and disappeared in the next interval. The whole mode of procedure
suggested the activity of a man with an abnormal morbid predisposition,
who in this place yielded to certain perverse impulses. Several com-
plaints having been made, some detectives were dispersed through the
audience, until finally the accused was caught in the act. During the
second act of a performance of " Lohengrin," the detective Brumme
observed the accused pressing up from behind against a lady, and, in
the semi-obscurity of the performance, acting in the manner already
mentioned. P. was arrested, and admitted that he had repeatedly
acted in this way. Before the judge the accused also confessed that
he had done the same thing on other occasions. How he had been
led to do it he could not say. Each time after committing the offence
he had suffered very bitter remorse.

The accused was acquitted of the criminal charge on the
ground of mental disorder.

The psychical element of exhibitionism also plays a part in
the practice of the so-called " voyeurs 'u and " voyeuses," that
numerous group of male and female individuals who are sexually

1 Not to be confused with the " essayeurs," a speciality of the brothels of Paris.
These are male individuals who are hired by the owner of the brothel, in order,
in the presence of clients, to cany out indecent manipulations in association with
the prostitutes, and thus to induce sexual excitement in the guests, and stimulate
them to fornication (cf. L. Fiaux, " Les Maisons de Tolerance," p. 177).

653

excited by regarding the sexual acts of other persons (active
voyeurs], or who allow themselves to be watched by others when
themselves performing sexual acts (passive voyeurs). In many
brothels, apertures in the wall or other arrangements have been
made for these voyeurs or gagas, through which they watch sexual
scenes. In fashionable dressmakers' shops, men are also said to
watch ladies trying on dresses — at least, so I have been informed
by a Parisian. Recently women also have been more and more
inclined to see such spectacles, so that Schwaeble devotes a special
chapter to the voyeuses in his book on the perverse women of
Paris. Messalina compelled her court ladies to prostitute them-
selves in her presence. Not infrequently male and female
voyeurs unite to form societies and secret sexual clubs, in which
all the sexual acts are performed in public.

Thus, in the end of September, 1906, in Graz, a " Secret Society
for Immoral Purposes " was discovered by the police. At the head

of this club was a merchant, thirty years of age, B , jun. A number

of other persons of good position belonged to this sexual club. They
met in the great restaurant " Zuin Konigstiger." Under the title of
" An Assembly of Beauty," festivals were held in the magnificent
garden of this restaurant, which were concluded as orgies behind
closed doors. The beautiful gardens of the Schlossberg were also the
scene of many meetings of the club.1

A remarkable category of voyeurs is constituted by the so-called
" stercoraires platoniques,"2 individuals who obtain sexual en-
jovment by observing the acts of defaecation and micturition
performed by persons of the other sex, and seek opportunities
for such observations in brothels or public lavatories. In the
closet of one of the Berlin railway-stations such a stercoraire
recently made a small artificial opening in the wall, through
which he was able to watch other persons when engaged in the
act of defaecation !

Here also we may refer to heterosexual paedication. to coitus
analis, which, according to the reports of French authors (Tardieu,
Martineau, and Taxil), appears to be especially common in France,
but which is by no means rare also in other countries. It becomes
comprehensible only in view of the fact that the anus may itself
be an erogenic zone. Details regarding this matter are given
by Freud.3 Krauss, also, in the second volume of his " Anthro-
pophyteia " (p. 392 et aeq.), has given numerous examples of

1 Regarding secret sexual clubs, see also my "Sexual Life in England."
vol. i., pp. 406-415.

2 Cf. L. Taxil, " La Corruption Fin do Sieclo," p. 220 (Paris, 1904).

3 8. Freud, " Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory." pp. 40-42.

psedication. Among others, he reports two cases related to him
by the ethnologist Friedrich Miiller, in which men had coitus
with their wives only per anum.

Finally, we must refer to a practice which appears to be con-
fined to France, the customary use of opium, hashish, and
ether, for the purpose of inducing sexual excitement, regarding
which Schwaeble (op. cit., pp. 19-36) and d'Estoc (op. cit.,
pp. 151-158) give very interesting reports. There exist hi Paris
special opium-houses, hashish-houses, and ether-houses, some
for men and some for women. Three opium-houses are to be
found, for example, in the Avenue Hoche, the Avenue J6na, and
the Rue Lauriston ; there is an ether-restaurant in Neuilly ; one
for opium, hashish, and ether in the Rue de Rivoli. All these
means of enjoyment evoke after a time sexual ideas and fantasies
of an extremely peculiar character, associated with actual volup-
tuous sensations. Opium gives rise to " ardent, brilliant pictures
of an excessively stimulated imagination,1 frequently of a per-
verse character ; hashish has a similar but even stronger
influence ; and ether gives rise to a more powerful stimulation
of the sexual organs, to a " vibration of the flesh and of the soul."
The interior of these unwholesome places of exotic enjoyment,
in which frequently homosexual acts also occur, is vividly de-
scribed by both the above-named French authors.2

1 L. Lewin, the aiticle " Opium," in Eulenburg's " Realenzyklopadie der
Heilkunde," vol. zvii., p. 629 (Vienna, 1898).

2 The following interesting reports, given by A. Wernichs (" Geograpbico-
Medical Studies," pp. 48-50), elucidate very exactly the nature of the sexual
fantasies of the opium-smoker, which have the character of an indeterminate
and by no means coercive sexual desire : " It is not necessary to proceed to grati-
fication ; one is almost disinclined to bring the series of beautiful pictures to an
end in this way. All the joyful sexual experiences follow one another in a peculiar
and fanciful admixture. Alluring forms appear in the most stimulating postures.
Often one does not seem to take part in the matter oneself. Beautiful women
whom one has seen in any part of the world, at the theatre, etc., move before one's
eyes, in the most beloved games of our youth. Everything that memory and the
half-dream brings us is naked, shining, delicate, luxurious — and for us alone ;
for me these groupings, these fountains with bathing forms, these gestures, these
embraces." It is, therefore, not simply by chance that the majority of Chinese
brothels have arrangements for opium-smokers, and that, contrariwise, many
opium-dens provide opportunities for sexual enjoyment. Indeed, prostitutes are
said to prefer opium -smokers, precisely because the latter, as long as the effect
of the opium persists, do not come to an end of their enjoyment.

[These sexual fantasies of the opium-smoker probably occur only in the
initial stages of indulgence in the drug. The confirmed opium-smoker, like the
man habituated to the hypodermic injection of morphine, is probably, with rare
exceptions, completely impotent. Sexual appetite and power return, however,
when the habit is cured. — TRANSLATOR.]

655

APPENDIX
THE TREATMENT OF SEXUAL PERVERSIONS

In the treatment of sexual perversions and anomalies, always
a matter of great difficulty, knowledge of mankind, tact, and the
finer understanding of the physician for the psychological pecu-
liarities of each individual case, must play a greater part than any
definite method of medical treatment. An exact understanding
of the true nature of the sexually abnormal personality is the
indispensable preliminary to our exercising a favourable influence
upon morbid impulses and practices. Unquestionably, the
physician must in the first place treat all actual diseases under-
lying the sexual abnormalities, by means of the physical and
pharmacological therapeutical methods open to us in such
abundance. Bodily and mental repose is here often the first
need we have to satisfy ; and for this purpose a change of environ-
ment, climatic cures, and such drugs as bromide and camphor
may be very useful. But the principal matter must remain
psychical, suggestive treatment. The mere discussion of the
matter with the physician, the possibility at length of confiding
in one capable of taking a thoroughly objective, calm, compre-
hensive view of the matter, one who by his profession is instructed
in all secrets of the human spiritual and impulsive life, and who
is aware of all the bodily necessities — this by itself suffices to
restore to these unhappy beings, who are tortured by the evil
demon of their unhappy impulse, who are often in a state of
spiritual despair and hypochondria, to restore to them an inward
confidence and a healing repose. This is the great triumph of
medical research in this hitherto tabooed, and yet so enormously
important, department, which only crass ignorance or evil-
minded hypocrisy could designate as " improper " or " unworthy.'*
We have passed beyond the fruitless and dangerous method of
" moral preaching," to attain a scientific understanding of sexual
anomalies ; we have exposed the roots of these anomalies, lying
deep in the physical and psychical nature of humanity, and we
have recognized their connexion with so many other phenomena
of the civilization of our time. When I speak of a " treatment "
of the common, widely diffused sexual anomalies, it appears to
me that that standpoint is the best which regards them as pure
diseases of the will, which have been diffused in all times, but have
never been more distinctly manifest, and never have possessed
more importance, than they do at the present day, when will,

656

energy, has become the most important weapon in the ever more
violent struggle for existence. As Napoleon III. said, it is not
to the apathetic man, but to the energetic man, that the future
belongs, to the man with the will of iron. But nothing paralyzes
the will so much as the dominance of blind and, above all, of
abnormal, impulses. Unquestionably they conceal within them-
selves, when frequently gratified, feelings rather of pain than of
pleasure, and become the unconquerable source of hypochondria
and self-contempt. The stronger the impulse becomes, the longer
the habit has lasted of yielding to that impulse, the greater is the
loss of will from which the individual suffers. The first and most
important task of the physician is, therefore, to weaken the
impulse by means of strengthening the will. He must consist-
ently and methodically educate the will, in order to assist the
patient to obtain the victory over his impulse. As Goethe says
in his " Epimenides " :

" Noch ist vieles zu erfiillen,
Noch ist manches nicht vorbei :
Doch wir alle, durch den Willen
Sind wir schon von Banden frei."

[" Much there remains to fulfil,

Many things have yet to be endured :

Still, all of us, by the exercise of will

Can to a large extent free ourselves from our fetters."]

The best way to attain this is to employ personal influence
by means of suggestion. We must recommend frequent con-
versations on the part of the patient with the physician, which
can be powerfully supplemented by epistolary communications
on the part of the physician, of which an excellent example will
be found in the " Psycho therapeutic Letters " by H. Oppenheim
(Berlin, 1906).1 Hypnosis is also of value, although it does not
appear to do any more in these cases than is effected by
suggestion in the waking state.2

It is not so easy to transform a Hamlet into a man of action.
We must impose tasks upon the will, tasks both mental and
physical ; we must regulate the mode of life ; we must give to
the individuality special prescriptions adapted to the particular
case, and we must call to our assistance, whenever advisable,
the friends and associates of our patient. The great enemy of

1 I refer more especially to the last letter, one directed to an onanist (pp. 42-44),
as instructive in this connexion.

2 Cf. also Alfred Fuchs, " Therapeutics of the Abnormal Sexual Life in Men "
(Stuttgart, 1899).

657

the will, alcohol, must be absolutely prohibited ; on the other
hand, the taste for finer enjoyment and also for easy sports
and pastimes must be stimulated.1 The vita sexualis needs
repose in every case, and, above all, masturbation must be
energetically resisted. If we succeed in diminishing the intensity
of the impulse, and in increasing the power of the will, we have
already done much. In isolated cases, we must also always make
the attempt to conduct the libido and its activity very gradually
into normal channels, perhaps with the assistance of suggestive
ideas in coitu, for which, above all, the assistance of the sexual
partner is indispensable. Only an experienced physician can here
hit the mark.

1 In such cases music, more especially the more emotional music of Wagner,
must be employed only with great care.

StrppLEMENTABY NOTE. — With regard to offences against morality, see the
comprehensive work by Mittermaier, " Crimes and Offences against Morality "
(Berlin, 1906) (gives a comparative description of the legislation of various
countries). See also J. Werthauer, " Offences against Morality in Large Towns "
(Berlin, 1907).

CHAPTER XXIV

OFFENCES AGAINST MORALITY FROM THE FORENSIC
STANDPOINT.

" In view of the peculiar character of sexually perverse acts, or rather
in view of the widely diffused interest in sexual questions and of
the hypocrisy which seems inseparable from their consideration, it
is easily comprehensible how to these acts there is commonly ascribed
a forensic importance greater than that which properly attaches
to them. And it is precisely this hypocrisy with which all questions
connected with sexuality are treated on the public platform, which
hinders a natural mode of regarding them, and renders so difficult
an unprejudiced judgment regarding all the relevant facts."-
J. SALGO.

659 42-2

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXIV

Importance of sexual perversions to the State and to society — Exaggerated views
regarding their injurious influence — Ono-sided condemnation of them from
the forensic -psychiatric standpoint — Their wide diffusion among healthy
individuals — Protection against real injury to public and private interests
from sexual offences — Their frequency among diseased persons — The idea of
degeneration — Congenital taint and the stigmata of degeneration — Signifi-
cance of these stigmata — Social causes of degeneration — Significance of
tattooing — § 51 of the Criminal Code — The idea of " diminished re-
sponsibility " — Characterization of sexual emotions — Other factors lessening
responsibility (menstruation, etc.) — Points of view in the punishment of acts
of fornication with persons under age — Value of the evidence of children in
the law-courts — The age of consent — The condemnation and punishment
of sexual offences.

CHAPTER XXIV

IT is the evident duty of the State to protect society from certain
manifestations of the sexual impulse, occurring publicly in the
form of " offences against morality," and whenever these mani-
festations interfere with the persons and the rights of citizens.
The sexual impulse has been compared with a powerful stream,
which, when confined to its natural bed, is a never-ending source
of blessing to the surrounding country ; but which, as soon as
with elemental force it overflows its banks and gives rise to
widespread floods, is the cause of unspeakable misery among the
entire population.1 This comparison would be just if the facts
were as stated. But, as I have already pointed out, as a whole,
sexual perversions have played a far smaller part in the decadence
of fallen nations than has hitherto been assumed. The biological
and economical history of civilization has taught us to recognize
numerous other influences, which, in such a process of national
decay, play at least as great a part as sexual " degeneration,"
and in many cases a much greater part than this. Frequently,
indeed, sexual perversions and unnatural modes of gratification
of the sexual impulse are in the first place a consequence of
economic and social abnormalities, and are intimately connected
with the so-called social problem. The above-named stream,
to pursue the image, only trickles over its banks here and there,
without giving rise to any widespread and devastating flood.
And so long as these destructive tendencies are wanting, the State
has no right to take measures against sexual perversions, or at
most can justly do so only by dealing with their social causes.
In view of the extensive diffusion of sexual anomalies among
persons who in other respects are perfectly healthy, we must ask
ourselves whether the importance of these anomalies, in respect of
the offences against morality to which in certain circumstances they

1 E. Weisbrod, " Offences against Morality before the Law Courts," p. 6
(Berlin and Leipzig, 1891). C/., regarding offences against morality, in addition
to the above-mentioned work of Tardieu, the interesting " Notes et Observa-
tions de Medocine Legale: Attentats aux Mceurs," by H. Legludic (Paris,
1896); also P. Viazzi, Sur Roati Sossuali" (Turin, 1896); L. Thoinot, "Atten-
tats aux Mceurs et Perversions du Sens G6nital " (Paris, 1898) ; Toulouse, " Lea
Dclits Sexuels," published in " Los Conflicts Intersexucls et Sociaux," pp. 318-326
(Paris, 1904). Regarding offences against morality from the forensic standpoint,
seo also the comprehensive work of Mittcrmaier, " Crimes and Offences against
Morality" (Berlin, 1906), which contains a comparative account of the legisla-
tive enactments of the principal countries of Europe. In addition, consult
J. Werthauer, " Offences against Morality in Large Towns " (Berlin, 1907).

661

662

may give rise, has not been overestimated. This idea has recently
been put forward by J. Salgo, in his valuable monograph, " The
Forensic Importance of Sexual Perversities " (Halle, 1907). I
am more especially pleased to find that this author shares the view
which I have myself advocated for years, that sexual perversities
in the majority of cases are not indications of " degeneration,"
as has been assumed both by psychiatrists and neurologists,
especially under the influence of the doctrine of Mobius, who
pushed this idea much too far. Moreover, the late Jolly, in his
lectures to practising physicians upon sexual aberrations, ex-
pressly maintained the justice of my view of sexual anomalies as
an anthropological phenomenon. With regard to the nature of
sexual perversions, psychiatric science will have greatly to
modify its general views, in order to attain an objective considera-
tion of their significance.

" Psychiatry," says Salg6 (op. cit., pp. 37, 38), " must not follow the
decoy-call of the law (which has wandered into a blind alley), by en-
deavouring to cover with the mantle of specialist science the serious
legal errors in the matter of perverse sexuality. The incontestable
domain of psychiatric experience in forensic questions is already suffi-
ciently large, and it needs no artificial extension. But it is an artificial
extension to indicate as morbid all the aberrations of sexual activity,
or any single one of such aberrations, in the absence of indubitable
or demonstrable symptoms of physical disturbance, and in the absence
of a clearly recognizable and abnormal course — simply because they
contravene the existing criminal law."

The blind alley of psychiatry is the prison and the asylum.
Because psychiatry is principally concerned with those sexual
perversities which have criminal or psychiatric importance, with
the abnormalities and the crimes of the sexually perverse, psychi-
atric science failed to recognize the extraordinarily wide diffusion
of sexual perversions among persons who are mentally and physi-
cally healthy. Among the healthy, homosexuality, sadism,
masochism, fetichism, etc., may make their appearance in more
or less severe forms ; just as other " vicious habits " may occur
in the healthy, just as passionate tobacco-smoking, or intoxication
with any sport, may become an ineradicable habit, or at least a
habit extremely difficult to eradicate. Neither jurisprudence nor
psychiatry can be spared the accusation of having misled " public
opinion," this terrible monster so often hostile to civilization, in
respect of sexual perversities, regarding whose nature recent
scientific research, and above all, anthropological research, has
diffused a light. I am acquainted with a number of persons
whose bodily and mental health is excellent, persons who are,

indeed, imposing in respect of their primeval German racial force,
who have assured me that they suffer from the most severe sexual
perversions ! Recall the description given on p. 584 of a maso-
chistic " slave " of the most extreme type. I do not go so far
as Salgo, who demands for sexual anomalies, in so far as they are
not criminal, the same " right of existence " (p. 7) as for the
normal sexual impulse ; but I do assert that sexual anomalies
exist in individuals who are in other respects perfectly healthy,
and that they do not always injure the personal health or the
bodily and moral well-being of another, as is the case with sexual
perversions arising upon a morbid foundation and attaining
forensic importance. Above all, I must sharply condemn the
fashion of glorifying sexual perversities, which have been regarded
as a peculiar privilege of the highest mental development, and as
corresponding to an especial refinement of sensibility. This
assertion may be refuted by reference to the fact, often mentioned
before, that the most incredible and most artificial sexual mal-
practices occur among savage races, who in this respect could
give points to our modern decadents and epicurean aesthetes.
In any case, sexual perversions in themselves have neither a
moral nor a forensic importance, and must be regarded as more
or less biological variations of the normal impulse.

Where, on the other hand, the public or individual interest is
injured by these perversions, the State has unquestionably the
right of intervention and the right of prevention. In every case
in which we have to do with the production of a public nuisance,
with the bodily or mental injury of other human beings, with
the employment of force, with the misuse of the lessened or
absent responsibility of children, of unconscious persons, of those
asleep, and of those mentally disordered, society must intervene
in its own interest, and must take suitable measures to protect
itself against such offences. Now, it is certain — and to have
established this is an honour to psychiatric science — that it is
precisely these latter sexual offences which in the great majority
of cases are committed by diseased persons and by those who are
more or less irresponsible. Therefore, we are thorouglily justified
in demanding that in every such criminal case, the bodily and
mental condition of the accused should be subjected to a medical
examination. A typical mental disorder, such as imbecility,
epilepsy, alcoholic insanity, general paralysis of the insane,
paranoia, etc., will be detected without difficulty, and thereby
responsibility will at once be excluded. More difficult are the
transitional stages between health and disease, the so-called

664

" borderland cases," the cases of " psychopathically deficient
responsibility" and of "disequilibrium." In forensic medicine
two ideas play a very great part in this connexion, that of " de-
generation " and that of " diminished responsibility."

Every sexually perverse person must be examined for signs of
severe hereditary taint, as well as for the so-called " stigmata
of degeneration." If we can prove that in his family there have
been several instances of severe mental disorder, of alcoholism,
syphilis, diabetes, and other diseases leading to degeneration, the
suspicion that there is a psychopathic foundation for the sexual
offence is justified. But we must insist that congenital taint does
not make itself felt in every case, and cannot, therefore, always
be made responsible as a causal influence in the production of
a sexual perversion.1

The so-called " stigmata of degeneration " have importance only
when they are very markedly developed, and when several of
them are simultaneously present. We distinguish physical and
mental stigmata degenerationis. To the former belong dis-
turbances and inhibitions of development, malformations, such
as asymmetry of the skull, narrowness of the palate, hare-lip,
cleft palate, anomalies of the teeth and the hair, difficulties of
speech, tic convulsif, abnormal and morbid states of the genital
organs and genital functions, and more especially malformations
of the ear, such as Morel's ear (the complete or partial absence of
the helix or antihelix), the Darwinian pointed ear, etc.2

The mental degenerative phenomena comprise all that are
known as " bizarre or abnormal " characters ; those who possess
such characters are termed " eccentrics " and " originals," or
are known as persons " psychopathically below par " (J. L: A.
Koch), as " disequilibrated " (Eschle), as " superior degene-
rates " (Magnan). These phenomena comprise peculiar distur-
bances of the harmony of the spiritual life, characterized by lack

1 Cf. Th. Ziehen, " Degeneratives Irresein," in Eulenburg's " Realenzyklopadie,"
vol. v., p. 448 (Vienna, 1895) ; A. Hoche, " Handbook of Forensic Psychiatry,"
p. 413.

2 Cf., in this connexion, P. Nacke, " The Value of the So-called Stigmata of
Degeneration " (Archives of Criminal Psychology, May, 1904), and " The Great
Value of Certain Signs of Degeneration " (Archives of Criminal Anthropology,
1904, vol. xvi., pp. 181, 182). The most important, according to him, are stig-
mata of the head and of the genital system, on account of the relationships to
the brain and to the reproductive organs. Disturbances of development of the
auricle are not so important as those of the globe of the eye (absence of the iris,
nystagmus, opacities of the lens, coloboma iridis, ptosis, microphthalmus, an-
ophthalmus, colour-blindness, etc.). Penta has recently drawn attention to the
importance and frequency of anomalies of the sexual organs in stuprators and in
the sexually perverse (cf. Archives of Criminal Anthropology, 1904, vol. xvi.,
p. 343 ; cf. also the observations of Matthaes, quoted in note 3, p. 477).

of balance between emotion and intellect, as well as by an ab-
normal irritability and undue reaction to stimulation. We may
find complete absence of ethical perception, so-called " moral
insanity," of which E. Kraepelin and his school have proved that
it may arise secondarily as a sequel to certain mental disorders.
Striking in these unbalanced persons is the disharmony of the
entire conduct of life, the internal lack of the point d'appui, the
unsteadiness, the suddenness of their actions, which often occur
under the influence of coercive ideas and abnormal impulses, the
abnormally early appearance and the extraordinary intensity of
the sexual impulse, the tendency to cruelty (0. Rosenbach). In
judging the personality of the degenerate as a whole, we must
always take into account the entire course of life, to which only
too often the remark of Stifter applies : " In his life we saw only
beginnings without continuations, and continuations without
beginnings."

On the other hand, we must not forget that many of the bodily
stigmata of degeneration occur also in healthy persons, and that
the existence of such stigmata in mentally disordered persons and
in criminals may also be referred to social causes, to bad condi-
tions of life and deficient nutriment, to alcoholism, syphilis, or
rickets. For this reason P. Nacke1 rightly insists that many of
the so-called stigmata of degeneration are socially produced, and
will therefore disappear with the employment of a purposive
social hygiene ; he gives as an example the rachitic bandy legs of
English factory labourers. Therefore, for the proof of degenera-
tion, we must lay more stress upon mental stigmata, upon abnor-
mality of the spiritual personality, abnormality of its intellectual
and emotional character, and from this proceed to infer the
irresistible character of a morbid impulsive manifestation.

In addition to the study of the stigmata of degeneration, the
study of tattooing is of forensic importance in the consideration
of the sexual offences ; the character and the date of the tattooing
give sometimes interesting information regarding the nature of
the personality.

Thus Lombroso8 reports the case of an offender against morality,
fifty years of age, with prominent ears and scanty growth of hair.
This man ravished a girl of fifteen, whose mother was his mistress.
At the early age of fifteen he had had the most obscene pictures tat-
tooed upon his body ; and upon inquiry he stated that lie had begun
to masturbate at the age of thirteen years, and had begun to have

1 Paul Nacke, " Criminality and Insanity in Women," pp. 154-156 (Vienna and
Leipzig, 1894).

* C. lx>mbroHo, " Recent Advances in the Study of Criminality," pp. 177, 178.

intercourse with women at the age of fifteen years. He denied the
accusation of rape, and maintained that he had enjoyed the girl without
using force. His tattooing, however, gave evidence of his capacity
to commit sexual crime. The pictures served as a certain and impor-
tant proof of this.

This appeared even more clearly in the case of the ravisher Francesco
Spiteri, published by Dr. F. Santangelo in 1892, whose utterly immoral
and sexually perverse mode of life was most wonderfully displayed
and recorded by means of the tattooings by which his entire body was
covered. It will suffice here to allude to the drawing of a fish and of
seven points upon his membrum. This indicated that his penis
(Italian, pesce = fiah) since his youth had predicated seven boys
( = seven points) !

In the case of sexual offences we have to consider, in addition
to the question of degeneration, that of diminished or entirely
absent responsibility. In cases of unmistakable mental disorder,
responsibility does not exist, nor in epileptic confusional states,
nor in profound alcoholic intoxication.1 Between complete
irresponsibility and complete responsibility there are numerous
transitional stages, which are all classified under the idea of
diminished responsibility. This fact is not recognized by § 61
of the Criminal Code, which runs as follows :

" A punishable offence has not been committed when the accused
at the time the action was performed was in a state of unconsciousness,
or in a state or morbid disturbance of mental activity, by means of
which his freedom of will was excluded."

In this we find the idea of " morbid disturbance of mental
activity," which is definitely wider than the idea of mental
disease, in so far as it embraces transient mental disorders in
persons who are not suffering from definite mental disease ; but
it does not take into consideration the even more important notion
of diminished responsibility, which is applicable to all the above
described borderland states and transitional conditions lying
between mental health and mental disease. Hausler (op. cit.,
p. 39) as long as eighty years ago demanded the recognition of
the idea of diminished responsibility — that is, of a condition " in
which responsibility for the action was diminished by an imper-
fectly developed intelligence, without the disturbance of intel-
lectual activity being sufficiently great completely to abolish free
voluntary determination " (Aschaffenburg). Since that time, by

1 Cf. G. Aschaffcnburg, " Responsibility in Mental Disease," published in
Hoche's " Handbook of Forensic Psychiatry," pp. 13-47.

[On the question of " Responsibility in Mental Disease," English readers will
naturally refer to Maudsley's classical work bearing this title, published in the
International Scientific Series. — TRANSLATOR.]

667

the address given on September 16, 1887, to the Association of
German Alienists at Frankfort on " diminished responsibility,"
Jolly opened a discussion upon this question. In this discussion
the majority of German psychiatrists recommended the legislative
recognition of such an idea, among these Wollenberg, Hoche,
Cramer, Kirn, Aschaffenburg, von Schrenck-Notzing, etc.1

In connexion with diminished responsibility we must distin-
guish between individuals and actions. Among the individuals
recognized above as persons " psychopathically below par,"
responsibility may be diminished permanently and for a number of
different actions ; but in other cases healthy normal individuals
may exhibit diminished responsibility in respect of isolated
actions, when, for example, an excessively strong emotion, or a
state of acute intoxication, has for a certain time and in relation to
a particular action abrogated responsibility. In this connexion,
in addition to acute alcoholic intoxication, certain sexual pro-
cesses have especially to be considered. Haussler recognized the
influence of the sexual impulse upon responsibility, and con-
sidered that certain actions performed under the influence of that
impulse were performed without complete responsibility, and he
declared that the voluptuary was a person whose mental health
was imperfect.2 Forel3 also regarded the " slaves of the sexual
impulse " as mentally abnormal, as individuals whose responsi-
bility was diminished. I consider it indisputable that sexual
emotions, especially when they arise suddenly, diminish responsi-
bility, and limit, to some extent at least, the freedom of voluntary
determination. Regarding certain processes of the vita sexualis,
such as the epoch of puberty in both sexes, regarding menstruation,
pregnancy, and the climacteric in women, this fact has been already
generally recognized. It ought, however, to be admitted regarding
the sexual impulse in general, more especially when the whole
character of the action proves that it has been the consequence
of a suddenly arising powerful emotion. Von Krafft-Ebing
also is of this opinion.4 It is, moreover, in most cases possible
to determine whether the offence was caused only by a powerful
sexual emotion, by means of which the intelligence and the freedom
of the will of a person, in other respects normally responsible,

1 Cf. A. von Schrenck-Notzing, " The Question of Diminished Responsibility,
etc.," published in " Crimino-Psychological and Psychopathological Studies,"
pp. 76-101 (Leipzig, 1902).

2 Hauslor, up. cit., p. 39.

3 A. Forel, "The Responsibility of Normal Human Beings," p. 21 (Munich,
1901).

4 Von Krafft-Ebing, " 1'sychopathia Sexualis,"tp. 331.

G68

were temporarily limited or completely arrested ; or whether
other motives intervened, so that the action must be regarded as
the result of conscious choice.

In conclusion, another point must be considered, which is
related to the question of sexual offences committed with children,
and which possesses forensic importance. This is the circum-
stance that in many such cases there is no question of the " seduc-
tion " of children, but that, on the contrary, the incitation first
proceeded from the children themselves. In the previous chapter
we discussed the early appearance of sexual activity in children.
Moreover, in such cases we could distinguish between a nobler
and a grosser, more sensual love.

As an example of the former, I may allude to the ardent, affectionate
love of a girl of twelve for a thoroughly honourable man of forty years
of age, who certainly had no idea of sexual intimacy with the chUd, and
who was unable to free himself from her passionate caresses. We often
observe such intimate inclinations on the part of young girls towards
mature men, and we must be careful in such cases to avoid immediately
thinking of paedophilic unchastity.

In another case a mother complained that her daughter, seven years
of age, was in continual pursuit of a boy of fourteen, and could not be
cured of the affection.

Maria Lischnewska reports (" Mutterschutz," 1905, p. 155) the case
of a boy, not yet six years of age, who drew up the nightgown of his
foster-mother, and endeavoured to have intercourse with her.

The sexual offences committed by clergymen and tutors upon
the girls taught by them are apt to be seen in a different light
when we subject the youthful accuser to a strict cross-examination,
and, in addition, to a physical examination, whereby in many cases
we bring to light the fact that, long before the recent offence,
they have been accustomed of their own free will to have sexual
relations with other men. Casper long ago drew attention to
these circumstances. Very often from the pupil herself proceed
actual advances of the worst kind, which have proved ruinous
to many a young teacher whose morals were previously above
reproachr

Finally, there is an important point which must not be for-
gotten : the untrustworthy character of childish evidence, a matter
which has recently been discussed by the specialist Adolf Bagin-
sky.1 This writer, whose knowledge of childish psychology is so
profound, remarks :

1 Adolf Baginsky, " The Impressionability of Children under the Influence of
their Environment," published in Medizinisclie Reform, edited by Rudolf Lenn-
hoff, 1906, Nos. 43, 44 (especially pp. 533, 534).

669

" The evidence given by children in the law-courts appears to those
who are really familiar with the child mind to be absolutely worthless
and utterly devoid of importance, and t his is the more the case the
more frequently the child repeats its statement, and the more firmly
it sticks to its evidence."

He alludes to the law of Sweden, according to which the child
is not competent to give evidence in a law-court before the com-
pletion of its fifteenth year.

All these circumstances must be considered in relation to the
question of the so-called " age of consent." M. Hirschfeld justly
remarks that the natural age of consent is equivalent to that at
which a child is competent to make a choice ("The Nature of
Love," p. 284). I consider that the decision of the Italian
Criminal Code is the best ; by this Code the age of consent for
both sexes is placed at the conclusion of the sixteenth year.

The majority of crimes committed from purely sexual motives
belong to the crimes of passion, in the sense of Ferris, and indeed
to crimes committed under the coercion of the most powerful
of organic impulses. I doubt whether the existing punishments
are the most suitable for the purpose for which they are designed.
In any case, gentleness is here above all demanded, and we should
invoke the saying, " Judge not, that ye be not judged !" Indeed,
an evangelical minister1 speaks truly when he says :

" The enormous majority of men and women, who constitute them-
selves the judges of offences against morality, whilst they themselves
take every opportunity of infringing the moral laws they profess to
uphold — lie day after day, throughout their whole life — their position
is built upon hypocrisy and lies."

It very rarely happens that a judge who condemns a thief or a
murderer has himself been guilty of this crime, but without
doubt it frequently happens that a judge condemns other men
on account of sexual offences which he has himself committed.
In the case of sexual crimes we almost always have to do with
individuals to whom more good could be done by medical influ-
ence than by imprisonment ; we must entrust the physician with
the duty of protecting society against such offenders. " In this
province, physicians will become the judges of the future," says
M. Hirschfeld most justly.2 Until this end is attained, let us

1 " Another Conventional Lie : Studies concerning Love, Marriage, and
Morality," by an Evangelical Clergyman, p. 7 (Leipzig).

2 Kraepelin (" The Question of Diminished Responsibility," published in the
Monatsckrift fiir Knminal-Paychiatrie, 1904, No. 8) pleads that the necessity for
imprisonment should be determined, not by judges, but by medical " crimino-
pedagogues," and he demands " places of secure restraint " (" Sicherungsanstal-

670

remind German judges of an anecdote which I found in an old
French encyclopaedia i1

" A courtesan in Madrid killed her lover, on account of his unfaith-
fulness ; she was condemned and brought before the king, from whom
she hid nothing. The king said to her : ' Thou hast loved too much
to be a reasonable being.' '

ten "), differing in character from ordinary prisons, for the detention of criminals
whose responsibility is diminished. Similarly, P. Nacke (" The So-called Moral
Insanity, "p. 60; Wiesbaden, 1902), considers that the prison should be transformed
into a kind of " hospital and educational institution."

1 " Encyolopediana ou Diotionnaire Encyclopedique des Ana," p. 69 (Paris,
1701).

CHAPTER XXV

THE QUESTION OF SEXUAL ABSTINENCE (DIE
ENTHALTSAMKEITSFRAGE)

" 0 heiliger Busser, jolg1 ich dir,
Folge ich dir, Frau Minne ?"

EDUARD GRISEBACH.

[" Holy Penitence, art thou my aim,

Or is it thou whom I pursue, lovely woman .?"]

671

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXV

Great variation in the views held regarding sexual abstinence — Five groups —
The apostles of absolute asceticism — Criticism of their views — View of
duplex sexual morality — Its refutation — The unfounded doubt in the possi-
bility of abstinence — Recommendation of relative temporary abstinence
from the medical and moral standpoint — Relative abstinence as an ideal of
civilization — Recognition of this ideal among the ancient Israelites — Wise
prescriptions and utterances in the Bible and the Talmud — Misrepresentation
of this idea by the notion of absolute asceticism — Reaction against the latter
— Rules regarding the frequency of intercourse — Self-command as a principle
of enjoyment — Abstinence before the first sexual intercourse — Sexual
maturity and physical maturity — Sexual tension of the third decade of life —
Erb's experiences regarding the harmful consequences of abstinence —
Lowenfeld's reports — Comparison with the dangers of extra-conjugal sexual
intercourse — Value of abstinence later in life — Influence upon intellectual
activity — Higher civilizing value of the idea of abstinence.

672

CHAPTER XXV

THERE is no disputed question in respect of which the divergent
views are so sharply opposed as they are regarding the im-
portance, the value, and the consequences of sexual abstinence.

[The question has been recently discussed by O. Schreiber,
in a paper entitled " Sexual Abstinence," published in Medi-
zinische Blatter, 1907, Nos. 25-27.]

I distinguish five groups of opinion :

1. The apostles of absolute asceticism during the whole of
life (Tolstoi, Weininger, Norbert Grabowsky, Kurnig, etc.).

2. The medical advocates of relative temporary continence,
until it becomes possible to enjoy permanent hygienic inter-
course, free from all objections.

3. The advocates of " duplex sexual morality," who demand
from woman sexual abstinence until she marries, but who regard
this as impossible in the case of man.

4. The " Vera " 1 enthusiasts, who on moral grounds demand
abstinence for both sexes until marriage.

5. Those who doubt the possibility of abstinence of any kind
for either sex, whether absolute or relative.

Regarding those mentioned under the first heading, who
demand absolute, life-long sexual abstinence, it is hardly neces-
sary to say a word. It is nonsense, a pious superstition, a
Utopia contrary alike to nature and to civilization, born of the
belief in the " sinfulness " of sexual intercourse.

The normal sexual impulse is a natural phenomenon ; it is
pure and thoroughly ethical ; and it is only in an insane con-
fusion and in a morally reprehensible falsification of his own
nature that man has come to regard it as a " sin," as an " evil."
Man has a natural, inborn right to the gratification of the sexual
impulse. Absolute asceticism must be rejected as a thoroughly
immoral doctrine.

The same is true of the duplex sexual morality, alluded to

1 " Vera" is the heroine of a novel ("Eine fur Viele: Aus dem Tagebuche
• •ui> s Madchens ") which attracted considerable attention in Germany. She
demanded from men entering on marriage the same virgin intactitude which men
are accustomed to expect in their wives. English readers will be reminded of
Evadno, in Sarah Grand's " The Heavenly Twins." Evadne, it will be remem-
bered, left her husband at the church door, owing to information she received
regarding his preconjugal career. In England wo might speak of " Evadne "
enthusiast*, instead of " Vera " enthusiasts. — TRANSLATOR.

673 43

674

under the third heading, by which that is justified to man which
is denied to woman. This " morality " (lucus a non lucendo)
presupposes for man a natural impulse, and demands for him
a right to gratify it, whilst the existence of such an impulse and
of such a right is denied to woman. We have shown that
this view is an inevitable consequence of coercive marriage
moralitv.1

The standpoint of the sceptics alluded to under § 5 is
one which denies the possibility of any abstinence, even merely
temporary abstinence ; but this view is equally to be rejected.
Man is a natural being ; his sexual impulse is a natural instinct,
and as such one whose existence is justified ; but at the same
time man is a civilized being. Civilization is an elevation, an
ennoblement, a transfiguration of nature, whose unduly powerful
impulses and powers must be tamed and harmonized by civiliza-
tion. The right to sexual gratification is therefore opposed by
the duty to set bounds to the sexual impulse, to conduct it into
such paths that no harm can result from its exercise, either to
the individual or to society ; and in order that, like all other
impulses, it may subserve the purposes of the evolution of
civilization. To this end, however, a relative abstinence is of
great importance (this is a matter which has not hitherto been
sufficiently recognized) ; but this course it is only possible to
follow when, at the same time, we emphatically affirm the right-
ness of sexuality, and when it is our desire to utilize it as a
civilizing factor of the first rank. The " individualization " of
the sexual impulse has been described in detail in an earlier
chapter of this work, to which I may refer the reader. If we
fail to recognize the value of temporary abstinence, and the im-
portance of the storing up of sexual energy which is thereby
effected, and the transformation of this energy into other energies
of a spiritual nature, such an individualization becomes im-
possible.

Alike the medical advocates (§ 2) and the moral advo-
cates (§ 4) of a relative temporary abstinence for both sexes
have, from their respective standpoints, made a just demand.
This is, in fact, in both cases an "ideal standpoint," to use the
phrase of F. A. Lange ; but it is also an ideal most desirable to
set before youth, and more especially before our German

1 P. Nacke also (" A Contribution to the Woman's Question and to the Question
of Sexual Abstinence," op. cit., p. 49) strongly condemns this duplex morality,
which he regards as " obviously unjust." Cf. also Max Thai, " Sexual Morality :
an Attempt to solve the Problem of Sexual, and more Particularly of the so-called
Duplex Morality " (Breslau, 1904).

675

youth. We cannot repeat too often, or insist with too much
emphasis, what an endless blessing results from the endeavour
towards, and from the realization of, temporary sexual abstinence,
more especially in the years of preparation for life, but also in
the years of independent creative work.

The importance of relative sexual abstinence was first recog-
nized by the ancient Israelites. Numerous wise prescriptions
and utterances prove this. Julius Preuss, the most celebrated
student of ancient Jewish medicine, has recently, in an interest-
ing study of "Sexual Matters in the Bible and the Talmud"
(Allgemeine Medizinische Centrcd-Zeitung, 1906, No. 30 et seq.),
collected the following facts bearing on the matter :

" Chastity was a self-evident demand for the unmarried. It is true
that, in view of the early occurrence of puberty, they married very young
— at the age of eighteen or twenty ; and Rabbi Huna is of opinion
that anyone who at the age of twenty is still unmarried passes his
days in sin or — which he regards as even worse — in sinful thoughts.
There are three whom God praises every day : an unmarried man who
lives in a large town and does not sin ; a poor man who finds an object
of value and returns it to the owner, and a rich man who gives his
tithe secretly. Once when this doctrine was read out in the presence
of Rabbi Safra, who as a young man lived in a large town, his face
lighted up with joy. But Raba said to him : " It is not meant such
a one as thou art, but such a one as Rabbi Chanina and Rabbi Oschaja,
who live in the street of the prostitutes, and make shoes for them, to
whom, therefore, the prostitutes come, and look upon them, but who,
notwithstanding this, do not raise their eyes to look upon the
prostitutes."

After marriage also they endeavoured by valuable prescrip-
tions to enforce the great civilizing idea of temporary sexual
abstinence. Thus, intercourse during menstruation was strictly
forbidden, and was regarded as a deadly sin ; the same was the
case as regards intercourse when there was any other haemor-
rhage from the genital organs ; but in this case the abstinence
must last even longer. It is remarkable that the Catholic
theologians allowed sexual intercourse without limit when such
morbid haemorrhage was present, and allowed it also, with
certain restrictions, during menstruation. Further, among the
ancient Hebrews intercourse was forbidden during the week of
mourning for parents or brothers or sisters ; it was forbidden
also during the festival of atonement. Guests in an inn when
travelling were also forbidden sexual intercourse, doubtless on
grounds of decency. Intercourse was likewise forbidden in
times of famine, in order to spare the bodily forces.

43—2

676

Golden sayings recognize the value of moderation and of
relative abstinence.

According to an ancient Israelitish popular saying, sexual inter-
course is one of eight tilings which are beautiful when enjoyed in
strict moderation, but harmful when enjoyed very freely. The others
are walking, possessions, work, wine, sleep, warm water (for bathing
and for drinking), and venesection.

! Rabbi Jochanan said : " Man possesses a little limb : he who satisfies
it hungers ; he who allows it to hunger is satisfied."

Rabbi Ilai said : " When man observes that his evil impulse is more
powerful than he is himself, let him go to a place where people do not
know him, let him put on dark clothes, let him wear a dark turban,
and let him do that which his heart desires ; but let him not publicly
profane the name of God." This can only mean that in general he
only controls the desire who has already tasted the fruit — that is to
say, that abstinence is the safest means against lust; but he who,
notwithstanding this, finds that the impulse threatens to become too
violent, still has the duty to fight against it, and in any case not to
yield immediately.

This ancient notion of relative asceticism was, unfortunately,
falsified and thrust into the background by the Utopian and
contra-natural idea of absolute asceticism ; its great value was
completely obscured by the inevitable reaction against the
principle of absolute chastity. This reaction led actually to
the formation of rules regarding the frequency of intercourse,
such as that attributed to Luther — " Twice a week does harm
neither to her nor to me "; although it is precisely in this depart-
ment of life that no rules can be given, and that the greatest
individual variations occur, so that " twice a week " may for
many constitute by far too much, and can only be regarded as
permissible to robust constitutions. Daily indulgence in sexual
intercourse, continued for a long period of time, would be dele-
terious even to a Hercules, and in all circumstances would be
harmful to both parties. Nature herself, by exhibiting a certain
periodicity in sexual excitement (which periodicity is admittedly
far more distinct in women than it is in men, who can " always "
love), has facilitated temporary abstinence. This is, in fact, a
natural demand even of the most extreme ethical materialism ;
for, as Friedrich Albert Lange1 rightly points out, " even though
the individual sensual pleasure, as with Aristippos or Lamettrie,
is raised to a principle, self-control still remains a requirement
of philosophy, if only in order to assure the permanence of the

1 Friedrich Albert Lange, " History of Materialism," vol. iii., p. 302, English
edition.

677

capacity for enjoyment." So also the poet of the " New Tan-
hauser " sings :

" Selig, der da ewig sclimachet,
Sei gepriesen, Tantalus,
Hatt' er je, wonach er trachtet,
Wiird' es auch schon Ueberdruss :
Gib mir immer Eine Beere,
Aus der vollen Traube nur,
Und ioh schmachte gern, Cythere,
Lebenslang auf deiner Spur !"

[" Happy is he who eternally desires.
A happy man art thou, Tantalus !
If he ever attained that for which he longs,
He would instantly taste satiety :
Let me have but a single grape
From the full cluster,
Gladly, Cytherea, will I live,
Ever desiring, in thy courts !"]

The question of abstinence is an entirely different one, accord-
ing as it relates to the time before or after the first experience of
sexual intercourse. Experience shows that in the former case
abstinence is far easier than it is when the forbidden fruit
has once been tasted. If, with the author of this book, relative
asceticism is regarded as the most desirable ideal, we shall
endeavour in youth to realize that ideal for as long a time as
possible, without any interruption by sexual intercourse ; whereas
in the later period of the fully-developed sexual life we shall
practise sexual abstinence only from time to time.

With regard to the former point, it would be the greatest
good fortune for every man if he could remain sexually abstinent
until the complete maturity of body and mind — that is, until
the age of twenty-five.1 But this is in most cases an impossi-
bility. Yet it is possible for every healthy man — and it is an
imperative demand of individual and social hygiene — to abstain
completely from sexual intercourse at least until the age of twenty.
That is possible without any harm resulting, and it is carried out
by innumerable persons of both sexes. It is, indeed, a fact that

1 " My dear young men," thus wrote Ernst Moritz Arndt, at the age of eighty-
nine, to the Burschenschaft (Students' Association) of Jena, " I can wish nothing
better for you than that you should arrange your course of life in Jena, and pass
through it, as I heretofore passed through it, making a courageous, vigorous,
and earnest fight against the lusty, overbearing impulses of youth, which in the
best case are so easily carried to excess. ... in these your most valuable years,
between eighteen and twenty, you must, with redoubled manliness, courage, and
chastity, strive to deserve the praise given by Caius Julius Caesar to the young
men of Germany."

678

in civilized countries the physical and mental maturity of girls
and boys by no means coincides with their sexual maturity,
but, on the contrary, occurs from three to five years later. First
between the ages of twenty and twenty- two does man attain
complete development.1 If the sexual impulse is not artificially
awakened and stimulated during these years of adolescence, it
may remain very moderate, without masturbation and without
pollutions, and can be easily controlled. Relations with the
other sex have not yet become necessary for the development of
the individual personality. The human being has still enough to
do in isolation. First with the commencement of the third decade
of life do the conditions alter, and sexual tension becomes so
great as to demand the adequate and natural discharge given by
the normal sexual act. If this is impossible, pollutions form the
natural, or masturbation forms the unnatural, outlet ; and when
abstinence is continued for a long time after attaining this age,
the vital freshness and the spiritual and emotional condition are
more or less impaired. To have emphasized this fact, in opposi-
tion to those authors2 who declared that total sexual abstinence
is absolutely harmless to mature men, was the great service of
Wilhelm Erb,3 the celebrated, widely experienced Heidelberg
neurologist.

" It is a well-known fact," he writes, " that healthy young men
with a powerful sexual impulse suffer not a little from abstinence,
that from time to time they are ' as if possessed ' by the impulse,
that erotic ideas press in upon them from all sides, disturb their work
and their nocturnal repose, and imperiously demand relief. I always
remember the remark of a friend of my youth, a young artist, who,
when speaking of these things, was accustomed to say with intense
meaning : ' Wer nie die kummervollen Nachte in seinem Bette
weinend sass . . . ' And the same man could not sufficiently extol
the relaxing, disburdening, and positively refreshing influence of an
occasional gratification ; and the same thing has been said to me
innumerable times by earnest and thoroughly moderate men."

Women also gave him similar assurances.4 In numerous
cases Erb observed physical and mental harm to result from

1 Cf., in this connexion, the remarks of A. Herzen, " Science and Morality,"

Sp. 11, 12(Berlin, 1901). The same age for human maturity was fixed on also by
. C. G. Ackermann (" The Diseases of the Learned," p. 268 ; Niirnberg, 1777).

2 I need mention only Seved Ribbing, Acton, Rubner, Paget, Hegar, Beale,
Herzen, A. Eulenburg, V. Cnyrim, and Fiirbringer.

3 Wilhelm Erb, " Remarks on the Consequences of Sexual Abstinence," pub-
lished in tho Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1903, vol. ii., No. I.,
pp. 1-18.

4 Theodor Mundt, in his " Madonna" (pp. 240, 241 ; Leipzig, 1835), has very
vividly described the beneficial and refreshing influence of coitus upon women.

679

abstinence — sometimes in healthy individuals, but more especially
in the neuropathic.

Important also are the investigations of L. Lowenfeld1 regard-
ing the influence of abstinence. He found that in men under the
age of twenty-four any troubles worth mentioning as a result of
sexual abstinence were comparatively rare, as compared with
the case of men between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-six
years, the years of complete manly power and sexual capacity ;
and he found that whereas in healthy persons these disturbances
were indeed of a trifling character (general excitability, sexual
hyperaesthesia, hypochondriacal ideas, disinclination for work,
slight attacks of giddiness), in neuropathic persons, on the
contrary, there would occur coercive ideas, melancholy, feelings
of anxiety, and even hallucinations. Females, according to
Lowenfeld, bear abstinence — even absolute abstinence — much
better than men, but in them also hysterical and neurasthenic
conditions may develop as a result of sexual abstinence.

All these harmful consequences of abstinence are, however,
neither in man nor in woman, of such a nature that, where an
opportunity for sexual intercourse at once hygienic and free from
ethical objections is wanting, the gratification of the sexual
impulse need be advised by the physician as a " therapeutic
measure." No ; Erb himself insists that, on the contrary, the
dangers threatened by venereal diseases altogether outweigh the
comparatively rare and trifling injuries to health result-
ing from abstinence. " Extra-conjugal " sexual intercourse
involves the dangers of syphilitic or gonorrhoeal infection, or of
illegitimate pregnancy, which latter to-day must, unfortunately,
be regarded as a kind of severe disease. In contrast with these
evils, any harmful consequences of abstinence fade away to
nothing.

Later in life, when the possibility of a permanent pure love
exists, the value of temporary abstinence is to be found especially
in the spiritual sphere. Precisely for the " erotocrat," as Georg
Hirth terms one endowed with a powerful and healthy sexual
impulse, is this temporary abstinence of a certain importance,
because the stored-up quantum of sexual tension re-enforces the
inward spiritual productivity. A number of men, at once endowed
with strong sexual needs and with a noble mental capacity, have
assured me that, in consequence of abstinence, they have tempor-
arily experienced a peculiar deepening and concentration of their

1 L. Lowonfeld, " The Sexual Life and Nervous Troubles," pp. 62-69, fourth
edition.

680

mental capacity, by means of which they were undeniably
enabled to increase their mental output. This point in the
hygiene of intellectual activity, which seems not to have been
unknown to Goethe, has been as yet too little studied.

In any case, it is definitely established that from the standpoint
of civilization the idea of sexual abstinence is justified, if for this
reason alone : because in it we find a great means for increasing
and strengthening of the will ; but, in the second place, because
in it we have a valuable protection against the dangers of wild
love ; and, finally, because sexual abstinence emphasizes the fact
that life contains other things worth striving for besides matters
of sex, that the content of life is far from being exhausted by the
sexual, even though the sexual impulse, in addition to the impulse
of self-preservation, will always remain the most powerful of all
vital activities.

CHAPTER XXVI
SEXUAL EDUCATION

" Better a year too early than an hour too late." — OKER BLOM.

t;.xl

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXVI

Science and practice have hitherto, for the most part, ignored the sexual — The
danger of blind chance in the sexual province — Necessity for the enlighten-
ment of the coming generation — Sexual education as a part of general peda-
gogy— The right to the knowledge of one's own body — Sexual enlightenment
of young people — The dispute regarding the when and the how — Distinction
between the youth of the country and the youth of the town — Points of
association — A passage from Gutzkow's autobiography — Disastrous sources
of early sexual enlightenment — Character of the pedagogic enlightenment —
Importance of this — Suggestions regarding the methods of sexual enlighten-
ment (Sigmund, Lischnewska, F. W. Forster) — My own views — Education
of the character and of the will — Principal rules of sexual pedagogy — Educa-
tion to manhood.

682

CHAPTER XXVI

THE manner in which up to the present day humanity has,
properly speaking, completely ignored the fact of sexuality is
at once remarkable and difficult to understand. Until recently
people went so far as to regard scientific research into sexual
matters by adult persons as improper ! The mystical idea of the
sinfulness, of the radically evil character, of the sexual, was a
dogma which even natural science appeared to admit. Our
attitude towards the sexual was as if it were at once Sphinx
and Gorgon's head, as if it were the veiled statue of Sais. We
stood helpless, in the face of this mysterious and malignant power,
against the blind hazard of chance which plays so momentous
a part, more especially in sexual affairs. As everywhere in life,
so here also, the dominion of chance could be overcome only by
means of knowledge. The solution of the sexual problem
demands, in the first place, openness, clearness, learning in the
department of the sexual, knowledge of cause and effect, and
the transmission of this knowledge to the next generation,
so that this latter may without harm become wise. Sexual
education is an important chapter in general pedagogy.1

Regarding animals, plants, and stones the youthful human
being of to-day acquires the most exact information, but we
have hitherto refused liim the right to understand his own body,
and to acquire a knowledge of certain important vital functions
of that body. There can be no doubt about the fact that the
modern human being, who has learned to so large an extent to
regard himself as a social being, has a sacred natural right to this
knowledge.

Celebrated pedagogues of a hundred years ago, such as Rous-
seau, Salzmann, Basedow, Jean Paul, etc., expressed themselves
in favour of the early sexual enlightenment of youth, and gave
the most valuable advice regarding the methods to be employed ;2
but their views remained for the most part devoid of practical
effect, and it is only in recent years, in connexion witli the

1 For this reason, Fr. W. Forster, in his admirable " Jugendlehre " (Berlin,
1906), devotes a special section to the subject of " sexual pedagogy" (pp. 602-
652).

2 Maria Lischnewska, in her admirable work upon " The Sexual Instruction of
Children," published in Mutterschutz, 1905, vol. i.f pp. 137-150, quotes the prin-
cipal^passagos relating to this subject from the works of the writers just
mentioned.

683

684

question of the protection of motherhood, with the campaign
against prostitution, and with the attempt to suppress venereal
diseases, that interest in this matter has been reawakened ; and
there now exists in this department an extensive literature,
belonging chiefly to the last few years, proceeding from the pens
of physicians, pedagogues, hygienists, and advocates of woman's
rights.1 It is, in truth, the burning question of our time, the
solution of which is here attempted. Correct sexual education
forms the foundation for the ennoblement and resanation of our
entire sexual life. Only knowledge and will can here effect a
cure. Thus, sexual pedagogy naturally falls into two parts —
sexual enlightenment and the education of the will.

The need for sexual enlightenment is now recognized by all
far-seeing social hygienists and pedagogues. The only difference
of opinion concerns the when and the how. Some plead for
enlightenment as early as possible, in the first years of school
life ; others wish to defer enlightenment until puberty, or
even later. I am of opinion that the circumstances in this
respect are entirely different, according as we have to do with

1 In addition to the two admirable works already mentioned, by F. W. Forster
and M. Lischnewska, I may allude also to the following : Richard Flachs, " Sexual
Enlightenment as a Part of the Education of our Young People," with a full
bibliography (Dresden and Leipzig, 1906) ; Carl Kopp, Sexual Affairs in the
Education of Youth " (Leipzig, 1904) ; Max Marcuse, Sexual Enlightenment in
Youth " (Leipzig, 1905) ; " Sexual Hygiene and Sexual Enlightenment in the
School " (a Discussion at the First International Congress for School Hygiene,
held at Nurnberg, 1904), published in the " Reports of the German Society for
the Suppression of Venereal Diseases," 1904, vol. ii., pp. 63-71 ; Karl Ullmann,
" The Sexual Enlightenment of School-Children," published in the Monatsachrijt
fiir Oesundheitspftege, 1906, No. 1 ; M. Flesch, " Enlightenment in the School,"
published in Blatter fiir Volksgesundheitepflege, vol. iv., p. 164 ; Emma Eckstein,
" The Sexual Question in the Education of the Child " (Leipzig, 1904) ; Adelheid
von Bennigsen, " Sexual Pedagogy in the House and the School " (Berlin, 1903) ;
Alfred Fournier, " Pour nos Fils quand ils auront Dix-huit Ans " (Paris, 1905) ;
M. Oker Blom, " Beim Onkel Doktor auf dem Lando " : a Book for Parents, second
edition (Vienna, 1906) ; Friedrich Siebert, " A Book for Parents " (Munich, 1905) ;
same author, " What shall I say to my Child ?" (Munich, 1904) ; Mary Wood- Allen,
"When the Boy becomes Man" (Zurich, 1904); same author, "Tell me the
Truth, dear Mother " ; W. Busch, " No more Stork Stories : a Practical Intro-
duction, showing how Children should be taught the Truth, and how the Family
should be Safeguarded from Moral Contamination " (Leipzig, 1904) ; E. von den
Steinen, " The Human Sexual Life : a Lecture to those leaving School " (Dussel-
dorf, 1906) ; cf. also, by the same author, " An Address to those leaving School
concerning Sexual Love," published in the Journal for the Suppression of Venereal
Diseases, 1900, vol. v., pp. 259, 260; F. Siebert, " Our Sons: their Enlightenment
regarding the Dangers of the Sexual Life " (Straubing, 1907) ; F. Siebert, " The
Sexual Problem in Childhood," published hi " The Book of the Child," edited by
Adele Schreiber (Leipzig and Berlin, 1907), vol. i., pp. 106-117 ; L. Bergfeld,
" Take the Bandage from your Eyes, dear Sister : an Open Letter to Adolescent
Girls " (Munich, 1907).

685

small towns and the open country, where more careful watching
of children is possible, and where the dangers of premature
sexual development and of seduction are not so great, or as we
have to do with large towns, where, in my view, the children
cannot be enlightened too early, since town life brings the
children of all classes, and social misery brings more especially
the children of the lowest classes of the population, so early into
contact with sexual matters that a purposive enlightenment
becomes absolutely indispensable. Children living in lafrge towns
should, from ten years onwards, be gradually and carefully made
acquainted with the principal facts of the sexual life. We find
here more points of association than is usually imagined. Gutz-
kow, in his admirable autobiography, " From the Days of My
Boyhood " (Frankfort-a.-M., 1852, pp. 263, 264), has beautifully
described this :

" The first appearances of love in the heart of the child occur as
secretly as the fall of the dew upon flowers. Playing and jesting,
innocence gropes its way through the darkness. Words, perceptions,
ideas, which to the adult appear to be full of dangerous barbs, the
cliild grasps with careless security, and takes the duplex sexual life
of humanity to be a primeval fact which came into the world with
man as a matter of course, and one which requires no explanation.
Born from the mother's womb, to the child the mother is the secure
bridge by which it is conducted past all the riddles of womanhood.
The child imitates the love of the father for the mother, plays the
game of the family, plays father and mother, plays at being himself,
a cliild. From the rustling autumn leaves, from abandoned bundles
of straw, huts and nests are built, and for half an hour at a time a
completely blameless boy can lie down besides his girl playmate,
quietly, and as if magnetized by the intimation of love. Danger is
in truth not far distant from such a practice of childish naiveto ; it
lurks in the background, and seeks only an opportunity to lead astray.
But a child never understands the significance of the severe punish-
ment which it so often receives for its imitative imaginary family
life. The amatory life of the adult first breaks upon the imagination
of the cliild and upon liis quiet play like the opening of a door into
a house. People take so little care of what they do before the
innocent ; they exliibit passionate affection for one another ; they
caress when the children are by. The child sees, ponders, and listens.
Certain hieroglyphics alarm it ; tales are laughed at — tales which
suddenly throw a strange and wonderful light upon quite familiar
human beings. The boy will notice that his older sister has a joy or
a sorrow, the nature of which he cannot completely grasp. He sees
an elder brother filled with the joy of life, with the lust of youth,
with the lovo of adventure, and no attempt is made to conceal these
passions from the child. . . . Such and similar experiences succeed
one another without cessation, and tales which the child hears are

686

listened to with eagerness. The red threads of love and of the oharni
of beautiful women are not to be grasped by the hand of a child,
and yet they have upon the child a certain secret influence."

The child hears and sees much that is erotic, even immoral,
but does not stop to think about it, does not understand it.
After a while its ignorance becomes a puzzle ; soon lascivious
thoughts arise. Maria Lischnewska describes very vividly this
psychological process in the soul of the child, in part according
to her observations as a teacher. She justly criticizes the
" stork stories," to which the child listens without believing
them, in order subsequently to be enlightened in an extremely
disagreeable manner by older ill-conditioned comrades.1

These children, ten or twelve years of age, often learn about
sexual matters from the lowest side, without obtaining a true
knowledge. They frequently acquire the most astounding verbal
treasury of lewd expressions, and even sing obscene songs, of
which Maria Lischnewska gives a remarkable example on the
part of a girl twelve years of age.

No, there can be no question that the child at school, from
the tenth year onwards, should, without fear of disastrous con-
sequences, be enlightened regarding sexual matters by parents
and teachers, in order to avoid the dangers which we have just
described. But this instruction must be divested of any in-
dividual relationship, of any personal character, and must be
communicated in thoroughly general terms, as natural scientific
knowledge, as a medical doctrine, belonging to the province of
philosophical and pathological science. In this way will be
avoided any undesirable accessory effect related to subjective
perceptions. When Matthisson esteems youth as happy on this
account, because the book of possibilities is not yet open to its
gaze, this certainly does not hold as regards sexual enlighten-
ment. Here, to a certain degree, this book of possibilities must
be disclosed, if we do not wish all the poetry and all the ideal
view of life to be utterly destroyed by contact with rude reality.
Precisely in this case do we understand the wonderful remark of
Goethe, that we receive the veil of poetry from the hand of
truth. This first renders possible a truly earnest and profound
conception of sexual relationships ; this creates a consciousness
of responsibility which cannot be awakened sufficiently early.

1 In some cases the child will criticize the grown-up's fables with a sharp-
sighted logic, as the following story proves : Pepito, a child seven years of age,
asks his mother, " Tell me, mamma, how do children come ?" People buy
them." " I don't believe that people buy them !" " Why not ?" " Because
poor people have the most !"

687

The true danger is, as Freud1 also points out, the intermixture
of " lasciviousness and prudery " with which humanity is
accustomed to regard the sexual problem, just because
people have not learned sufficiently to understand the con-
nexion between cause and effect in this department of human
activity.

Various methods have been recommended for sexual enlighten-
ment. I shall discuss more particularly the suggestions of the
Austrian Realschul professor, Sigmund, of the Volkschul teacher,
Maria Lischnewska, and of the University professor, F. W.
Forster.

Sigmund (quoted by Ullmann, op. cit., p. 7) considers that in
the Volkschuler (primary schools), in the case of children up to
the age of eleven years, there should be no systematic explanation
of sexual matters, and that this should be begun first in the
Gymnasium (higher school). His scheme of instruction is as
follows :

1. The enlightenment of the pupils at the Gymnasium is to be
effected in five stages (Classes I., II., V., VI., VII.)

2. The enlightenment in the lower classes is limited to the processes
of sexual reproduction. In the first class, the origin and birth of the
mammalian young and the origin of insects' eggs are explained. In
the second class, the origin and birth of reptiles' and birds' eggs,
the fertilization of the eggs of fishes and batrachians, the ova
of the sea-urchin, and those of the jellyfish, are described. The act
of sexual intercourse will not be alluded to in the first two classes —
that is, it will not be mentioned to children before the age of thirteen
years.

3. The completion of the idea of " sexual life " is effected by means
of botanical and zoological instruction in the upper school in a syn-
thetic manner, wherein no important detail is omitted, but the copula-
tory act is kept in the background.

4. All sexual matters expressly concerning human beings, and all
the pathological relations of the sexual life, should be left to the
hygienic instruction, which is given during one hour weekly to the
seventh class as a part of general instruction in somatology.

5. The natural history taught to the sixth class will embrace
zoology only ; the natural system will be considered in an ascending
series (excluding human somatology, which in a logical manner is
deferred until the study of zoology is completed, and it will thus be
dealt with in the seventh class, as a preparation to the instruction
in hygiene).

6. In conferences with parents, the parents can be kept informed
regarding the nature of the instruction which is being given to their
children, and can at the same time be led to work in unison with the
school in this matter.

1 S. Freud, " Collection of Minor Writings upon tho Doctrine of Neurosis,"
p. 216 (Leipzig and Vienna, 1900).

688

Maria Lischnewska advises beginning already in the third
class of primary schools — that is, when the child is only eight
years old — to give instruction in the elements of natural science,
more especially utilizing, as the first means of sexual enlighten-
ment, the examples of vegetable fertilization, as well as the
reproduction of fishes and birds. Even to the question " Whence
do little children come ?" an answer should be given, more or
less in the following terms :

" The child lies in the body of the mother : when she breathes, then
the child breathes ; when she eats and drinks, the child also obtains
his food. It lies there warm and safe. Gradually it becomes larger
and begins to move. It has to lie somewhat curled up, because there
is so little room for it. But the mother feels that it is alive ; she is
full of joy, and makes ready the child's clothing and its bed. Finally
it is fully grown. The mother's body opens, and the child comes to
the light. Then the mother takes it into her arms with joy and
nourishes it with her milk." Then the teacher would pause, and
continue after a while : " Now, would you like to see the child ?"
Then there would naturally be a many- voiced " Yes, yes !" and the
teacher would show to the class a picture such as our anatomical
atlases exhibit now in beautiful form. The abdominal walls of the
mother are turned back, and the child is seen slumbering. Then the
teacher would say : " Thus you also slept within the body of your
mother. You belong to her as to no other human being in the
whole world. For this reason you should always love and honour
her."

Thus is the child's urgent demand for knowledge satisfied. He
is freed from all prying into nooks and corners. He experiences
a feeling of honourable respect towards the primary source of
life.

In the fourth school year further examples of the reproduction
of plants, fishes, and birds should be given ; in the fifth and sixth
years the first demonstration of the process of sexual union
among the mammals, with some account of embryology ; and
the process of birth should also be described. Then there should
follow (at about the age of thirteen or fourteen) enlightenment
regarding the development of the sexual life and regarding
venereal diseases— information, that is to say, concerning hygiene
and concerning the protection of one's own body. Physicians
such as Oker Blom and Dr. Agnes Hacker definitely demand
that elucidation regarding this latter point should not be deferred
until the time of puberty.

F. W. Forster proposes to postpone the whole process of
enlightenment until the twelfth or thirteenth year ; and if at an
earlier age a child expresses any natural doubt regarding the

689

stork fables, the following answer should be given (op. cit.,
p. 606) :

" Where small children come from is a matter which you cannot
yet understand. We grown-up persons even understand very little
about it. I promise you that I will explain to you what we know
of the matter on your twelfth birthday, but only if you promise me
something in return. Do you know that there are boys and girls so
bumptious that they behave as if they already knew all about it, because
they have somewhere picked up a word or two without really under-
standing it ? Promise me that you will never listen when such as
these begin to talk about the matter ; for you may be certain that the
true secrets are matters of which they are ignorant, for this reason —
they would not speak about it. He who really knows holds it as a
sacred matter ; he is silent about it, and does not call it out at the
street corners."

Forster strongly advises against associating sexual enlighten-
ment with a knowledge of the reproductive process in plants and
animals, for this reason : that if this is done " the human being
is brought too near to the vegetable and animal life," and the
" sacred thought " of the elevation of humanity above the animal
is obscured. He then gives very beautiful examples and modes
of instruction for such sexual enlightenment of children twelve
years of age.

I myself am of opinion that, without in any way making light of
the difference between man and animal, the earlier elucidation
at about the age of ten years should be associated with the general
instruction in natural history regarding the reproductive process
of animals and plants ; and then very gradually, up to the age
of fourteen, all important points in this department can be
explained, including, finally, an account of the venereal diseases.
It is obvious that after this time, more especially in the
dangerous years of puberty, systematic enlightenment must be
continued. That which is good and useful in this department
of knowledge cannot be too often repeated.

But all enlightenment will be useless unless hand in hand with
it there proceeds a process of education of the character and the
will. Our school youth thinks and dreams too much, and does
too little. Up to the present time it has been believed that it is
sufficient to teach children, and to continue to teach them, to
care for their health, to see that they have good food and sound
sleep, without also taking into consideration the necessity for
awakening the individuality and the energy slumbering in each
one of them. The " gymnasium " must concern itself with the
gymnastics, not only of the body, but also of the mind, and must

690

thus restore that harmony between body and mind which appears
to have been quite lost at the present day. Bodily education by
games and sports is only one of the means for this purpose. The
principal aim is to strengthen the character, to induce the habit
of self-command and self-denial by a profound and intimate
grasp of sexual problems. Nowhere does fantastic dreaming
take revenge more thoroughly than in sexual relationships, for
which reason also the so-called " only children " are especially
endangered ;l nowhere do clear knowledge, objective acquire-
ments, and a firm will celebrate finer triumphs over blind impulses
than they do here. The principal rule of sexual pedagogy runs
as follows : Avoid the first opportunity and the first contact ;
keep the child and the young man and the young woman at a
distance from all the stimulating pleasures and enjoyments of
the adult. The production of manliness, as it has recently been
described by Mosso,2 Giissfeldt,3 Georg Sticker,4 and Ludwig
Gurlitt,5 has the greatest importance, more especially as regards
the sexual life. This has been insisted on, above all, by Hans
Wegener® and F. W. Forster (op. cit.). Moral statistics have
incontrovertibly proved that progress in civilization and morals
does not depend upon punishment or upon prophylactic measures
against errors and excesses of passion, but only upon the sub-
jective improvement and strengthening of the single individual.
Guizot declared : " C'est de 1'etat interieur de 1'homme que depend
l'£tat visible de la societe." Drobisch,7 in his " Moral Statis-
tics," has established this fact yet more firmly. Energy is the
magic word for all vital activities of the present day, both spiritual

1 Cf. Eugen Neter, " The Only Child and its Education " (Munich, 1906).

2 Angelo Mosso, " Physical Culture in Youth " (Hamburg and Leipzig,
1894).

3 Paul Giissfeldt, " The Education of German Youth " (Berlin, 1890).

4 Georg Sticker, " Health and Education," second edition (Giessen, 1903).
8 Ludwig Gurlitt, " Education in Manliness " (Berlin, 1907).

6 Hans Wegener, " We Young Men : the Sexual Problem of the Cultured Young
Man before Marriage : Purity, Strength, and the Love of Woman " (Diisseldorf
and Leipzig, 1906).

7 M. W. Drobisch, " Moral Statistics and the Freedom of the Human Will,"
pp. 96-101 (Leipzig, 1867). Valuable works regarding the education of the
character and the social education of the child are found in the first volume
(second edition) of the monumental work edited by Adele Schreiber, " The Book
of the Child " (Leipzig and Berlin, 1907), from the pens of Laura Frost (pp. 42-53),
F. A. Schmidt (pp. 168-179), Liingen (pp. 192-201), G. Kerschensteiner (pp. 202-
207), R. Penzig (pp. 215-222), and Adele Schreiber (pp. 223-231). Important in
relation to sexual enlightenment is also the question (one actively discussed at
the present moment) of the education of the sexes in common — the so-called
co-education. It has been proved by experience that co-education has a
good effect in sexual relationships (cf. Gertrua Baumer, " Co-education," op. cit.,
vol. ii., pp. 44 48).

691

and physical. Discipline, work, abstinence, bodily hygiene, are
the means for educating the character, and these also play the
principal part in sexual pedagogy.1

1 The question of sexual education and enlightenment occupies at the moment
a place in the foreground of public interest, and rightly so ; for upon this depends
principally the further reform and the resanation of all the sexual relationships
of civilized peoples. For this reason the Discussions, now in the press, of the
Third Congress of the Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases (" Sexual -
padagogik"), Leipzig, 1907, were occupied exclusively with this subject, which
was considered in elaborate debates from four points of view :

1. Sexual instruction in the house and the school.

2. Sexual enlightenment of young persons at puberty.

3. Sexual instruction of teachers and parents.

4. Sexual dietetics and education.

The present position of sexual pedagogy in all these respects is exactly defined
in this comprehensive volume ; and, in addition, at the conclusion of the book we
find a compend of the recent literature of the subject. Much of value regarding
sexual regimen is to bo found in the work of H. Mann, " Art and the Sexual
Conduct of Life " (Oranienburg, 1907), and in that of A. Eulenburg, " Sexual
Regimen," published in Mutterschutz, July and August, 1907. As an opponent
of early sexual enlightenment, we must mention G. Leubuscher (" School Medi-
cine and School Hygiene," pp. 65-70; Leipzig, 1907). He considers that such
enlightenment should only be given at the time of leaving school. His reasons,
however, are not convincing, and, above all, do not apply to large towns.

44r-2

CHAPTER XXVII

NEO-MALTHUSIANISM, THE PREVENTION OF CONCEPTION,
ARTIFICIAL STERILITY AND ARTIFICIAL ABORTION

" Formerly the use of such devices was regarded as immoral and
punishable, and was actually punished : it was condemned as an
interference with the Divine plan. But such views and measures
are extreme. Here, as everyiuhere, human foresight and methodical
interference are permissible." — GUSTAV SCHMOLLER.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXVII

Importance of the problem of population — Malthus and his doctrine — Its fal-
lacies— Temporary validity — " Moral restraint " — Neo-malthusianism — The
foundation of the Malthusian League — Great antiquity of malthusian
practices — Disharmony of the family instinct — The mica operation of the
Australian indigens — Artificial abortion among primitive races — Methods
of preventing pregnancy in ancient times — In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries — Relative justification of the use of preventive measures — Views
of recent physicians on this subject — Summary of the principal methods of
preventing conception — Limitation of coitus to particular times — Advice
of Soranos and Capellmann — Feskstitow's " conception-curve " — Influence
of particular seasons of the year — Prolongation of the period of lactation —
Buttenstedt's " Happiness in Marriage " and Funcke's " New Revela-
tion " — Criticism of these fantasies — Divergences from the normal method
of coitus — Passive demeanour of the woman — Coitus interruptu-a — Exag-
gerated views of its injurious influence — Coitus interruptus and anxiety-
neurosis — Trifling effect in healthy individuals — Repeated interruptions of
coitus — Mechanical means of preventing conception — Compression — Mus-
cular action — Mensinga's " occlusive pessary " — Holweg's " obturator " —
The condom — Chemico -physical preventive measures — Douches — The
" Lady's Friend " — Antiseptic powders and security sponges — Combination
of chemical and mechanical means — The " Venus apparatus " — The duplex
occlusive pessary — Inflammatory affections after the use of chemical pre-
ventive measures — Herpes progenitalis — Artificial sterility — Operative
methods of inducing it — Vaporization and castration — The " ovariees " —
Wide diffusion of artificial abortion — Critical remarks regarding the punish-
ment of abortion in Germany — The right of the unborn child — Rape and
abortion — The methods of expelling the ovum — Internal means — Mechan-
ical means — Danger and consequences of both — Social means for limiting
abortion.

694

CHAPTER XXVII

WHEREAS in former times opinions on social questions were
determined principally by economic considerations, to-day we
are to a great extent influenced also by the aims and endeavours
of individual and social hygiene ; for this reason the so-called
problem of population has come to occupy the consciousness of
civilized mankind to a far greater extent than before it has
passed from the stage of theory into that of practice. Serious
critical political economists, such as, for example, B. G.
Schmoller,1 have recognized this. The increasing understanding
of the conditions of social life, knowledge of the connexion between
economic conditions and the number and quality of the popula-
tion, must of itself lead to the discussion of the question whether
the regulation of the number of children born is not one of the
principal duties of modern civilization. The Englishman Robert
Malthus was the first who, stimulated by an idea of Benjamin
Franklin, in the year 1798, in his " Essay on the Principles of
Population," discussed this serious, and even alarming, question
of the natural consequences of unrestricted sexual intercourse,
and answered it in an extremely pessimistic sense. For, accord-
ing to him, whereas human beings tend to increase in number
according to a geometrical progression — that is, in the ratio
1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and so on — the means of subsistence increase only
in arithmetical progression — that is, in the ratio of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
and so on. Hence it follows that the numbers of the population
can be kept within bounds, so as to remain proportional to the
nutritive possibilities, only by means of decimating influences,
such as vice, poverty, disease, the entire " struggle for existence,"
by preventive measures, and by the so-called " moral restraint "
in and before marriage. Although this celebrated theory, which
filled with alarm, not only all those already living in Europe,
but also all those who wished to produce new life, has to-day been
generally recognized as false,2 since it failed to take into account

1 Cf. his classical essay, " Population : its Natural Subdivision and Movement,"
published in " Elements of General Political Economy," vol. i., pp. 158-187
(Leipzig, 1901).

a Cf. Franz Oppenheimer, " The Law of Population of T. R. Malthus, and the
more Recent Political Economists : a Demonstration and a Criticism " (Bern,
1900). See also the interesting demonstration and criticism of the malthusian
doctrine in the work of Henry George, " Progress and Poverty."

H'.l.-,

696

technical advances in the preparation of the soil1 and other ways
in which it will become possible to increase the means of subsist-
ence ; and he equally ignored the possibility of a better division
of property. None the less does his theory remain apposite in
respect of many of the social relationships of more recent times ;
the doctrine has, in fact, temporary validity for certain periods
of civilization, such as our own. Malthus recommended, as the
principal means of preventing over-population, abstinence from
sexual intercourse (moral restraint) before marriage, and the
postponement of marriage ; thus he was an apostle of the " rela-
tive asceticism " recommended in the twenty-fifth chapter of the
present work.

In England this early view found utterance among the political
economists and sociologists, such as Chalmers, Ricardo, John
Stuart Mill, Say, Thornton, etc. It was also actively discussed in
wide circles of the population, so that as early as the year 1825 the
" disciples of Malthus " were a typical phenomenon of English life.

A further development of malthusianism in the practical
direction was represented by the so-called "neo-malthusianism " —
that is, an actual diffusion of instruction in the means for the pre-
vention of pregnancy and for the limitation of the number of
children. Such a procedure was first publicly recommended by
Francis Place, in the year 1822 ; but no widespread teaching of
practical malthusianism occurred till a considerably later date,
notably after the foundation of the Malthusian League, on July 17,
1877. The principal advocates of neo-malthusianism in England
were John Stuart Mill, Charles Drysdale, Charles Bradlaugh, and
Mrs. Besant.

Malthusian practice is, however, much older than the theory.
Metchnikoff2 declares the endeavour to diminish the number of
children to be a very widely diffused " disharmony of the family
instinct," which in itself is much more recent, and is much less
widely diffused in the animal kingdom than the sexual instinct.
Animals, at any rate, know nothing of the prevention of concep-
tion ; that is a " privilege " of the human species. By primitive
races such preventive measures are very widely employed. Among
these measures one of the best known is the " mica " operation
of the Australian natives — the slitting up of the urethra of the
male along the lower surface of the penis, so that the semen

1 A notable example of such advances is found in the recently discovered
method of inoculating the soil with nitrifying organisms, whereby barren
lands are made fertile at trifling cost. — TRANSLATOR.

2 Eli Metchnikoff, " The Nature of Man." — English translation by Chalmers
Mitchell, pp. 101-107; Heinemann, London, 1903.

697

flows out just in front of the scrotum, and is ejaculated outside
the vagina.1 Regarding the wide diffusion of artificial abortion
among savage races, Ploss-Bartels gives detailed reports. The
pursuit of material enjoyments, characteristic of civilized peoples,
is not here (as recent authors have erroneously assumed) the de-
termining influence ; we have, in fact, to do with a widely diffused
disharmony of the family instinct,2 for which in certain definite
conditions some justification must be admitted. The period
for the unconditional rejection of malthusianism by pietists and
absolute moralists has passed away definitely. Not only physi-
cians, but also professional political economists, recognize the
relative justification and admissibility of the use of preventive
measures in certain circumstances for the limitation of the
procreation of children. It has rightly been pointed out3 that
in every marriage a time must eventually arrive when preventive
measures in sexual intercourse are employed, and necessarily must
be employed, because, in respect of the state of health of the wife,
and also in view of economic conditions, their use is urgently
demanded. These relationships have been discussed with great
insight by A. Hegar,4 and he has proved the justification of
practical neo-malthusianism in every ordinary marriage, as well
as for the population at large. By means of a " regulation of
reproduction," an immoderate increase of the population is pre-
vented ; by diminishing the quantity we improve the quality
of the offspring. Late marriages, long pauses between the
separate deliveries, and the greatest possible sexual abstinence,
subserve this purpose.

1 A more detailed account of this interesting " politico -economical " operation
will be found in the work of Max Bartels, Medicine among Savage Races,"
pp. 297, 298 (Leipzig, 1893).

2 The ancients were also familiar with preventive methods of intercourse and
with abortion. Widely renowned is the passage of the historian Polybius
(XXXVII. ix. 6) in which we read : " In my time the whole of Greece suffered
from an insufficiency of children — speaking generally, from a lack of men ; for
men had become so much accustomed to good living, to the greed for money, and
to every comfort, that they no longer wished to marry, or, at any rate, they
wished to have only a few children. Not the sword of the enemy was it that
depopulated the ancient States, but the lack of offspring." In Spain also, in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in consequence of the wealth acquired in the
New World, there resulted an overwhelming dread of marriage and child-bearing,
so that the population became reduced to nine millions, and the bringing up
of four children was rewarded with a title of nobility (cf. J. Unold, " Duties and
Aims of Human Life," p. 110; Leipzig, 1904).

3 Cf. E. H. Kisch, " Artificial Sterility," published in Eulenburg's " Real-
Enzyklopadie," third edition, 1900, vol. xxiii., p. 372. See also the elaborate
discussion of artificial sterility and means for the prevention of conception in
Kisch's work, " The Sexual Life of Woman," English translation by M. Eden
Paul (Rubman Limited, London, 1908).

4 A. Hegar, " The Sexual Impulse," pp. 58, 69, 104, 105 (Stuttgart, 1894).

698

Like Hegar, the Munich hygienist Max Gruber1 also recognizes
the necessity for setting bounds to the number of children to be
brought into the world, since the capacity of the human species
to increase is far greater than its power to increase the means of
subsistence. He describes very vividly the physical and moral
misery of the parents and the children when the latter are too
numerous ; he also shows that from the birth of the fourth child
onwards the inborn force and health of the children diminish
more and more. Naturally, also, diseases affecting the parents,
and the pressing danger of the inheritance of these diseases,
renders necessary the use of sexual preventive measures, or
else of moral restraint. Gruber enunciates the thoroughly neo-
malthusian proposition :

" The procreation of children must be kept within bounds, if mankind
wishes to free itself from the cruel condition by which, in irrational
nature, the balance is maintained — death in the mass side by side
with procreation in the mass !"

L. Lowenfeld2 also sees in the recommendation of such measures
for the prevention of pregnancy " nothing either improper or
immoral " ; he sees in these measures " means for diminishing
the poverty of the lower classes, and for abolishing, to a great
extent, the high infantile mortality of these classes, although
neo-malthusianism is in no way a panacea for all the social evils
of our time " ; and he writes very strongly against the condemna-
tion of preventive measures by a " perverse medical zealotry " ;
in fact, he assigns to preventive measures an immense hygienic
importance. Many other physicians also, such as Mensinga3
(the discoverer of the occlusive pessary, the first medical man
in Germany to assert with energy the justification of employing
means for the prevention of pregnancy, and the first to establish
with precision the indications for the use of these measures,
especially in relation to the disadvantageous consequences to
women's health of bearing a large number of children), Fiir-
bringer,4 Spener,6 and others, have drawn attention to the

1 M. Gruber, " Hygiene of the Sexual Life," pp. 60-62 (Stuttgart, 1905).

2 L. Lowenfeld, " The Sexual Life and Nervous Disorders," pp. 154-156.

3 C. Hasse (Mensinga), "Facultative Sterility," fourth edition (Berlin and
Neuwied, 1885) ; same author, " How is the Life of Married Women best Safe-
guarded ?" (Berlin and Neuwied, 1895) ; same author, " Prognosis of Married
Life for Women " (Berlin and Neuwied, 1892) ; same author, Vom Sichinacht-
nehmen " [Coitus interruptua, see p. 702] (Neuwied, 1905).

4 P. Fiirbringer, " Sexual Hygiene in Married Life," published ur Senator
and Kaminer's, " Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage and the^Married
State," p. 209 (London, Rebman Limited, 1906).

6 Spener, the article " Artificial Sterility," published in Eulenburg's Encyclopedic
Annual of the Medical Sciences, vol. i., pp. 456-459 (Berlin and Vienna. 1903).

699

eminent hygienic and social importance of measures for the pre-
vention of pregnancy ; whereas, on the other hand, in France, in
view of the alarming decline in the population of that country,
scientific medicine has adopted a more hostile attitude ; no
longer, however, so bitterly hostile as in the work (now some-
what out of date, but nevertheless containing interesting details)
of Bergeret.1 A layman also, Hans Ferdy (A. Meyerhof),2 has
published a number of interesting works on practical neo-
malthusianism.

We shall now proceed to give a brief account of the means
commonly employed for the prevention of pregnancy.

1. The Restriction of Intercourse to Particular Periods. — It is
clear that by means of relative asceticism, and by restriction of
the number of individual acts of sexual intercourse, the possi-
bilities of fertilization can be limited to a considerable extent.
Thus, Capellmann, in a work published in 1883, entitled " Facul-
tative Sterility, without Offence to Moral Laws," recommended
abstinence from intercourse for fourteen days after the cessation
of menstruation and for three or four days before the commence-
ment of the flow, in the belief that fertilization occurs principally
during the days immediately before and after menstruation.
Capellmann thus revived the prescription of Soranos, a gynecolo-
gist of the days of antiquity. According to the researches of the
physiologist Victor Hensen, it is true that the greatest number
of fertilizations take place during the first few days after the
menstrual period ; but conception may also occur on any other
day of the menstrual cycle, although the probability of conception
at other periods than those named is a diminishing one. Fesk-
Btitow has based upon statistical data an interesting " conception
curve," according to which the frequency of fertilization on the
last day of menstruation, on the first, ninth, eleventh, and twenty-
third days after the end of the flow, varies respectively accord-
ing to the ratios 48, 62, 13, 9, 1 ; between these points the course
of the curve is almost straight. On the twenty- third day after
menstruation the probability of conception is thus one-sixty-
second of the maximum. Thus, though the probability of fer-
tilization following intercourse on the twenty-third day after the
cessation of the flow is much less than the probability of fertiliza-

1 L. Bergeret, " Des Fraudes dans 1' Accomplishment des Fund ions Genera-
trices," fourteenth edition (Paris, 1893). See also Toulouse, " Les Conflits
Intereexuelfl," pp. 41-58 (1'aris, 1904).

a H. Ferdy, " Means for tho Prevention of Conception," eighth edition, two
parts (Leipzig, 1007); same author, "Moral Self-restraint: the Reflections of a
Mnlthusian " (Hildesheim, 1904).

700

tion as a result of intercourse shortly after menstruation, still, the
possibility of conception in the former case cannot be absolutely
excluded.

It has also been recommended that in certain seasons of the
year, to which a peculiar influence upon fertility has been ascribed,
more especially the months of May and June, abstinence from
intercourse should be observed. But this is naturally quite
untrustworthy, since the same mother can conceive in all months
of the year, as is sufficiently proved by the ordinary variations
in the birthdays of children.

Somewhat more trustworthy, but still not absolutely to be
depended upon, is the practice, after the birth of a child, of
artificially prolonging the period of lactation, since it is well known
that during lactation the menstrual periods often fail to occur,
and that fertilization is exceptional. Upon the recognition of this
causal sequence, notwithstanding the fact that it does not possess
any absolute validity, there has recently been founded a very
remarkable method of practical malthusianism, which the two
discoverers, Karl Buttenstedt1 and Richard E. Funcke,2 have
announced to their astonished contemporaries as a " new revela-
tion," and as the realization of " happiness in marriage." These
remarkable apostles have combined another observation with the
one mentioned above of the relative infertility of women during
lactation, the new observation being that sometimes by the
mammary glands of women who are not pregnant, and even by
those of virgins, milk is secreted, especially during menstruation.
This fact was known to earlier gynecologists, a£, for example, to
Dietrich Wilhelm Busch.3

Buttenstedt, to whom the " priority " of the new doctrine of
happiness unquestionably belongs, an advocate of the extremely
optimistic theory of the possibility of an everlasting life for
humanity and of the cessation of death (!), also conceived the
idea of evoking lactation artificially in all women by means of
the sucking of their breasts by men ! In this way he believed
that artificial sterility and amenorrhoBa might be produced.

1 Karl Buttenstedt, " Happiness in Marriage (Revelation in Woman) : a
Nature Study," third edition (Friedrichshagen, 1904).

2 Richard E. Funcke, " A New Revelation of Nature : a Secret of the Sexual
Life. No more Prostitution " (Hanover, 1906).

3 Dietrich Wilhelm Busch, " The Sexual Life of Woman in Physiological, Patho-
logical, and Therapeutical Relations," vol. ii., p. 94 (Leipzig, 1840): "The gradual
swelling of the breasts, and the presence of milk in these organs, arouses to a high
degree the suspicion of pregnancy, but gives no certain proof of the existence
of this condition. These organs often swell very gradually hi certain pathological
states, and in virgins, unimpregnated wives, widows, old women, and even in
men, milk has been found in the breasts."

701

Naturally, also, woman's milk is regarded as an elixir of life
for old men, a true panacea for the elongation of life ad infinitum ;
and this " happy marriage " in itself is to be a means by which
all the possible ills of degenerate humanity are to be cured. In
this paean he is joined by Funcke, who regards woman's milk as
" the best, most natural, and most valuable drug," and on p. 70
of his book preaches to girls and women the " new categorical
imperative " (sic).

" Thou shalt not leave thy vital force unutilized ; thou shalt not
menstruate unless thou hast the firm will and desire to become preg-
nant ; thou shalt allow thy vital force in the form of milk to flow
from thy breasts for the benefit and enjoyment of other human
beings."

Buttenstedt, who possesses some historical knowledge, wishes
also to make the breasts of men lactiferous (p. 24), so that the
sexes can exchange their " blood through the breasts," thus
become more and more alike one another, and ultimately become
urnings !

This beautiful lactation idyll or, more correctly, mammalian
idyll, will not bear the test of scientific criticism. In the first
place, the effect of the proposed manipulations is exceedingly
dubious, and would only produce the desired result in exceptional
cases ; in the second place, such an artificial lactation, continued
for a long period, would be extremely harmful, just as an exces-
sive protraction of lactation after normal delivery is known to be
deleterious ; and in the third place, last, not least, the reputed
anticonceptional effect would, in the majority of cases, fail to
occur. At any rate, there appears to be no reason why preg-
nancy should not ensue, since the condition of the genital organs
would apparently permit this, and would certainly differ from
that which obtains in women who give suck in a normal manner
after giving birth to a child.

2. Divergences from the Normal Mode of Coitus.— Attempts
have been made to prevent fertilization by means of various
modifications of the sexual act. Thus, starting from the old
belief that active participation in the sexual act on the part of
the woman, as well as libido and the sexual orgasm on her part,
are indispensable prerequisites of the occurrence of impregnation,
a more passive demeanour of the woman has been recommended
— a distraction of the mind and the senses from the sexual act,
after the manner of the cong-fou of the Chinese, who frequently
employ this trick during intercourse. This opinion is deceptive,
for, in the absence of all activity and orgasm on the part of the

702

woman, in the most diverse conditions possible, conception may
ensue.1 Thus, in this case also we have to do with a quite un-
trustworthy method.

Trustworthy, on the other hand, and therefore extremely widely
diffused, is the so-called coitus in term plus — interrupted inter-
course, in which the penis is withdrawn from the vagina shortly
before the ejaculation of the semen (so-called " withdrawal,"
" Zuruckziehen," " Sichinachtnehmen," " fraudieren," " congres-
sus reservatus, onanismus conjugalis "). The views regarding the
harmful ness of this method, by which pregnancy can certainly
be prevented, have in recent years undergone considerable
change, in so far as the disadvantages are to-day considered less
serious than they formerly were. More especially, Dr. Alfred
Damm, in his work " Neura," overestimated the harmful effects
of coitus interruptus, inasmuch as he attiibuted to it the entire
degeneration of a race. These extreme views, supported by no
facts whatever, of the degeneration fanatic Damm are briefly
described in a little book by E. Peters, " The Sexual Life and
Nervous Energy " (Cologne, 1906).2

It cannot be denied — and has, in fact, been maintained by other
physicians such as Gaillard Thomas, Goodell, Valenta, Bergeret,
Mantegazza, Payer, Mensinga, Beard, Hirt, Eulenburg, Freud,
von Tschich, Gattel, and others — that the " ineffective " excite-
ment occurring during coitus interruptus, the absence of the
natural discharge of sexual tension, the voluntary postponement
of ejaculation, the strain put upon the will during the sexual
act, may have a transient harmful influence upon the nervous
system ; but, according to recent researches, it is only in those
who are already neuropathic that permanent troubles result,
in the form of " anxiety-neurosis " (which, as Freud3 has proved,
is actually dependent upon coitus interruptus}, or in the form of
other neurasthenic and hysterical troubles, and also sometimes
of local irritative conditions. The harmful influence of frustrated
sexual excitement is shown also by the frequency of nervous
troubles during the period of engagement, which, as a witty
colleague of mine remarked, must be regarded as a single, long-
drawn-out coitus interruptus. But it has not been proved that

1 Mensinga, in a most readable short study, " A Contribution to the Mechanism
of Conception " (Berlin and Neuwied, 1891), has considered this question in
detail.

2 To propagate Damm's idea, the German Society for Regeneration was
founded, whose first president was the above-named Peters ; the organ of the
society is the newspaper Volkskraft.

3 S. Freud, " Collection of Minor Writings upon the Doctrine of Neurosis,"
pp. 70, 71 (1906).

703

in healthy individuals coitus interruptus, even when the practice
is continued for a long time, gives rise to serious and permanent
injuries to health. According to the experience of Furbringer,
Oppenheim, von Krafft-Ebing, Rohleder, Spener, and, above
all, of L. Lowenfeld, who has instituted exceptionally exact
researches into the matter, such consequences are quite ex-
ceptional. This is also true of the disorders which coitus inter -
ruptus is reputed to cause in women.

Another method for the prevention of pregnancy, which,
according to Barrucco, is practised especially in Italy, is the pro-
longation of sexual enjoyment by means of repeated interruptions
of the act, followed by renewed erections. This, naturally, is
extremely harmful. Furbringer, however, reports the case of
certain frigid men who were able to extend the act of conjugal
intercourse for long periods, without any disastrous effect upon
their health. One of these men was able to find time during the
act for smoking and reading !

3. Mechanical Means for the Prevention of Conception. — Ac-
cording to Kisch, in Transylvania and in France a method is in
use according to which, during the sexual act, the woman, at
the commencement of ejaculation in the male, presses her finger
forcibly upon the root of his penis just in front of the prostate
gland. In this way the passage through the urethra is temporarily
occluded, and ejaculation of the semen is prevented : it regurgi-
tates into the bladder, and is subsequently evacuated with the
urine. Unquestionably this manipulation would be likely to
prove exceedingly injurious to health.

In Italy and in New Guinea many women expel the semen
from the vagina, as soon as coitus is completed, by means of
muscular action, by vigorous movements of the perineum.

A mechanical apparatus for the prevention of conception which
is unquestionably carefully thought out is the so-called occlu-
sive pessary of Dr. Mensinga — a hemisphere of rubber surrounded
by a steel ring, introduced into the vagina before coitus, and even
left in situ for prolonged periods, so that the os uteri is occluded.
When accurately applied, it does, in fact, definitely prevent
fertilization. Various considerations, however, render its use
undesirable : (1) the difficulty of the introduction, which most
women are unable to master ; (2) liability to displacement of
the pessary during the act ; (3) the occurrence of irritative
conditions of various kinds (discharges, diseases of the uterine
annexa, etc.), if, as often happens, the pessary is allowed to
remain in the vagina for a long time. Recently a pessary has been

704

constructed of waterproof cambric, which is said not to produce
any such irritative reaction. Moreover, Mensinga himself, and
Earlet, have made other improvements upon the occlusive pessary.
Easier to introduce is Gall's " balloon occlusive pessary." In this
instrument, by means of a compressible rubber ball and tubing,
air is blown into the interior of a thin-walled rubber ring which
surrounds a soft elastic rubber disc. A dangerous article, and
one to be avoided, is Hollweg's " obturator." The ideal mechanical
means for the prevention of pregnancy is, once more, the condom,
regarding the application and qualities of which we have already
said all that is necessary (vide supra, pp. 378, 379). Simple in
its mode of application, it is, when of good quality, certain in
its effect, and is relatively the most harmless of all preventive
measures. When it is used, coitus runs a perfectly normal course,
with the sole exception of the sensation during ejaculation.
We must reject as harmful the use of the so-called " stimulant
condom," which bears a ring of spines or points, in order to
increase libido in the woman.

i 4. Chemical Physical Preventive Measures. — To these belong,
above all, douching of the vagina immediately after sexual
intercourse, for which purpose cold water, solutions of alum
(1 per cent.), copper sulphate (£ to 1 per cent.), sulphate of
quinine (1 : 400), etc., may be used. The douching must be
effected when the woman is in the recumbent posture, and the
vaginal tube must be introduced deeply. This method, however,
is very untrustworthy.1

The same is true of attempts to destroy the spermatozoa by
the insufflation of chemically active powders ; or by the insertion
of antiseptic " security sponges," which Rohleder has rightly
named " insecurity sponges " ; untrustworthy also is the com-
bination of these with mechanical apparatus.

The number of articles belonging to this category is legion. I need
mention a few only : " Security ovals," containing boric acid, quinine,
or citric acid ; " little vaginal plugs " ; " salus ovula " ; Kamp's anti-
conceptional cotton-wool plugs ; Kilter's vaginal insufflator " for the
malthusian " ; Npffke's tampon-speculum ; " spermathanaton " ;a
Weissl's preservative (a combination of speculum and rubber disc

1 The most convenient and complete apparatus for vaginal douching is the
American irrigating syringe known as the " Lady's Friend." The technique of
vaginal douching is very thoroughly described by L. Volkmann, " Solution of
the Social Problem by Means of Woman," pp. 29-31 (Berlin and Leipzig, 1891).

2 R. Braun recently reported (" Experiments made with Spermathanaton
Pastilles," Medizin. Woch., 1906, No. 13) successful results with this means.
But, in general, this, like all chemical means, cannot be absolutely depended upon
to prevent pregnancy.

705

with a steel spring and a cotton- wool plug impregnated with a drug) ;
the " Venus apparatus " (a double rubber ball, the smaller ball filled
with " Venus powder " (sic) being introduced within the vagina,
whilst the woman herself, at the moment of ejaculation, presses tl.e
larger ball lying near to her thighs, whereupon the powder is expelled
from the smaller ball into the vagina) ; the " duplex occlusive pessary "
(an occlusive pessary with double walls, perforated with round aper-
tures, containing in its interior boric acid tablets for the purpDse of
killing the spermatozoa).

It may be that now and again, by some of the means just
mentioned, conception may be prevented. But on the whole
they are very uncertain ; and, on the other hand, it is doubtful
if the chemical substances introduced in this way are harmless.
It is possible that many peculiar inflammatory conditions of the
male and female genital organs may be referred to their use.
For example, Blumreich x reports the case of a man who, after
coitus in which a means of this kind had been used, had an ex-
tremely obstinate inflammatory eruption upon the penis.

I take this opportunity of pointing out that the so-called herpes
progenitalis, a peculiar vesicular eruption of the genital organs, occur-
ring chiefly in males, which alarms a great many patients, because
they regard it as the result of syphilitic infection, is, in the great
majority of cases, a perfectly harmless affection caused by some
transient irritation.2

Besides the above-mentioned methods for the prevention of
pregnancy, we have also to consider two radical means of practical
malthusianism which belong to the purely medical province,
and can only be employed when life and death are involved,
when pregnancy and parturition would entail upon the woman
severe illness or certain death. These two means are the operative
induction of artificial sterility and artificial abortion.

Artificial sterility can be produced by various measures, as by
the intentionally effected malposition of the uterus, such as
is practised among the indigens of the Malay Archipelago ; by
section of the Fallopian tubes, as recommended by Kehrer ; by
the so-called castratio uterina by means of vaporization (the
application of superheated steam by the method of Pincus,
whereby menstruation is suspended and the uterine cavity is
obliterated) ; and finally by castration proper, the extirpation

1 L. Blumreich, " Diseases of Women, including Sterility," in Senator -Kaminer,
" Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage and the Married State," p. 769
< / .-"/. (London, Rebman Limited, 1906).

- ' '/. the account of herpes progenitalis given in Iwan Bloch's " Origin of
Syphilis," part ii., pp. 386-388.

706

of the ovaries1 (oophorectomy, spaying, Battey's operation),
which was carried out in ancient times by quite savage races,
in order to prevent reproduction.2 In France, theoretically
anti-malthusian, but practically through and through malthu-
sian, in the country from which the song originates—

" Ah ! 1'amour, 1'amour !
C'est le plaiser d'un jour
Pour le regret d' neuf mois."

[" Ah ! love, love !

'Tis the pleasure of a day

For the regret of nine months "]

— it appears, according to recent descriptions,3 that oophorectomy
is greatly prized by distinguished ladies as a means for the pre-
vention of pregnancy. It is said that there even exist " special-
ists " for the production of these child-hating " ovariees," men
who undertake this operation at a high fee. In Germany, happily,
this radical measure for the prevention of conception is not
employed in healthy persons ; the operation is performed only in
women who are seriously ill, and strictly for therapeutic purposes.
The preventive measures previously mentioned, if we except
coitus interruptus and the condom, are all very untrustworthy,
as we learn from the extreme frequency of deliberate, artificial
abortion in all countries, and among all classes of the population.4
Artificial abortion is, as is well known, a criminal offence, punish-
able by a long term of imprisonment for all those concerned, the
pregnant woman herself and her accomplices. In the Orient and
among savage races, however, abortion is not punishable. Among
the civilized nations of Europe artificial abortion is punished ;
in Germany the mere attempt at abortion is punishable, even
though only an imaginary pregnancy is present. That the State
must take steps to prevent abortion, as an immoral and unnatural
action, is obvious, and this is necessary above all because inten-
tional abortion in so many cases endangers the life and health of
women. But in order that such punishment should be reasonable,

1 A detailed account of " Operative Sterility " will be found in Kisch's " The
Sexual Life of Woman," English translation byM. Eden Paul(Rebman Limited,
1908).

3 Cf. the accounts of this operation among the Australians given by Max
Bartels, " Medicine among Savage Races," pp. 306, 307 (Leipzig, 1895).

3 Cf. R. Schwaeble, the chapter " Ovariees " in " Les Detraquees de Paris,"
pp. 255-258. [This aspect of the operation of oophoreotomy is the foundation of
some of the most striking incidents in Zola's novel " Fecondite." — TRANSLATOR.]

* Cf. H. Ploss, " The History of Abortion " (Leipzig, 1883) ; Galliot, " Re-
cherches Historiqucs sur 1'Avortement Criminel " (Paris, 1884).

707

it is essential that society should work to this end, that
the social conditions upon which the frequency of the practice
depends should be abolished ; society should abandon the artificial
defamation of illegitimate motherhood, and should in every
possible way work for the improvement of the possibilities of
motherhood — should found homes for mothers and for pregnant
women, should provide for the insurance of mothers, etc. It
is a remarkable contradiction, to which Gisela von Streitberg1
draws attention, that illegitimate pregnancy is regarded as sinful
and shameful : simultaneously the life of the child about to be
born is regarded as sacred ; whilst this same child, as soon as it
is born, is once more regarded as infamous. In fact, to the
illegitimate child, in the social morality of our time, which is
at once ridiculous and profoundly perverted, there inevitably
attaches something despicable and dishonourable. It is right
that those who make the procuring of abortion a professional
occupation should be severely punished ; but, on the other hand,
it is doubtful whether it is right to punish mothers, and more
particularly the mothers of illegitimate infants, against whom the
Criminal Code is especially directed, for artificially inducing
abortion. It is, in fact, open to question whether the punishment is
even legal. It is well known that according to § 1 of the Civil Code
the rights of a human being are said to begin only with the com-
pletion of birth,2 and it is certainly open to question whether the
as yet undeveloped human foetus has any personal rights at all.
Without doubt we have to do with a being which has not yet
begun to exist, but which is only in process of becoming. Thus,
juristically, and from the standpoint of the philosophy of law,
the foundation for the punishment for abortion is a very unstable
one. Consider, for example, impregnation resulting from rape.
Should not the woman concerned have the right to employ any
and all means available to her to destroy at the very outset the
child thus forced upon her ?

The means for the induction of abortion3 prior to the
twenty-eighth or thirtieth week of pregnancy are very various,
and may be considered under the two categories of internal and
mechanical means respectively. Infallible internal abortifacients

1 Countess Gisela von Streitberg, " The Right to Destroy the Germinating Life :
§ 218 of the Criminal Code, from a New Point of View " (Oranienburg, 1904).

2 In a work recently published, which I have not yet been able to obtain,
entitled " Nasciturus : Life before Birth, and the Legal Rights of the Being about
to be Born," the gynaecologist F. Ahlfeld discusses this question very thoroughly.

3 Cf. Lewin and Brenning, " Abortion induced by Means of Poisons " (Berlin,
1899) ; E. von Hoffmann's "Textbook of Forensic Medicine," edited by A. Kolisko,
ninth edition, pp. 220-258 (Berlin and Vienna, 1903).

46—2

708

do not exist ; and almost all abortif acients are dangerous owing
to their toxic effects. Those most commonly employed are ergot,
ethereal oil of savin (Juniperus sabina), varieties of thuja, yew
(Taxus baccata), turpentine, oleum succini, tansy, rue, camphor,
cantharides, aloes, phosphorus, etc. Mechanically, abortion may
be effected by blows, by violent movements (for example, during
coitus), massage, perforation of the membranes, hot injections,
steam, manipulations with the finger at the os uteri, the
introduction of sounds and other objects through the os uteri,
venesection, application of the electric current, etc. With all
these practices there is involved great danger of injury, poisoning,
infection, rupture and perforation of the uterus, the entry of
air into the uterine veins, scalding of the internal genital organs,
etc. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that death so frequently
ensues, and that almost always severe illnesses result from the use
of these abortif acients.

The State would in this way best put a stop to artificial abortion
if, in addition to the above-mentioned removal of the disgrace
attached to illegitimate motherhood, it diffused widely among
all classes of society a knowledge of the permissible means for the
prevention of pregnancy.

The fact that neo-malthusian methods are chiefly employed in
large towns, indicates their dependence upon economical con-
siderations, and upon the struggle for existence, which is
especially severe in large towns. Hope for the future rests
upon the removal of moral and legal coercion in marriage, in
which Gutzkow " (Sakularbilder," i. 174, 175) saw the principal
causes of social and sexual misery ; and upon the rational regula-
tion of methods for the prevention of pregnancy, which must be
regarded as in no way identical with the hostility to " fruitful-
ness " in the sense of Weininger. On the contrary, the yearning
for children, and the joy in their possession, will then, for the
first time, obtain their natural satisfaction.

CHAPTER XXVIII
SEXUAL HYGIENE

"Man scans wiih scrupulous care, the character and pedigree of
his horse, cattle, and dogs, before he matches them ; but when he
comes to his own marriage, he rarely, or never, takes such care. Yet
he might by selection do something, not only for the bodily con-
stitution and frame of his offspring, but for their intellectual and
moral qualities." — CHARLES DARWIN.

709

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXVIII

Sexual hygiene as social hygiene — Ita foundation by Darwin — Recent works —
" Reproductive hygiene " — Degeneration and regeneration (hereditary taint
and hereditary enfranchisement) — Possibility of the disappearance of
morbid tendencies — " Eugenics " (Galton) — Love's choice and sexual selec-
tion— Principles — Darwin's prescriptions regarding sexual selection — Pro-
hibition of marriage — Inheritance of morbid tendencies and morbid con-
stitutions— Danger of alcoholism for the offspring — Families of drinkers —
Direct influence of alcohol upon the germ-plasm — Observations on this
subject — Syphilis as a cause of racial degeneration — Syphilis and the duration
of life — Degenerative effects of tuberculosis — Direct infection — Inheritance
of the tubercular habit of body — Mental disorders, diatheses, and malignant
tumours — Nervous disorders — Inheritable atrophy of the female mammary
glands — Recent works on this subject — Effect of excessive youth or excessive
age of the married pair — Influence of blood-relationship — Significance of
breeding in-and-in in relation to the evolution of the race — The dangers of
too close blood-relationship — Importance of spiritual qualities in relation to
love's choice — The breeding of talent — Importance of this in relation to the
woman's question — In relation to the improvement of the race — Greater
resisting powers possessed by women towards degenerative influences —
A quotation from Carl Vogt — Unfavourable influence of coercive marriage
morality and of mammon ism — Importance of racial hygiene and of the sexual
sense of responsibility.

710

CHAPTER XXVIII

SEXUAL hygiene in individual relationships has already been
discussed in previous chapters, and more especially in those
upon the prophylaxis and suppression of venereal diseases, upon
the question of sexual abstinence, upon sexual education, and
upon the use of methods for the prevention of pregnancy. Here
we merely propose to deal shortly with the social relationships of
the hygiene of the sexual life. After Darwin, more particularly
in his work on the " Descent of Man," had published fundamental
observations regarding the social importance of sexual hygiene,
other writers, influenced by recent anthropological and ethno-
logical research, occupied themselves with these problems, more
especially Hegar,1 A. Ploetz,2 and R. Kossmann ;3 the subjects
considered by these writers have been aptly comprised under the
name " reproductive hygiene," which constitutes a part of general
racial biology.

Unfortunately, racial biology, as Max Gruber4 justly remarks,
has formed exaggerated estimates of the ideas of "degeneration "
and " hereditary taint " ; and, on the other hand, the comple-
mentary ideas of " regeneration " and " hereditary enfranchise-
ment " have been unduly neglected. And yet it is certain that
these latter influences are continually in active operation in the
direction of the resanation and invigoration of the race : that
the introduction of new and healthy blood is competent to
bring about reanimation and regeneration, even in degenerate
families. Gruber says with justice (" Hygiene of the Sexual
Life," p. 65, 1905) :

" Completely normal, and entirely free from hereditary taint, no
single human being can be ; and, on the other hand, experience teaches
us, that just as morbid tendencies make their appearance in certain
families, so also they may disappear from these families. Many of
these tendencies can be rendered ineffective by a suitably chosen mode
of life for the individual ; and by means of repeated crossing with
stems which are free from these particular taints, the morbid
tendency can be led to disappear, unless the degenerative impulse is
too powerful."

1 A. Hegar, " The Sexual Impulse " (Stuttgart, 1894).

3 A. Ploetz, " Outlines of Racial Hygiene 'T (Berlin, 1896).

3 R. Kossmann, " Breeding — Politics " (Sohmargendorf — Berlin, 1905).

4 Max Gruber, " Does Hygiene lead to Racial Degeneration T" published in
the M unchener Mediziniache Wor.hen*chrift, October 6 and 13, 1903.

711

712

The recognition of this fact does not in the least diminish the
great importance of purposive choice in love and marriage ; nor
does it diminish the sense of sexual responsibility in relation to
the great fact of heredity. But the recognition of the fortunate
fact of hereditary enfranchisement supports, on the other hand,
all our endeavours in the direction of rational " eugenics "
(Galton),1 in accordance with which we must, as Nietzsche says,
not merely reproduce, but produce in an upward direction
(" nicht bloss fort-, sondern auch hinaufpflanzen sollen ").

The central problem of reproductive hygiene is that of love's
choice, of sexual selection. It is a most difficult task, one which
is rarely fulfilled to the utmost, for the right man to find the
right woman, so that their individualities may in every respect
correspond to and complement one another. In most cases it is
necessary to be contented with relative harmony, and with
sufficient health on both sides. The laws of a refined, differen-
tiated marriage choice have not yet been discovered. Havelock
Ellis2 has instituted exhaustive researches on this subject, without,
however, attaining any positive result. He was only able to
establish the general proposition, that in love's choice identity
of race and of individual characters (homogamy), and at the
same time unlikeness in the secondary sexual characters (hetero-
gamy), are to be preferred. In other respects, however, very
various and complicated influences are determinative in sexual
selection. Havelock Ellis also detected a natural disinclination
towards love between blood-relatives, which, however, he
regards as merely due to the customary life in close association
from childhood onwards.

Darwin propounded the principle for sexual selection, that both
sexes should avoid marriage when in any pronounced degree
they were defective, either physically or mentally. Upon this
idea rests the old and widely diffused custom of killing or
exposure of sickly children, as well as the more recent pro-
hibitions of marriage in certain States of the American Union —
for example, Michigan, in which the marriage (also sexual union
for procreative purposes ?) is forbidden on the part of those

1 Francis Galton, "Eugenics: its Definition, Scope, and Aims" (Sociological
Society Papers, vols. i. and ii.), 1905; comments on this work by A. Ploetz,
published in the Archives for Racial and Social Biology, 1905, vol. ii., pp. 812-829 ;
also W. Schallmayer, " Marriage, Inheritance, and the Ethics of Reproduction,"
published in " The Book of the Child," edited by Adele Schreiber, vol. i., pp. ix-xx
(Leipzig and Berlin, 1907) ; Alfred Grotjahn, " Social Hygiene and the Problem
of Degeneration " (Jena, 1904).

2 Havelock Ellis, "Studies in the' Psychology of Sex," vol. iv. : "Selection

• \* •' •" *

in Man.

713

mentally diseased and of those who are infected with tubercle or
syphilis.1

The most important fundamental principle, however, of rational
reproductive hygiene is, without doubt, that only healthy indi-
viduals should pair, or, at any rate, those only whose abnormalities
or diseases, if any, would not injure their offspring, physically
or mentally. Not in disease itself, but in the inheritance of
disease, lies the great danger for the deterioration of the family
and the race. It is for this reason that the study of the
inheritance of morbid predispositions and morbid constitutions
is of such enormous importance in racial biology.

With regard to illnesses to which attention must especially be
paid in connexion with sexual selection, we have here, in the
first place, to consider the " three scourges " of humanity :
alcoholism, syphilis, and tuberculosis.

Apart from the fact that alcoholism leads in the drinker him-
self to nervous weakness, to mental disturbances of all kinds
(delirium tremens, imbecility, mania, peripheral neuritis, etc.), it
also exercises a very serious influence upon the offspring, who
are, unfortunately, in many cases very numerous,2 as the study
of " drinker families " shows (cf. Jorger, " The Family Zero,"
published in the Archives for Racial Biology, 1905, vol. ii., pp.
494-559). Only a very small fraction of the offspring of such
families are physically and mentally normal (about 7 to 17 %) ;
the majority display a rapidly progressive degeneration, which
manifests itself physically more especially by the tendency
to tuberculosis and epilepsy, and mentally by the tendency to
drunkenness, crime, and imbecility. Alcohol is a direct poison
to the germ cells, so much so that, according to the degree of
drunkenness, it is almost possible to estimate beforehand the
degree of hereditary taint. Moreover, an otherwise healthy

1 Regarding marriage prohibitions, c/. P. Nacke, " Marriage Prohibitions,"
published in the Archives for Criminal Anthropology, 1906, vol. xxii. ; M. Marcuse,
' Legislative Marriage Prohibitions for Persons who are Diseased or Deficient
Mentally or Physically," published in Sociale Medizin und Hygiene, 1907, Nos. 2
and 3. It is said that in Dakota medical examination of those who wish to
marry is legally prescribed (Archives for Criminal Anthrojiologv, 1903, vol. xi.,
pp. 266, 267).

* fls« especially the excellent treatise of A. Leppmann, "Alcoholism, Mor-
phinism, and Marriage," published in Senator- Kaminer, " Health and Disease in
Relation to Marriage and the Married State," p. 1057 et seq. (London, Rebman
Limited. 1906). See also, regarding alcohol as a " Racial Destroyer," the funda-
mental study by Alfred IMoetz, " The Significance of Alcohol in Relation to the
Life and Development of the Race," published in the Archives for Racial and
Social Biology, 1904, vol. i., pp. 229-25:!. [English readers should consult the
works of Archdall Reid, "The Present Evoluthn of Man," Alcoholism, a Study
in Heredity," and ",The Principles of Heredity."— TRANSLATOR.]

714

father, in a single severe acute alcoholic intoxication, may pro-
create a child either quite incompetent to live, or weakly, or
completely degenerate. On the other hand, it has been observed
that a person given to chronic alcoholism is competent, during
a temporary diminution in his consumption of alcohol, to procreate
a comparatively vigorous child. From this it follows that mar-
riage, or sexual union in general for reproductive purposes, with
a man or woman addicted to alcohol, and no less the act of pro-
creation in a state of intoxication, are absolutely to be condemned.

The danger of alcoholism to the offspring is illustrated by the
experience that about one-eighth of the surviving children of
drunken parents become affected with epilepsy, and that more than
one-half of idiotic children are born of drunken parents (Kraepelin,
" The Psychiatric Duties of the State," p. 3 ; Jena, 1900).

In an earlier chapter (pp. 301-363) attention was drawn to
the fact that syphilis rivals alcohol in its potency as a cause of
racial degeneration.1 Thanks to the researches of Alfred Fournier
and of Tarnowsky, the sinister influence of syphilis in this respect
is now widely recognized. E. Heddaeus rightly2 asserts that
since at the present day the whole world is contaminated with
congenital or acquired syphilis, the eradication of syphilis is the
most important task of reproductive hygiene. The previously
mentioned etiological and prophylactic-therapeutic researches,
among which may be included the quite recent discovery of
syphilitic antibodies in the system of those who have formerly
suffered from syphilis,3 open to us a prospect of the realization
of this magnificent idea. The weakening and degeneration of
the individual by acquired and inherited syphilis, is also shown
by the recent researches into the influence of syphilis upon the
duration of life, among which I may mention the works of A.
Blaschko4 and Hans Tilesius.5 Regarding the disastrous in-
fluence of syphilis continued into the second and third generations,
see the monograph of B. Tarnowsky, " La Famille Syphilitique et
sa Descendence " [Clermont (Oise), 1904]. (See note 3 to p. 363.)

1 See also R. Ledermann, " Syphilis and Marriage," published in Senator -
Kaminer, " Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage and the Married State,"
p. 561 (liondon, Rebman Limited) ; Alfred Fournier, " Syphilis and Marriage."

3 E. Heddaeus, " The Breeding of Healthy Human Beings," published in the
Ittgemeine Medizinische Zentral-Zeitung, 1901, No. 6.

3 A. Wassermann and F. Plaut, " The Occurrence of Syphilitic Antibodies in
the Cerebrospinal Fluid of General Paralytics," published in the Deutsche Medi-
zinische Wochenschrift, 1906, No. 44.

4 A. Blaschko, " The Influence of Syphilis upon the Duration of Life," pub-
lished in the " Transactions of the Fourth International Congress of Medical
Examiners in Life Insurance," pp. 95-149 (Berlin, 1906).

8 Hans Tilesius, " Syphilis hi Relation to Life Insurance," op. cit., pp. 201-213.

715

The third disease leading to degeneration is tuberculosis, which
may be inherited either by direct infection of the germ, or (more
frequently) by the transmission of a predisposition to the off-
spring. This simple predisposition, recognized by the so-called
" tubercular physique " (long, thin individuals, with a flattened
chest, poorly developed muscles, and a pale countenance), does
not offer any absolute ground for prohibiting reproductive
activity, since the health of the other party to the marriage
may diminish or entirely remove the danger of inheritance.
But, on the other hand, manifest tuberculosis or scrofula is a
centra-indication to marriage.

The same is true of actual mental disorders, of severe diatheses,
such as gout, obesity, or diabetes ; and of cancer and other malig-
nant tumours ; whereas the bulk of " nervous " affections and
other bodily diseases only exclude marriage in certain special
circumstances.1

Very unfavourable to the offspring is the atrophy of the female
breasts, and the consequent incapacity for lactation, a matter
to which Mensinga,2 G. von Bunge,3 G. Hirth,4 Emil Abderhalden,5
A. Hegar,6 and others, have referred, and which exercises a very
unfavourable influence upon the offspring, since natural lactation
cannot be adequately replaced by artificial feeding. According
to Bunge, alcoholism, tuberculosis, syphilis1, and mental disorders
of the ancestry are the principal causes of atrophy of the mam-
mary glands. Whether atrophy of the mammary glands is really
on the increase, and whether it is hereditary, are matters de-
manding, as Abderhalden insists, more careful critical investi-
gation.

Marriage at an age too youthful (below twenty on the part of
the woman, below twenty-four on the part of the man) and at
too advanced an age (above forty on the part of the woman,
above fifty on the part of the man) is also disadvantageous to

1 In the great work of Senator-Kaminer (" Health and Disease in Relation to
Marriage and the Married State," London, Rebman Limited, 1906) we find a
detailed account of the circumstances and possibilities which have hero to be
considered.

3 Mensinga, " Incapacity for Lactation, and its Cure " (Berlin and Ncuwied,
1888). * * \

3 G. von Bunge, " The Increasing Incapacity of Women to Suckle their Chil-
dren " (Munich, 1903).

* Q. Hirth, " The Maternal Breast : its Indispensability and its Education for
the Restoration of its Primitive Forces," published in " Ways to Love," pp. 1-67.

6 Emil Abderhaldon, " The Question of the Incapacity of Mothers to Suckle
their Children," published in Medizinischt Klinik, 1900, No. 45.

0 A. Hegar, " Atrophy of the Mammary Glands and the Incapacity for Lacta-
tion," published in the Archives for liacial and Social Hygiene, 1905, vol. ii.,
pp. 830-844.

716

the offspring, as manifested by higher mortality of the infants,
by the more frequent occurrence of malformations, idiotcy,
rickets, etc. Equally disadvantageous is too close relationship
by blood,1 since in this way any unfavourable tendencies are
greatly strengthened. Upon a certain degree of inbreeding, or,
rather, upon an approximation to inbreeding, depends the forma-
tion of every race. The " racial problem " in this sense is a kind
of exaltation of the inbreeding principle, for the very idea of
race implies a more or less close relationship between all the
members of a definite stock. Thus the entire absence of fresh
blood does not necessarily give rise to any degeneration ; but it is
certain that long-continued close in-and-in breeding on the part
of near blood-relatives in the same family results in a progressive
tendency to degeneration, because, among those who unite in
marriage, the same morbid tendencies are present, and accumu-
late in consequence of the inbreeding. This is shown very
clearly by some statistics collected by Morris (published by
Gruber, op. cit., p. 32). Marriage between uncle and niece, or
between aunt and nephew, and the, unfortunately, far too fre-
quent marriages between first cousins, are therefore to be con-
demned.

The greatest value is to be placed, in love's choice, upon
intellectual qualities. Intelligent persons, and those full of
character, are to be preferred. Precisely in relation to the breed-
ing of talents, Nietzsche recommended (" Posthumous Works,"
vol. xii., p. 188 ; Leipzig, 1901) polygamy for men or women of
predominant intellectual capacity, so that they might have the
opportunity of reproducing their kind in intercourse with several
persons of the opposite sex, and in this way, since the later
children of the same women are not so powerful nor of such
striking capacity as the first-born, they might have the possi-
bility of being the parents of several talented and distinguished
individuals. In relation to the woman's question, the breeding
of women well endowed with talent is a matter of especial in-
terest. Charles Darwin2 writes :

" In order that woman should reach the same standard as man, she
ought, when nearly adult, to be trained to energy and perseverance,
and to have her reason and imagination exercised to the highest
point ; then she would probably transmit these qualities chiefly to her
adult daughters. All women, however, could not be thus raised,

1 Cf. F. Kraus, " Blood-Relationship in Marriage and its Consequences to the
Offspring," published in Senator-Kaminer, " Health and Disease in Relation to
Marriage and the Married State," p. 79 (London, Rebman Limited, 1900).

3 Charles Darwin, " The Descent of Man," vol. ii., pp. 354, 355 (London, 1898).

717

unless during many generations those who excelled in the above
robust virtues were married, and produced offspring in larger numbers
than other women."

In a valuable work W. Schallmayer1 has recently discussed
the great importance of the offspring of talented persons in the
improvement of the race, and has considered the details of
psychical inheritance.

As in the entire animal world, so also in the human race, the
feminine nature has a more conservative character, one more
disinclined to variations, whether favourable or unfavourable,
as contrasted with the more variable nature of the male, which
is also more prone to submit to degenerative influences. For this
reason, in declining races, we meet many more women free from
degeneration than men. Carl Vogt, in a passage which appears
to be very little known, writes on this subject in the following
terms :2

" It is the women, my friend, who maintain the race, who for the
longest time safeguard the type of the people in body and spirit, and
for this reason they form the mirror at once of the future and of the
past which are allotted to that people. You will no doubt have noticed
how, in many races, there exists a disharmony between men and
women, so that in one race the male and in another the female stands
behind the other in physical beauty and in mental development.
This relationship between the two sexes is precisely that from which
we are able to learn the past and the future of the nation. Good and
bad, advance and retrogression, are first undertaken by the man, and
by him passed to the woman, whose conservative nature much more
gradually yields to strange influences. But since the stages of mental
culture through which a race passes are not only reflected in its bodily
development, but actually depend upon tlu's development, it is easy
to understand that in a nature which is striving upwards, wliich we
see in the process of advance towards better tilings, the men possess
the advantage in the matter of beauty and of intellectual capacity ;
whereas when the race is a declining one, the advantages in these
respects will lie with woman. If you find a race in which the women
are beautiful, but as a rule the men are ugly and badly formed, you can
with certainty conclude that tliis race has long since passed its cul-
minating point in development, and has long been undergoing a process
of decline."

For racial biology it is at least equally important, if not even
more important, that healthy, vigorous, and talented men

1 W. Schallmayer, " The Sociological Importance of the Offspring of Talented
Persons, and Psychical Inheritance," published in the Archives of Racial and
Social Biology, 1905, vol. ii., pp. 36-75. Cf. also S. R. Steinmotz, " The Offspring of
Talented Persons," published in the Zeitschrijt ftir Sozialwissen.ichaflt 1904, No. 1.

2 Carl Vogt, " The Ocean and the Mediterranean : Letters of Travel," vol. ii.,
pp. 203, 204 (Prankfurt-on-tho-Main, 1848).

718

should reproduce their kind, rather than that in love's choice
the corresponding qualities in women should be regarded as deter-
minative. Racial biology, if it really wishes to obtain success in
the breeding of humanity, is compelled to demand the abolition
of the present evil coercive marriage morality, and, according to
the suggestions of Nietzsche, von Ehrenfels, and others, will not
hesitate, in certain cases, to regard polygamy as desirable, if
only from this standpoint — that coercive marriage is the sole
cause of the domination of " mammonism " in the sexual life,
to the deleterious influence of which we have before alluded.1

Mammonism is dangerous if for this alone, because it involves
(he annihilation of the sense of sexual responsibility, and in
consequence of this, natural love is rejected on one side, and all
considerations of a racial hygienic nature are cast away on the
other. The lack of both is the cause of degeneration.

1 Alexander von Humboldt (" Journey in Tropical Regions," vol. ii., p. 17)
remarks that in Europe a greatly deformed or hideous girl, if only she possesses
property, can marry, and that the children frequently inherit the malformations
of the mother ; whereas among savage races there exists a natural disinclina-
tion to such marriages — a disinclination which money is not able to overcome.

CHAPTER XXIX

" One of the principal reasons which makes the eradication of
quackery for ever impossible is to be found in the fact which finds
incisive expression in the proverb ' Die Dummen werden nicht
alle' " ["Stupidity is a hardy perennial"] — WILHELM EBSTEIN.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXIX

Greater publicity of the sexual life in the age of commerce — Three forms of
this publicity — Sexual quackery — The relations of quackery to the sexual
life — Recent examples — The trade in sexual nostrums and other articles
of immoral use — Public puffing of sexual nostrums — Quack advertise-
ments.

Newspaper advertisements for sexual purposes — Matrimonial adver-
tisements— Their history — The two oldest matrimonial advertisements —
Mercenary ^marriages and marriages for position — Nominal marriages —
Immoral advertisements — Loan advertisements — Acquaintance adver-
tisements— Friendship advertisements — Employment advertisements —
Heterosexual and homosexual advertisements — Advertisements regarding
correspondence — Advertisements of rooms for sexual purposes — Adver-
tisements regarding instruction — Rendezvous and jostillon d1 amour
advertisements — Paste, rcstante correspondence — Private inquiries —
Advertisements for the purpose of sexual perversions — Street handbills —
Brothel guides.

Public scandals of a sexual character — Murders and suicides from love —
Seductions, duels, procuress trials — Orgies and the life of swindlers.

CHAPTER XXIX

IN this age of commerce, of telegraphs, and of the press, the role
which the sexual life plays before the public eye is notably greater
than it used to be. From very early times, indeed, sexual
matters formed the principal constituent of the chronique
scandcdeuse, but it was not then possible to disseminate such
scandals by means of daily newspapers, as it is now so easy to
do. In three forms at the present day the sexual life attains
publicity : in the form of an unscrupulous quackery ; in the
form of newspaper advertisements relating to the sexual life ;
and in the form of sexual scandals diffused by means of the press.
We propose to refer briefly to the principal aspects of all
three, and we shall find that they are, for the most part, of an
unpleasant character.

According to the well-known saying that hunger and love rule
the world, quackery has from its very earliest beginnings concerned
itself by preference with the provinces of disorders of digestion
and of sexual troubles ; and especially in respect of the latter
have its developments been so astounding — in fact, there appears
to be nothing else which gives such instructive information re-
garding the possibilities of human folly, depravity, and super-
stition. When we regard the history of quackery and medical
charlatanry of all times,1 we discern beyond question the justice
of the assertion that " quackery is identical with the diffusion
of sexual vice and of fornication." These relationships of
quackery to the sexual life and to sexual crime have recently
had a vivid light thrown upon them by C. Reissig2 and C. Alex-
ander.8

Reissig deals more especially with the " immoral practices of many
magnetizers, lay hypnotizers, and similar individuals, who, under the
pretence of giving help to the sick, seek and find opportunity for the
gratification of all kinds of immoral lusts " ; and he gives characteristic
examples of these practices. Police reports have shown that numerous
masseuses and male quacks, who commonly appear under the
high-sounding names of " professor," " director," " hygienologist,"
" magnetopath," etc., and who profess to treat " secret diseases " or
" diseases of women," are in reality concerned with abortion monger-
ing, the production of artificial sexual excitement, and the provision

1 <7/. the valuable historical and critical monograph of Professor Wilhclm
Ebstein, " Charlatanry and Quackery in the German Empire " (Stuttgart, 1905).
9 C. Reissig, " Medical Science and Quackery," p. 114 «/ -••</. (Leipzig, 1900).
3 C. Alexander, " The True and the False Healing Art," pp. 46-49 (Berlin, 1899).

721 40

722

of human material for the gratification of perverse lusts. Who does
not know the ominous words, " Rat und Hilfe /" (" Advice and help !")?
Under the mantle of quackery the worst kinds of immorality are prac-
tised. Thus, Alexander (op. cit., p. 48) speaks of an " ear specialist "
who, paving the way by gigantic advertisements in the local papers,
travelled from place to place, nominally in order to relieve " defects
of hearing," but who in reality utilized his opportunities in order to
make immoral attempts upon young girls (Glatz Assizes, July 10, 1896).
The " magnetizer " M— - hypnotized young girls, and then violated
them ; another examined the genital organs when professing to treat
oar troubles, and carried out improper manipulations. In an article,
" Serene Highness's Quackery," in the Aerztliche Vereinsblatt, No. 418,
August, 1900, Dr. Reissig reports that " to Her Serene Highness the
Princess Maria von Rohan in Salzburg " it appears to be a sacred duty
to bear witness to the joiner (!) Kuhne, in Leipzig, under date No-
vember 9, 1889, that his sexual friction baths (!) " had proved to be of
inestimable value, and had had a wonderful effect," and she felt
impelled " to recommend to physicians the most careful examination
and trial of this new method of cure."

The treatment of " secret diseases," l in the hands of quacks,
does incredible harm ; and the same is true of the uncleanly
and dangerous practices of " masseuses " and of professional
abortion-mongers. Closely connected with quackery is the
trade in sexual nostrums and in other articles of immoral
use.2 This trade is occupied in the manufacture and public
recommendation of " sexual articles " of every kind : aphro-
disiacs ; " protective articles " ; various celebrated measures for
the relief of " sexual weakness," infertility, pollutions, lack of
voluptuous sensation, etc. The artificial sterilization, not of
women, but of men, by means of Roentgen rays is recommended.3
The newspapers overflow with advertisements recommending all
these articles. Beneath the aliases of " chiromancy " and
" astrology," sexual quackery also lies concealed. It allures its
clients chiefly by means of newspaper advertisements.

Newspaper advertisements for sexual purposes are not more
than 200 years old. Their oldest and most harmless form was
that of matrimonial advertisements, the first two of which ap-
peared on July 19, 1695, in the Collection for the Improvement of

1 Cf. C. Alexander, " Venereal Diseases and Quackery," published in the
" Reports of the German Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases,"
1902-1903, vol. i., Nos. 6 and 7 ; Hennig, "Venereal Diseases and Quackery,"
op. cit., No. 7 ; " Petition of the German Society for the Suppression of Venereal
Diseases to the German Imperial Chancellor, regarding the Injury done to
Venereal Patients by Quacks," op. cit., No. 7.

a Cf. the work of H. Beta, which is still of value in relation to present con-
ditions, " The Trade in Sexual Nostrums and Other Articles of Immoral Use,
as advertised in the Daily Press" (Berlin, 1872), at which early date we find
mention of the " hygienologist," Jakobi, the Nestor of the Berlin quacks.

» Cf. W. Ebstein, op. cit., p. 46.

723

Husbandry and Trade, published by Houghton, the father of
English advertising.1 These two remarkable and historical
advertisements run as follows :

A gentleman, thirty years of age, who says that he has considerable
property, would be glad to marry a young lady with property amounting
to about £3,000. He will make a suitable settlement.

A young man, twenty-five years of age, with a good business, and
whose father is prepared to give him £1,000, would be glad to make
a suitable marriage. He has been brought up by his parents as a
dissenter, and is a sober man.

We see that from the very outset matrimonial advertisements
did not forget the punctum saliens, which I need not specify.2
All, down to those of the present day, are alike. The only
difference is that, in addition to these " money marriages," ad-
vertisements of " nominal marriages " and also of " marriages
for position " appear freely in the papers. The majority of
matrimonial advertisements are inserted for mercenary or inter-
ested purposes, and really belong to the category of " immoral
advertisements," which conceal themselves under all possible
titles. I give a short classification of some of the commonest
immoral advertisements, and append some actual advertisements
of each kind taken from leading German and Austrian news-
papers.

1. Loan Advertisements. — In most cases a "young," "smart"
lady begs an older gentleman for a loan, or vice versa, a young
man directs the same request to a lady belonging to the best
circles." Frequently also it is a " lady living alone," " a young
widow," or a " recently married woman," who, " without the
knowledge of her husband," and " in temporary want of money,"
seeks a " helper." Almost invariably the need and the marriage
are fictitious. These are in most cases the advertisements of
secret prostitutes, of a similar character to the advertisements of
masseuse*. The following advertisement must otherwise be in-
terpreted :

What noble-minded lady would be willing to lend, to a young,
widely-travelled engineer, the sum of 12,000 marks [£600], for six
months, on good security ?

2. Acquaintanceship Advertisements, Friendship Advertisements,
and Employment Advertisements. — These may be divided into

1 Cf. the complete history of matrimonial advertisement* which is given in
my " Sexual Life in England," vol. i., pp. 140-159 (Charlottenburg, 1901).

8 " Propatty, proputty, proputty — that's what I 'ears 'em saay." — TRANS-
LATOR.

46—2

724

the two classes of heterosexual and homosexual advertisements.
Examples of the former are the following :

A young widow, twenty-seven years of age, desires friendly inter-
course with a man of position, who will assist her with word and
deed.

A young stranger desires acquaintanceship (!) to relieve her of a
temporary difficulty.

A merchant, a man of middle age, desires the acquaintanceship of
a good-looking lady (a slender figure preferred), for the purpose of
friendly intercourse.

The following advertisements have a more or less definite
homosexual note :

A well-placed young lady, nearing the age of thirty, desires an
honourable, trustworthy lady friend.

A cultured lady of middle age desires a ladies' club.

A well-placed elderly gentleman desires friendly intercourse with a
young man.

A young merchant, between twenty and thirty years of age, desires
friendly intercourse with a young man of good family.
*^A young lady, a stranger to the town, desires a lady friend ; apply
by letter to " Lesbos " at the office of this paper.1

A newspaper, now defunct, which formerly appeared in Munich,
characterized by homosexual " psychologic o-erosophical " ten-
dencies, entitled Der Seelenforscher (edited by August Fleisch-
in a nn). appears to have laid itself open to such advertisements.
In No. 11 of the second year of issue, November, 1903, I find
the following distinctive advertisements :

A young vigorous (!) man, a Swiss, twenty-four years of age, well
recommended, desires a situation with a gentleman living alone.

A young man, twenty years of age, of agreeable appearance, with an
honourable and ideal mind, desires a position as correspondent or
companion in the house of a well-to-do, even if elderly, gentleman.

A wealthy, talented uranian young man desires the patronage of a
noble well-to-do urning.

A good, affectionate, and bright young man, who at the present time
is in an official position, desires to find a well-to-do, kind-hearted, and
lonely gentleman, to whom he could be a true life-companion, and to
whom, until the end of his life, he would give true affection. He
would faithfully fulfil all his duties.2

The numerous advertisements, also, in which young girls and
women, or widows, desire " positions " as housekeepers, com-

1 Cf. Paul Nacke, " Newspaper Advertisements by Female Homosexuals,"
published in the Archives for Criminal Anthropology, edited by Hans
Gross, 1902, vol. x., pp. 225-229 (taken from Munich newspapers).

2 Cf. Paul Nacke, Supply of and Demand for Homosexuals in the News-
papers," published in the Archives for Criminal Anthropology, 1902, vol. viii.,
pp. 319-350.

725

panions, etc., in the houses of "well-to-do " gentlemen "living
alone " have, as a rule, an immoral basis.

3. Advertisements regarding Correspondence. — These also form
a permanent constituent of the advertisements of the daily
papers, and serve in part the aims of prostitution or of assignations
for sexual intercourse, but in part really aim at an exchange of
more or less erotic letters, as is obviously the case in respect of
the following advertisements :

Young cultured man desires a stimulating (!) correspondence with
a young lady.

Young lady desires to enter into correspondence with a lady of good
position, with similar ideas.

4. Advertisements of Rooms. — Among these advertisements,
we find that of the " convenient room " or the room " with a
separate entrance "—the " storm-free diggings " of the student.
Such rooms are usually offered to men ; women must seek them
for themselves, as in the following advertisement :

A lady artist desires a well-furnished convenient room, with bath-
room and piano, as an only tenant.

The advertisements regarding rooms to be let " during the
day " mostly refer to opportunities for fornication (" houses of
accommodation ").

5. Pseudo-Educational Advertisements. — Here also there is a
form of advertisement which enables us without difficulty to
recognize their true purpose — for example :

A young Englishwoman gives stimulating instruction.
Jeune Fran9aise, gaie (!), bien recomm. qui enseigne de m6thode
facile et rapide, donne des lec.ons.

Very frequent are announcements of sadistic or masochistic
" instruction," in which the " energy " or " imposing appearance "
of the instructor or instructress is emphasized, or in which the
word " discipline " is displayed in a significance which cannot be
misunderstood.

6. Rendezvous and Postilion d Amour Advertisements. — These
subserve the appointment of lovers, often adulterous lovers ;
but also the opening up of acquaintanceship. Examples :

Veronika.
To-day unfortunately prevented, therefore 21st.

" Wireless Telegraphy."
Best thanks for dear letter. Drive to-day. A thousand kisses. — L.

726

" Good Report."

A lette will bo found addressed to " Sophie G.," post restante,
Vienna, I/I, principal post-office.

M.S.A.
To-day, 4. Please bring news. Most intimate. — K. D. D.

A. 15.

Je n'oublie pas et j'espere.

Very frequent also are requests from male advertisers, addressed
to ladies they have chanced to meet in the railway, electric
tram, etc., asking where the latter may live. These advertise-
ments give a description of the appearance, costume, time, and
place of the first meeting, and beg the lady to give her address
" in confidence," or to come to some specified place of meeting.
A very large number of letters addressed post restante are of an
erotic nature, and belong to this category.

7. Private Inquiries. — Under this heading persons advertise
in the newspapers that for an honorarium (usually a very high
one) they will undertake to watch secretly any desired person —
and almost invariably such watching relates to the sexual life
and activity of the person under observation ; when employed,
they use all the methods of the most unscrupulous detective.
These individuals play a principal part in divorce proceedings,
and in conjugal quarrel based upon jealousy ; they are a
cancer of our time l which cannot be too energetically suppressed.
A detective advertisement of this character is the following :

Private Inquiry.

Confidential ! Enlightening ! Unfailing ! Truthful ! Universal !
Extraordinarily satisfactory conjugal inquiries ; mode of life, family
relationships, liaisons, peculiarities of character, occupations, present
condition, past misconduct, future prospects, state of property, secret
intercourse, etc., etc.

8. Advertisements relating to Sexual Perversions. — We have
already referred to homosexual advertisements. An even
more important part is played by sadistic and masochistic
advertisements, which usually appear under the cloak of

1 Cf. also the account of these detectives given in the essay " The Lovo-
Market," published in " Roland von Berlin," No. 45, of November 8, 1906. In
this case, a jealous young woman offered 1,500 marks (£75) in order to have hor
husband " watched " by such a detective.

727

" massage," " instruction," or of an " energetic " person.
Examples :

Masoch. Who is interested in this matter ? Address " Kismet,"
office of this paper.

Widow of noble birth, middle-aged, energetic, desires position in
the house of a gentleman of standing, as reader, or in some other
capacity.

Cabinet de massage, par dame diplomee, hydro th^rapie. Mme. D.,
82, Rue Blanche.

Massage suedois, par dame diplomee, tous les jours de 10 a 8 heures.

Madame Martinet, Ie9ons de maintien ....

Monsieur des. gouvernante gr. et forte, 40 a. severe pour educ.
enfant diffic. A. B. p.r. Amiens.

Energetic distinguished lady, in temporary need, wishes to receive
a considerable loan, but will meet only the actual lender.

Severin is seeking his Wanda !

A young man begs 30 marks from a lady. " Sacher Masoch," Post
Office, Kopenickerstrasse.

Even fetichistic advertisements sometimes appear, such as the
following, from a shoe fetichist :

A young man of means buys for his private collection elegant shoes,
which have been worn by leading actresses, or by ladies of high rank.

9. Handbills. — In large towns these are distributed by persons
standing at the street corners, and usually relate to restaurants
with women attendants. One example will suffice :

The Restaurant of the Good-Natured Saxon Girl.

The attendants at this restaurant are young and pretty girls from
Saxony ; Miss Elly waits at the bar. Piano-playing and singing.
Your kind patronage is requested by The Young Hostess.

" Chiromantists, "magnetopaths, and other charlatans, advertise
themselves by means of street handbills. In the Latin countries,
and more especially in Paris, true " brothel guides " stand at the
street corners, and conduct the passers-by to improper dramatic
representations, or provide for them children for fornicatory
purpose, or invite them to homosexual intercourse, etc.

The third form under which the sexual life makes a public
appearance is that of the great scandals and sensational occur-
rences with a sexual background, which are discussed by the
press. I allude here, without attempting completeness, to
murders and suicides arising from jealousy, from rejected love,
or from love unsuccessful for some other reason — occurrences
which afford sufficient proof that individual falling in love in

728

our own time is just as violent and passionate as it was formerly ;
further, to abduction and seduction ; to divorce scandals and
divorce proceedings ; in general, to all law-court proceedings
relating to sexual offences ; to duels dependent upon erotic
motives ; to family tragedies upon a similar basis ; to the great
procuress trials ; to the discovery of secret sexual clubs and of
erotic orgies ; to revelations from nunneries and from secular in-
stitutions ; to the exploits of swindlers, who very frequently make
use of sexual passion in others to assist them in their pursuit
of plunder, etc. Examples of all these varieties of scandals
and sensational occurrences are found day by day in the news-
papers. Very frequently, on account of the very nature of sexual
psychology, they exercise a suggestive influence, so that we often
hear of similar occurrences at brief intervals. If we assume
.the existence of psychical contagion, there is no doubt that these
sensational newspaper reports play a far greater part therein
than the whole of the so-called erotic literature.

CHAPTER XXX
PORNOGRAPHIC LITERATURE AND ART

" Wer will das Hochste aus Wollust machen, der krbnt ein Schwein
in wuster Lache." [" He who devotes his talents to the glorification
of lust is like one who crowns a pig in the midst of a dismal
— HANS BURGKMAIR.

729

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXX

Distinction between pornography and eroticism — An old medical thesis concern-
ing obscene books, dating from the year 1688 — Definition of obscenity
in this thesis — Modern definition of an obscene book — Treatment of purely
sexual relationships from the artistic and scientific standpoints respectively
— Summary of the general tendency — Morality-fanaticism and medical
authorship — The artistic treatment of sexual matters — Humorous mode of
treatment — The erotic in caricature — The mystic-satanic conception of the
sexual — The importance of the individuality and the age of the reader or
onlooker — Danger of Bible-reading for children — A remark of John Milton
upon this subject — Importance of the standard of the time, and of contem-
porary moral ideas, in our judgment of an erotic work — Example of the works
of Nicolas Chorier and of the Marquis de Sado — Observation regarding the
recent German translations of pornographic works — Comparison of obscene
books with natural poisons — Recent obscene literature — Remarkable fond-
ness of great artists and poets for the pornographic-erotic element —
French celebrities as pornographista (Voltaire, Mirabeau, de Musset,
Gautier, Droz, etc.) — Goethe and Schopenhauer as erotic writers — Schiller's
and Goethe's fondness for French erotic writings — Occupation of women
with pornographic literature — Obscene pictures by great painters, from
Lucas CVanach to the present time — Pornographic garbage literature and
garbage art — Origin of these — Dangers of hawkers' literature — Futility of
the efforts of Purity Societies — Historical examples of this — The true
means to render pornography harmless.

730

CHAPTER XXX

WHAT is an obscene, pornographic book or picture ? In order to
obtain an accurate and objective definition of this idea, we must
always keep clearly before our minds the distinction between
" pornography " and " eroticism." The confusion between these
two ideas explains the great conflict of opinion on the part of
expert witnesses in connexion with the question whether any
specified book or picture is to be regarded as " immoral " or
" indecent."

The obscene differs toto ccelo from the erotic. In my own
possession is a rare work which is probably the first monograph
regarding obscene books. It dates from the year 1688, and is
the thesis of a Leipzig doctor.1 At that time it was still possible
to compose academic essays upon such topics. To-day this
would only be possible in the legal faculty and from the criminal
standpoint. In respect of the unprejudiced scientific and his-
torical consideration of pornography, we have experienced a
notable retrogression, and at the present day a certain degree of
courage is needed to make these things an object of scientific
study, to consider in an unprejudiced and objective manner
these peculiar outgrowths of the human soul.

In the above-mentioned essay the learned writer gives, on
p. 5, a definition of the obscene, which shows that he had not
thoroughly differentiated it from the erotic, but confused the
two ideas under the same term. In his view, obscene writings
are " all such writings whose authors use distinctly improper
language, and speak plainly about the sexual organs, or describe
the shameless acts of voluptuous and impure human beings, in
such words that chaste and tender ears would shudder to hear
them."

But such improper descriptions might occur in a work without
its being possible to designate this as obscene. A book can
justly be called obscene only when it has been composed simply,
solely, and exclusively for the purpose of producing sexual excite-
ment— when its contents aim at inducing in its readers a condition
of coarse and brutish sensuality.

This definition clearly excludes all those literary products
which, notwithstanding the existence of isolated erotic, or

1 Johannes David Sclirober (of Meissen), " Do libra obscoenis " (Leipzig, 1088,
quarto).

731

732

even obscene, passages, are yet composed for purposes radically
different from that above described — it excludes, for example,
artistic, religious, and scientific works (the' history of civiliza-
tion, poetry, belles-lettres, medicine, folk-lore, etc.).

The question, namely, whether simple sexual relationships can
properly be made the object of artistic or scientific representation,
may be answered with an unconditional affirmative, if we pre-
suppose a purely artistic or scientific critical representation and
consideration of erotic objects ; that is to say, in the work of
art, or the scientific work, as the case may be, the purely sexual
must completely disappear behind the higher artistic or scien-
tific conception. This is possible only when that which is
represented is completely devoid of actuality ; when time and
place are entirely ignored, so that the object is regarded rather
from its general human aspect ; and when, further, in the artistic
representation of the purely sexual we find expression also, on
the part of the artist, of a conception enlightening and to a degree
overcoming the purely physical ; or when, finally, on the part
of the man of science, we recognize a critical point of view, by
means of which the causa Irelationships of the sexual find
expression.

The general tendency is determinative, not the shocking indi-
vidual detail. I need not waste any more words upon the
importance of medical, ethnological, psychological, and his-
torical works upon the sexual life.1 This fact is, fortunately,
now fully recognized even by the greatest morality fanatics, and
it would hardly now be possible in Germany that a law-court
— as recently in Belgium2 — should witness proceedings against a
medical undertaking on account of pornographic (!) illustrations.3

The same is true of the artistic consideration of sexual matters.
For example, how readily everything sexual lends itself to the
humorous point of view ! How short here is the step from the
sublime to the ridiculous ! In a copy which lies before me of
Fr. Th. Vischers' first work, " The Sublime and the Ridiculous "
(Stuttgart, 1837), which was once in the possession of a friend of
Goethe, the Driburg physician, Anton Theobald Briick, we find

1 Cf. Iwan Bloch, " The Lex Heinze and Medical Authorship," published in
Die Medizinsche Woche, No. 9, March 12, 1900.

a Cf., regarding this matter, the Aerztlicher Zeatral-Anzciyer, No. 24, June 10,
1901.

3 Unfortunately, I was mistaken in this optimistic assumption. In the
Journal of the German Book Trade, No. 77, April 3, 1906, I find among the
list of confiscated works " Means for the Prevention of Conception " — a separate
impression of the Deutsche, Mediziniache Presse, Berlin, No. 7, April 5, 1899.
By the decision of one of the Berlin courts the further issue of this work, and the
further use of the stereotype forms from which it was printed, were forbidden.

733

on p. 203, in his handwriting, the apt marginal note : " Wit gilds
the nickel of the obscene." Sexual matters actually provoke
humour. This fact was enunciated by Schopenhauer, and was
ascribed by him to the profound earnestness which underlies the
sexual (" Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," i., 330). For this
reason, as Eduard Fuchs1 rightly insists, the majority of all
erotic creations are of the nature of caricatures. The most
brilliant advocate of this humorous view of sexual matters is
the brilliant English artist Thomas Rowlandson, whose works,
both in England and in Germany, have long been kept under
lock and key.

The mystic-Satanic element in the sexual also stimulates
artistic representations, and in the works of Baudelaire, Barbey
d'Aurevilly, Felicien Rops, Aubrey Beardsley, Toulouse Lautrec,
etc., we see that the " perverse " also is thoroughly capable of
erotic representation. But even pure obscenity, without any
underlying idea — as, for example, we see it to-day in the obscene
drawings of Carracci — may have the effect of a simple artistic
product, if the taste of the onlooker is so far matured that the
purelysexual can recede completely behind the artistic conception.
We must, generally speaking, not fail to take into account the
individuality and the age of the spectator or reader. For children
and immature persons, even works that are obviously not obscene,
such as artistic, religious, and scientific literature, may, in certain
circumstances, be dangerous — works which adults regard and
judge in the spirit of their own time, as, for example, the Bible
and the writings of the Fathers of the Church. John Milton, who
was certainly not lacking in piety, wrote : " The Bible often
relates blasphemies in no very delicate manner ; it describes the
fleshly lusts of vicious men not without elegance."2 Books
which are to be read by children cannot be chosen too carefully,
for a very large proportion also of the literature which is not,
properly speaking, obscene, but which deals with sexual matters,
has upon the childish imagination an effect equivalent to that of
true pornography upon the adult.

In passing judgment on an erotic work, we must, finally, take
into consideration the standard of the epoch to which the work
belongs ; we must bear in mind the nature of the contemporary
moral ideas. Much which to us to-day appears obscene was not

1 Eduard Fuchs, " The Erotic Element in Caricature," p. 10 (Berlin, 1904),
Cf. also Paul Leppin, " The Ludicrous in the Erotic," published in Daa
Blaubuch, edited by Ilgenstein and Kalthoff, No 4, February 1, 1906, pp. 149-
156.

* John Milton's " Aroopagitica."

734

so in the middle ages. On the other hand, we must not excuse
everything on this plea, for our forefathers were also familiar
with pornographic and utterly obscene books. Works such as
those of the Marquis de Sade or of Nicolas Chorier (" Gesprache
der Aloysia Sigaea ") have not only an importance in the history
of civilization : they also have an interest for anthropologists
and medical men. They constitute remarkable documents of
the nature and mode of manifestation of sexual perversities in
earlier times. Moreover, all pornographic writings afford us valu-
able assistance in our study of the genesis of sexual perversions.
But while we admit the importance of such writings — for example,
those of de Sade — to learned men and bibliophiles, we cannot
condemn in sufficiently strong terms the insane undertaking of
translating de Sade's books in our own day. This is simply
pomology ; for all those who, as medical men, psychologists,
or historians of civilization, are occupied with pornographic
literature, are — or, at any rate, should be — competent to read
these authors in the original tongue.1 I feel therefore that the
mass of recently published German translations of the porno-
graphic writings of John Cleland, Mirabeau, Nerciat, de Sade,
of the " Anti Justine " of Retif de la Bretonne, of the " Portier
des Chartreux," of Alfred de Musset's "Gamiani," etc., can
only be described as pornography, although I must admit that
the original editions are often inaccessible to the scientific student
interested in the matter, who in such cases must, faute de mieux,
content himself with translations.

These obscene writings may be compared with natural poisons,
which must also be carefully studied, but which can be entrusted
only to those who are fully acquainted with their dangerous
effects, who know how to control and counteract these effects,
and who regard them as an object of natural research by means
of which they will be enabled to obtain an understanding of
other phenomena.

The pornographic element of literature and art2 has an ancient

1 An exception must be made of the work of Aretino, which in the Italian
original is extremely difficult to understand. I, therefore, regard the masterly
translation published by the Insel-Verlag as a justifiable undertaking.

2 To those desirous of obtaining information regarding modern pornography,
I can recommend, above all, the work of Ludwig Kemmor, based upon official
material, " Die graphische Reklame der Prostitution," Munich, 1906. Cj. also
Hcinrich Stiimcke, " The Immoral Literature of the Present Day," published in
" Zwischen den Oarben," pp. 100-107 (Leipzig, 1899) ; same author, " Literary Sins
and Affairs of the Heart," pp. 30-34 (Berlin, 1894) ; Sebastian Brant, " Prostitu-
tion as displayed in the Great Art Exhibition of Berlin, 1895 " (second edition,
Berlin, 1895). Consult also the chapter concerning erotic literature and art in
my "Recent Researches regarding the Marquis de Sade," 1904 (pp. 237-272),
and my " Sexual Life in England," vol. iii., pp. 235-473.

735

history. In Greece, Rome, and Egypt, but more especially in
India, Japan, and China, there existed an extensive obscene
literature. In Europe the French, Italian, and English obscene
literature occupies the first place as regards comprehensiveness
and wide diffusion. Exceptionally dangerous in their effect are
French pornographic writings, because their mode of expression
is so elegant, whereas the English obscene books, with the single
exception of Cleland's " Fanny Hill," are positively deterrent,
on account of the coarse phraseology employed in them. The
German writings in this department are not much better
than the English, and consist to a large extent of bad transla-
tions of foreign pornographic works — if we except a few older
writings, which are repeatedly reissued, such as the " Denkwiir-
digkeiten des Herrn von H.," by Schilling, or the " Memoiren
einer Sangerin," the first part of which is ascribed to the
celebrated Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient. Speaking generally,
it is a remarkable phenomenon (and one which is in flat
contradiction to the assertion so frequently made that porno-
graphy and true art cannot possibly be associated) that so
many spirits of the first rank, great artists either in literature
or plastic art, have enriched pornography themselves by works
of their own, or, failing this, have at least been notorious lovers
of pornography. This fact was clearly manifested at the time
of the Italian renascence, but it can be traced down to the present
day. Men like Voltaire ("La Pucelle d' Orleans "), Mirabeau
(" L'fiducation de Laure," "Ma Conversion," etc.), Alfred
de Musset (" Gamiani "), Guy de Maupassant (" Les Cousines
de la Colonelle "), Theophile Gautier (" Lettre a la Presidents "),
and Gustave Droz (" Un fite a la Campagne "), have written
indubitably pornographic books. But the heroes of our own
German literature have not been free from such tendencies.
Goethe not only wrote the " Tagebuch," but composed other (still
completely unknown) erotica, which, by command of the Grand
Duchess Sophie, were sealed and hidden away.1 Schopenhauer,2

1 Cf. G. Hirth, " Ways to Love." p. 352. This fact has been confirmed to
me by Herr F. von Biedermann. When Frauenstadt once said to Schopenhauer
that Goethe, when away from the Court, gladly made use of coarse expressions,
Schopenhauer replied : " Yes, many contrasts can exist side by side in the same
human being," and he confirmed the fact from his own experience that Goethe
was fond of gross phrases. Cf. Schopenhauer's " Gespracho und Selbstges-
prache," edited by £. Grisebach, p. 40 (Berlin, 1902). Certain " Secret Epigrams
of Goethe " have recently been privately printed (forty copies only were issued).
Many similar erotic poems of Goethe'* are still carefully preserved in Goethe-
Archives, and withheld from publication.

a " Arthur Schopenhauer," by E. 0. Lindner, and " Memorabilia, Letters,
and Posthumous Pieces," edited by Julius Frauenstadt, p. 270 (Berlin, 1862),

736

who said to Frauenstadt that a philosopher must be active,
" not only with his head, but also with his genital organs,"
was a lover of pornography, even of a skatological character, and
was fond of telling " bawdy stories which will not bear repeti-
tion " — for example, he would enumerate the different kinds of
kissing, describe the varieties of the sexual impulse, etc.1 Schiller
and Goethe enjoyed reading Diderot's " The Nun " (" La Re-
ligieuse ") and his " Bijoux Indiscrets," R6tifs " Monsieur
Nicolas," and the " Liaisons Dangereuses " of Choderlos de
Laclos, books which would nowadays be suppressed as " im-
moral." Lichtenberg also was a very zealous reader, and a
connoisseur, not only of erotic, but also of pornographic litera-
ture. In his letters he alludes to reading such pornographic
works as Cleland's " Woman of Pleasure " (" Letters," edition
Leitzmann and Schiiddekopf, vol. ii., p. 187) and " Lyndamine,"
etc. Talented women of that period also read pornographic
works. Pauline Wiesel, the beloved of Prince Louis Ferdinand
of Prussia, greatly admired Mirabeau's obscene writings, as we
learn from a letter of Friedrich Gentz, in which the latter decries
them as " cold libertinage," and recommends to his friend similar
products of Voltaire, Crebillon, and Grecourt.2

These facts do not excuse pornography, but they refute the
assertion that pornography and true artistic perception are in-
compatible. As Schopenhauer truly says, many contrasts can
exist side by side in the same human being. This is even more
clearly manifest in pictorial art. Anyone who turns over the
leaves of Eduard Fuchs' book upon the erotic element in carica-
ture will learn that the greatest painters have occasionally
painted deliberately improper, obscene pictures. I need mention
only the names of Lucas Cranach, Annibale Carracci, H. S. Beham,
Rembrandt, G. Aldegrever, Adrian van Ostade, Watteau,
Boucher, Fragonard, Vivan-Denon, Gillray, Lawrence, Row-
landson, Heinrich Ramberg, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Schadow,
Otto Greiner, Willette, Kubin, Julius Pascin,3 Beardsley, etc.4

Side by side with these higher pornographic works there exists
also a lower kind — obscene garbage writings and pornographic

1 Schopenhauer's " Gesprache und Selbstgesprache," pp. 42, 53, 106.

2 Rudolf von Gottschall, " The German National Literature of the Nineteenth
Century," vol. i., p. 255 (fifth edition, Breslau, 1881).

3 Julius Pascin. Regarding this painter of the perverse, who has recently
become more widely known, see Max Ludwig, " Erregungen und Beruhigungen,"
published hi Welt am Montag, December, 21, 1906.

* The name of Hokusai may well be added to this list. There exists a series
of outline drawings by this great Japanese artist, in which the beauty of the
draughtmanship is only equalled by the ingenuity with which sexual perversions
are depicted. — TRANSLATOR.

737

pictures of the worst possible kind, such as picture postcards,
" act-photographs," etc., in which all possible sexual perversities
are represented, either in printed matter or by pictures (mas-
turbation, poses lubriques, representations of nude portions of
the body, copralagnistic and urolagnistic acts, bestiality, sadism,
masochism, paederasty, incest, fornicatory acts with children,
orgies, obscene paraphrases of proverbs, rape, etc.). Kemmer
(op. cit., pp. 31-45) gives a detailed account of the sale of these
obscenities, and of the way in which they are advertised in
catalogues, etc. They are manufactured in France, Germany,
Belgium, and Spain (especially in Barcelona). The dangerous
character of these articles is indisputable ; they have a suggestive
influence, and stimulate those who look at them to imitative
acts. They may thus directly give rise to sexual perversities.1
But they are not so dangerous as the true hawkers' litera-
ture 2 and popular garbage writings about " secret sins."
These inflame the imagination, and thus lead to crime and
sexual infamies. This is an old experience. In the year 1901,
at the trial of the boy murderers Tharigen and Krof t ( Vossische
Zeitung, No. 161, April 5, 1901), the two murderers confessed
that they had been incited to the commission of crime by back-
stairs romances, and by tales of Indians and robbers. The same
cause was alleged, in December, 1906, in Kottbus, by a boy
fourteen years of age, who was accused of murder.

How are we to counteract the moral harm done by such litera-
ture ? I consider all the efforts of societies for the suppression
of immorality to be illusory and two-edged, for they always fail
to attain their end ; and in addition, unfortunately — a matter of
which there is no doubt — they endanger the freedom of art and
science.3 All measures calculated to keep away from children

1 Cf., regarding this matter, my "Contributions to the Etiology of Psycho-
pathia Sexualis," vol. i., pp. 194-200.

a Cf. Paul Dehn, "Modern Hawkers' Literature" (Stuttgart, 1894); "The
Repression of Garbage Literature," published in the Nationcdzeitung, No. 683,
December 11, 1906 ; Johannes Liebert, " Das Indianerbuch und die Backfischer-
zahlung," published in Der Zeitgeist, No. 51, of December 17, 1906.

3 The literature dealing with the campaign against pornography is very
extensive. I may mention : Francisque Sarcey, " La Presse Pornographique, '
published in Le Livre: Bibliographie Moderne, November, 1880, pp. 287-289
(Paris, 1880) ; Hermann Roeren, " Public Immorality and its Repression "
(Cologne, 1903) ; F. S. Schultze, " Immorality and the Christian Family "
(Leipzig, 1892) ; Jacques Jolowicz, " The Campaign against Immorality "
(Leipzig, 1904). Works of an opposite tendency : Karl Frenzel, " Art and the
Criminal Law " (Berlin, 1885) ; rejoinder to this by Max Heinemann, " The
Graef Trial and German Art " (Berlin, 1885) ; " The Moral Salvation Army in
Berlin: a Union of Men for the Repression of Public Immorality. A Contem-
porary Picture by * * * " (Berlin, 1889) ; " Against Prudery and Lying "
(Munich, 1892), contains, inter alia ; " The Campaign against Immorality on the

738

and immature persons books which might serve to give rise
to sexual stimulation are worthy of support ; and it must be
remembered that for children and immature persons scientific
books, religious writings — as, for example, the unexpurgated Bible
—and also illustrated comic papers, etc., may be dangerous. But,
for the most part, all prohibitions, and the whole campaign against
immorality, serve only to favour pornography. The stricter the
measures taken against it, the wider becomes its diffusion. This is
a very old experience, an incontrovertible fact. Tacitus ("Ann.,"
XIV., c. 50) rightly explained this peculiar phenomenon : " Libros
exuri jussit, conquisitos lectitatosque, donee cum periculo para-
bantur : mox licentia habendi oblivionem attulit " ("He issued a
decree that the books were to be burned ; but as long as it was
dangerous to publish them they were in great request, and were
eagerly read : whereas as soon as people were permitted to possess
them they passed into oblivion "). The pornographic books
which during the last five hundred years have been burned by
the public executioner, which have been confiscated, and which
have been repeatedly destroyed to the last copy, the obscene
engravings of which the plates have been destroyed — have all
these disappeared from the surface of the earth, have all these
confiscations and condemnations1 of livres defendus been of any
use whatever ? No. All the pornographic writings, confiscated
and destroyed a thousand times over, reappear again and again ;
indeed, they become more numerous the more the attempt is
made to suppress them. The campaign against them has always
been a campaign against a hydra, a labour of the Danaides,

Part of the Pietists, and Free Literature," by Dr. Oskar Panizza ; Georg Keben,
" The Pons Asinorum of Morality " (Berlin, 1900) ; Heir.-rich Schneegans, " Prudery
and Science," published in the Frankfurter Zeitung, No. 123, May 5, 1900 ;
" Punishment and Morality," published in the Vossische Zeitung, No. 447,
September 24, 1903 (condemning the confiscation of Hans von Kahlenberg's
" Nixchen ").

1 With regard to the extent of this campaign against pornography, consult :
" Catalogue des bents, Gravures et Dessins condamn6s depuis 1814 jusqu'au
1" Janvier, 1850, suivi de la Liste des Individus condamnes pour delits de Presse "
(Paris, 1850) ; " Catalogue des Ouvrages condamnes comme contraire a la
Morale publique et aux bonnes Mo3urs du 1" Janvier, 1814, au 31 Decembre,
1873" (Paris, 1874); Fernand Drujon, "Catalogue des Ouvrages, Merits et
Dessins de toute Nature poursuivis, supprimes ou condamn6s depuis le 21 Octobre,
1814, jusqu'au 31 Juillet, 1877, etc." (Paris, 1878) ; Index Librorum Prohibitorum
Sanct issimi Domini, Pii IX. Pont. Max. Jus.su editus. Editio novissima in qua
libri omnes ab Apostolica Sede usque ad annum 1786, proscripti suis locis recen-
sentur (Rom, 1876) ; Catalogue des Livres d^fendus par la Commission Imp6riale
et Royale jusqu'a I'aunde 1786 (Briissel, 1788) ; 0. Delepierre, " Des Livres
condamnes au Feu en Angle terre." For Germany, see the recorded reports
regarding forbidden and confiscated matter contained in the Journal of the
German Book-Trade.

739

which has no object, and only entails the disadvantage that, in
the general zeal to put an end to immoral literature, scientific
and artistic interests are most seriously endangered. Happily,
this campaign is to-day less vigorous than it was of yore. In
proportion to the population, immoral literature in Germany was
before 1870 far more widely diffused than it is at the present
day. During the sixth and seventh decades of the nineteenth
century it flourished more luxuriantly ; even during the time of
the war of liberation numerous original obscene books were
printed in Germany. To-day the interest in social, scientific,
technical, and philosophic questions, and in sport, has become
so great, and the interest in sexual questions has become so much
more profound, that an overgrowth of pornography is no longer
to be feared. From these facts we recognize at once the only
way, and the right way, which we must follow in order to paralyze
the evil influences of pornography. This is to take a proper
care for genuine popular culture, to increase educational oppor-
tunities, and to reduce the price of books. A single undertaking
such as that of A. Reimann, who, in his Deutsche Bucherei,
publishes for threepence a volume a collection of choice litera-
ture, containing not only the best fiction, but also popularly
written scientific works from the pens of leading men of science
and essayists — such an enterprise is far more effective in the
suppression of garbage literature than all the Unions for the
Promotion of Morality.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE TO CHAPTER XXX. — In connexion with the questions
discussed in this chapter, the reader may profitably consult the recently published
book of Willy Schindler (written, however, from an unduly subjective stand-
point), " The Erotic Element in Literature and Art " (Berlin, 1907). i

[English readers interested in the question of the dangers of pornographic
literature and art in relation to that " liberty of unlicensed printing " which is
so essential to the welfare of the modern social democratic State, should read
the thoughtful and luminous discussion of the topic by H. G. Wells, in one of the
later chapters of his admirable " Mankind in the Making." — TRANSLATOR.]

47—2

CHAPTER XXXI
LOVE IN POLITE (BELLETRISTIC) LITERATURE

" The question arises whether it is not absolutely necessary that
art should represent this erotic element forbidden by the culture of
our time, because it corresponds to a profound subjective human need,
to a yearning for the completion of man's imperfect existence." —
KONEAD LANGE.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXXI

Love the nucleus of belletristic literature — Necessity for the erotic element in
polite literature — Remarks of the aesthetic Konrad Lange on this subject —
Sexual topics in belles-lettres are principally problem -literature — As a mirror
of the times — Description of puberty in our poems — The demi-vierge type
— The " Vera " books — Misogyny and ascetic romances, and rejoinders — The
" intimacy " and free love in literature — Irregular sexual intercourse in litera-
ture— Marriage in literature — Novels of divorce — The emancipated woman
in belletristic literature — Novels dealing with " fallen woman " — Precursors
and imitations of the " Diary of a Lost Woman " — Belletristic descriptions
of brothel life, and of the life of prostitution — Alcoholism and syphilis in
literature — Sexual perversities in belletristic literature — Larocque's " Volup-
tueuses," etc — Homosexuality and bisexuality in belles-lettres — Masochism
and sadism — Psychological love romances — More earnest and more pro-
found grasp of sexual questions displayed in modern belletristic literature.

742

CHAPTER XXXI

IT is a familiar fact that from the very earliest uprising of belle-
tristic literature its nucleus has always been the passion of love.
There are, indeed, very few recent romances or dramas in which
love does not play a part. It is a fable to say that sexual matters
have to-day for the first time been freely discussed in belletristic
literature, to assert that the predominance of erotic literature
(which is to be distinguished from pornographic literature by its
artistic intention and form) is especially characteristic of modern
civilization. A glance at the catalogue of the library of the
poet and bibliophile Eduard Grisebach,1 which contains the
erotic literature of the world, teaches us that such literature
has existed at all times and among all civilized nations. The
erotic in belles-lettres has not merely a permissive existence, but
by necessity forms a part of it — a fact very justly recognized
by the aesthetic Konrad Lange.2 Who that knows human
nature can doubt the fact ? Lange remarks :

" Art which represents the nude, because an opportunity exists for
it to delight in the representation of the flesh, because it regards
humanity as the crown of creation, and because it admires the pur-
posive anatomical structure of the human body — such an art is within
its own rights, and does what it may and must.

"If we regard the representation of the nude in painting and
sculpture as not repulsive, although it does not suit us in ordinary life
to go naked, so also in the poesy of the erotic we must sometimes
allow a form to which in ordinary life a justification is refused.
Indeed, the question arises whether it is not absolutely essential that
art should represent the erotic, although this is forbidden by the
civilization of our time ; for this corresponds to a profound subjective
human need, a yearning for the completion of man's imperfect
existence.

" Next to hunger and thirst, love is the strongest human emotion ;
next to death, its enjoyment is the most important human experience.
It is not to be wondered at that art is especially fond of depicting it.
Art which wishes to represent life in general cannot leave unconsidered
an instinct which plays so important a part in the life of the majority
of human beings, and from which such a number of conflicts proceed.
With regard to the degree and the kind of representation, the decision
depends not upon moral, but exclusively upon aesthetic, considerations.
The task of the poet is no more than this : to describe transgressions

1 Eduard Grisebach, "Catalogue of World Literature, with Literary and
Bibliographical Annotations " (second edition, Berlin, 1905).

2 K. Lange, "The Nature of Art," vol. ii., pp. 161-177 (Berlin. 1901).

743

744

of the moral code in such a manner that they appear to arise by an
inner necessity out of the whole course of activity, out of the char-
acters, out of the objective relationships. Then the immoral content
comes to the help of the illusion."

It is naturally impossible, within the narrow compass of this
work, to give an exhaustive account of the sexual element in
modern belletristic literature. I shall only refer to a few well-
known phenomena which all exhibit a common feature. Love
and sexual topics in belles-lettres are principally problem litera-
ture. The earnest and profound social perception with which
sexual problems are to-day considered and explained is reflected
also in the literature of our time. The adult will long ago in these
matters have risen above the level of shallow story-telling and
schoolgirl morality, and demands an earnest and honest repre-
sentation of sexual problems. Frey1 justly observes that it is
a general and a healthy tendency of the time, not a tendency
to perverse lust, which impels the choice of erotic material. In
the economically determined forced labour of persons of average
ability, in the monotony and the poverty of adventure of our
civilized life, it is only by eroticism that into many a life any
individual colouring is brought.

In the following brief sketch of the sexual problems treated
in recent belletristic literature, I hope to give some idea of the
very numerous and interesting topics which the various pheno-
mena of the sexual life now offer to the poet.

The very first sexual activities of the child have been subjected
to poetic treatment, as in Frank Wedekind's drama, " Fruhlings-
erwachen " (" The Awakening of Spring ") ; and the sexual note
of the time of puberty is treated in Bonnetain's celebrated
onanistic novel, " Chariot s'Amuse," in Walter Bloem's novel,
" Der krasse Fuchs," in Max von Miinchhausen's " Eckhart von
Jeperen," and very strikingly in the novel " Lothar oder Unter-
gang einer Kindheit " ("Lothar, or the Ruin of Childhood"),
by Oscar A. H. Schmite. In connexion with the consideration
of the time of puberty in belletristic literature, the following
works may also be mentioned : " Unterm Had," by Hermann
Hesse ; " Freund Hem," by Emil Strauss ; " Die Verwirrungen
des Zoglings Torless," by Robert Musil ; " Was zur Sonne Will,"
by Hans Hart ; " Eine Gymnasiastentragodie," a drama in four
acts, by Robert Sandeks. Consult also Gustav Zieler's review of
" Fruhlingserwachen," published in Das Literarische Echo of
August 15, 1907.

1 Philipp Frey, " The Battle of the Scxee," pp. 33, 34 (Vienna, 1904).

745

The type of girl who ripens to a premature sexuality, and
who, though physically still intact, is spiritually corrupt, has
been made widely known by Marcel Prevost's " Demivierge." A
companion novel to this is " Nixchen," by Hans von Kahlenberg.
Nobler types of girls playing with this vice are described by
Clara Eysell-Kilburger in " Dilettanten des Lasters."

Diametrically opposed to these are the " Vera " characters,
so called after the book by Vera, " Eine fur Viele. Aus dem
Tagebuche eines Madchens " (" One for Many. From the Diary
of a Girl "), which demands from the man before marriage the
same purity and chastity that man himself demands from his
future wife. Svava, in Bjornsen's drama "Der Handschuh," is
a similar type. Regarding this problem an entire literature has
sprung into being, which associated itself with Vera's above-
mentioned book, such as " Eine fur sich Selbst " (" One
for Herself"), by " Auch Jemand " ("Somebody Else");
" Einer fiir Viele " (" One Man for Many ") ; " Eine fiir Vera.
Aus dem Tagebuche einer jungen Frau " (" One for Vera. From
the Diary of a Young Wife ") — these in favour of Vera's demand
—and Christine Thaler's " Eine Mutter fur Viele " (" One Mother
for Many"); by Verus, "Einer fiir Viele" ("One Man for
Many "), and " Kranke Seelen. Von einem Artze " (" Morbid
Souls. By a Physician ") — these in opposition to Vera's demand
— for masculine abstinence from sexual intercourse before
marriage.1

Next we may mention certain novels glorifying misogyny, such
as Strindberg's " Beichte eines Toren " (" Confessions of a
Fool ") and " Vergangenheit eines Toren " (" The Past of a
Fool ") ; and Tolstoi's "The Kreutzer Sonata," in which absolute
asceticism is demanded. These ideas, which in Weininger found
a pseudo-scientific apologist, have been contested in an interest-
ing autobiography in the form of a romance, " Das Weib von
Manne erschaffen : Bekenntnisse einer Frau " (" Woman created
from Man : Confessions of a Woman "), translated from the
Norwegian by Tyra Bentsen. Zola's magnificent hymn in favour
of fruitfulness in " Fecondite " is also a refutation of this extreme
ascetic-malthusian standpoint.

The " intimacy " and " free love " are to-day the subject of
innumerable romances and novels. Tovote discusses the problem

1 Reference has previously been made (p. 673) to an English novel similar in
character to Vera's hook — viz., " The Heavenly Twins," by Sarah Grand. But
the classical Kngli.-n example of a novel devoted to the consideration of the
differing standards by which preconjugal sexual intercourse is judged in man
and in woman respectively is "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," by Thomas Hardy.

746

in "Im Liebesrausch " ("In the Intoxication of Love"), and in
other novels, more superficially from the grossly sensual side ;
the ideal free love, ending indeed hi marriage, is described hi
Peter Nansen's " Maria." l Similarly, Frenssen, hi " Hilli-
genlei," deals with the preconjugal sexual intercourse so common
in country districts, and he reproves hi powerful words the
repression of natural impulses by conventional morality.2

In " Martin Birks Jugend," Hjalmar Soderberg has described
the great difficulties of ideal-minded young men who are not in
a position to marry, and who are repelled by the idea of inter-
course with common prostitutes.

In contrast to this, Camille Lemonnier, in " Die Liebe im
Menschen," describes the great danger of an overgrowth of the
sexual ; and Arthur Schnitzler, hi his admirable " Reigen,"
describes the utter misery of irregular sexual intercourse, of true
" wild love," and displays vividly before our eyes the results
of sexual promiscuity.

The social contempt and the other disastrous consequences
which to-day follow free love, in the form of illegitimate mother-
hood, have been described in dramas, such as Sudermann's
" Heimat " and Gerhart Hauptmann's " Rose Bernd," and in
romances such as Gabriele Renter's " A us guter Familie," Johann

1 In " The Woman who Did," by Grant Allen, we have an English novel
advocating free love ; like " Eine fur Viele," this evoked a number of novels
with allied titles, such as " The Woman who Didn't," " The Woman who
Wouldn't," and the like. A far profounder study of a free union between a
man whose wife refused to divorce him (on " moral " grounds) and another
woman is George Meredith's " One of Our Conquerors." In " Jude the Obscure,"
by Thomas Hardy, we have another detailed consideration of the difficulties
attendant on a free union in a society under the dominion of Philistine morality.
A recent novel in which freer sexual relationships are discussed from a somewhat
ideal standpoint is " In the Days of the Comet," by H. G. Wells. (In the
character of Sue Bridehead, in " Jude the Obscure," we have a remarkable
study of the " frigid " type of woman. I have before alluded, in a note to
p. 435, to a recent novel by Hubert Wales, " Mr. and Mrs. Villiers," devoted
to the question of sexual frigidity in woman.) — TRANSLATOR.

2 " Bourgeois morality is the arch -murderer, which murders your youth and
the youth of many of your sisters. If we lived in natural conditions, you would
always, from the days of your childhood, be surrounded by young persons of
the other sex. One of these would have contracted a friendship for you ; another
would have honoured you from a distance ; with a third you would have played
joyfully. But from your twentieth year onwards, three or four or more of them
would have ardently wooed you, because you are strong and beautiful and
chaste. And so with tears, and passion, and suffering, with games and kisses,
you would have gladly become a woman ; thus it is even yet among the children
of manual labourers. A beautiful, chaste, diligent workman's child has wooers
enough. But among the so-called cultured people, morality has distorted and
destroyed all the beauty of nature .... Where the middle-class youth goes
to and fro, there goes also, " like an old youth -hating aunt, morality, and destroys
for each poor girl the best time of her life ; and many never come to marriage,
and many come too late."

747

Bojer's " Eine Pilgerfahrt," and Ernst Eberbardt's " Das Kind."
The manifold conflicts resulting from free love and illegitimate
motherhood are also described by Marce] le Tinayre in "La
Rebelle."

In belles-lettres we also find numerous accounts of the burping
question of our day — that of coercive marriage. Above all,
Ibsen, in " Ghosts," " A Doll's House," " The Lady from the
Sea," " Hedda Gabler," and " Little Eyolf," has exposed the
manifold injuries resulting from modern conventional marriage,
and has propounded the ideal of a new marriage, based upon a
deeply subjective conception of love and upon life's work in
common. The influence of Ibsen is further shown in numerous
dramas and romances dealing with the marriage problem. Of
these, it will suffice to mention a few of the most successful, such
as " Die Sklavin," by Ludwig Fulda ; " Fanny Roth : eine Jung-
frauengeschichte," by Grete Meisel-Hess ; and " Was siehst du
aber den Splitter," by Karl Larsen.

The important question of differences in class and social
position in married life is considered by Ernst von Wildenbruch
in his drama, " Die Haubenlerche."

The classical novels of divorce are, and will remain, Erneste
Feydeau's delightful " Fanny," and Gustave Flaubert's " Madame
Bovary." In French literature in general, in dramas as well as
romances, divorce is a favourite motive.1

Isolated but especially characteristic phenomena of the sexual
life have also found expression in poetry. Thus Ernst von
Wolzogen, in " Das Dritte Geschlect," describes the various types
of emancipated women ; the same question forms the theme of
" Die Neue Eva," by Maria Janitschek. Anna Mahr, also, in
Gerhart Hauptmann's " Einsame Menschen," is such a type.
In all of these the conflict between woman and personality is
described ; and this is done with exceptional force and clearness
in " Das Neue Weib," by M. Janitschek.2

The contrast to the woman who wishes to become a personality
is to be found in the woman who has never possessed a per-
sonality, or who has lost it, the woman who has become only a
chattel, an object of enjoyment for man — the prostitute. I

1 In " Divorcons," a comedy by V. Sardou and E. de Najac, we have an exceed-
ingly witty, though trivial, treatment of the idea of a terminable marriage
contract. — TRANSLATOR.

8 An early example of the " emancipated woman " in English literature is
to be found in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's " Aurora Leigh." This conception
of feminine character aroused the usual hostility in minds working along the
older grooves, so that Edward Fitzgerald, when Mrs. Browning died, is said to
have exclaimed : " Thank God ! No more ' Aurora Leighs ' !" — TRANSLATOR.

748

alluded before (p. 315) to the fact that Margarete Bohme, in her
sensational " Diary of a Lost Woman," was not the first to
describe the life of a prostitute. Already from the sixteenth
century there date such romances as, for example, the celebrated
" Lozana Andaluza " of Francisco Delgado ; also Defoe's " His-
tory of Moll Flanders," and Abb6 Pr6vost's " Manon Lescaut "
(both belonging to the eighteenth century). Besides the
" Memoirs of a Hamburg Prostitute " (vide supra, p. 315), there
exist still other precursors, belonging to the nineteenth century,
of the " Diary of a Lost Woman," such as E. de Goncourt's
" Fille Elisa," Leon Leipsiger's " Ballhaus-Anna," etc. The
" Diary of a Lost Woman " naturally soon found imitations, such
as Hedwig Hard's " Confessions of a Fallen Woman," the " Diary
of Another Lost Woman "; and the purely pornographic " History
of Josephine Mutzenbecher, a Viennese Prostitute," Daudet's
" Sapho," Zola's " Nana," Cristian Krogh's " Albertine," and
George Moore's " Esther Waters," belong to the same class.1

Brothel life and the life of prostitution, in all their relationships
to modern civilization, and in their influence upon human char-
acter, are described by Frank Wedekind in " Die Biichse der
Pandora " (" Pandora's Box ") and in his " HidaUa " ; and with
exceptional vividness by Oscar Metenier, in his romance cycle,
extending to seven volumes, " Tartufes et Satyres."

The role of alcohol and of syphilis in the sexual life have also
been discussed in belletristic literature. In Gerhart Haupt-
mann's " Vor Sonnenaufgang " (" Before Sunrise "), Loth
abandons his beloved Heine as soon as he learns that she springs
from a degenerate family of drunkards. The disastrous con-
sequences of syphilis are described by Ibsen in " Ghosts," and
recently most vividly by Brieux in " Les Avari6s."2

Extraordinarily comprehensive, especially in France, is the
belletristic literature of sexual perversities. After the manner of
the " Rougon-Macquart " series by Zola, Jean Larocque has
written a romance cycle of eleven volumes, under the general
title of " Les Voluptueuses " (the separate titles are : " Isey,"
" Viviane," " Odile," " Fausta," " Daphne," " Phoebe,"
"Fusette," "La Naiade," " Louvette," " Lucine," and
" Hemine "; in the last volume we find even a discussion of
copralagnistic details !). Some volumes of this series — for
example, " Phoebe " — have even been translated into English.

1 George Gissing's " The Unclassed " is a powerful study of the life of a London
prostitute. — TRANSLATOR.

2 Bayet, " A propos des ' Avaries ' " (Brussels, 1902).

749

The works also of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Guy de Maupassant,
offer a rich material for the study of psychopathia sexualis. In
this connexion I may also mention the poetic collections " La
Legende des Sexes," by Edmond Haraucourt ; " Rimes de Joie,"
by Theodore Hannon ; and also the " Chants de Maldoror."
Octave Mirbeau also, in his " Journal d'une Femme de Chambre,"
provides us with a review of the entire register of sexual per-
versities.1 He, and also the talented Rachilde (who in her
romances " Monsieur Venus," " Les Hors Nature," and " Madame
Adonis," considers the question of homosexuality), never fail to
exhibit the artistic spirit in their descriptions of these delicate
topics — and, indeed, Vari pour Part doctrine seems to have been
created especially in relation to this department of thought.

Homosexuality and bisexuality have been considered in such a
large number of works that it is quite impossible to mention
them all here. A fairly complete bibliography of these will be
found in the volumes of the Annual for Sexual Intermediate
Stages.2 I can allude here only to a few especially well-known
and artistically important homosexual romances and poems.
Jouy, in his admirable " Galerie des Femmes " (Paris, 1799),
devotes to the " Lesbiennes " a special chapter ; Theophile
Gautier, in " Mademoiselle de Maupin," discusses the interesting
problem of bisexuality ; Zola, in " Nana," represents the Lesbian
relationship ; Paul Verlaine in 1867 published tribadistic poetry
under the title of " Les Amis."3 Since that time Englishmen,
Germans, Belgians, and Italians have published belletristic
descriptions of homosexual relationships. I may allude to Oscar
Wilde's "Dorian Grey," Georges Eekhoud's " Escal- Vigor,"
Walt Whitman's " Leaves of Grass," Prime-Stevenson's " Ire-
naeus," Louis d'Herdy's " L'Homme-Sirene," F. G. Pernauhm's
" Ercole Tomei," " Die Infamen," and " Der junge Kurt "; also
the sensational " Idylle Sapphique " of the demi-mondaine Liane
de Pougy, the epic " Ganymedes " of C. W. Geissler, and the
drama " Jasminblute " of Dilsner.

Masochism found its introduction to belles-lettres by the writer
from whom the very name is derived, L. von Sacher-Masoch,
more especially in " Vermachtnis Kains." Of his novels, the

1 We may include in this category Willy's " La Momo Picrate," and also the
" Claudine ' novels by the same author (Claudine & 1'ficolo," " Claudine a Paris,"
etc.).

2 Consult also the work " Ldcblingsminne und Freundcsliebe in der Welt-
litcratur," by Elisar von Kupffer.

3 And at a later date Verlaino wrote other homosexual poems, " Les Homines,"
which for the most part are still unpublished.

750

best known is "Venus im Pelz "; others are "Galizischen Ges-
chichten," " Messalinen Wiens," " Die schwarze Zarin," and
" Wiener Hofgeschichten." He still remains the only writer
who has treated this peculiar perversity in an artistic manner.
The more recent masochistic and sadistic novels belong to the
worst kind of hawker's literature. Lou Andreas-Salom6 only,
in " Eine Ausschweifung," has artistically described the spiritual
masochism of a woman with the fine psychological characteriza-
tion peculiar to her work.

Quite recently there has actually appeared a masochistic
monthly magazine, entitled Geissel und Rule : Archiv fur
Erziehung [sic /] Erwachsener (Whip and Rod : Archives for the
Education [sic /] of Adults), edited by C. vom Stein, Buda-
Pesth. The first number appeared on February 1, 1907. It
contains masochistic stories, correspondence, historical sketches,
and advertisements.

Sadistic love is the theme of Oscar Wilde's " Salome," and of
the " Diaboliques " of Barbey d'Aurevilly. The satanic element
is dealt with in Huysmans' " La Bas," and in various novels by
St. Przybyszewski. Herbert Eulenburg's drama "Hitter Blau-
bart " also represents a sadistic type.

In conclusion, I may allude to some authors who represent to
us the whole psychology of modern love, and, above all, the
depths of the love of reflection, its spiritual refinement, all the
manifold moods, illusions, and dreams of the modern eros.
J. P. Jakobsen's " Niels Lyhne," Hans Jager's " Christiania-
Boheme," Oskar Mysing's " Grosse Leidenschaft," Heinrich
Mann's " Jagd nach Liebe," Gabriele d'Anmmzio's " II Piacere,"
Trionfo della Morte," and " Fuoco," represent aspects of love.
With the profoundest art, Lou Andreas-Salome, in her stories —
which in this respect I regard as among the most valuable products
of modern literature — " Ruth," " Fenitschka," " Ma," and
" Menschenkinder," represents the finer spiritual relationships
between man and woman. This writer appears to possess the
most intimate knowledge of the soul of the modern woman.
Elisabeth Dauthendey, also (" Vom neuen Weibe und seiner
Liebe "), Gabriele Reuter (" Liselotte von Reckling," " Ellen von
der Weiden "), and Rosa Mayreder (" Idole "), give most powerful
descriptions of complicated feminine characters.1 An important
and interesting topic is discussed by Yvette Guilbert in " Les
Demivieilles " — the psychology of the woman beginning to grow

1 A work of similar character to these is the notable novel recently published
(February, 1907) " Die Stimme," by Crete Meisel-Hess (Berlin, 1907).

751

old, who cannot yet renounce love and yet is forced to do so by
rude reality.

The writings to which I have referred in this chapter — the
number of which could easily be increased tenfold without
exhausting the abundance of recent belletristic literature occupied
in the discussion of the sexual problem — should suffice to give
some idea of how great is the interest in the important problems
of the sexual life, how detailed and complicated the problems of
that life have become under the influence of modern civiliza-
tion, and with what earnestness they are treated in the belles-
lettres of the day. The light and frivolous mood of Wieland
and Clauren is no longer found to-day. In its place we have
grandiose moral description, a more dramatic treatment of
sexual problems, an unsparing exposure of the gloomier aspects
of amatory life, and a psychological penetration into all the
activities of the loving soul. Regarded as a whole, love in
modern belletristic literature is treated from far worthier and
higher standpoints than formerly. There is no ground whatever
for regarding the widespread discussion of sexual problems in
modern literature as a stigma of degeneration. In this respect
our literature is merely a mirror of our time ; and its ten-
dencies indicate very clearly the emergence of a new, earnest,
and more profound conception of the sexual relations between
man and woman.

CHAPTER XXXII
THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE OF THE SEXUAL LIFE

" Stress has been laid upon the Jmrm which can be done by the
publication of works dealing with sexual problems. Undoubtedly
the pornographic interest of the laity, and also of men of science,
does play a part here ! But the benefits which the unreserved
scientific elucidation of the sexual problem is able to diffuse
throughout the widest circles of the population are so extensive
that this consideration of any possible harm that may ensue
becomes infinitesimal in comparison." — A. VON SCHRENCK-
NOTZING.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXXII

Indispensable need for the scientific investigation of sexual problems — Insignifi-
cance and ludicrous character of the objections made to such investigation —
The diffusion of sexual perversities was just as extensive before their scien-
tific study was first undertaken — de Sade's system of psychopathia sexualis
— Recent additions to the scientific literature of the subject — Works upon
homosexuality — Upon erotic symbolism — General investigations regarding
the sexual impulse — General works upon the sexual problem — Periodical
literature relating to the sexual life.

754

TRUTH is always a good thing, even truth regarding the sexual
life. Neither prudery nor moral hypocrisy can controvert this
proposition. He who recognizes the immense importance of
sexuality in relationship to civilization at large — he who, like
the author of the present work, has been occupied for many years
in the study of the subject from the points of view of medicine,
anthropology, ethnology, literature, and the history of civilization
— is not only entitled, but will also consider it his duty, to publish
his investigations, to make publicly known his views and his
opinions, and to take a definite and clear position hi relation to
the burning questions of the day in this province of thought.

Such men as Ploss-Bartels, who, in their celebrated and
purely scientific work, " Woman in Natural History and Folk-
lore," could not avoid collecting numerous piquant and even
obscene details, and who, for example, have described in a special
chapter the various postures assumed during sexual intercourse ;
such a man as von Krafft-Ebing, whose " Psychopathia Sexualis"1
contains a number of detailed autobiographies and clinical
histories of sexually perverse individuals — such men as these
have been blamed because their books have been diffused in
numerous editions, extending to many thousands of copies, and
because these books have been read more by laymen than by
medical men. Apart from the fact that in earlier times much
more dangerous books — such, for example, as the works of
Virey, Flittner, G. F. Most, and Rozier, characterized by a
lascivious style, or such a book as the dictionary " Eros " —
obtained the widest possible circulation ; apart, also from the
fact that even in works conceived and executed in a strictly
scientific spirit — such as the numerous monographs of Martin
Schurig, or the work of Frenzel (belonging to the nineteenth
century) concerning impotence (see, for example, Frenzel, op.
cit., pp. 155, 156, 161) — obscene passages and incredibly depraved
stories occur ; and apart, finally, from the incredible mass of
pornograpliic writings, in comparison with which the scientific
literature of the sexual life is almost infinitesimally small —
putting on one side all these considerations, it is merely necessary
to refer to the established fact that all possible sexual perversities

1 R. von Krafft-Ebing, " Psvch'ipathia Sexualis." Only Authorized Transla-
tion from the Twelfth revised German Edition (Rebman Limited, London, 1900).

755 48—2

756

were known to exist before the publication of von Krafft-Ebing's
" Psychopathia Sexualis," and that they made their appearance
spontaneously at all times and in all places. In the eighteenth
century the Marquis de Sade, in his romance " The One Hundred
and Twenty Days of Sodom," was able to found a system of
psychopathia sexualis which not only contained all the perverse
types described by von Krafft-Ebing, but was even more varied in
its contents, and exhibited yet more numerous categories of
sexual anomalies than the book of the Viennese alienist.1 This
work is a document of enormous importance to civilization,2
because it provides a complete refutation to the fable of modern
degeneration, and because it gives us a proof that quite shortly
before the powerful upheaval of the French nation and the heroic
campaigns of the Napoleonic epoch, in this nation there were
diffused the most frightful perversities, regarding the reality of
which there can, according to recent experience, be no doubt
whatever.

Scientific authorship — even popular scientific works3 — dealing
with the province of the sexual life cannot therefore be made
responsible, in any respect, for the diffusion of sexual perversities.
The founder of modern sexual science, A. von Schrenck-Notzing,4
insisted on this fact ; and recently it has been once more em-
phasized by S. Freud, who has probably gone further than any other
writer in biologico-physiological derivation of sexual perversions.

Havelock Ellis 's " Analysis of the Sexual Impulse " (vol. iii.
of this writer's " Studies in the Psychology of Sex," published

1 Cf. my "New Researches concerning the Marquis de Sade," pp. 437-450
(Berlin, 1904).

2 Recently A. Moll (Enzyklopadische Jahrbiicher derg samten Heilkunde,
1906, vol. xiii., pp. 238, 239) has expressed the " opinion," without offering the
slightest proof in support of his views, that "The One Hundred and Twenty
Days of Sodom " is a forgery. But I myself, in my French edition of this work,
have given all the historical and critical details regarding its origin ; moreover,
the original manuscript, as has been shown by the examination of all the experts,
( 1 ) dates from the eighteenth century ; (2) is throughout in de Sade's original
handwriting; (3) is written in his characteristic style ; and, finally, the for-
gery of this manuscript, a roll 12 metres 12 centimetres in length, written on both
&ides in letters of microscopic smalhiess, would be an absolute impossibility. If
anything is genuine and authentic, this work is such. Dr. Albert Eulenburg, with-
out doubt one of the most experienced, if not the most experienced, student of de
Sade, assured me that this work unquestionably came from de Sade's pen. I
must, therefore, reject Moll's opinion, which was formed independently of any
proof, and without any examination of the original manuscript, as unscientific
and utterly futile.

3 In popular writings dealing with the sexual life, I have myself found many
interesting remarks, and even many new ideas. Naturally, when I say " popular,"
1 mean truly popular writings, not hawkers' literature or garbage literature.

4 A. von Schrenck-Notzing, " Suggestive Therapeutics in Cases of Morbid
Manifestations of Sexual Sensibility," preface, p. ix (Stuttgart, 1892).

757

by the F. A. Davis Co., Philadelphia) — a book in which we
find an admirable analysis of the development and variations of
the sexual impulse, including an account of sadism and maso-
chism, enriched by numerous examples — has recently appeared
in a German translation (Wiirzburg, 1903). The translator,
Dr. H. Kurella, in his preface to this work, says (pp. ix, x), in
my opinion with perfect justice :

" Daily experience among my patients suffering from nervous
diseases — patients who were for the most part women and girls — has
shown me how extremely important is enlightenment regarding the
sexual life for women suffering from nervous disorders. For this
reason, I hope the book will have the widest possible circulation among
the mothers of daughters about to grow up. If they will employ in
a proper manner the knowledge which they will 4be able to obtain from
its contents, in this way an immeasurable quantity of sorrow and
misery can be prevented. This use of its teaching will, by itself,
suffice to compensate the author and the translator for the scruples
they must always feel in giving to the world a book which is likely
to be valued by some simply as providing prurient reading matter, and
which by such persons will perhaps be circulated for this purpose — a
fate to which every book dealing with erotic subjects is exposed,
however earnest its style and tendency may be."

The lively scientific activity which now animates the depart-
ment of sexual problems is a matter for rejoicing, since
it indicates the advance of knowledge in one of the most
important of all vital problems. Whereas earlier none but
alienists and neurologists concerned themselves with sexual
questions, an interest in these questions is now very generally
displayed by the circles of other medical men, of anthropologists,
folk-lorists, psychologists, aesthetics, and historians of civiliza-
tion. One good result of this wide diffusion of interest is, as I
have already remarked (pp. 455 et seq.), that a one-sided con-
sideration of the problems under investigation will thereby be
prevented. Every earnest investigator, to whatever discipline
he may personally belong, can here contribute something new,
something which will advance knowledge ; but most helpful,
unquestionably, can the physician be who, as von Schrenck-
Notzing1 declared, is competent to consider the question in
relation to various other departments — those of biology, anthro-
pology, history, belles-lettres, psychology, and forensic medicine.

It would subserve no useful purpose to enumerate once more
in this place the works of all the recent authors who have dealt

1 Von Schrenck-Notzing, " Bibliography of the Psychology and Psycho-
pathology of the Vita Sexualis," published in the Zeitschri/t fiir Hypnotismus,
vol. vii., Nos. 1 and 2, p. 121.

758

with the subject of the sexual life. In the text of the present
book they have for the most part received sufficient mention.1

Of larger monographs upon homosexuality, there still remain
to be mentioned those of Havelock Ellis and J. A. Symonds,2
A. Moll,3 J. Chevalier,4 and Laupts.5 In these works we find
extensive reports of cases ; and more especially in the two first
mentioned do we find a record of all the historical and critical
data of homosexuality up to the time of the first publication of
the " Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages " (1899 et seq.).

A new work by Havelock Ellis6 recently reached me, the
fifth volume of the American edition of his " Studies in the
Psychology of Sex,"7 giving an account of " Erotic Sym-
bolism " (fetichism, exhibitionism, etc.), the " Mechanism of
Detumescence," and the "Psychical Condition during Pregnancy,"
with an appendix giving an analysis of the sexual develop-
ment of various individuals. This book, full of interesting
details, will doubtless, like the earlier volumes of his " Studies,"
soon appear in a German translation.

The fundamental work of A. Marro on " Puberty in Man and
Woman " also deserves especial mention. It can most usefully
be consulted in the French edition, " La Puberte chez I'Homme et
chez la Femme. Etudi^e dans ses Rapports avec 1'Anthropologie, la
Psychiatric, la Pedagogic, etla Sociologie " (Paris, 1902 ; 536pp.).

1 In order to give an idea of the great interest in sexual science exhibited by the
most diverse circles of cultured men of the present day, I shall merely mention
in this note a few names, without pretending to give an exhaustive list : R. von
Krafft-Ebing, Mantegazza, Ploss-Bartels, A. Eulenburg, von Schrenck-Notzing,
Fr. S. Rrauss, Tarnowsky, L. Lowenfeld, Havelock Ellis, Magnus Hirschfeld,
S. Freud, Georg Hirth, H. Kurella, H. Swoboda, Laurent, A. Hoche, C. Lombroso,
P. Furbringer, E. Carpenter, Rohleder, Alfred Fournier, A Binet, Marro, J. J.
Bachofen, J. Kohler, E. Westermarck, Max Dessoir, Alfred Blaschko, Albert
Neisser, Eli Metchnikoff, Fritz Schaudinn, Ducrey, Unna, Oskar Schultze,
Wilhelm Waldeyer, V. von Gyurkovechky, Louis Fiaux, Leon Taxil, Wilhelm
Fliess, Willy Hellpach, P. J. Mobius, Heinrich Schurtz, B. Friedlander, Eduard
von Meyer, Hans Ostwald, R. Kossmann, Otto Adler, W. Hammond, Beard,
Wilhelm Erb, Paul Nacke, J. Salgo, H. T. Finck, F. Neugebauer, C. Wagner,
H. Ferdy, Rosa Mayreder, Ellen Key, Helene Stocker, Anna Pappritz, Maria
Lischnewska, Lily Braun, and many others.

2 Havelock Ellis and J. A. Symonds, " Contrary Sexual Sensibility."

3 Albert Moll, " Contrary Sexual Sensibility," third edition (Berlin, 1899).

4 J. Chevalier, " L'Invereion Sexuelle," with a preface by A. Lacassagne (Lyons
and Paris, 1893).

6 Laupts, " Perversion et Perversite Sexuelles," preface by Emile Zola (Paris,
1896). (Containing interesting critical, literary, and medical studies upon the
subject of homosexuality.)

8 Havelock Ellis, " Studies in the Psychology of Sex," vol. v. : " Erotic
Symbolism, etc." (Philadelphia, 1906).

7 Apart from " Man and Woman " (fourth edition, 1904, revised and enlarged),
all Havelock Ellis's writings on sexual questions are included in the " Studies
in the Psychology of Sex," 5 vols. (sixth concluding volume not yet completed),
published by the F. A. Davis Company, of Philadelphia, U.S.A. — TRANSLATOR.

759

Special studies on the subject of the sexual impulse have been
published by Moll1 and Fere.2 In Moll's work, of which hitherto
the first part only has appeared, the sexual impulse is divided
into two components, the " detumescence impulse " — that is,
the impulse towards the evacuation of the reproductive products
— and the " contrectation impulse " — that is, the impulse
towards the other individual ; and from these two components
the various manifestations of sexuality are explained. Fer6, more
especially, has made an exhaustive study of the instinctive element
of the sexual impulse ; and, apart from this, he appears to be the
most extreme advocate of the atavistic theory of sexual perversions.

An interesting study of sexual psychology, based upon the
doctrine of Freud, has been published by Otto Rank.3 The ten-
dency of this work also is in opposition to the degeneration-phobia.

The work of the Italian psychiatrist Pasquale Penta, " I per-
vertimenti sessuali nelT uomo e Vincenzo Verzeni strangolatore
di donne " (" The Sexual Perversions observed in Vincenzo
Verzeni, the Strangler of Women "), Naples, 1893, contains
numerous interesting details. In the first chapter the author
gives contributions to a history of psychopathia sexualis ; the
second chapter contains a detailed report of Verzeni and an
account of his lust-murders ; in the third chapter Penta discusses
the similarities and differences between the sexual impulse in
man and in the lower animals ; in the fourth chapter he deals
with the biological foundations of lust-murder ; in the fifth
chapter he reviews the different sexual perversions ; in the
sixth chapter he considers rape ; and in the seventh and last
chapter he discusses the forensic importance of rape and of sexual
perversions.

The recently published work on " Sexual Biology," by Robert
Miiller (Berlin, 1907), is written from the standpoint of veterinary
medicine, and the sub-title of the book, " Comparative and
Evolutionary Studies in the Sexual Life of Man and the Higher
Mammals," indicates the author's intention to elucidate the
general biological roots of sexual phenomena. This comparative
consideration of the sexual life of man and of the higher mammals
throws a new light on many matters, and enables us to under-
stand a number of phenomena of the sexual life which have
hitherto seemed obscure.

1 A. Moll, " Investigations regarding the Libido Sexualis," Part I. (Berlin,
1897).

2 Charles Fe"r6, " L'Instinct Sexuel, Evolution et Dissolution " (Paris, 1899).

3 Otto Rank, " The Artist : Contributions to Sexual Psychology " (Vienna and
Leipzig, 1907).

760

A comprehensive, general, popular work upon the sexual life
is now in course of publication — " Man and Woman." It is
issued by R. Kossmann and J. Weiss, with the collaboration of
a number of leading specialists (Stuttgart, 1907). A number
of illustrated sections have already been issued.

Finally, two other works must be mentioned which consider
the sexual life as a whole, a larger work and a smaller one.
Forel's1 comprehensive book is distinguished from beginning to
end by an original, subjective grasp of the question, and by
an optimistic view of the future, as I have pointed out in
my review of this book in the Deutsche Aerztezeitung. As such
a subjective programme of a future solution of sexual problems,
it will ever retain a value ; and we can always follow with pleasure
the demonstrations of the talented and sympathetic author,
although the book is perhaps somewhat monotonous in character.
Its merits, moreover, are counterbalanced by the almost com-
plete neglect of the numerous recent researches in almost every
department of the sexual life. More particularly the chapter
upon syphilis and venereal diseases, the chapter upon homo-
sexuality and sexual perversions, and the chapter upon marriage
betray this fault. The chapter on marriage is a mere extract
from Westermarck. The author is fully conscious of these
defects, and freely admits them ; and in spite of them the book
must not be ignored, because its value really lies in its sub-
jectivity, and because we find in it so profound a conviction of
the great importance of social activity for the higher develop-
ment of love. A shorter consideration of sexual problems, but
one abounding in paradoxes, is to be found in a book by Leo Berg.2

In conclusion, I may give a brief survey of the reviews and
other periodical publications which are occupied with sexual
questions. A great periodical devoted to the entire province of
sexual research does not exist. Such periodicals as we have
deal with separate departments of the sexual life. A rather
insignificant periodical, Vita Sexualis, which appeared for the
first time in 1899, seems to have become extinct a few years
later. An exceedingly valuable publication, especially occupied
with the problems of homosexuality, bisexuality, and sexual
intermediate stages, is the one edited by Magnus Hirschfeld,
and entitled Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages (of this eight
volumes have hitherto appeared). Purely popular and belle-
tristic aims are subserved by the homosexual monthly magazine

1 August Forel, " The Sexual Question" (Rebinan, 1908).

2 Leo Berg, " Geschlechter " (Berlin, 1906).

761

Der Eigene (edited by Adolf Brand). Another annual, not less
valuable than the one previously mentioned, is that edited by
Friedrich S. Krauss, entitled Anthropophyteia. This treats more
especially of folk-lorist research in sexual matters, and is a true
treasure-house of new facts and observations.1 The periodicals
for the study of venereal diseases, such as the Archives of Der-
matology and Syphilis, edited by F. J. Pick (hitherto eighty-two
volumes), the Monthly Magazine of Practical Dermatology, edited
by Unna and Tanzer (hitherto forty-four volumes), the Monthly
Magazine for Diseases of the Urinary Organs and Sexual Hygiene,
edited by W. Hammer, in succession to K. Ries (hitherto four
volumes), and the other German and foreign dermato-urological
periodicals, also contain much material regarding venereal diseases
and sexual perversions. Interesting contributions to all sexual
problems, as well as an extensive case-literature and bibliography,
are to be found in the Archives for Criminal Anthropology and
Criminology, edited by Hans Gross (hitherto twenty-seven
volumes), proceeding largely from the pen of the learned and
most original alienist Paul Nacke ; also in the Monthly Magazine
for Criminal Psychology and Criminal Law Reform, edited by
Gustav Aschaffenburg ; in the monthly magazine The Protection
of Motherhood ; a Magazine for the Reform of Sexual Ethics, edited
by Helene Stocker (vide supra, pp. 270 and 273) ; in the monthly
magazine Sex and Society, edited by Karl Vanselow (hitherto
two volumes) ; and in the illustrated magazine, under the same
editorship, Beauty (hitherto four volumes). Finally, we have to
mention certain periodicals concerned chiefly with the aims of
racial hygiene, and containing valuable material — the Politico-
Anthropological Review, edited by Ludwig Woltmann (hitherto
five years of issue), and the Archives for Racial and Social Biology,
edited by Alfred Ploetz (hitherto three years of issue).

1 Prior to the issue of the first edition of the present work, three volumes of
Anthropophytzia had appeared, and references to many of the most important
papers in these volumes have already been given in the appropriate chapters.
While the sixth edition of " The Sexual Life of Our Time " was in the press, in
October, 1907, the fourth volume of Anthropophyteia was issued, and con-
stitutes an especially weighty section of this work. Among the contributions are
the following : A. Mitrovic, " Temporary Marriages in Northern Dalmatia ";
FT. S. Krauss, " Selective Marriages in Bosnia "; H. E. Luedecke, " Erotic
Tattooing "; W. von Biilow, " The Sexual Life of the Samoans "; F. Wernert,
" Tales of the German Peasantry " (of an erotic character) ; A. Mitrovic, " A
Visit to a Sorceress in Northern Dalmatia "; Krauss, Mitrovic, and Wernert,
" The Sense of Smell in the Sexual Life "; B. Laufer, " A Japanese Spring
Picture "; O. Knapp, " The ' «W/3o* ' of the Hellenes "; A. Kind, " Coitus and the
Sexual Instinct "; K. Amrain, " The Increase of Virile Potency "; H. E. Luedecke,
"Eroticism and Numismatics"; V. S. Karadiic", "Erotic and Skatological
Proverbs and Locutions of the Servians "; Luedecke, " Elements of Skatology ";
Fr. S. Krauss, " Slavonic Popular Traditions regarding Sexual Intercourse."

CHAPTER XXXIII
THE OUTLOOK

" A happy man is he who in his individuality possesses an
instrument upon which the world can play with all its wealth of
powers. To him the sexual will be a means by which he will be
enabled to grasp the innermost of life, to understand its most painful
sorrows and its most intoxicating delights, to plumb its most frightful
abysses and to scale its most shining summits." — ROSA MAYREDER.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXXIII

The future of human love — Indications of progress and of a happier configuration
of the sexual life — Relationship of sexuality to intimate individual love —
The categorical imperative of the sexual life — The association of love with
the work of life — Love and personality.

764

CHAPTER XXXIII

LOOKING backwards over the long road which lies behind us, and
which has conducted us past all the heights and deeps of the
human amatory and sexual life, we may now endeavour to give
a brief answer to the difficult question, What is the future of
human love ? Are we able to recognize the existence of progress
towards better things ? Are there any indications of a new,
nobler, happier configuration of the sexual life ? The answer
is a confident and joyful " Yes !"

Never before throughout the history of mankind has love
evoked so earnest and so profound an interest as to-day ; never
has it been considered from so eminently social a standpoint as
now. As I remarked at the first public meeting of the Associa-
tion for the Protection of Motherhood, the idea of a reform,
ennoblement, and more natural configuration of the sexual life
harmonizes perfectly with the general tendency of our time,
which has in view a resanation of all the relationships of life.
It is continually more clearly and widely recognized that in the
human sexual life, as in all other departments of human activity,
modifications may be effected by means of conscious endeavour
in the direction of a progressive evolution ; that the relationship
between man and woman, alike in its individual and in its social
aspects, is influenced by the changes and advances of human
evolution ; and that this relationship cannot be artificially con-
fined by main force within limits which may have been suitable
to it one hundred or two hundred years ago.

Our love is of this earth, afflicted with all earthly defects and
sorrows. Notwithstanding this, we affirm it joyfully, in the
confident hope that it can be saved from all hostile and destruc-
tive influences, and that it can be elevated above the transient
and the casual, and manifest itself in its finest form as intimate,
individual love. In the sphinx of the individual, the greatest
riddle of all unquestionably lies in the alarming and elemental
qualities of the sexual impulse. But the way to liberation is
obvious and open. Let us fight courageously with all the hostile
forces described in this book, which poison the amatory life of
our time ; let us destroy all the germs of degeneration, and let
us imprint upon our sexual conscience three words — health,
purity, responsibility.

765

766

One thing more. Why does love at the present day so often
threaten to perish amid the general fragmentation of life ?
Why do the leading spirits and the greatest artists in love com-
plain of the fragile character of all love ? Because love is
isolated, because it is not associated with the work of life, with
the battle for freedom which every man has to fight ; because
love is not conceived as a union between the lovers for the common
conquest of existence, as a partnership for the purposes of inward
spiritual growth. Far too often the man of the future is opposed
to the woman of the past, or the woman of the future to the
man of the past ; each is to the other a sexual being, and nothing
beyond. And yet individual love is only possible when, passing
beyond the aims of mere sexual gratification, and beyond the
purposes of reproduction, it subserves the general objects of life,
and assists in the performance of all the tasks of the civilization
of our time. The most wonderful dreams of the heart cannot
suffice to take the place of the positive work which life demands
from love. Without free activity there is no love ! That is the
great saying of a great thinker. And I add to this saying, that
without free activity there is no right to love. Such a right is
possessed only by the personality, the poetic, striving, willing
human being, be it man or be it woman. How often the man
seeks love from the woman and cannot find it, and yet might
have found it so easily !

"... doch wenn ich suchend driicke
Die Fange meines Geistes in ihr Him,
Diinkt mich, dass hinter dieser hohen Stirn
Bin Etwas liegt, das einst gefehlt dem Gliicke."

[" But when searchingly I press

The talons of my spirit into her brain,

It seems to me that behind this lofty forehead

Something lies which has just missed happiness."]

In this beautiful verse of Ada Christen's the secret of all love
reveals itself. We must not seek that which is lower in the
other sex, in the beloved person ; we must seek the highest, her
spiritual essence, her will, her developmental possibilities.
Before the eyes of the modern human being, the individual love
of two free personalities appears as an ideal, as is poetically
expressed by Dingelstedt in the words :

" Und Liebe bliiht nur in dem Doppel-Leben
Verwandter Seelen, die nach oben streben."

[" And Love blossoms only in the duplex-life

Of two allied souls, which together strive upwards."]

INDEX OF NAMES

ABELABD,'94

Abderhalden, Emil, 715
Acbelis, Thomas, 192
Ackermann, J. C. G., 678
Acton, W., 317, 678
Adam, Madame, 32
Adler, Otto, 49, 50, 68, 83,

418, 433, 435, 439, 758
Adonis, 107
Agathe, 173
Ahlfeld, F., 707
Albert, Charles, 87, 91, 249,

250, 251, 472
Alcibiades, 460
Aldegrever, 736
Alera, Don Brennus, 569
Alexander, C., 721, 722
Alexander the Great, 460,

583

Allan, 72

Allen, Charles W., 437
Allen, Grant, 746
Almquist, C. J. L., 243, 244
Alsberg, 60
Altenberg, Peter, 624
Altmann-Gottheiner, Eliza-
beth, 81
Altmuller, 540
Alton, 574
Amrain, K., 625, 761
Amschl, 633

Andreas-Salome, Lou, 750
Andrian, F. von, 90
Angelo. See Michael An-

gelo
d'Annunzio, Gabriele, 292,

619, 622, 626, 750
Antiochus, 436
Antoninus, Marcus Aure-

lius, 75
Apelles, 105
Aphrodite, 105
Aphrodite Porne, 105
Aquinas, Thomas, 122
Archenholtz, 615
Arduin, 529

Aretino, Pietro, 308, 734
Aristippus, 676
Aristophanes, 413, 460
Aristotle, 94, 436, 460, 583
Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 476,

677

Arnobius, 102
Aschaffenburg, G., 294, 417,

424, 606, 607, 761
Ashbee, Honry Spencer,

515
Assing, Ludmilla, 242

Astarte, 123

Astruc, Jean, 354

Atkinson, 368

" Auch Jemand," 745

Augagneur, V., 317

August, Karl, 502

August von Gotha, Duke,

506
Augustine, Saint, 102, 109,

115, 122
d'Aurevilly, Barbey, 175,

474, 733, 750
Avebury, Lord (Sir John

Lubbock), 25, 189
Avenarius, Ferdinand, 524
Avicenna, 436
d'Azimont, Helene, 173

Baal-Peor, 101, 107
Bab, Edwin, 485
Bachofen, J. J., 10, 102,

104, 189, 194, 195, 758
Bacon, 477
Bacon, Francis (Lord Veru-

lam), 134

Bade, Thomas, 343
Baer, 298

Baginsky, Adolf, 668
Bahr, Hermann, 141, 144,

474

Bain, Alexander, 562, 565
Balbi, Gaspare, 101
Baldung, Hans, 583
Balzac, Hoaoru de, 174
Bar, von, 382, 383
Barbosa, Duarte, 101
Barenbach, 78
Barrault, 242

Barrucco, Nicolo, 440, 703
Bartels, Max, 697, 706
Bartels, Paul, 63
Barth, 139
Barthelemy, 363
Bartholini, 16
Bashkir tzeff, Marie, 182
Basedow, Hans von, 524,

863

Bastian, 107, 189, 192, 467
Bataille, Henri, 219
Batley, 706
Batut, 135, 136
Baudelaire. 175, 474, 624,

733. 749, 750
Bauer, Friedrich, 270
Bauer, Leopold, 145
Baumatm, Felix, 338, 563,

614
Baumcr, Gertrud, 690

767

Baumes, 362

Baumgarteu, Anton, 335

Bayet, 748

Beale, 678

Beard, G. M., 428, 702,

758

Beardsley, Aubrey, 733,-736
Beate, 172
Beatrice, 162
Bebel, 251
Beck, H., 109
Beck, Karl, 559
Becker, Hans von, 566
Beham, H. S., 736
Behrend, F. J., 314
Behrmann, S., 380
B61ot, 620

Bendix, Ludwig, 395
Benedict XIV., Pope, 122
Bennigsen, Adelheid von,

684

Bentsen, Tyra, 754
Benzi, 122
Beraud, 312
Berg, Leo, 760
Berger, H.,397, 418
Bergeret, L., 699, 702
Bergfeld, L., 684
Bergh, Rudolf, 23, 50, 135
Berkley, Theresa, 573
Bernard, Gentil, 286
Bernard, P., 635
Berahard, Georg, 382
Bcrnhardi, 421
Bernhardt, Paul. 440
Bernhoff. 192
Bernini, 110
Bernstein, 395
Bertram!, 646
Besant, Annie, 696
Beta, H., 721
Bettmann, S., 398
Beulwitz, Rudolf von, 523
Boyle, Henry (Steudhal),

286, 287

Beza, Theodor, 507
Bickel, Andreas, 574
Bio, Oskar, 180
Biodcrmann, F. von, 735
Biodermanu, Woldemar

voo, 524
Bilharz, Alfons, 53, 56, 68,

Billroth, Theodor, 08
Binot. A., 464, 612, 613.

622, 758
Binz. C., 354
Bischoff, 60, 62, 63

768

Bjornsen, Bjornstjerne,
257, 745

Blaschko, Alfred, xii, 237,
238, 255, 267, 314, 318,
319, 322, 329, 333, 334,
336, 358, 374, 391, 392,
393, 394, 395, 396, 397,
399, 400, 714, 758

Blanc, Louis, 320

I '.lam | ni. 599

Bleibtreu, Carl, 460

Bleuler, E., 85

Bloch, I wan (see also Diih-
ren, E.), 43, 94, 116, 121,
192, 267, 270, 271, 308,
319, 354, 357, 385, 387,
388, 412, 420, 450, 558,
569, 628, 641, 646, 705,
732

Block, Felix, 375, 401,417

Bloem, Walter, 744

Blokusewski, 378

Blom, Oker, 681, 684, 688

Blougram, Bishop, 132

Blumreich, L., 551, 705

Boas, Franz, 192

Bock, Erail, vi, 31, 440

Boeck, G., 363

Boeteau, 646

"36hme, Jakob, 59

Bohme, Margarete, 315,
748

Bohmert, 271

Boileau, 113

Bois-Reymond, Emil du,
166

Bojer, Johann, 746, 747

Bolsche, Wilhelm, 8, 18, 21,
23, 30, 32, 38, 41, 42, 44,
125, 179

Bonaparte. See Napoleon
the Great

Bonheur, Rosa, 528

Bonhoeffer, 294

Bonnard, de, 208

Bonneau, Alcide, 308

Bonnetain, 744

Borgia, Caesar, 566

Borgius, W., 267, 274

Borne, 78

Bottger, Hugo, 267

Boucher, 736

Bouillier, Francisque, 564

Boureau, E., 375

Bourget, Paul, 286

Bouvier, 648

Bovary, Madame, 140

Bradlaugh, Charles, 696

Brand, Adolf, 485, 761

Brandt, Wilhelm, 271

Brant, Sebastian, 734

Braun, Lily, 267, 270, 274,
275, 758

Braun, R., 704

Bre, Ruth, 197, 267, 270

Breitenstein, 376

Brenning, 707

Bretonne, Retif de la, 205,

242, 290, 309, 427, 628,

634, 639, 734, 736
Bridehead, Sue, 746
Brieux, 748
Bright, 443
Brinvilliere, 575
Broca, 54, 64
Broicher, Charlotte, 240
I '.i-oii-iui. 43, 44
Brooks, 56

Brasses, President de, 110
Brouardel, 545
Brown, John, 459
Browning, Elizabeth Bar-
rett, 747"

Browning, Robert, 132, 221
Bruck, Martin, 402
Briick, Anton Theobald,

732

Biicher, Karl, 80
Buchncr, Alexander, 242
Buckle, Henry Thomas, 79,

213

Buddha, 20, 29, 103
Budin, 13
Buffenoir, H., 166
Buffon, 92

Biilow, Frieda von, 216
Billow, W. von, 761
Bulthaupt, Heinrich, 506,

524

Bulwer (Lytton), 243
Bunge, G. von, 715
Buonarroti. See Michael

Angelo
Burchard, Bishop of

Worms, 412
Burchard, E., 492
Burdach, 20, 31, 47, 77
Burger, 278
Burgkmair, Hans, 729
Burgl, G., 649
Burne-Jones, Edward, 182
Burwinkel, 358
Busch, Dietrich Wilhelm,

700

Busch, W., 47, 49, 684
Bussy, Charles de, 115
Butler, Josephine, 318
Buttenstedt, Karl, 700, 701
Buttler, Eva von, 97
Byron, 32, 78, 166, 168,

216, 507

Cabral, A., 90

Caesar Borgia, 566

Caesar, Caius Julius, 193,

677

Cailles, Eliza, 638
Caitanya, 107
Caligula, 566
Calvin, John, 507
Campagnolle, R. de, 378,

380

Campbell, Harry, 83
Campe, J. H., 426
Cangiamila, 122
Canitz, von, 421
Canler, 648
Capellmann, 122, 699
Capponi, Gino, 243
Carpenter, Edward, 37, 45,

96, 249, 251, 252, 253,

758

Carracci, Annibale, 733, 736
Casanova, 174, 287
Casper, Leopold, 441, 475,

668

Castor and Pollux, 582
Catherine de Medici, 566
Catherine, St., of Siena, 110
Cazenave, 368
Challemel-Lacour, 116
Chalmers, 696'
Chambers, 163
Charles IV., King of Spain,

277'
Charles VTIL, King of

Spain, 355

Charpentier, Armand, 249
Chateaubriand, 214, 243
Chatelet, du, 165
Cheadle, 363
Chesterfield, Lord, 287
Chevalier, J., 758
Chimay, Princess, 623
Chorier, Nicolas, 734
Chotzen, 395
Christen, Ada, 766
Clara, Abraham a Santa,

483

Claret, Antonio Maria, 122
" Claudine," 749
Clauren, 751
Clausmann, 398
Cleland, John, 734, 735, 736
Cleopatra, 165
Cleves, Maria of, 623
Cnyrim, V., 678
Coe, 415, 416
Cohn, Hermann, 424
Colles, 362
Collins, 428
Columbus, 355
Commence, O., 317
Comte, Auguste, 97
Conrad, M. G.,267
Constantine, Emperor of

Rome, 102, 103
Conton, 378
Cordelia, 165
Coulon, Henri, 219
Courty, 434
Coutts, 363
Cowper, 439
Cramer, 667
Cranach, Lucas, 736
Crebillon, 736
Crede, 367, 524
Crohns, Hjalmar, 437

769

Cronquist, 380

Cruz, Ignacio dos Santos,

312

Cullen, WiUiam, 459
Cunningham, 64
Curie, Madame, 74
Curschmann, 422, 437
Curtius, Quintus, 102
Cuvier, 5

Dahlen, Georg, 347

Damaschke, A., 267

Damian, Wilhelm, 575

Damm,A.,421,702

Dana, 418

Danner, Countess, 324

Dante, 162

Darwin, Charles, 4, 20, 23,

25, 26, 35, 40, 56, 72,

77, 162, 179, 467, 664,

709, 711, 712, 716
Daudet, Alphonse, 748
Daumer, 486

Dauthendey Elizabeth, 750
Dea Perfica, 101
Dea Pertunda, 101
Debreyne, 122
Deffand, du, 165
Defoe, 748
Dehn, Paul, 737
Delastre, 646
Delaunay, 68, 73
Delepierre, O., 738
Delgado, Francisco, 308,

748
Delicado, Francesco, 308,

748

Delvincourt, G. L. N., 457
Demetrius, 586
Demeunier, 101
Demosthenes, 460
Dempwolf, 468
Dennewitz, Billow von, 267
Dens, 122
Desdemona, 165
Deslandes, 47, 418/440
Dessoir, Max, 532, 758
Diday, 402
Diderot, 736
Dieterich, Albert, 109
Dilsner, 749

Dingelstedt, 175, 472, 766
Diodorus Siculus, 190
Diotima, 162
Dippold/571, 572
Dixon, 109
Dohm, Hedwig, 267
Dohrn, 368
Domitian, 566
Donath, Julius, 373 '
Don Juan, 208, 216, 236,

285, 287, 288, 289, 290
Dowden, Edward, 240
Drago, 135
Drialya, 569
Drobisch, 213, 690

Droste-Hulshoff, Annette

von, 79, 180
Droz, Gustave, 735
Drudo, Hilarius, 286
Drujon, Ferdinand, 738
Drysdale, Charles. 696
Dubois-Desaulle, G., 643
Duchesne, E. A., 313
Ducrey, Max, 357, 758
Duensing, Frieda, 267, 277
Diihren, Eugen (see also

Bloch, Iwan), 319, 558,

628
Diihring, Eugen, 217, 233,

251

Dulaure, J. A., 101
Dumas, Alexandre (Fils),

345, 346
Dupuy, 444

Duquesnoy, Jerome, 506
During, E. von, 319, 329,

402

Diirkheim, 137
Duse, Eleonore, 182
Dyer, Alfred G., 336

Earlet, 704

Eberhardt, Ernst, 747

Eberstadt, Rudolph, 200,
201

Eberstaller, 64

Ebstein, Erich, xii

Ebstein, Wilhelm, 449, 719,
721, 722

Eckhard, Meister, 176

Eckstein, Emma, 684

Edwards, Milne. See
Milne-Ed wards

Eekhoud, Georges, 506, 749

Effertz, O..433, 434

Egerton, George, 182

Eggers-Sinidt, 403

Ehrenberg, Christian Gott-
fried, 458, 459

Ehrenfels, Chr. von, 267,
323, 718

Ella Rose, 173

Ellis, Havelock, 8, 14, 18,
24, 26, 32, 35, 56, 60, 64,
68, 72, 73, 74, 77, 81, 84,
122, 123, 128, 129, 135,
138, 157, 404, 407, 409,
411, 415, 416, 417, 420,
424, 426, 428, 466, 471,
557, 558, 559, 566, 582,
640, 712, 756, 758

Ellis, William, 137

Emberg, 343

Emerson, 181

1'Enclos, Ninon do, 165

Endymion, 183

Enfantin, 242, 243

d'Enjoy, 33

Ense, Rahel von, 242

d'Eon, Chevalier de, 545

Evictetus, 75

Erasistratus, 436

Erb, Wilhelm, 267, 361,
394, 421, 422, 678, 679,
758

Erkelenz, A., 267

Eros, 111, 162, 171, 179

Ersch, 505

Ertel, 581, 583

Eschle, 664

d'Estoc, Martial, 475, 519,
529, 580, 586, 629, 640,
654

Ettlinger, Karl, 286

Eugenie, Empress, 516

Eufenberg, Herbert, 750

Eulenburg, Albert, xii, 83,
86, 192, 267, 410, 418,
419, 421, 428, 432, 438,
439, 441, 444, 450, 451,
524, 547, 555, 560, 569,
578, 647, 654, 664, 678,
691, 697, 702, 756, 758,

Eulenburg-Hertefeld .Prince
Philipp zu, 548

Euripides, 460, 481

Eusebius, 102

Evadne, 673

Eyck, Jan van, 57, 147

Eye, A. von, 152

Eysell-Kilburger, Clara, 745

Fabry, J., 397, 402
Falb, 462
Falck, N. D., 624
Falke, Jacob, 164
Falke, J. von, 583
Fallopius, 378
Faust, 183
Faust, Bernhard Christian,

426

Faustine, 208
Federn, Karl, 249
Ferdy, Hans, 378, 699, 758
F6re, Charles, 477, 508, 563,

564, 565, 646, 759
Ferguson, A., 471
Ferrero, G., 68, 72, 83, 130,

318, 577
Ferri, 669
Feskstitow, 699
Feuerbach, Luclwig, 98, 110
Feydeau, Ernesto, 747
Fiaux, L., 296, 318, 319,

340, 399, 648, 652, 758
Filliucius, 122
Finck, H. T., 159, 161,482,

758
Finger, Ernest, 365, 388,

442

Finkelstoin, 270. 271
Finsch, Otto, 467, 470
Fischer, Kuno. 162, 171,

177, 242. 561
Fitzgerald, Edward, 747
Flaeha. Richard. «84
Flanders, Moll, 748
49

770

Flaubert, Gustave, 140, 747
Flechsig. 267

Fleischmaun, August, 724
Fleach, Max, 267. 271, 395.

684
Fliees, Wilhelm. 16, 20, 26,

539, 758
Flittncr, 755
Foerster, Fr. W.. 683, 684,

687, 688, 689, 690
Forel, A., 267, 667, 760
Forster, Edmund, 44, 415,

416, 559

Fouque, de la Motte, 169
Fourier, Charles, 242
Fournier, Alfred, 349, 358,

361, 362, 363, 364, 378,

384, 386, 388, 395, 684,

714, 758

Fournier, Edmond, 363
Fragonard, 736
Francillon, 77
Francois de Sales, St., Ill
Francke, E., 267
Franckenau, Georg Franck

von, 309
Frank, J., 119
Frank. J. P., 623, 631, 635
Frankel, C., 383
Franklin, Benjamin, 695
Frassette, 64
Frauenstadt, J., 93, 245,

246, 735, 736
Fraxi, Pisanus (Henry

Spencer Ashbee), 515, 519
Fred, W., 152
Frederick the Great, 507
Frederike, S.,553
Freimark, Hans, 534
Frenssen, 746
Frenzel, J. S. T., 441, 446,

755

Frenzel, Karl, 173, 737
Freud, S., 38, 46, 47, 271,

413, 414, 428, 456, 464,

465, 476, 641, 653, 687,

702, 756, 758, 759
Frey, Ludwig, 506, 520
Frey, Philipp, 94, 190, 744
Friedenthal, H., 554
Friedjung, 272
Friedlander, Benedict, 40,

482, 485, 486, 548, 758
Fritsch, Gustav, 60, 411
Froehner, R. , 643
Fronsac, Duke of, 573
Frost, Laura, 690
Fryer, John, 101
Fuchs, Alfred, 656
Fuchs, Eduard, 733, 736
Fulda, Ludwig, 747
Funcke, Richard E., 700
Furbringer, P., 410, 417,

i21, 422, 427, 428, 437,

441, 442, 444, 448. 449,

678, 698, 703, 758

Fiirth, Henriette, 267, 274,
402

Gaedertz, Theodor, 524

Galen, 49, 448

Galewsky, 358

Gall, 416, 704

Gall, Louise von, 180

Galli, 270'

Galliot, 706

Galton, Francis, 712

Gans, Eduard, 197

Garland, Hamlin, 420

Gamier, P., 415, 621

Garre, 552

Garre-Simon, 551

Gassen, 449

Gattel, 428, 712

Gautier, Thdophile, 79, 175,
646, 735. 749

Gay, Delphine, 243

Gegenbaur, 22

Geigel, A.,354

Geissler.C. W.,749

Gentz, Friedrich, 736

George, Henry, 695

George Sand, 174, 243,
254,277

Gerland, 81

Giacomo, Salvatore di, 308

Gillray, 736

Girardin, Delphine de, 79

Giraud-Teulon, 189

Girtanner, Christoph, 354

Gissing, George, 244, 748

Ginffrida-Ruggieri, 64

Giulietta, 139, 446

Gleiss, O., 239

Glossy. 540

Gobineau, Count Arthur,
548

Godwin, William, 239

Goebeler, Dorothee, 214

Goethe, August, 240

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
von, xi, 31, 78, 166, 167,
168, 169, 171, 181, 183,
205, 209, 240, 242, 320,
502, 548, 550, 560, 621,
628, 656, 680, 735, 736

Gogol, 424

Goncourt, E. and J. de,
100, 150, 209, 309, 430,
444, 642, 748

Conner, 577

Goodell, 702

Gordon, Bernhard von, 436

Gorres, Franz, 524

Gotter, Luise, 183

Gottfried, 575

Gottschall, Rudolf von,
123, 242, 524, 736

Grabowsky, Norbert, 673

Graef , 737

Grand, Sarah, 673, 745 "

Grand-Carteret,J.,'574

Grazie, Marie Eugenie delle,

271

Greaves, 135
Grecourt. 736
Greiner, 736
Gretehen, 171
Gretchen, patient, 182
Griosingor, 94
Grillparzer, Franz, 175, 292,

446, 474, 507, 540
Grimm, brothers, 578
(! rim men, Stefan, 324
Grisebach, Eduard, 5, 176,
205, 244, 246, 312, 424,
484, 561, 614, 671, 736.
743

Groddeck, 486
Groos, 129
Gross, Hans, 188, 509, 581,

724, 761
Gross-Hoffinger, Anton J.,

221, 226, 227. 316, 332
Grotjahn, Alfred, 712
Gruber, Max, 505, 698, 711,

716

Grundmann, 643 , 645
Gruyo, 574
Gualino. 31

Guenole, Pierre, 569, 573']
Guilbert, Yvette, 136, 750
Guislain, Joseph, 473
Guizot, 690

Gumplowicz, Ladislaus, 251
Gurlitt, Ludwig, 690
Gury, 122

Giissfeldt, Paul, 690
Guttstadt, A., 394
Guttzeit, 433

Gutzkow, Karl, 155, 169,
172, 173, 174, 175, 207,
252, 277, 325, 329, 481,
540, 548, 685, 708
Guyau, 180
Guyon, Abbe, 101
Guyot, Yves, 318
Gyurkovechky, V. von, 441,
448, 758

Haberda, A., 643

Hacker, Agnes, 267, 270,

688
Haeckel, Ernst, 4, 7, 8, 9,

15, 23, 242

Hagel, Christine, 207
Hahn-Hahn, Ida, 208
Haig, 414
Hall, Marshall, 47
Hammer, Friedrich, 326,

398

Hammer, W., 314, 529, 761
Hammond, W. A., 419, 441,
I 645, 546, 758
Hamsun, Knut, 33, 207
Hanc, 641
Hannon, Theodore, 474,

749

771

Hansen, D., 581

Hanslick, 98

Haraucourt, Edmond, 474,

749

Hard, Hedwig, 748
Hardy, E., 103, 108, 114
Hardy, Thomas, 238, 746
Harlowe, Clarissa, 288
Harnach, Adolf, 114
Hart, Hans, 744
Hartleben, O. E.,524
Hartinann, Eduard von, 5,

41, 70, 183, 204, 209
Hasse, C., 698
Hauptmann, Carl, 472
Hauptmanu, Gerhart, 524,

746, 747, 748
Haussler, Joseph, 455, 577,

666, 667

Havelburg, W., 59
Heape, 26
Hebert, 594
Heddaeus, 714
Hegar, A., 267, 678, 697,

711, 715
Hegel, 95, 197
Heine, Heinrich, 166, 168,
172, 174, 176, 182, 373,
561

Heinemann, Max, 737
Heinse, Wilhelm, xi, 38, 40,

171

Helbig, 23
Helena, 171, 586
Helene, 173
Heliogabalus, 509, 566

Hellmann, Roderich, 301

Hellpach, Willy, 267, 279,
283. 285, 293, 297, 335,
758

Hellwald, Friedrich von,
189, 461

Heldise, 165

Helvetius, 565

Hennig, 721

Hensen, Victor, 699

Henry ILL, King of France,
606, 623

Herder, 20, 34, 163

d'Herdy, Louis, 749

Hering, Ewald, 14

Hermann, 386

Herodotus, 102, 103, 105,
190

Herondas, 413

Herrmann, Anton, 192

Herrmann, Emanuel, 133

Here, Henriette, 242

Herzen, A., 678

Heaiod, 481

HOMC, Hermann, 744

Hessen, Robert, 286, 376

Heaychios, 578

Hippel, von, 79

Hippocrates, 440

Him, Yrjo, 133, 134, 137

Hirsch, William, 356, 462

Hirschberg, Clara, 267, 268

Hirschberg, Leopold, 459

Hirschfeld, Magnus, xii, 30,
40,43,181,293,296,487,
490, 492, 497, 498, 499,
500, 501, 503, 504, 506,
507, 509, 510, 514, 517,
521, 522, 530, 531, 539,
541, 545, 548, 551, 553,
587, 611, 629, 669, 758,
760

Hirth, Georg, x, xii, 3, 67,
71, 86, 93, 117, 144, 146,
161, 204, 208, 240, 267,
268, 289, 443, 444, 449,
460, 461, 462, 463, 485,
559, 621, 679, 702, 715,
735, 758

Hoche, A., 133, 464, 649,
650, 664, 666; 667, 758

Hoensbroech, . Graf von,
118, 122, 268

Koffding, Harald, 166

Hoffman, Dr., 618

Hoffmann, Erich, 357

Hoffmann, V.,481

Hofmann, E. von, 707

Hogarth, 573

Honenau, 525

Hokusai, 736

Hollweg, 704

Holstein, Franz von, 506

Holtzendorff, 120

Holtzendorff-Kohler, 193

Holtzinger, 119, 120

Hoppe, A., 294

Hora, Franz, 643

Horace, 282

Horand, 368

Horos, 123

Horwicz, A., 564

Hoss, Crescentia, 110

Hossli, Heinrich, 506

Houghton, 722

Hiibner, B. A. H., 294,
382

Hiibner, Har% 357

Huf eland, 646

Hiigel, 207, 317

Hugo, Victor, 515

Humboldt, Alexander von,
138, 465, 718

Hunter, John, 77, 355

Hutchins, 238

Hutchinson, Jonathan
(senior), 362, 363, 376

Hiiter, 704

Huxley, Thomas Henry, 68
81

Huysman, 750

Ibsen, 173, 176, 301, 747,

748

Icartf, 77
Idaline, 172

Ilai, R., 676
Ugenstein, 733
Immermann, 459
Imogen, 165
Isidora, 551
Israel, Bianca, 268, 525
Ivan the Terrible, 593
Iwaya, Suyewo, 505

Jack the Ripper, 574
Jacobi, A., 423
Jacobowski, L., 28
Jacquemart, 444
Jacques, 263
Jadassohn, J., 357
Jadassohn, 8., 524
Jager, Hans, 750
Jakobi, 721
Jakobsen, J. P., 323, 324,

750

Jalin, Olivier de, 345
James, 565

Janitschek, Maria, 747
Janssen, Lina, 272
Jastrow, 68, 72
Jean, Paul. See Richter
Jeannel, J., 317
Jegadp, 575
Joachimsen - Bohm, Mar-

garethe, 270
Jochanan, R., 676
Joel, Karl, 170
Joest, 133, 134
Jolly, 662, 667
Jolowicz, Jacques, 737
Jones, Edward Burne, 182
Jorger, 713
Joseph, Max, 182, 375,

380

Jouy, 749
Joze, Victor, 347
Juan, Don, 208, 216, 236,

285, 287, 288, 289, 290
Julie, 165, 166, 169
Juliet, 169
Juliette, 484
Julius Csesar, 193
Jung, G., 479
Juvenal, 107, 142, 430

Kaan, Heinrich, 455
Kahlenberg, Hans von, 540,

637, 738, 745
Kalis ko. A.,
Kalthoff, 733
Kaminer, S., 59. 200. 215,

551. 705, 713, 714. 715,

716

Kamp, 704
Kampffmeyer, Paul, 329.

335, 403
Kant, Immanuel, 20, 27,

Kantorowicz, 583
Kapp, Ernst, 142, 152
Karadiic", V. S.. 761
49—2

772

Karagnine, Princess, 642

Karl August, 60S

Karlfeldt, 256

Karech, F., 504, 505, 80S,
507,530

Kast . 368

Katte, Max, 498, 534

Kaufmann. R., 386

Kaulbach, Hermann, 524

Kaulbach, Wilhelm von,
736

Keben, Georg, 123, 329,
738

Kehler, 193

Kehrer, F., 442

Kem6ny, Julius, 336

Kemmer, Ludwig, 734, 737

Kerechensteiner, G., 690

Kersten, 640

Kertbeny, M., 503

Key, Ellen, x, 243, 244, 251,
253, 254, 255, 256, 257,
258, 259, 261, 262, 263,
264, 266, 267, 270, 316,
758

Kiefer, O., 548

Kielmeyer, 5

Kierkegaard, 175, 204, 287,
289, 446, 474

Kiernan 576

Kind, A., 761

Kirohner, Martin, 374, 395

Kirn, 667

Kisch, E. Heinrich, 83, 85,
697, 703, 706

Kjolenson, Hjalmar, 286

Klaatsch, 134

Klein, Gustav, 16

Klein, Hugo, 145, 271

Kleist, 32

Knapp, O., 761

Kobelt, 47, 49

Koblanck, 451

Koch, J. L. A., 156, 664

Kohler, Joseph, 268, 758

Kohn, Albert, 270, 391

Kolisko, 707

Konigsmark, 347

Kopp, Arthur, 163, 684

Kopp, Carl, 684

Kossmann, R., 414, 711,
760

Kowalewska, Sonja, 182

Kowalewski, 476

Krafft - Ebing, von, 146,
180, 428, 455, 463, 475,
490, 496, 503, 518, 525,
531, 541, 574, 579, 609,
619, 620, 623, 627, 633,
641, 667, 703, 755, 756.
758

Krapelin E., 294, 336, 665,
669, 714

Kraua, Karl, 141

Krause, 30

Krauss, Friedrich S. , xii, 16,

17, 34, 50, 136, 189, 101.

192. 453, 466, 469, 559.

578, 616, 644, 645, 646,

650, 653, 716, 758, 761
Krehl, L., 428, 533
Kries, Friedrich, 577
Krishna, 103
Kroft, 737

Krogh, Christian, 748
Kroraayer, Ernst, 402, 403
Kroner, Eugen, 8, 15
Krupp, 525
Kubary, J., 470
Kubin 736
Kuhne 722
Kulischer, 104
Kupffer, Elisar von, 207,

.749
Kurella, H., 135, 136, 327,

525, 560, 757, 758
Kurnig, 673
Kiirschner, Joseph, 525
Kuttler, 368

Lacassagne, A., 135, 758
Laclos, Choderlos de, 290,

736

Lacroix, Paul, 515, 519
Lactantius, 102
Ladenberg, von, 314
Laehr, Heinrich, 215; !
Lafitte, Paul, 74
Laker, Carl, 434

Lallemand, M., 421, 437,

439

Lamettrie, 676
Lamprecht, Karl, 550
Landmann, 268
Landois, 47
Landsberg, Hans, 270
Lang, E., 375
Lang, Joseph, 364
Lang, Otto, 293
Lange, C., 75
Lange, E. von, 60
Lange, Friedrich Albert,

674, 676
Lange, Konrad, 64, 135,

181, 741, 743
Lankester, E. Ray, 308,

461

Laquer, B., 293
Laroche, Sophie, 207
Larocque, Jean, 474, 748
Larsen, Karl, 747
Lasegue, Ch., 649
Lassar, 401, 403
Laube, Heinrich, 172, 174,

175, 176, 207, 375, 548
Laufer, B., 761
Lauff, Josef, 558
Laupta, 523, 758
Laura, 217

Laurent, E., 17, 476, 635
Laurentius, 421, 758

Lautrec, Toulouse, 733

Lawes, H., 533

Lawrence, 736

Lazarus, 104

Leca, von, 291

Lecky, W. H., 202, 203,

303

Lecour, 402

Ledermann, R, 391, 714
Lee, James, 221
Loffler, Anna Charlotte, 182
Legludic, H., 661
Legroux, 638
Lenmann, Jon, 615
Leigh, Aurora, 747
Leipziger, Leon, 748
Leistikow, Walter, 525
Leitner, Hermann, 421
Leitzmann, 736
Lelia, 174, 243
Lemer, Julien, 209
Lemonnier, Camille, 764
Lennhoff, Rudolf, 391, 668
Leonide, 207
Leopardi, 79, 104
Leppin, Paul, 733
Leppmann, A. W. F., 525,

618, 713
Lermontoff, 183
Leroy-Beaulieu, 109
Lescaut, Manon, 166, 748
Lespinasse, 165
Lesser, Edmond, 374
Lessing, 457
Lestmann, 342
Letourneau, Charles, 27,

138, 252

Leubuscher, G., 691
Leupoldt, Johann Michael,

Leuss, Hans, 268
Levin, Rahel, 242
Levy-Rathenau, Josephine,

Lewin, L., 654, 707
Librowicz, J., 32
Lichtenberg, 736
Lichtenberg, G. Chr., 577
Lichtenberg, L. Chr., 577
Liebermann, Max, 525
Liebermeister, von, 354
Liebert, Johannes, 737
Liebig, G. von, 525
Liguori, 122

Liliencron, Detlev von, 525
Linas, 646
Linder, E. O., 735
Lindwurm, Arnold, 3
Linschoten, Jan Huygen

van, 101
Lippert, G. H. C., 314, 315,

327, 332, 457
Lischnewska, Maria, 267,

268, 270, 271, 274, 277,

668, 683, 684, 686, 687,

688, 758

773

Liszt, Franz von, 382, 383,

522,525

Liszt, R. von, 268
Litzmann, Berthold, 525
Loeb, Heinrich, 380, 396
Loebisch, 444
Lohmann, 138
Lohsing, 188
Lombroso, C., 51, 56, 68,

72, 83, 130, 135, 318,

325, 326, 328, 329, 401,

429, 476, 490, 545, 577,

586, 639, 665, 758
Lomer, G., 33, 201
Lot, 641

Lotmar, Ph., 525
Lotte, 166
Lotze, H., 140
Louis Ferdinand, Prince,

242, 736
Louis XIV., 165
Louis XV., 165
Louis Philippe, 519
Louys, Pierre, 219
Lovelace, 288
Lowenfeld, L., 418, 419,

423, 425, 428, 429, 430,

438, 439, 449, 560, 679,

698, 703, 758
Lowenstein, H. J., 455
Lubbock, Sir John (Lord

Avebury), 28, 189
Lucas, 268
Lucianus, 141, 143
Lucinde, 169, 170, 175, 240,

242

Lucretius, 14, 559
Ludwig, Max, 736
Ludwig, Philipp,
Luedecke, H. K, 761
Lully, 565
Liingen, 690
Luschan, Felix von, 566
Luther, Martin, 245, 676
Lyhne, Niels, 323
Lytton, Bulwer, 243

Mab, Queen, 239
Macbeth, 443
MacDonald, 476
Mace, 624

Mackay, John Henry, 525
M'Lcnnan, 98, 189
Madelon, 171
Maeterlinck, 219
Magendie, 38, 47, 49, 83
y«gn>n 035, 064
Magnaud, 219
Miilir, Anna, 747
Maisonneuve, Paul, 381
Malthus, Thomas Robert,

695, 696
Mann, H.. 691
Mann, Heinrich, 750
Mann, J. Dixon, 641
Manouvrier, 64

Manso, J. C. F.,286
Mantegazza, 13, 30, 51, 71,

93, 164, 191, 466, 702,

758

Marat, 594
Marchand, 60
Marcion, 115
Marco Polo, 191
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,

75
Marcuse, Max, 238, 267,

268, 270, 271, 277, 403,

684, 713

Marholm, Laura, 182
Maria of Cleves, 623
Maria Theresia, 23
Marilaun, Kerner von, 10
Maro, Francis, 253
Marquardt, 133
Marro, 135, 565, 758
Marshall, 194
Martial, 625
Martin, R., 10
Martineau, L., 317, 547,

653
Martius, K. Fr. Ph. von,

104, 119

Marx, K. F., 371, 373
Maschke, Frau, 647
Mason, 80
Matthaes, 477, 664
Matthisson, 686
Maudsley, Henry, 666
Maupassant, Guy de, 207,

474, 735, 749
Maupin, Mademoiselle de,

545

Mauregard, Lena de, 472
Mayer, Eduard von, 40, 99,

100, 195, 485, 758
Mayer, Louis, 417
Mayet, 271
Mayreder, Rosa, xii, 68, 69,

70, 71. 72, 77, 83, 271,

288, 289, 750, 758, 763
Mazzini, 243

Medici, Catherine de, 566
Meier, 505
Meinken, Metta, 268
Meisel-Hess, Grete, 117,

747, 750
Meisner, J. E., 498, 506,

507

Melanie, 173
Melnikow, 190, 191
Memling, Hans, 57, 147
Mendel, 167, 418, 450, 525
Mendes, Catulle, 286, 529
Mendoza, Suarez de, 375
Menesclou, 574
Menge, 145
Mensinga, 698, 702, 703,

704,715

Mercier, Sebastian, 248
Merckel, Friedrich. 168
Meredith, George, 202, 746

Meritens, <H. [Allard de,

243

Meritens, Napoleon de, 243
Merkel, 60
Merode, Cleo de, 151
Merzbach, G., 503, 509
Mesnil, 264
Messalina, 430, 431, 586,

653
Metchnikoff, Eli, x, 8, 12,

13, 27, 112, 211, 247,

357, 380, 381, 410, 418,

449, 460, 461, 462, 696,

758

M6tenier, Oscar, 517, 748
Metternich, Melanie, 207
Metzger, 33

Meyer, Bruno, 268, 270
Meyer, Elard Hugo, 25, 212,

268

Meyer-Benfey, H., 170
Meyerhof, A., 378, 699
Meynert, 90
Michael Angelo, 506
Michelangelo, 506
Michelet, J., 118, 120,483
Miklucho-Maclay, von, 135,

467, 470

Mill, John Stuart, 257, 696
Miller, 168

Milne-Edwards, Henri, 56
Milton, John, 733
Minot, 68, 73
Mirabeau, G., 75, 183, 412,

460, 639, 640, 734, 735,
736

Miranda, 165

Mirbeau, Octave, 219, 642,

749

Mireur, 309, 402
Mitchell, P. Chalmers, 461,

696

Mitrovic, 761
Mittermaier, 657, 661
Mobius, P. J., 35, 40, 92,

461, 485, 662, 758
Mocquet, Jean, 101
Moesta, 268
Mohemann, !'>.. 421
Mohnike, 32, 33
Moja, 122
Molinos, 122

Moll, A., 268, 619, 756, 758,

759

Moller, Magnus, 395
Mommsen, 594
Montaigne, Michel, 565
Montalti, A., 646
Montejo, 354
Montez. Lola, 347
Moore, George, 748
Moraglia, 85
Moreau, 20, 36
Moreau de Tours, 455
Morel, 664
1 Morgan, 189

774

Morhardt, Paul Emile, 399

Moritz, Priedrich, 525

Morris, 716

Moseley, 137

MMM, 139

Mosso, Angelo, 75, 690

Most, G. F., 755

Moullet, 122

Mucbe, Klara, 268

Muff, Christian, 457

Mul ji. Karaandas, 103

Muller. 268

Miiller, Chancellor von, 550

Muller, Friedrich, 189, 654

Muller, Johannes von, 47,

506

Muller, Robert, 759
Munchhausen, Max von,

744
Mundt, Theodor, 68, 78,

171, 172, 174, 175, 640,

678

Miinsterberg, 72
Miinzer, Thomas, 593
Murger, Henri, 248, 324
Musil, R, 744
Musset, Alfred de, 150, 174,

446, 580, 734, 735
Mutunus Tutunus, 101
Mutzenberger, Josephine,

748

Mylitta, 102, 103
Mysing, Oscar, 750

Nacke, Paul, vi, vii, 31, 51,
188, 236, 237, 457, 464,
485, 490, 509, 511, 512,
517, 518, 525, 530, 639,
548, 571, 629, 664, 665,
670, 674, 713, 724, 758,
761

Najac, E. de, 747

Nana, 585

Nansen, Peter, 747

Napoleon the Great, 460,
614

Napoleon HI., 516, 656

Natorp, Paul, 525

Naumann, Friedrich, 268,
274, 275

Naumann, Gustav, 181

Nefzawi, Sheik, 20, 31, 51

Neisser, Albert, vi, vii, 268,
357, 365, 374, 380, 381,
383, 388, 391, 395, 397,
525, 758

Nerciat, 734

Neri, 647

Nero, 566, 593

Nerrlich, Paul, 550
Neter, Eugen, 690
Neuberger, 375
Neugebauer, Franz, 375,

653, 758

Neumann, Hugo, 277
Neumann, Isidor, 364

Neustatter, Otto, 376, 382

Nevinny, 451

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 79,
95, 111, 168, 170, 180,
209, 273, 274, 409, 461,
485, 558, 562, 595, 712,
716. 718

Nippold, Friedrich, 120

"Nobody," 553

Noeggerath, 367

Noffke. 704

Nora, 214

Nordau, Max, 203, 205, 236,
525

Nordlund, 675

Notzel, Karl, 402

Novalis, 170, 548

Numantius, Numa (Ul-
richs), 505

Nystrom, Anton, 264, 265

Obst, Bernhard, 192

Ocrisia, 102

Oechelhauser, A. von, 625

Ofner, 272

Olberg, Oda, 329

Olga, 173

Olivier, Jacques, 483

Olympia, 651

Oncken, 120

Ophelia, 165

Oppenheim, A. von, 417,

525, 703

Oppenheim, H., 656
Oppenheimer, Franz, 268,

383, 695

Oschaja, R., 675
Osier, William, 362, 363
Ostade, Adrian van, 736
Ostwald, Hans, 277, 342,

400, 401, 758
Ottfried, 173
Otto, Christian, 550
Ovid, 78, 149, 286, 435

Pacini, 30

Pagel, J., 436, 625, 678

Pagenstecher, 31

Paget, Sir James, 422

Panizza, Oskar, 738

Pappenheim, Berta, 337

Pappritz, Anna, 329, 330,

332, 398, 402, 758
Paracelsus, 56
Parent-Duchatelet, A. J.
B., 307, 309, 311, 313,
317, 319, 326, 327, 373,
540

Parr, Thomas, 449
Parrot, 363
Pascal, 562
Pascin, Julius, 736
Passet, 63
Paul, C. Kegan, 239
Paul, Jean. See Richter
Jean Paul

Paul, M. Eden, 697, 706
Pauline, 173
Payer, 702
Pearl, Cora, 324
Pearson, 64

Pearson, Karl, 251, 404
P6Iadan, Joseph, 568
Pellacani, 75
Pelman, 268, 525
Penta, Pasquale, 759
Penzig, R., 525, 690
Peor, Baal, 101, 107
Pereira, 120
Pericles, 460
Pernauhm, F. G., 749
Perrier, Charles, 546
Petermann, 31, 622
Peters, E., 702
Petrarca, 162, 217
Petronius, 570
Peyer, Alexander, 451
Pfeiffer, 329, 335
Pfitzner, 60, 62
Phidias, 460
Philipp, 428
Phyllis, 583
Picard, 620
Pick, F. J., 761
Pick, Ludwig, 551
Pietsch, Ludwig, 324
Piger, F. P.,110
Pincus, 705
Pisanus Fraxi, 519
Pitre, Giuseppe, 192
Pius IX., 738
Place, Francis, 696
Placzek, 525
Plant, F., 714
Platen, 78, 506, 517
Plato, 59, 75, 92, 162, 506,

548
Plehn, 567
Ploetz, Alfred, 268, 711,

712, 713, 761
Ploss, H., 706
Ploss-Bartels, 51, 72. 91,
104, 106, 108, 134, 191,
466, 633, 697, 755, 758
Pohl-Pincus, J., 459
Poincare, 219
Polo, Marco, 191
Polybius, 697

Poppenburg, Felix, 170, 525
Porosz, Moriz, 451
Posner, C., 411, 451
Post, 104, 189, 191
Potthoff, Heinrich, 268
Potton, A., 313
Pougy, Liane de, 749
Pratorius, Numa, 506, 520,

522, 535, 548
Praxiteles, 105
Preuss, Julius, 675
Pr6vost, Abbe, 165
Prevost, Marcel, 219, 745,
748

775

Priapus, 102

Prinz - Flohr, Wilhelniine

Ruth, 266

Prime-Stevenson, 749
Probst, 117
Profeta, 362
Proksch, J. K, 375
Przybyszewski, St., 750
Pudor, Heinrich, 146, 147,

150, 151
Puschmann, 102

Quensel, H., 57, 486
Quetelet, 60
Quinault, 165
Quintus Curtius, 102

Rabinowitsch, Lydia, 268
Rabinowitsch, Sera, 337
Rachilde, 537, 749
Rahel, 242
Rahmer, Alfred, 265
Rahmer, Wilhelmine Ruth,

265

Rake, 265

Ramberg, Heinrich, 736
Rank, Otto, 759
Ranke, Johannes, 60, 61
Ratzel, Friedrich, 54, 59, 90
Rau, Hans, 507
Ray-Lankester, E., 306
Rebentisch, 60
Ree, Paul, 8, 14
Regla, Paul de, 471
Rehfues, 125
Reibmayr, Albert, 384
Reich.Eduard, 277, 419,432
Reichert, F., 643
Reid, Archdall, 356, 383, 713
Rcimann, A., 739
Reinhard, W., 570
Reinl, Carl, 26
Reissig, G, 721, 722
Rembrandt, 736
Remusat, Abel, 103
Renan, 75
Rene, 166
Retau, 421
Reti, S., 445
Retif de la Bretonne, 205,

242, 290, 309, 427, 628,

634, 639, 734, 736
Retzius, G., 54, 64
Reuter, Gabriele, 198, 267,

268. 746, 750
Roy, 319

Rheinhard, W., 20, 28
Rhyn, Otto Henne am, 336
Ribbing, Seved, 678
Ricardo, 696
Richardson, 166, 288
Richet, 130
Richter, Eduard, 380
Richter, Jean Paul, 170,

207,650,551,683
Richter, Z.. 528
Ricord, Philipp, 354, 356

Riehl, Regine, 336
Riehl, W. H., 57, 58, 59
Ries, Karl, 157, 268, 358,

383, 761
Rig6, 623

Rilke, Rainer Maria, 525
Ring, Max, 548
Ritter, B., 144
Robinsohn, Isak, 136, 192
" Roda-Roda," 265
Rodriguez, 122
Roe, 101

Roeren, Hermann, 737
Rohan, Princess Maria von,

722
Rohleder, 418, 424, 428,

703, 704, 758
Rohrmann, Carl, 314
Romanes, 306, 461
Romer, L. S. A. M. von,

504, 506, 533, 539
Rops, Felicien, 175, 629,

733

Roscher, W. H., 105, 467
Rosenack, 377
Rosenbach, O., 145, 525,

665
Rosenbaum, Julius, 308,

505

Rosenfeld, G., 293, 294
Rosenthal, Oscar, 293, 342
Rosinski, 368
Rossetti, 182
Rottmann, 104
Roubaud, F., 38, 47, 419,

441
Rousseau, J. J., 26, 78, 139,

165, 166, 168, 169, 208,

420, 435, 446, 487, 460,

570, 683
Rousselot, 122
Roux, Wilhelm, 525
Rowlandson, Thomas, 733,

736

Rozier, 436
Ruben, Regina, 274
Rubner, Max, 525, 678
Rudinger, 54, 63
Ruedebusch, Emil F., 272
Ruling, Anna, 529
Rumi, 557
Runge, Max, 275
Ruskin, John, 240
Rutgers, J., 337, 402
Riittenauer, Benno, 525
Ryan, Michael. 150, 312
Ryle, Charles W., 286

Sa, 122

Saalfeld, 391

Sacher - Masoch, Leopold

von, 160, 558, 580, 582,

585, 627, 628, 749
Sacher - Masoch, Wanda

von, 150, 580
Sade, Marquis de, 95, 117,

175. 336, 470, 483, 484,

558, 564, 627, 628, 639,

646, 647, 734, 756
Sadler-Grim, Willibald von,

500

Saettler, J. C., 122
Safra, R., 675
Sainte-Beuve, 243
Saint-Preux, 166
St. Augustine, 102, 109,

115, 122

St. Catherine of Siena, 110
St. Franjois de Sales, 111
Saint-Simon, 242
St. Theresa, 110
Saint- Yves, G., 135
Salen, 551

Sales, St. Francois de, 111
Salgo, J., 659, 662, 663, 758
| Salillas, 135
• Salomon, Alice, 81
I Salzman, 683
Sanchez, Thomas, 122
Sand, George, 174, 243,

254,277

Sanger, William M., 317
Santangelo, F.,666
Santayana, G., 181
Santlus, 92, 186, 577
Santos Cruz, Ignacio dos,

312

Sarcey, Francisque, 757
Sardou, Victorien, 747
Sarmiento, 484
Saudek, R., 744
Sauer, 540
Savill, 428
Say, 696

Scavola, Emerentius, 207
Schadow, 736
Schallmayer, W., 442, 712,

717

Schaudinn, Fritz, 357, 758
Schauta, 271
Schdanow, 593
Scheel, Alfred, 270
Scheffel, 32
Schelling. 31, 92
Schenk, von, 525
Scherer, Wilhelm, 181
Schorr, Johannes, 163
Schiller, Fr. von, 28, 34, 91,

216, 322, 334, 387, 403,

628, 736
Schilling. 735
Schindler, W. M., 739
Schlaf, Johannes, 525
Schlegel.A W.,242
Schlogel, Caroline, 183,

208, 242, 277
Schlegel, Dorothea, 242
Schlegel, Friodrich, 123,

169, 240, 550
Schleich, 380
Schleiermacher, Friodrich,

95. 155, 156. 169, 208
Schlichtegroll, C. F. von,

580

776

Schmidt, Erich, 1" '•'.
Schmidt, F. A., 690
Srhinidtlein, 577
Schmitz, Oscar A. H., 287,

288, 289, 022, 623, 744
Schmoldcr, R, 382, 383,

397, 398
Schmoller. Gustav, 68, 82,

211, 213, 639, 693, 695
Sclmoegans, Heinrich, 738
Schneider, G. H., 558, 560
Schmitzlor, Arthur, 525, 746
Schonfliess, 270
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 3, 4,
5, 6, 25, 75, 93, 94, 99,
116, 142, 147, 148, 175,
180, 192, 205, 244, 245,
246, 247, 253, 282, 312,
354, 385, 440, 481, 483,
484, 485, 486, 558, 561,
733, 735, 736
Schouten, H. J., 507
Schrank, Josef, 316, 319,

320, 328, 466
Schreber, Johannes David,

731

Schreiber, Adele, 82, 267,
268, 270, 271, 277, 684,
690, 712

Schreiber, 0., 673
Schrenck-Notzing, A. von,
419, 426, 448, 464, 525,
546, 557, 613, 637, 650,
651, 667, 753, 756, 757,
758
Schrodep-Devrient, Wilhel-

mine, 208, 735
Schroeer, Samuel, 122
Schubert, Gotthilf Heinrich

von, 118

Schubert, W., 481
Schiicking, Lewin, 180
Schiiddekopf, 736
Schultze, F. S., 737
Schultze, W., 101
Schultze, Oskar, 55, 60, 63,

64, 758
Schultze-Malkowsky, Emil,

637
Schultze-Naumburg, Paul,

154

Schulz, Alwin, 525
Schurig, Martin, 644, 755
Schurtz, Heinrich, 13, 59,
138, 188, 189, 193, 194,
195, 212, 320, 325, 481
485, 548, 758

Schwaeble, Rend, 136, 471,
580, 642, 649, 653, 654
706

Schwalb, Moritz, 525
Schwalbe, 60, 63
Schwartz, W., 103
Schweinfurth, Georg, 625
Seche, Leon, 243
Seiffer, 649
Sello, 270

Sollon, Edward, 105, 108
Si-hiia, 173
Semrau-Lubke, 583
Senator, 59, 200, 215, 551,

705, 713, 714, 715, 716
Seneca, 142
Soraphine, 172, 207
Sorgi, 130
Severseronus, 275
Seyffert, Hermann, 342
Shakespeare, 164, 173, 443,

586

Shaw, 72, 85
Shelley, 239, 240
Shortt, 106

Siculus, Diodorus, 190
Sidonie, 173
Siebert, Friedrich, 684
Siemens, Werner von, 459
Sigmund, 687
Silvestre, Armand, 286
Simmel, Georg, 128, 148,

149, 152, 153, 154, 155
Simon, Ferdinand, 39
Simon, Walter, 552. See

also Garr6-Simon
Simonides, 481
Simonson, 395
Siva, 108
Skiers, 122
Skram, Amalie, 182
Socrates, 217, 460
Soderberg, Hjalmar, 746
Sohnrey, Heinrich, 268
Soldan, W. G., 119
Sollier, 637
Sombart, Werner, 143, 152,

153, 267, 268, 285
Sonnenthal, Adolf von, 525
Sophie, Grand Duchess, 735
Soranos, 699
Soto, 122

Soukhanoff, S., 625
Spann, Ottomar, 271, 277
Spencer, Herbert, 54, 55,

56, 64, 134, 565
Spener, 698, 703
Sperk, 402

Spiteri, Francesco, 666
Spitzka, 418, 574
Splingard, Alexis, 336
Stachow, 402
Stadion, Count Emmerich

von, 506
Starke, 104

Starling, E.H., 414, 533
Staudinger, 467
Steffens, Heinrich, 8, 15
Stein, Charlotte von, 240
Stein, Ludwig, 134, 185,

194, 197, 212, 213
Stein, C. vom, 750
Steinbacher, J., 441
Steiner, E. von den, 684
Steinen, Karl von den, 61,

128, 130, 131, 133, 134,

139, 192, 567

Steinmetz, S. B., 565, 568,

717

Steinthal, 104
Stella, 167, 181, 205, 560
Stendhal (Henri Beyle),

286, 287
Stern, 391
Sternberg, Alexander von,

318, 507
Sterne, 166
Stevens, Vaughan, 467
Stevenson, W. B., 277
Sticker, Georg, 690
Stiedenroth, 205
Stieglitz, Charlotte, 78
Stifter, 665
Stocker, Helene, xii, 170,

267, 268, 270, 271, 273,

274, 485, 758, 761
Stockham, Alice, 214
Strabo, 102
Stratonica, 436
Stratz, C. H., 60, 65, 128,

132, 133, 139, 143
Strauss, Emil, 744
Streitberg, Gisela von, 707
Strindberg, August, 6, 40,

118, 481, 482, 484, 485,

486, 745

Stritt, Marie, 268
Strohmberg, 318
Striimpell, 295
Stiilpnagel, von, 332
Stiimcke, Heinrich, 176,

734

Suarez, 122

Sudermann, Hermann, 746
Sue, Eugene, 640
Sulzer, J. G.,5
Swedenborg, 183
Swediane, 440
Swieten, van, 23
Swoboda, Hermann, 20, 26,

107, 499, 758
Sjononds, J. A., 471, 758

Tacitus, 78, 738
Taine, 288
Tait, Lawson, 418
Tait, William, 312
Tamburini, 122
Tanaquil, 102, 104
Tanzer, 761
Tarbel, Jean, 207
Tardieu, Ambroise, 426,

516, 518, 520, 653, 661
Tarnowsky, 318, 363, 471,

476, 647, 714, 758
Tasso, 171
Taube, 277
Taxil, Leon, 340, 546, 647,

653, 758
Tepper - Laski, K. von,

525

Thai, Max, 674
Thaler, Christina, 745
Tharigen, 737

777

Theile, F. W., 516

Theopold, 38, 47, 49

Theresa, Saint, 110

Theopold, 38, 47, 49

Thoinot, L., 661

Thomalla, R., 416

Thomas, Gaillard, 702

Thomasius, 245

Thompson, Helen Brad-
ford, 68, 72, 77

Thornton, 696

Tiberius, 566

Tiech, 548

Tilesius, Hans, 714

Tinayre, Marcel, 747

Tissot, 418, 420

Titian, 147, 150

Tobler, L., 104

Tolstoi, Lyof, 6, 116, 117,
292, 532, 673, 745

Tomei, Ercole, 749

Topinard, 60, 61

Topp, Rudolf, 96

Torquemada, 593

Toulouse, 661, 699

Tovote, 745

Trelat, 430, 432

Trinius, A., 278

Troll-Borostyani, Irma von,
268

Tronow, 135-

Tschaikowsky, Peter, 506

Tschich, von, 702

Tiirkel, Siegfried, 573, 578

Tylor, Edward B., 98, 134,
352

Ullmann, Karl, 684, 687
Ulrichs, Karl Heinrich

( * ' Numa Numantius ' ' )

505, 507, 531
Ultzmann, 427
Unna, P. G., 354, 357/638,

758. 761
Unold, J., 697
Unverricht, H., 525
Unzer, 577
Ursinus, 575
Usener, 108,

Vacano, Emil Mario, 506
Valenta, 702
Vallabha, 103
Vanaelow, Karl, 273, 761
Varro, 142
Vator, 30

Vatsyayana, 51, 578
Vaucanson, 648
Vaudere, J. de, 547
Velde, van dc, 26
Veniero, Lorenzo, 308
Venus, 105, 107
" Vera," 073, 745
Verlaine. 474. 749
" Verus," 745
Vcrworn, Max, 525

Verzeni, 574, 759
Viazzi, P., 661
Vierkandt, A., 525
Vierordt, 60, 61
Villiot, Jean de, 569
Virchow, Rudolf, 354, 356,

386
Virey. J. J., 20, 29, 93,

138, 326, 448, 566, 755
Virginia, 165
Vischer, Friedrich Theodor,

140, 144, 147, 152, 732
Vitalius, 115
Vivaldi, 122
Vivan-Denon, 736
Vogt, C., 72, 717
Volkelt, Johannes, 34, 179,

180

Volkmann, L., 704
Voltaire, 20, 33, 94, 324,

421, 735, 736
Voss, Richard, 525
Vulpius, Christine, 240

Wachenhusen, Hans, 525
Wachenroder, 548
Wagner, C., 84, 468, 758
Wagner, Major D., 337
Wagner, Ernst, 551
Wagner, Richard, 289, 657
Waitz, G., 104. 138, 183
Waldeyer, Wilhelm, 54, 55,

60, 63, 64, 148, 758
Waldvogel, 358
Wales, Hubert, 435, 746
Wally, 172, 174
Walser, Karl, 164
Wardlaw, Ralph, 312
Warens, de, 435
Warneck, 105
Wassermann, A., 714
Watteau, 136, 736
Weber, Max. 268
Wedde, 486

Wedelund, Frank, 744, 748
Wegener, Hans, 690
Wehl, Theodor, 172
Weill. Alexander, 351,

428

Weingartner, Felix, 525
Weininger, Otto, 6, 38, 39,

40, 69, 70, 95, 113, 116,

117, 118, 179, 481, 482,

484, 486, 539, 620, 673,

708, 745

Weismann, 4, 94
Weisbrod. E., 661
Weiss, Julius, 760
Weissenberg, 467
Weissl, 704
Welcker. 60, 62, 550
Wcllfl, H. G., 82, 93, 94, 306,

739, 746
Werner, 173
Wernert, 761
Wernichs, A., 241, 064

: Werthauer, Johannes, 657,

661
Werther, 165, 166, 167.

168, 169, 288, 460
Wesendonk, 289
West, J. P., 417
Westermarck, 133, 138,

139. 188, 189, 194, 198,

758, 760

Whitman, Walt, 749
Wichmann, R., 438
Wicksell, Knut, 264
Widbeck, Lara, 244
Wiedereheim, R., 19, 22,

Wieland, 207, 628, 751
Wienberg, 163, 174
Wiesel, Pauline, 242, 736
Wigand, O., 122, 144
Wigandt, 122
Wilbrandt, Adolf, 525
Wilcken, 189
Wild, A., 411
Wilde, Oscar, 749, 750
Wildenbruch, Ernst von,

525, 747

Wille, Bruno, 268
Willette, 736
Willy, 749
Wilser, L., 268
Wirickelmann, 78, 507, 548
Winkel, F. von, 525
Wirz, Caspar, 523
Withowski, 620
Witmalett, 623
Wolff, 402
Wollenberg, 667
Wollenmann, A. G., 477
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 147,

239
Woltmann, Ludwig, 268,

761
Wolzogen, Ernst von, 13,

525, 747

Wood-Allen, Mary, 684
Worbe, 577

Zeisig, J., 315

Zeiss, Max, 95

Zeissl, M. von, 368

Zenardi, 122

Zeppelin, von, 265

Zero, 713

Ziegler, Ernst, 525

Ziegler, Theobald, 525

Ziehen. Th.,664

Zieler, Gustav, 744

Zimmermann, O., 561

Zimmern, Helen, 239

Zingerle, H., 577

Zinsser, F., 402

Zola, Smile, 176, 523, 685,

706, 745, 748, 749, 758
Zolling, Theophil, 525
Zwaardemaker, 16
Zwcifel. Paul, 358, 366, 367

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

ABORTION, artificial, 706-708
Abstinence, sexual, 113,

255, 448, 671-680
Accentuation of certain
parts of the body by
means of clothing, 139
it aeq.

Accompaniments of coitus,
f physiological, 50, 51
Accommodation, houses of,
*• 344

Act, sexual. See Coitus.
Acts of fornication with
animals. See Bestiality
Adornment : its sexual sig-
Unificance, 133
Advertisements, sexual,

723-728
Esthetics, sexual element

in, 34-36, 200 et seq.
Age of consent, 669
of nubility, 210
in relation to the mani-
festation of sexual
perversions, 469-470
Ages : difference between
nusband and wife. See
Difference between the
ages of husband and
wife

Agoraphobia, 451
Alcohol :

its relations to the
sexual life, 292-296,
377, 667

its relations to prosti-
tution, 336

its relations to impo-
tence, 443, 444
its relations to homo-
sexual acts, 546
its relations to acts of
fornication with chil-
dren, 636

its effects upon the off-
spring, 713, 714
its role in the sexual life
discussed in belle-
tristic literature, 748
Algolagnia, 555-607. See
also Sadism and Maso-
chism
Altar of monogamy, human

sacrifices on the, 244
Amativeness, excessive,
436-437

Ampallang, the, 470
Anaesthesia, sexual, 86, 432-
436, 470. See also Fri-
gidity

Anal masturbators, 546
Angina syphilitica, 360
Animals, acts of fornica-
tion with. See Besti-
ality
" Animierkneipen," 341,

342

Antagonism between capi-
talism and love, 250
Anthropological aspect of

the sexual life, 98
view of psychopathia
sexualis, 453 - 475,
662
Antipathy of the sexes,

Antiseptic washes, 381
Anus : its relations to the

sexual life, 42
Anxiety-neurosis, 702
Aperture-problem, 41, 42
Aperture, sexual. See Re-
productive aperture
Apoplectic stroke in syphi-
lis, 361

Arctic clothing, 139
Armpits, odour of, 623
Ars amandi, 286-290
Arsenic in the treatment of

syphilis, 388
Arson from sexual motives,

577

Art of love, the, 286-290
Art, the sexual, as afford-
ing objects for artistic
representation, 732 et seq.
Artistic emotional element

of love, 169, 170
element, the, in mo-
dern love, 177-183
endowments, sexual
differences in, 76, 77
representation of sex-
ual matters, 732 et
seq.

Asceticism, sexual, 111-118
absolute, 673
relative, 251, 252, 674-

680

Asexuality, 95
Association for the Protec-
tion of Mothers, 267-
278
for sexual reform, 273

778

Auto-erotism, 409-415. See
also Masturbation and
Onanism

Axillary odour, 623

Azoospormia, 442

Babylonian Mylitta-cult,
102, 103

Bachelorhood and inconti-
nence, 236

Balanitis, 376

Baldness, fetichism for, 620

Ballrooms, 342-343

Barmaids and prostitution
(in Germany), 341, 342,
396

Battey's operation, 705-
706

Beard : its small import-
ance as a sexual lure, 24

Beauty and love, 35

Beauty, sense of, a function

of love, 34-36
sexual differences in,

64,65
modern ideas of, 182,

183
masculine, 182-183,550

Belletristic literature, love
in, 741-751

Berkley-horse, the, 573

Bestiality, 426, 643-646
causes of, 644
definition of, 641
sadistic, 645

Biological law of Herbert
Spencer, 55, 56, 64

Bisexuality, 39, 40, 70, 71,
504, 539-541, 549-551

Biting kiss, the. See Kiss,
the biting

Blackmail, 520 et seq.

Blindness due to syphilis,
361

Blood and sexuality, 51

Blood corpuscles, red : their
number in men and wo-
men respectively, 62

Blood - relationship and
marriage, 716

Boards for the care of chil-
dren, 261

Boarding-houses, 344

Bodily injury, sadistic, 574
Body-weight, sexual differ-
ences in, 61, 62

779

Bohemian life, 175, 248

love, 175, 248
Bond, the marriage, and its
results. See Coercive
marriage

Borderland cases, 664
Born prostitute, the, 318,

325-326

Boys, love of, 547
Braguettes, 149
Brain : the distinctive dif-
ferential character-
istic between human
and animal sexu-
ality, 21, 22
sexual differences in,

63,64

Breast fetichism, 620
Breasts. See Mammary

glands

Breeches, wearing of, in re-
lation to masturbation,
426-427

Breeches-flap, 149
Briar-rose morality, 244
Breeding in-and-in, 716
Brothels, 318, 337, 339, 340,

398, 399, 401-403,
614

abolition of, 318, 398,

399, 401-403

and flagellation, 573
Brothel-guides, 727
jargon, 340
slang, 340
streets, 402
Bubo, syphilitic, 359
painful (from soft

chancre), 364

Buggery. See Paederasty,
Indication, and Paxlo-
phila
Buttock fetichism, 622

Cabarets, 343-344

Calcification of the arteries,
361

Capital : its relations to the
sexual life, 250

Capitalism antagonistic to
love, 260

Capryl odours, sexual char-
acters of, 16

Capture, marriage by, 195

Casanova type of seducer,
the, contrasted with the
Don Juan type, 286-
286

Castratio uterina, 705-706

Castration, 441-442

of women. See Ooph-
orectomy

Casuistry, sexual, litera-
ture of, 121 et aeq.

Celibacy, compulsory, 274-

275, 276
Cells, reproductive. See

Reproductive cells
Ceremonial uncleanness,

130
Certificate of health before

marriage, 256
Chance occurrences : their
influence on the sexual
life, 613, 644
Chancre, hard, 356, 359

soft, 356, 364
Chantage, 520 et seq.
Character, education of the,

889

Characteristic pictures of
the married state, 227-
231

Characters, sexual, secon-
dary, 17, 18, 59 et aeq.
Charlatans. See Quackery
Charms, kallipygian. See

Kallipygian charms
Checks, preventive. See
Preventive measures ;
also Malthusian theory
and practice, and Neo-
Malthusiansim
Chemotropism, erotic, 15
Child-prostitution, 638-639
Children :

sexual activity in, 12,

13, 637-639, 668
their protection in
cases in which the
parents are divorced,
219, 220
duties of parents to,

256

rights of, 259
protection of, 261
care for, compulsory,

263
illegitimate, 268 et seq.,

277

child-labour and pros-
titution, 330
and seduction, 636
mortality of, from con-
genital syphilis, 362
masturbation in, 417-

418
sexual suggestibility of,

464

homosexual, 497
danger of whipping,

570

sexual fetichism origi-
nating in, 613 et aeq.
seduction of, 634-637
worthlessness of their

evidence, 669
ago of consent, 669
sexual education of,
681, 691

Children:

co-education of, 690
books read by, 733
Chiromancy, 722, 727
Christianity, sexual mys-
ticism in, 108, 124
characteristics of Chris-
tian asceticism, 115-
116
and misogyny, 482-

483

Circumcision in the prophy-
laxis of venereal disease,
376

Civil marriage, 198, 199
Civilization :

and degeneration, 459
its relations to prosti-
tution, 322-325
its relations to auto-
erotism, 410
its relations to psycho-
pathia sexualis, 455
et seq., 471-475
Clap. See Gonorrhoea
Clitoris, diminution in its
size in the human
female, 22, 23
excitability of, 22, 23
the rudiment of a
primitive penis, 42,
43

Cloaca love, 42
Cloistral life, the, 1 15 et seq.
Clothing, 130-155
arctic, 139

effect of certain fabrics
upon the skin, 149,
150

distinction between an-
cient and modern ,
142

nature of, 140, 141
reform. See Reformed

dress

relation to hairy cover-
ing of the body, 23,
24
sexual differentiation

of, 148, 149
tropical, 139
upper clothing and
under clothing, 142
Clothing fetichism, 627-

629
Clubs, secret sexual, 653,

728

Cocotte, 347
Co-education, 690
Coercive ideas, 451
Coercive marriage, 236, 316,

747
attacked by Eugen

Diihring. 251

growing lioatility

to, 254, 255

780

Coercive marriage, views of
Shelley regard-
ing, 239. 240
morality, 237,

310, 747

Coffee : its deleterious in-
fluence on sexual po-
tency, 444
Coitus, 47 -51 699,700,701,

702

postures during, 51
Coitus interruptus, 702-703
Collectivism and free love,

249-251

" Collier de Venus," 360
Colour, love of, and the
sexual impulse, 51, 135,
137, 615
Colour red. See Red, the

colour
Committee, Scientific and

Humanitarian, the, 521
Communism and free love,

249-251

Concealment of charms as
a sexual stimulus, 138,
139

Conception, prevention of.
See Preventive mea-
sures

relation of its occur-
rence to the men-
strual cycle, 699
Concubinage, 203, 245
Condom, the, 378-379, 704
Condylomata, 360
Conference, National and
International, for the
Suppression of the
Traffic in Girls, 337
International, for the
Prophylaxis of Ve-
nereal Diseases, 373
el seq.

Congenital syphilis, 362
Conjugal rights, 214
Conscience, marriage of.

See Free marriage
Contact, sexual significance

of, 45, 753

Continence. See Absti-
nence

Convalescent homes, 391
Convenience, marriage of,

204
Conventionalism of the age

of chivalry, 164
Conventiality of the pre-
sent day, 472-473
Conventional marriage. See

Coercive marriage
Conventional lies of our
civilization, 203, 204, 236
Coprolagnia, 583, 625-626
Copulation. See Coitus
Coquetry, 129, 568

Corona Ventris, 300
Corpora cavernosa, 46
Correspondence, erotic, 420
treatment by means of,

656

Corset, 143-146
discipline, 574
fetichism, 629
Costume, 151-152
Council of divorce, 263
Country, sexual aberra-
tions in, 468-469, 644-645
Cries daring sexual inter-
course, 51

Criminality and prostitu-
tion, 400-401
Criminologists, 699
Crimino-pedagogues, 669
Crinoline, 147, 148
Cruelty : its relations to
voluptuousness, 51, 559-
567
Cunnilinctus (the act), 529,

621, 624, 626
Cunnilingus, cunnilingi (the

agent), 467

Cures by disgust, 436-437
Custom. See Habituation

Dames de voyage, 468-649.
See also Hommes de voy-
age

Dancing saloons, 342-343
Day-dreams, sexual, 420
Deceased husband's bro-
ther, compulsory mar-
riage of, 196
Defects, bodily, fetichistic

attractive force of, 627
Defloration, religious, 101

et seq.

mania for, 635
Pott Mall Gazette scan-
dals, 655
Degeneration in prostitutes,

328

in consequence of sy-
philis, 361-363
among homosexuals,

492, 493

social causes of, 665
the result of alcohol-
ism, 713-714
the result of syphilis,

714

the result of tubercu-
losis, 715
the result of mental

disorders, 715
the result of diatheses,

715

Degeneration, stigmata of.
See Stigmata of degene-
ration

Degenerative theory of
sexual anomalies, 455,
459, 490, 661-662, 711
Deities, sexual, 100-104
Demand for prostitutes in
large towns does not cor-
respond to the supply,
321 et seq.

Dementia, paralytic, as a
sequel of sy-
philis, 361
as a cause of sex-
ual perversions,
476

senile, 476

Demi-monde, the, 345-348
relations to fashion

(the mode), 153
utilization of hair-
fetichism, by dyeing
the hair, 615 f { <
Depilation as a sexual

stimulus, 620
Decensus tesliculorum, 42
Deutsche Biicherei, 739
Development, inward spiri-
tual, love regarded as,
248
Devil's mistresses, witches

as, 119, 120

Difference between the ages
of husband and wife, 211,
715, 716

Differentiation, sexual, 9-13
its importance to civi-
lization, 14, 57
its relation to phylo-
genetic develop-
ment, 55

nature of human, 64
physical, 53-65
psychical, 67-82
a source of sexual per-
versions, 466, 567
" Dippoldism," 571-573
Disclosuv, partial, of cer-
tain regions of the body,
139 et seq.

Disease and marriage, 215
Diseases, secret, 722
Diseases of women, 367
Disequilibrated, the, 664

et seq.

Disgust, cures by, 436-437
Disharmonies, sexual, 112,

410,411, 696,697
Disinclination to marriage,

213
Disorders, mental. See

Mental disorders
Distance-love, 18, 44, 45
Divorce, 199 et seq., 217-
221, 241, 257-260,
262-264

increase of, in recent
years, 217-218

781

Divorce, care of children

after, 219, 220
repeated, 218, 219
followed by remar-
riage, 242
council of, 263
scandals, 728

Dogs, fomicatory acts with,
- 543^ g4g

Dolls,' fomicatory, 648-649.

See also Oodemiches
Don Juan type of seducer,

the, contrasted with the

Casanova type, 286-289
Double love, 206-208
Douching, vaginal, 704
Duplex sexual morality,

199-200, 244, 248, 249,

673-674

Eccentrics, 664

Economic independence of

women, 251
reform the only way to

the higher love, 50
Education, sexual, 681-692
of the character and

the will, 689
Effeminate turnings, 498-

501

Ejaculation, 46, 47, 48
Emancipation of women,
58, 59, 79 et aeq., 529, 747
Embrace : its relation to

the sexual act, 42
Emissions, seminal, 437-

441

Emotivity of woman, 75, 76
Enfranchisement, heredi-
tary, 462, 463, 711-712
Enlightenment requisite
regarding homosexu-
ality, 523, 524
regarding the sexual
life in general, 684-
691

Ennoblement of our ama-
tory life, 179

Epicureanism, modern, cha-
racterized, 282 et aeq.
Epididymitis, 3G6, 442
Epilepsy :

as a cause of sexual

hypenesthesia, 429
as a cause of sexual

perversions, 476
as a cause of sexual

bestiality, 643
as a cause of sexual
exhibitionism, 649 d
aeq.

Epistolary masochism, 579
sadism, 579
treatment of sexual
perversions, 666

£pongeurs, 625
Equivalents, sexual, 92-94,

409,446
of menstruation, in

men, 499
Erection, 50, 442-443

morning, 443
Erector, Gassen's, 449
Ergophilia, 564-565
Erogenic areas of the skin,

31,46

zone, the eye as an, 31
Erotic element in polite
literature : its justi-
fication, 743-744
distinction from por-
nography, 731-734
genius, the, 289
the masterful, 288
sense of shame, 125-

157, 650
Erotocrat, 679
Erotographomania, 420
Erotomania, 436-437
Erythrocytes : their num-
ber in men and women
respectively, 62
Es-geht-an idea, the, 244
Eaaayeurs, 652
Ether intoxication, 654
Eugenics, 712
Exchange of wives, 194
Exhibitionism, 649-652
neurasthenic, 651
verbal, 578-579
Extirpation of the ovaries.

705-706

Extra-conjugal sexual in-
tercourse, 238, 280-302
Eye, the, as an erogenic

zone, 31

Eyes, the, as objects of
sexual fetichism, 620

Face, the : its sexual re-
lationship to the cloth-
ing, 150, 151

Factory women, condition
of, 330-333

Fallopian tubes, section of,
705

Family, the, 195

Farthingale, 147, 148

Fashion, 133

theory of. 152-154

Fat, deposit of, in men and
women respectively, 62

Father-right. See Patri-
archy

Feeling-tones, sexual, 91

Fellatio, 621. 624,626

Festivals, roligio-erotic, 107

it aeq.

phallic, 135
sexual, 190-191

Fetichism, racial, 614-615
sexual, 541, 609-629
Fetters, sadistic use of, 573,

576

Figures Veneris, 51
Finery, love of, 334
Flagellantism. See Flagel-

lomania
Flagellation. See Flagel-

lomania

Flagellomania, 568-574
Flavouring agents, 626
Flirt, 568. See also Coquetry
Fluor olbus, 146, 425
Foot fetichism, 622
Foot- wooers, 629
Formative impulse, 92
Fornicatory dolls, 648-649.

See also Godemiches
Fornication with animals.

See Bestiality
Fornication with corpses.

See Necrophilia
Freedom, sexual, 301

sense of, in erotic re-
lationships, 182
relations to erotic sss-

theticism, 182
loss of. See Loss of

freedom

Freedom to love, 284, 766
the cause of con-
stancy, and vice
versa, 220, 221
Free love, 198, 233-278, 316.
See also Free
marriage

distinguished from
wild love, 198,
221, 236-238
this distinction re-
cognized by
Shelley, 240
already sanctioned
by States which
permit repeated
divorces by the
same person,
218, 219

in the Isle of Port-
land, 237, 238
from the commun-
istic standpoint,
249,250
and collectivism,

251

compatible with
the preservation
of private pro-
perty, 251
and the economic
independence of
women, 251 et
seq.

Free marriage, 264-266, 361.
See also Free love

782

" Free wife," the, 242
Frenzy, tropical, 566-567
Friendship between men,

548
Frigidity, sexual, 86, 432-

436, 470
FroUeura, 652
Function impulse, 92. 180
Fur, sexually stimulating

influence of, 150
" Venus im Pelz " (Ve-
nus in a fur-coat),
150

Fusion-love, 18
Future of human love, the,
763-766

Gait of effeminate urnings,

499-500

Gallantry, 163-165
" Gamahucheurs," 467
Garbage literature, 737
Gastric disorder in sexual

neurasthenia, 451
Geese, fornicatory acts

with, 644

General paralysis of the in-
sane. See Dementia,
paralytic

Genius, the erotic, 289
Genital fetichiaui, 620-621
Genital organs. See also
r e p r o d u ctive
organs

variations in fe-
male, 23

nerve- terminal ap-
paratus of, 144
concealment of,

137-138

malformation of,
as a cause of
impotence, 441-
442

malformation of,
as a cause of
perversions, 477
odour of, plays a
subord ina te
part in the hu-
man sexual life,
624
Germany, young. See

Young Germany
Gerontophilia, 508, 627
Girl-stabbers, 575
Girls, traffic in, 336-338
Glans penis, hypersesthesia

of, 448
Goats, fornicatory acts

with, 644
Godemichcs, 412
Gonorrhoea, 364-367
Greek love of boys, 547

Grisette, 298
Group-marriage, 193-195
Guide-books for the world

of pleasure, 290 et seq.
Guides, brothel, 727
Gynecocracy, 59
Gymnastics, 689-690
Gumma, 361

Habit. See Habituation
Habituation in love :
its dangers, 209
its significance in the
genesis of sexual per-
versions, 456, 650,
662

" Half-world," the, 345-348
its relations to fashion

(the mode), 153
its utilization of hair-
fetichism, by dyeing
the hair, 615

Hair, falling out of, in con-
sequence of syphilis,
360

luxuriant growth in
homosexual men,
499

fetichism, 614-620
human, gradual loss of,

23, 24

Hair-stealers. See Plait-
cutters
Half-clothing (retrousse),

139 et seq.

Hand fetichism, 622
Handbills, 727
Handbooks for the world

of pleasure, 290 et seq.
Handkerchief fetichism,

629

Hanging, voluptuous ex-
citement in connexion
with, 582
" Happiness in marriage,"

700

Hard chancre, 356, 359
Hashish intoxication, 654
Hawkers' literature, 737
Head, sexual differences in,

62, 63

Health, certificate of, be-
fore marriage, 256
" Health and Disease in re-
. lation to Marriage and
the Married State "(Sena-
tor-Kaminer's work re-
ferred to), 215
Hearing in relation to the

vita sexualia, 35, 36
Heel fetichism, 629
Hellenic love of boys, 547
Hemispheres, testicular, 92
Henpecked husband, 567

Hereditary enfranchise-
ment. 462, 463, 711-712
Ilormaphroditism, 551-554
vestiges of, in normal
human beings, 11,
12, 39, 40

primeval history of, 59

philosophical idea of, 70

Hermaphrodite fetichism,

621-622

Herpes progcnitalis, 705
Hetairism, 346
Heterogamy, 712
Heterosexuality, 12, 14
Heterosexual predication,

653-654

Hierodules, 105
Homines de voyage, 648-649
Homogamy, 712
Homosexuality, 487-535
homosexual tattooing,

136

venereal diseases in the

homosexual, 368-369

meeting - places of

homosexuals, 514 et

seq.

balls and other enter-
tainments among
homosexuals, 517-
519

need for the enlighten-
ment of the general
public regarding,
523, 524

riddle of, 487-535
theory of, 530-535
temporary, 547
in belletristic litera-
ture, 749

Homosexuals (male), effe-
minate, 498-501
virile, 501

Homosexual physicians,492
Hormone, 414, 533. See

also Sexual toxins
Horses, fornicatory acts

with, 644

Household duties, simplifi-
cation of, 82
Houses of accommodation,

344

Housing ^conditions, im-
proper, in relation to
prostitution, 335-336
Human sacrifices on the
altar of monogamy, 244
Humanity, ideal type of,

56,57
Humorous aspect of the

sexual life, 732 et seq.
Husband, henpecked. See

Henpecked husband
Hutchinson's teeth, 365
Hygiene, reproductive, 711
sexual, 709-718

783

Hymen, significance and i

function of, 12
Hyperaesthesia, 429 - 432,

477

Hypnosis, 655-656
Hypochondria, sexual, 451

Ideal type of humanity, 56>

57
Idealization of the senses,

161-162
of parts of the body,

612
of bodily functions,

624, 625

Ideas, coercive, 451
Illegitimate children : their

maintenance, 275, 276
Illusion, erotic, need for,

181
Imitation in the vita sexu-

alis, 465
Immissio penis in anum.

See Predication
Immoral advertisements,

723-728

Immunity to disease, ac-
quired racial, 356
Impotence, 441-451
functional, 443
nervous, 444, 447
paralytic, 447
senile, 448-449
temporary, 445-446
treatment of, 449-451
Impulse, formative, repro-
ductive, sexual, etc. See
Formative impulse, Re
productive impulse, Sex-
ual impulse, etc.
Impulse, reproductive, 96
In-and-in breeding, 716
Incest, 639-640
Incontinence, bachelorhood

and, 230
Independence of women

economic, 251
Individual, importance o:
love to, 3, 4, 28, 29, 96
253. 254
Individualization of love

95, 96, 124, 159-176
Indolent bubo, 359
Inefficiency, psychopathic

664
Infantilism, peychosexual

432

Infection, venereal, 298
299, 353, 358, 359. 804
374-383

Inflammatory bubo, 364
Inheritance of diseases, 71!

of syphilis, 362
Injury, sadistic bodily, 574

Insanity. See Mental dis-
orders

[nsanity, moral, 665
[nstinct, sexual. See Sexual

impulse

Instrumentarium, auto-
erotic, 411-413
Insurance of motherhood,

269, 271
Intellect, in man and wo-
man respectively, 73-75
Intellectual activity and

potency, 446
and sexual absti-
nence, 679-680
Intercourse, sexual. See

Coitus
Intermediate stages, sexual,

499 531
" Intimacy," the, 296-302
a great focus of vene-
real infection, 299
Inunction for the prophy-
laxis of venereal in-
fection, 380-381
as a perverse sexual

manifestation, 579
Iodide of potassium in
the treatment of syphilis,
387

Iritis, syphilitic, 361
Irritable hunger, sexual,

463
" Island custom," the, of

Portland, 237, 238
Itching, tickling, and sexual
sensibility, 43, 44

Junorcs, 541-544
Jus primce noctis, religious,
102

Kaften, 337

Kallipygian charms, 146,

147, 570, 622
Kleptomania, 577, 643
Knickerbockers, wearing of,
in relation to masturba-
tion, 426-427
Krankenkassen, 390-391
Kin, near, marriage of, 716
Kiss, erotic significance of,

31 32
the biting, 32, 33, 42,

50
origin of, 32, 33

Lactation period, its arti
tk-ial prolongation in
order to prevent concep-
tion, 700-702

Lady's friend, 704
Larynx, sexual differences

in, 62

Late syphilis, 363
Lathering, 579
Law, Spencer's. See Spen-
cer's law
Lawyers : their inclination

to masochism, 580
Lending of wives, 194
Lesbian love. See Tri-

badism
Letter. See Condom ; also

Correspondence
Leucorrhoea (fluor albus),

146, 425
Leucoderma syphiliticum,

360

Leviratsehe, 196
Levitical law : marriage of
deceased husband's bro-
ther in accordance with,
196

Liaison. See " Intimacy "
Liberty. See Freedom
Libido -problem, 43-47
Lie of marriage, the, 203,

204
Lies, conventional. See

Conventional lies
Life, sensual, the. See Sen-
sual life

Lingam, the, 101
Lips, their relation to the

genital organs, 33
Literature, belletristic, love

in, 741-751

polite, love in, 741-751
scientific, of the sexual

life, 753-761
Locomotor ataxy. See

Tabes
Loss of freedom consequent

on legal marriage, 217
Love, a part of the general
science of mankind,
ix
significance and aims

of, 3, 91,92
origin of, 27, 28
purposes of the indi-
vidual and of the
species in relation to,
3,4

developmental possi-
bilities cf, 5, 6
elementary pheno-
mena of, 10, 18
secondary phenomena
of (brain and senses),
21-35, 37-51
appearance of spiritual
elements in, 25, 27,

significance of sensory
stimuli in, 29-35

784

Love (continued), beauty

and love. 35, 36
significance of person-
ality in relation
thereto, 82, 95, 173,

174, 182, 183, 766
individualization of,

95, 96, 124, 159-
176

romantic, 162, 168-171
platonic, 162, 550
nature sense, the, and,

165-167

sentimental, 166, 167
Weltechmerz and, 167

et seq.

classical, 170-172
self-analysis in, 174-

175

satanic - diabolic ele-
ment in, 175, 289
artistic element in, 170,

175, 177-183
simultaneous for two

or more persons
(double love), 206-
208
wild, 279-302, 476

Love in belletristic litera-
ture, 741-751

Love, Bohemian, 175, 248

Love and capitalism, mutu-
ally antagonistic, 250

" Love's coming of age,"
249

Love's choice. See Sexual
selection

Love as a disease (eroto-
mania), 436-437

Love, free, 175, 233-278

Love, free, in belletristic
literature, 745, 746

Love and marriage, 216,
217

" Love and marriage," by
Ellen Key, 253-267

Love of boys, 547-549

Love of finery, 334

Love regarded as inward
spiritual development,
248

Lues venerea. See Syphilis

Lust-murder, 574-575

Lynch law, sadism and, 563

Magazines. See Periodicals
Magical power of sex, 78
Maidservants, as recruits
to the ranks of pros-
titution, 315, 316,
317, 333,-334
as seducers of children
to sexual malprac-
tices, 634

Maintenance of " illegiti-
mate " children, 275, 276
Maisons de passe, 344
Malposition of the uterus,

artificial, 705
Malthusian theory and

practice, 693-708
Mammary glands, human :
reduction in their

number, 22
atrophy of, 145-146,

715

condition in homo-
sexual males, 500-
501
sucking of, by men,

700-701
Mammonism, 213, 718

annihilates the sense
of sexual responsi-
bility, 718

influence of, in the
sexual life. See Mer-
cenary marriage
Mariolatry, 110, 111
Marriage, 185-231, 239 et

seq,, 272-273
average age at, 211-

212
coercive. See Coercive

marriage

disinclination to, 213
" morganatic," 203
premature, 210 et seq.
the lie of, 203, 204
Marriage bond, the, and its
results. See Coercive
marriage

Marriage by capture, 195
Marriage of conscience. See

Free marriage
Marriage and disease, 215
Marriage impulse, the, 213
Marriage of near kin, 716
Marriage prohibitions, 712-

713
Marriage reform :

author's views, 264 et

seq., 301, 302 -uf
Edward Carpenter on,

252
Ellen Key's proposals,

260-264
in Austria, 231
in France, 219-221
in various countries,

248, 249

Marriage reform unattain-
able without preliminary
economic reforms, 250
Marriages of convenience,

204
Marriages, one hundred

typical, 221-227
Married state, character-
istic pictures of, 227-231

Masochism, 580-607

biological sources of,

51, 537 et seq.
religious, 103
of the days of chivalry,

164

relations to prostitu-
tion, 322-325
epistolary, 579
in art, 583
in women, 586-587
in belletristic litera-
ture, 750

Mass, the black, 579
Masculine beauty, 182-183,

550

Massage, 344, 569
Massage-institutes, 344-345
Masseuses, 582
Masterful erotic, the, 288
Masturbation (see also On-

anism), 410-428
a cause of sexual anaes-
thesia, 86, 433
psychical, 419-420
distinguished from
onanism (Onanis-
mus), 422
a cause of sexual hyper-

eesthesia, 429
a cause of exhibition-
ism, 650

Masturbator's heart, 424
Masturbators, anal, 546
Masturbatory insanity, 425
Matriarchy, 189, 196, 197-

198

Means for the prevention of
conception. See Pre-
ventive measures
Medical facts and prob-
lems from a theological
point of view (pastoral
medicine), 121
Member-problem, 42, 43
Memory, weakness of, in

syphilis, 630

Men, emancipation of, 485
friendship between,

548

Men-women, 545
Mental disorders :

as a sequel of mastur-
bation, 424, 425
as a cause of sexual

hypersesthesia, 429
as a cause of sexual
perversions, 475-476
as a cause of degenera-
tion, 715
Menstrual equivalents in

men, 499
Menstruation, 26, 27, 77,

425, 451, 667

Mercenary marriages, 195,
212-213, 718

785

Mercury the specific for
syphilis, 368-388

Metamarpliosis scxualis
paranoica, 544

Mica-operation, the, 696-
697

Mind, diseases of. See
Mental disorders

Minne, 163, 164

Misogyny, 117, 118, 165,
264, 479-486, 745

Mistresses of the devil, 119,
120

Mistress rule, 567, 568

Monandry, 201

Monasticism, 115 et seq.

Monism, erotic, 4, 254

Monogamic marriage, 196
et seq., 256

Monogamic society, George
Meredith on, 202

Monogamy, human sacri-
fices on the altar of, 244

Montgdj&re, 147, 148

Moonshiue-reverie, 169

Morality, offences against,
477, 689-670

Moral insanity, 665

Moral restraint (as advo-
cated by Malthus), 696

Moral statistics, 690

Morality.coercive marriage.
See Coercive mar-
riage morality,
sexual, duplex. See
Duplex sexual mor-
ality

" Morganatic " marriages,
203

Morning erection, 443

Morphinism and impotence,
654

Motherhood, insurance of,

269, 271
right to, 256, 257

Mother-right. See Matri-
archy

Mothers, Association for
the Protection of, 267-
278

Movements and gait of
effeminate urnings, 499-
500

Muiracithin, 451

Mujerados, 426, 544-545

Murders by poison, 575

Muse latrinale, the, 625

Music in relation to the vita
sexiialis, 35, 36

Music-halls, 343-344

Muscular system, sexual
differences in. 62

Mylitta-cult of the Baby-
lonians. 103

Mysticism, sexual, 107 d
teq., 123-124, 733

Nakedness : its relations
to the sense of shame,
130 et seq., 154-157
Nationality in relation to
sexual anomalies, 468-
469

Nature-sense, the, in re-
lation to love, 166
Nautch, the, 105, 106
Nautch-girls, 105, 106
Necrophilia, 646-647

symbolic, 647
Need for enlightenment, re-
garding homo-
sexuality, 523-
524

regarding the sex-
ual life in gen-
eral, 684-691
Need for sexual variety.

See Variety, sexual
Negroes, 614
Neo-malthtisianism, 693-

708

Neurasthenia, masturba-
tion and, 417
as a phenomenon of

adaptation, 460
and homosexuality,

490,492

of young wives, 451
sexual, 428-451
Neuro-chemical theory of

sexual tension, 414
Neuro-mechanical theory of

sexual tension, 414
Neuroses, sexual : their

cause, 47

Newspapers. See .Periodi-
cals
Nocturnal life of great

towns, 284, 292
Nose, the, in relation to

genital system, 16
Nostrums, sexual, 722
Nubility, age of, 210
Nudity. See Nakedness
Nutritive impulse, the, and

sexuality, 32, 33, 34
Nymphomania, 429

Object fetichism, 627 et seq.
Obscene tattooing. 135-136

words and phrases, 578
Obscenity, 794 et seq.
Obsession. See Ideas, co-
ercive

Occlusive pessary, 703
Odour. See also Smell

axillary, 623

Offouces against morality,
477, 659-070

Offences against property
from sadistic motives,
576-577

Olfactory kiss. See Smell-
kiss
Onanie and Onanismus,

422

Onanism. See also Mastur-
bation .

a cause of sexual an-
aesthesia, 86, 433
a cause of sexual ex-
hibitionism,
psychical, 419-420
Onanismus, 422
Oophorectomy, 705-706
Opium intoxication, 654
Opium-smoking and im-
potence, 654

Opportunity and its influ-
ence in the sexual mis-
leading of children, 633
et seq.

Opportunity, lack of, for
normal inter-
course, leading
to pseudo-homo-
sexuality, 54
leading to besti-
ality, 644

Opportunity for bestial in-
tercourse more frequent
in the country than in
towns, 644

Opportunity, first, and first
contact, their avoidance
the prime rule of sexual
pedagogy, 690
Organs, genital. See Re-
productive organs
reproductive. See Re-
productive organs
Organs of sexual congress.
See Reproductive organs.
Orgasm, sexual, 49, 50
Ornament, pubic, 137,

138

Orthobiosis, 461
Outlook, the, 763-766
Ovariotomy. See Oophor-
ectomy

Overcrowded dwellings and
prostitution, 335-336

Paederasty, 509, 547
definition of, 641

Paxlioation, 477, 509
definition of, 500
heterosexual, 653-G54

Paedophilia, 508, 633

Pagisin, 582

Pain, relation of, to the
voluptuous sensation,
43-44, 415, 557-500.
See also Algolagnia

786

Pain, relief of, by mastur-
bation, 415-416
Palaeolithic man : his erotic

life, 25, 26, 134
Pull Mall Gazette scandals,

635
Partial disclosure (re-

troiuse), 139 et scq.
Paralytic dementia. See

Dementia, paralytic
Parasyphilitic diseases, 361
Pastoral medicine, 121
Patriarchy, 194, 196
Pedagogy, sexual. See

Education, sexual
Pederastia. See Paederasty
Pelvis, sexual differences

in, 60

Penal laws against homo-
sexual intercourse, 520-
525

Penis : free mobility of this
organ in the genus
homo, 42
artificial, 101-102, 412-

413
malformations of, 441,

442
abnormal smallness of,

442

fetichism, 620-621
Penis-bone, 42
" Pensionate," 344
Perfumes, erotic, 17
Periodicals (newspapers,
magazines, and reviews)
devoted to the study of
the sexual life, 760-761
Periodicity, sexual, 26, 27,

55, 56
Perversions, sexual :

masturbation as a

cause of, 425-426
in relation to impo-
tence, 445
acquirement and arti-
ficial production of,
465

congenital, 466
racial diffusion of, 466-

468

due to disease, 475-477
the riddle of homo-
sexuality, 487-535
pseudo-homosexuality,

537-554

algolagnia (sadism and

masochism), 555-607

sexual fetichism, 609-

629

fornication with chil-
dren, incest, necro-
philia, bestiality, ex-
hibitionism, etc.,
631-654
treatment of, 655-657

Perversions, sexual, in bel-
letristic literature, 748-
750

Perversity, sexual, charac-
terization of modern, 474-
475

Pessary, occlusive, 703

Pessimism in love, 176
pleasurable, 561

Phallus, the, cult of (Phal-
lus f-tichism), 101, 620-
621. See also Penis, ar-
tificial

Philosophy, sexual. See
Sexual philosophy

Phirnosis, 477

Photographs, obscene, 731

Physicians, homosexual,
492

Physiological accompani-
ments. See Accompani-
ments, physiological

Pictures of the married
state, characteristic, 227-
231

Pigtail-cutters. See Plait-
cutters

Plait-cutters, 616-619

Platonism, 162

Poietic, definition of, 93

Poisoning, 575

Polite literature, love in,
741-751

Pollutions, the term de-
fined, 437. See also Se-
minal emissions

Polyandry, 193, 194

Polyclinics for prostitutes,

313,404

for venereal patients in
general, 391

Polygamy,196, 244, 245, 716
facultative, 196

Polygyny, 196, 254-255.
See also Polygamy

Population, problem of, 695
et «eq.

Popular culture, 739

Pornography, 312, 729-739

" Portland custom," 237,
238

Postures during coitus
(figurce Veneris), 51

Posture, upright, in rela-
tion to the sexual life, 34,
51

Powders lethal to the
spermatozoa, 704, 705

Pox. See Syphilis

Pregnancy, prevention of.
See Preventive measures

Prelibido, 46

Premature marriage. See
Marriage

Prematurity, sexual, 285,
417-418, 637-638, 668

Pre-Raphaelites, English :
their preference for the
infantile asexual
physique, 182
their ideas on love and

marriage, 240
Preventive measures

(means for the preven-
tion of pregnancy), 696-
706

Priapism, 429-430, 447
Priests : their sexual pre-
scriptive rights, 102 et
seq.
Primary sexual phenomena,

Primitive man. See Palaeo-
lithic man
Prisons, homosexual acts

in, 546

Procreation, spiritual, 252
Prohibition of marriage,

reasons for, 712-713
Promiscuity, sexual, 188-

197, 257

Promiscuity, sexual, dis-
tinction of free love from,

198, 221, 236-238, 240
Procurement, 336
Problem of population, 695

et seq.

Property, offences against,
from sadistic motives,
576-577

Prophylaxis, treatment,
and suppression of vene-
real diseases, 371-406
Prophylaxis of venereal in-
fection, personal, 375-
383

Prostatorrhoaa, 425, 439
Prostitute-quarters, 402
Prostitutes, congenital, 318,
325-326. See also
" Half- world "
humanization and en-
noblement of, 404-
406

international, 348
" late," 294
mental and physical
characters of, 325-
329

in belletristic litera-
ture, 747-748
pseudo-homosexuality

of, 646-547
Prostitution, 201-202, 237,

303-348, 395-402
causes of, 314-315, 318,
322, 329-339, 434-
435

crime and, 400-401
definition of, 319-321
growing hostility to,
254, 255

787

Prostitution, history and
literature of, 307-319
" Kasernierung " of
(prostitute - quar-
ters), 402

male, 313-314, 518-519
masochistic, 582-583
regulation of, 309, 318,

319

religious, 100-106, 321
public, 339 et seq.
secret, 317, 340 et seq.
supply and demand,

321 et seq.

Protection of mothers, as-
sociation for, 267-278
" Protectrices," 529
Prudery, 155-157
Pseudo-Don Juan, 290
Pseudo-hermaphroditism,

552-554
Pseudo-homosexuality, 426,

489, 496, 537-554
Psoriasis syphilitica, 360
Psychical elements in love,
Chapters VI., VTL, and
VIII., pp. 94-176
Psychical onanism, 419-

420

Psychopathia sexualis, 489
et aeq. See also Perver-
sions and Perversities
Psychopathic inefficiency,

664
Psycho-therapeutics, 427-

428, 450, 655-657
Puberty, 414, 497, 667
Pubic ornament. See Orna-
ment, pubic

Public-houses with women
attendants (" Animier-
kneipen"), 341-342
Public relationships of the

sexual life, 719-728
Punishment - rooms, 681-

582

Purchase, marriage by, 195
Pygmalionism, 648
Pyromania, 577

Q
Quackery, sexual, 721-722,

727
Queue. See Plait

Race : its significance in
relation to sexual ano-
malies, 468, 469
Racial fetichism, 614-615
Rape (B Marriage by cap-
ture), 195
(= Violation), 707
Rational dress. See Re-
formed dress

Red, the colour, in relation

to sexuality, 51
to " see red," 51
Red-hair fetichism, 615,

622, 623
Reflective love, 174, 446,

750

Reform, economic, prerequi-
site to marriage reform,
250
Reform of marriage. See

Marriage reform
Reform of our amatory life,

179

Reform, Sexual, Associa-
tion for, 273
Reformed dress, 154
Regeneration, 462, 463,
711-712. See also En-
franchisement, hereditary
" Regiment of Women," 59
Regulated prostitution, ab-
olition of, 318, 398, 399,
400, 401-403
Regulation of prostitution,

309, 318, 397-401
Relationships, sexual, need
for variety in, 133, 192,
205, 463 et seq.
Religion and sexuality, 87-

124

Religious imagination, the,
straying in sexual by-
paths, 120
Remarriage subsequent to

divorce, 242
Remedies, secret, 722
Renifleurs, 467, 625
Reproduction, sexuaL See

Sexual reproduction
Reproductive aperture, 41,

42
Reproductive cells :

conjugation of, 9, 10
differences in respect
of mode of energy in
two sexes, 71, 72
representative of re-
spective spiritual
natures of man and
woman, 72

Reproductive hygiene, 711
Reproductive impulse, 96
Reproductive organs :

aperture-problem, 41,

42
member-problem, 42,

libido-problem, 43-47
origin and purpose, 39-

differentiation, 39, 40
Responsibility, conjugal,

220

sense of, in free unions,
239

Responsibility, sexual, 220

239, 274, 765
diminished (in border-
land states of mental
disorder), 664, 666-
668

annihilated by mam-
monism, 718

Retifism (shoe fetichism),
627 et seq.

Retrogressive development
of sexual characters, 22-
25

Retrousse, 139 et seq.

Revaluation Society (" Um-
wertungsgesellschaft " —
for the reform of amatory
life) of the U.S.A., 272 et
seq.

Reviews. See Periodicals

Revolutionary movements,
part played by algolagnia
in connexion therewith,
563, 587-607

Rhythmotropism, 179

Riddle of homosexuality,
the, 487-535

Rights, conjugal. See Con-
jugal rights

Right to motherhood, 256,
257, 275

" Rings, stimulating," 467,
704

Romantic-individual love,
162

Romantic love, 168-171

Roseola syphilitica, 360

" Rummel," 344

Sacrifice, sexual, 103
Sacrifices, human, on the
altar of monogamy, 244
Saddle-nose, syphilitic, 361
Sadism, 568-580

biological sources of,

50,51,537 et seq.
in belletristic litera-
ture, 750

religious, 103, 579-680
symbolic, 577-580
verbal, 51,578
Sadistic bodily injury, 574-

576

bestiality, 644-645
Saloons, dancing. See

Dancing saloons
Sapphism, 529
Satanism, 175, 289, 563,

579, 733
Satyriasis, 429
Scandals, Poll Moll Gazette,

635

sexual. 721, 728
Seen to, erotic. 17

CO— 2

788

Schoolmaster's sadism, 571-

573

Scientific literature of the
sexual life, the, 753
761

Secondary sexual charac-
ters, 18, 59 ei aeq,
Secondary sexual pheno-
mena, 18
Section of the Fallopian

tubes, 705
Secret diseases, 722
Secret remedies, 722
Sects, sexual religious, 107-

111, 114, 114-115
Security sponges, 704
Seducer types, 286-290
Seduction, 264. 281-302,

416
definition of the term,

281

" Seeing red," 61
Selection, natural. See

Natural selection
sexual. See Sexual se-
lection

Self-abuse. See Masturba-
tion and also Onanism
Self-control, sexual, 252,

675-677

Seminal emissions, 437-441
Sensations, sexual differ-
ences in, 73
Sense of shame, sexual, 125-

157, 650
Sense, sexual. See Sexual

sense

Sensibility, sexual, in wo-
man, 83-86
Sensory stimuli, erotic, 29-

36
Sensual life, the, 281-286,

290-297
Sensuality, spiritualized,

253

Sentimentality, 166
Sex : its significance in the
etiology of psycho-
pathia sexualis, 470-
471

third, the, 13
fourth, the, 481
Sexual abstinence. See Ab-
stinence, sexual
Sexual act. See Coitus
Sexual advertisements, 723-

728

Sexual anaesthesia. See An-
aesthesia, sexual
Sexual anomalies. See
Perversions, and also
Perversity |

Sexual antipathy. See An-
tipathy of the sexes
Sexual aperture. See Re-
productive aperture

Sexual biology, 759
Sexual chemistry, literature

of, 121 et seq.
Sexual cells, 43
Sexual characters, secon-
dary. See Secondary
sexual characters
Sexual clubs, secret, 653
Sexual desire, 46
Sexual day-dreams, 420
Sexual differentiation. See
Differentiation, sexual
(and see also under sepa-
rate organs)

Sexual education, 691-692
Sexual enlightenment, need

for general, 684-691
Sexual equivalents. See

Equivalents, sexual
Sexual fetichism, 541, 609-

629

Sexual freedom, 301
Sexual gratification, 46
Sexual hygiene, 709-718
Sexual hyperaesthesia, 429
Sexual impulse, 45, 46

its increase by
natural selec-
tion, 14

its relations to
civilization, 14,
15

periodicity of, 26
components of, 46
Sexual intercourse. See

Coitus
Sexual intermediate stages,

499, 531
Sexual irritable hunger, 463
Sexual life, the, in its public

relationships, 719-728
Sexual links, 499, 531
Sexual literature :

belletristic, 741-751
pornographic, 729-739
scientific, 753-761
Sexual morality, duplex.
See Duplex sexual mor-
ality
Sexual mysticism. See

Mysticism, sexual
Sexual nostrums, 722
Sexual organs. See Repro-
ductive organs
Sexual orgasm. See Or-
gasm, sexual
Sexual perversions. See

Perversions, sexual
Sexual philosophy, 94, 95
Sexual prematurity, 285,

417-418, 637-638, 668
Sexual promiscuity. See
Promiscuity, sexual ; also
Wild love, and Extra-
conjugal sexual inter-
course

Sexual quackery. See
Quackery, sexual

Sexual Reform, Association
for, 273

Sexual reproduction, 10, 11

Sexual responsibility, 274

Sexual scandals, 721- 728

Sexual science, literature
of. 753-761

Sexual selection, 35-36, 712

Sexual sense, 43

Sexual sense of shame, 125-
157, 650

Sexual sensibility in wo-
man, 83-86

Sexual sphere. See Sphere,
sexual

Sexual tension. See Ten-
sion, sexual ; and also
Prolibido

Sexual toxins, 47, 414, 532-
533

Sexual variety. See Variety,
sexual

Sexual vampirism. See
Vampirism

Sexual visions, 115

Sexuality and religion, 87-
124

Shame, sense of, sexual,
125-157, 650

Shoe fetichism, 627-629

Shunammitism, 633

Sight in relation to the vita
sexualis, 34, 35

Silver salts in the prophy-
laxis of gonorrhoea, 379-
380

Simplification of household
tastes, 82

Simultaneous love for two
or more persons, 206

Skatological fetichism, 625

Skatology in folklore, 625

Skin, the, its relations to
sexuality, 30, 31, 43, 44,
45

Skull, sexual difference in,
63

Slave of love, the, 163

Slave-trade, the white, 336-

338

Slavery, sexual (masochis-
tic), 163, 568, 582-585
Smell, atrophy of organs of,

connexion between the
nose and the genital
organs, 16

erotic significance of
smell declines with
advancing civiliza-
tion, 17

fetichism, 622-626
of the body at large,
623, 624

789

S:uell of the genital organs,

624

of fur, 150
odoriferous ' glands,

sexual, 16
sexual odours, distinc-
tive, 16
sexual perfumes, 17

626

relation of hairy cover-
ing to sense of, 24,
615, 622-623
sense of, the psychical
elementary pheno-
menon of love, 1 •"
Smell-kiss, the, 33
Social intercourse, the erotic

element in, 181
Socialism and free love,

249-251
Society for the Suppression
of Venereal Diseases,
German, 374
" Sodomie ": German use
of this term denned and
explained, 640, 641
Sodomy. See Paederasty,
Psedi cation, and PJB-
dophilia
definition of the term,

641

Soft chancre, 356, 364
Soldiers, homosexual, 501
public-houses for ura-

nian soldiers, 518
Sore throat, syphilitic, 360
Soutenage, 400
Spasm, vaginal See Va-

ginismus
Spaying, 706
Speech : its relations to

love, 90

Spencer's law, 55, 56, 64
Spermatorrhoea, 425, 439
Spermatozoa, 9, 10, 71, 72,

554, 705
Sphere, sexual, in women,

Spirit, the way of, in love,
Chapters VI., VII., and
VII t, pr>. 94-176
Spiritual development, in-
ward, love regarded as,
248

Spiritual procreation, 252
Spiritualized sensuality, 253
Spirochaete pallida, 357
Sponges, security, 704
Stages, sexual, interme-
diate, 499, 531
" Stallions," 313
Statues, fornicatory acte

with, 647-649
Stature, sexual differences

in. 61
Stays. See Comet

Stercoraires platoniques, 653
Sterility, in women, 146,

365

in men, 365, 442
artificial, 705 et seq.
See also Preventive
measures
facultative, 699
Stigmata of degeneration,

455, 664-665

" Stimulating rings " and
similar apparatus, 467,
704

Stimuli, sensory. See Sen-
sory stimuli

Street-arabs, Parisian, ef-
feminate, 601
Street-prostitution, 339
Stroke, apoplectic, in sy-
philis, 361
Succubi, 119, 120
Suggestibility, compara-
tive, of men and women,
74

Suggestion : its significance
in the vita sexualis, 416,
465, 655-656
Suicide, 727

Sulphur - baths in the
" after - treatment " of
syphilis, 387-388
Superstition, sexual, 103,

633, 643, 650

Supply of prostitutes in
large towns in excess
of the demand, 321 et
seq.

Sweets, fondness for, in re-
lation to sexuality, 34
Swindlers, 728
Syphilis, as a cause of
sexual perversions,
476

congenital, 362
hereditaria tarda, 363
in apes, 357
in belletristic litera-
ture, 748
innocentium, 353
late, 363
origin of, 351-356
protozoal cause of,

357

treatment, 383-388
Syphilitic psoriasis, 360
Synsesthetic stimuli, 464
Synthetic human being, 71

Tabes as a sequel of syphi-
lis. 361. 476

Talent, the breeding of, 716-
717

Taste in relation to the vita
texualit, 33, 34

Tattooing, from erotic mo-
tives, 133-137
forensic significance of,

665, 666
Teeth, the, in congenital

syphilis, 365
Temple prostitution, 104,

105
Temporary marriage, 241,

242
Tension, sexual, 46, 48, 414,

679. See also Prelibido
Tension, sexual, relief of,

47
Testicles, in relation to the

brain, 92
Tetragamy Schopenhauer's

essay on, 246-248
Theatres, variety, 343-344
" Theologiens mammil-

laires," 122
"Third sex." See Sex,

third, the
Throat, sore. See Sore

throat

Tickling and sexual sensi-
bility, 43, 44, 45
Tight-lacing, results of, 157,

158

" Tingel-tangel," 343-344
Tobacco : its use an occa-
sional cause of impotence,

444
Tom-cat, fornicatory act

with, 645

Torture chambers, 581-582
Totem, 193, 194
Touch. See also Contact
sexual importance of,

30-33, 45
Town-life in relation to

prostitution, 321
Toxins, sexual, 47, 414,

532-533
Trade in articles of immoral

use, 722
Trade, the white slave, 336-

338

Traders in girls, 337
Traffic in girls, 336-338
Tress-cutters. See Plait-

cutters

Trials, scandalous, 728
Tribadism, 489, 524-530

definition of, 641
Tropical clothing, 139
Tropical frenzy, 566-567
Trousers, wearing of, in re

lat inn to masturbation,

426-427
Tuberculosis : its relation

to the sexual life, 476
Type, ideal, of humanity ,

56, 57

Typical marriages, one hun-
dred, 221-227

790

Ugliness, sexual passion
and, 183

Uncleanliness, ceremonial,
130

Underclothing fetichism,
629

Unto myatica, 109-110

Union, free. See Free love
and Free marriage

Uranism, 489

Unninde, 525

Urning, 498

Urnings' balls, 518 et seq.

Urolagnia, 583, 625-626

Urinary organs : their re-
lation to the reproductive
organs, 41, 42

Vaginal douching, 704
Vaginal muscles, 433
Vaginal spasm. See Vagi-

nismus

Vaginismus, 433, 434
Vampirism, 575, 640
Vaporization, 705
Variability, sexual, 56, 64,

Variety, sexual, need for,
133, 192, 205, 463 et seq.
Variety theatres, 343-344
Venereal diseases, 306-307,

349-370
prophylaxis of,

371-383
treatment of, 383-

392
statistics of, 392-

396

Venereal ulcer, 356, 364
" Venus apparatus," the

705

" Venus im Pelz," 150
Venus statuaria, 647-648
Vera-enthusiasm, 673
Verbal sadism. See Sadism,

verbal

Vertugale, 147, 148
Vestige of primitive civili-
zation, mercenary mar-
riage a, 212

Violation, 707

Virginity, disesteem for,
in primitive races, 104,
191

Virile urnings, 501

Visions, sexual, 115

Vitalizing influence of ero-
ticism, 182

Vitriol-throwing, 575

Vocabularia erotica, 578

Voice, the : its sexual sig-
nificance, 35-36
of urnings, 500

Voice fetichism, 627

Voluptuousness, 43-45

Voyeurs, 652-653

Voyeuset, 652-653

Washes, antiseptic, 381
Way of the spirit in love,
dhapters VI., VII., and
VIIL, pp. 94-176
Weak-mindedness of wo-
men, physiological, 40
Weight of body. See Body-
weight

Weltschmerz, erotic, the
different varieties of , 167-
168, 561

Whipping of children, dan-
gers of, 570
Whites, the. See Fluor

albus
White slave trade, the, 336-

338

" Wife, the free," 242
Wife-lending and wife-ex-
change, 194
Wig-collectors, 616
Wild love, 281-302

distinguished from

free love, 198,

221, 236 - 238,

281

Will, education of the, 655-

657, 680, 689-691
diseases of the, 423,

655

Witchcraft, sexual element
in belief therein, 118-121,
483

Woman, hair of, 24

demeanour during coi-
tus, 49, 50

primitive character and
comparative simpli-
city of feminine na-
ture, 66
greater suggestibility

of, 74

emotivity of, 75, 76
magical and mysterious

nature of, 78. 119
sexual sensibility in,

83-86

tattooing of, 136-137
change of type with
progressive civiliza-
tion, 157 et seq.
types of beauty, mo-
dern, 181-183
masturbation in, 418
nymphomania in, 429-

432

frigidity in, 433-435
pollutions in, 439-

440
sexual neurasthenia in,

451

flagellantism in, 573
masochism in, 586
poisoning by, 575
bestiality in, 645
power of resistance to

degeneration, 717
" Woman and Socialism,"

251
Woman's question, the, 58,

59, 79e*«eg., 529, 747
Women, economic indepen-
dence of, 251
diseases of, 367
Women-men, 545

Yohimbin, 450
Young Germany, the love-
problems of, 172-175

Zoophilia, 640-643. See also
Bestiality

Rebman Limited, 129, Shaftet'jury Avenue, W.C.

PUBLISHED BY i •
MESSRS. REBMAN LIMITED

129 SHAFTESBURY AVENUE
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THE SEXUAL QUESTION

A Scientific, Psychological, Hygienic and Sociological Study for
the Cultured Classes. By AUGUST FOREL, M.D., PH.D., LL.D.,
Formerly Professor of Psychiatry at and Director of the Insane
Asylum in Zurich (Switzerland). English Adaptation by C. F.
MARSHALL, M.D., F.R.C.S., Late Assistant- Surgeon to the
Hospital for Diseases of the Skin, London. Royal 8vo. With 23
Illustrations, 17 of which are printed in colours. Cloth, 550 pages,
price 2 is. net.

EXTRACT FROM AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION.

This book is the fruit of long experience and reflection. It has two
fundamental ideas — the study of nature, and the study of the psychology
of man in health and in disease.

To harmonize the aspirations of human nature and the data of the
sociology of the different human races and the different epochs of
history, with the results of natural science and the laws of mental and
sexual evolution which these have revealed to us, is a task which has
become more and more necessary at the present day. It is our duty to
our^descendants to contribute as far as is in our power to its accomplish-
ment. In recognition of the immense progress of education which we
owe to the sweat, the blood, and often to the martyrdom of our
predecessors, it behoves us to prepare for our children a life more
happy than ours.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

Professor Forel is well known to English readers through the
medium of English translations of his other works on Psychiatry and
kindred subjects. The present work has already been translated into
several European languages. Whether we agree with all Professor
Forel's conclusions or not, we must admit that he has dealt with a
difficult and delicate subject in a masterly and scientific manner.

CONTENTS: I. — The Reproduction of Living Beings — History of the Germ —
Cell-Division — Parthenogenesis — Conjugation — Mneme — Embryonic Development
— Differences of Sexes— Castration — Hermaphrodism — Heredity — Blastophthoria.
II. — The Evolution or Descent of Living Beings. III. — Natural Conditions of
Mechanism of Human Coitus — Pregnancy — Correlative Sexual Characters. IV. —
The Sexual Appetite in Man and Woman — Flirtation. V. — Love and other
Irradiations of the Sexual Appetite in the Human Mind — Psychic Irradiations of
Love in Man : Procreative Instinct, Jealousy, Sexual Braggardism, Pornographic
Spirit, Sexual Hypocrisy, Prudery and Modesty, Old Bachelors— Psychic Irradi-
ations of Love in Woman : Old Maids, Passiveness and Desire, Abandon and

Exaltation, Desire for Domination, Petticoat Government, Desire of Maternity and
Maternal Love, Routine and Infatuation, Jealousy, Dissimulation, Coquetry, Prudery
and Modesty — Fetichism and Anti-Fetichism — Psychological Relations of Love to
Religion. VI. — Ethnology and History of the Sexual Life of Man and of Marriage —
Origin of Marriage— Antiquity of Matrimonial Institutions — Criticism of theDoctrineof
Promiscuity — Marriage and Celibacy — Sexual Advances and Demands of Marriage —
Methods ot Attraction — Liberty of Choice — Sexual Selection — Law of Resemblance
— Hybrids— Prohibition of Consanguineous Marriages — Rdle of Sentiment and
Calculation in Sexual Selection — Marriage by Purchase — Decadence of Marriage by
Purchase — Dowry — Nuptial Ceremonies — Forms of Marriage — Duration of Mar-
riage— History of Extra-Nuptial Sexual Intercourse. VII. — Sexual Evolution —
Phylogeny and Ontogeny of Sexual Life. VIII.— Sexual Pathology — Pathology of
the Sexual Organs— Venereal Disease — Sexual Psychology — Reflex Anomalies —
Psychic Impotence— Sexual Paradoxy — Sexual Anaesthesia— Sexual Hyperaesthesia —
Masturbation and Onanism — Perversions of the Sexual Appetite : Sadism, Masochism
Fetichism, Exhibitionism, Homosexual Love, Sexual Inversion, Pederosis, Sodomy —
Sexual Anomalies in the Insane and Psychopathic — Effects of Alcohol on the Sexual
Appetite — Sexual Anomalies by Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion — Sexual Per-
versions due to Habit. IX. — The Rdle of Suggestion in Sexual Life — Amorous
Intoxication. X. — The Relations of the Sexual Question to Money and Property —
Prostitution, Proxenetism and Venal Concubinage. XI. — The Influence of
Environment on Sexual Life — Influence of Climate — Town and Country Life —
Vagabondage — Americanism — Saloons and Alcohol — Riches and Poverty — Rank and
Social Position — Individual Life — Boarding Schools. XII. — Religion and Sexual
Life. XIII.— Rights in Sexual Life — Civil Law — Penal Law — A Medico-Legal
Case. XIV. — Medicine and Sexual Life— Prostitution— Sexual Hygiene— Extra-
Nuptial Intercourse — Medical Advice— Means of Regulating or Preventing Con-
ception— Hygiene of Marriage — Hygiene of Pregnancy — Medical Advice as to
Marriage — Medical Secrecy — Artificial Abortion — Treatment of Sexual Disorders.
XV. — Sexual Morality. XVI. — The Sexual Question in Politics and in Political
Economy. XVII.— The Sexual Question in Pedagogy. XVIII.— The Sexual
Question in Art. XIX. — Conclusions — Utopian Ideas on the Ideal Marriage of the
Future — Bibliographical Remarks.

MARRIAGE AND DISEASE

Being an Abridged Edition of " Health and Disease in Relation to
Marriage and the Married State." Edited by Prof. H. SENATOR
and Dr. S. KAMINER. Translated from the German by J. DULBERG,
M.D., J.P. (of Manchester). Demy 8vo., 452 pages. Cloth, price
IDS. 6d. net.

A quarter of a century has elapsed since Francis Galton, in his
" Inquiries into Human Faculty," drew attention to the urgent need
for the foundation of a science and practice of " Eugenics," that is, the
improvement of the human stock. " Health and Disease in Relation
to Marriage and the Married State," edited by Senator and Kaminer,
undoubtedly occupies a very high place among recent works devoted to
the elucidation of certain aspects of this important topic, and in the
abridged edition an adaptation has been prepared for the enlightenment
of the thinking portion of the public on pathological questions in relation
to marriage and the married state, and from which all purely technical
and professional matter has been excluded.

At a time when such questions as the decline of the birth-rate,
the sterilization of the degenerate, the restriction of indiscriminate
marriages, the voluntary limitation of families, and so forth, form
subjects of daily debate and newspaper articles, it is of the greatest
advantage that every man and woman who either contemplates or has
embarked on matrimony should be as well acquainted, as the limits of
our conventionality permit, with the medical or hygienic aspect of
marriage.

To give some idea of the scope of this absorbingly interesting work,
we append the chapter headings. These apply to the unabridged as
well as to the abridged edition at present under review.

I — Introduction. II. — The Hygiene of Marriage. III. — Congenital and In-
herited Diseases and Predispositions to Disease. IV. — Consanguinity and Marriage.
V. — Climate, Race, and Nationality in Relation to Marriage. VI. — Sexual Hygiene.
VII. — Menstruation, Pregnancy, Child-bed and Lactation. VIII. — Constitutional
(Metabolic) Diseases. IX. — Diseases of the Blood. X. — Diseases of the Vascular
System. XI. — Diseases of the Respiratory Organs. XII. — Diseases of the Organs
of Digestion. XIII. — Diseases of the Kidneys. XIV. — Gonorrhoeal Diseases.
XV.— (a) Syphilis. XVI.— (6) Diseases of the Skin. XVII.— Diseases of the Organs
of Locomotion. XVIII. — Diseases of the Eyes in Relation to Marriage, with special
regard to Heredity. XIX.— Diseases of the Lower Uro-Genital Organs and Physical
Impotence. XX. — Diseases of Women, including Sterility. XXI. — Diseases of the
Nervous System. XXII. — Insanity. XXIII. — Perverse Sexual Sensations and
Psychical Impotence. XXIV. — Alcoholism and Morphinism. XXV. — Occupational
Injuries. XXVI. — Medico- Professional Secrecy. XXVII.— The Economic Im-
portance of Sanitary Conditions.

Brief as is this sketch of the abridged edition, it will suffice, in
conjunction with the following extracts from a few of the many highly
laudatory reviews, to show how valuable the work will be to parents
and guardians, family advisers, whether lawyers or clergymen, school-
masters and schoolmistresses, as well as to those who are already
married, and to those who are contemplating marriage.

THE LANCET says: "The progress of sociological investigation in modern
times has caused increased attention to be paid to questions of health in relation to
marriage and the propagation of the human race, and anything which helps to
spread abroad an intelligent appreciation of the dangers incurred, not only by
individuals who enter on the married state, but also by their offspring, from the
existence of many forms of disease must be regarded as a public benefit. The
present book is an attempt to make available for general consumption the gist of the
larger work from which it is taken. . . . The material contained in the book is most
valuable, and a study of it should be useful to those capable of appreciating it. . . ."

PUBLIC HEALTH says: "It is cleanly, even when dealing with most diffi-
cult subjects, and it is a storehouse of information on points on which hygienists are
expected to be well informed."

THE SCOTTISH MEDICAL JOURNAL says: " As a guide for the general
public many of the articles are well adapted to fulfil their object."

THE DAILY DISPATCH says: "... every work that helps to enlightenment
is to be welcomed so long as it comes with credentials as to its honesty and guarantees
that it is not merely a device for making money out of ignorance. ' Marriage and
Disease ' has all the essential claims to consideration. Dr. Dulberg has very ably
condensed the larger manual into one of 450 pages, containing 27 chapters. The
volume is of absorbing interest, not only for its arguments and conclusions, but
also, and perhaps mainly, for the wealth of information it contains on matrimonial
and sex questions in all countries and climes. ' '

From the Twelfth German Edition.

PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS

With Special Reference to Antipathic Sexual Instinct. A Medico-
Forensic Study by the late Dr. R. VON KRAFFT-EBING, Professor
of Psychiatry and Neurology, University of Vienna. Only
authorized Translation. (This is the last edition revised by the
late author himself.) This book is sold only to the Members of
the Medical, Legal and Clerical Professions. Royal 8vo.,
with Portrait of Author, containing 583 pages. Cloth, price 2 is. net.

This new translation contains much new matter and a great many
new cases not referred to in former editions.

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THE SEXUAL LIFE OF WOMAN

A Physiological, Pathological, and Hygienic Study. By Dr. E.
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