7th-8th; and that the minima occur at the beginning, end, and exact middle
of the month. There have been many idle superstitions as to the influence
of the moon upon the earth and its inhabitants, and some beliefs
that--once deemed equally idle--have now been re-instated in the regard of
science; but it would certainly seem to be a very fascinating and very
curious fact if the influence of the moon upon men should be such as to
regulate the spontaneous discharges of their sexual system. Certainly the
lovers of all ages would then have "builded better than they knew," when
they reared altars of devotional verse to that chaste goddess Artemis.


THE WEEKLY RHYTHM.

We now come to the third branch of our inquiry, and have to ask whether
there be any weekly rhythm of the sexual activity. _A priori_ it might be
answered that to expect any such weekly rhythm were absurd, seeing that
our week--unlike the lunar month of the year--is a purely artificial and
conventional period; while, on the other hand, it might be retorted that
the existence of an _induced_ weekly periodicity is quite conceivable,
such periodicity being induced by the habitual difference between our
occupation, or mode of life, on one or two days of the week and that on
the remaining days. In such an inquiry, however, _a priori_ argument is
futile, as the question can be answered only by an induction from
observations, and the curves on Chart 11 (_A_ and _B_) prove conclusively
that there is a notable weekly rhythm. The existence of this weekly rhythm
being granted, it would naturally be assumed that either the maximum or
the minimum would regularly occur on Saturday or Sunday; but an
examination of the curves discloses the unexpected result that the day of
maximum discharge varies from year to year. Thus it is[383]

Sunday in    1888, 1892, 1896.
Tuesday in   1894.
Thursday in  1886, 1897.
Friday in    1887.
Saturday in  1893 and 1895.

Since, in Chart 11, the curves are drawn from Sunday to Sunday, it is
obvious that the real symmetry of the curve is brought out in those years
only which are characterized by a Sunday maximum; and, accordingly, in
Chart 12 I have depicted the curves in a more suitable form.

Chart 12 _A_ is obtained by combining the data of 1888, 1892, and 1896:
the years of a Sunday maximum. Curve 12 _B_ represents the results of
1894, the year of a Tuesday maximum--multiplied throughout by three in
order to render the curve strictly comparable with the former. Curve 12
_C_ represents 1886 and 1897--the years of a Thursday maximum--similarly
multiplied by 1.5. In Curve 12 _D_ we have the results of 1887--the year
of a Friday maximum--again multiplied by three; and in Curve 12 _E_ those
of 1893 and 1895--the years of a Saturday maximum--multiplied by 1.5.
Finally, Curve 12 _F_ represents the combined results of all nine years
plus (the latter half of) 1891; and this curve shows that, on the whole
period, there is a very strongly marked Sunday maximum.

I hardly think that these curves call for much comment. In their general
character they display a notable concord among themselves; and it is
significant that the most regular of the five curves are _A_ and _E_,
representing the combinations of three years and of two years,
respectively, while the least regular is _B_, which is based upon the
records of one year only. In every case we find that the maximum which
opens the week is rapidly succeeded by a minimum, which is itself
succeeded by a secondary maximum,--usually very secondary, although in
1894 it nearly equals the primary maximum,--followed again by a second
minimum--usually nearly identical with the first minimum,--after which
there is a rapid rise to the original maximum. The study of these curves
fortunately amplifies the conclusion drawn from our study of the annual
rhythm, and suggests that, in at least part of the year, the physiological
condition of man requires sexual union at least twice a week.

As to Curve 12_F_, its remarkable symmetry speaks for itself. The
existence of two secondary maxima, however, has not the same significance
as had that of our secondary maximum in the preceding curves; for one of
these secondary maxima is due to the influence of the 1894 curve with its
primary Tuesday maximum, and the other to the similar influence of Curve
_C_ with its primary Thursday maximum. Similarly, the veiled third
secondary maximum is due to the influence of Curve _E_. Probably, any
student of curves will concede that, on a still larger average, the two
secondary maxima of Curve _F_ would be replaced by a single one on
Wednesday or Thursday.

One more question remains for consideration in connection with this weekly
rhythm. Is it possible to trace any connection between the weekly and
yearly rhythms of such a character that the weekly day of maximum
discharge should vary from month to month in the year; in other words,
does the greater frequency of a Sunday discharge characterize one part of
the year, that of a Tuesday another, and so on? In order to answer this
question I have re-calculated all my data, with results that are
graphically represented in Chart 13. These curves prove that the Sunday
maxima discharges occur in March and September, and the minima in June;
that the Monday maxima discharges occur in September, Friday in July, and
so on. Thus, there is a regular rhythm, according to which the days of
maximum discharge vary from one month of the year to another; and the
existence of this final rhythm appears to me very remarkable. I would
especially direct attention to the almost geometric symmetry of the Sunday
curve, and to the only less complete symmetry of the Thursday and Friday
curves. Certainly in these rhythms we have an ample field for farther
study and speculation.

I have now concluded my study of this fascinating inquiry; a study that is
necessarily incomplete, since it is based upon records furnished by one
individual only. The fact, however, that, even with so few observations,
and notwithstanding the consequently exaggerated disturbing influence of
minor irregularities, such remarkable and unexpected symmetry is evidenced
by these curves, only increases one's desire to have the opportunity of
handling a series of observations sufficiently numerous to render the
generalizations induced from them absolutely conclusive. I would again
appeal[384] to heads of colleges to assist this inquiry by enlisting in
its aid a band of students. If only one hundred students, living under
similar conditions, could be induced to keep such records with scrupulous
regularity for only twelve months, the results induced from such a series
of observations would be more than ten times as valuable as those which
have only been reached after ten years' observations on my part; and, if
other centuries of students in foreign and colonial colleges--e.g., in
Italy, India, Australia, and America--could be similarly enlisted in this
work, we should quickly obtain a series of results exhibiting the sexual
needs and sexual peculiarities of the male human animal in various
climates. Obviously, however, the records of any such students would be
worse than useless unless their care and accuracy, on the one hand, and
their habitual chastity, on the other, could be implicitly guaranteed.


FOOTNOTES:

[373] First published in the _University Magazine and Free Review_ of
February, 1898, and since reprinted as a pamphlet. A preliminary
communication appeared in _Nature_, May 14, 1891.

[374] [Later study (1906) has convinced me that my attempt to find a
lunar-monthly period in the female pulse was vitiated by a hopeless error:
for any monthly rhythm in a woman must be sought by arranging her records
according to her own menstrual month; and this menstrual month may vary in
different women, from considerably less than a lunar month to thirty days
or more.]

[375] I may add, however, that in my own case these discharges are--so far
as I can trust my waking consciousness--frequently, if not usually,
dreamless; and that strictly sexual dreams are extremely rare,
notwithstanding the possession of a strongly emotional temperament.

[376] If I can trust my memory, I first experienced this discharge when a
few months under fifteen years of age, and, if so, within a few weeks of
the time when I was, in an instant, suddenly struck with the thought that
possibly the religion in which I had been educated might be false. It is
curiously interesting that the advent of puberty should have been heralded
by this intellectual crisis.

[377] This unfortunate breach in the records was due to the fact that,
failing to discover any regularity in, or law of, the occurrences of the
discharges, I became discouraged and abandoned my records. In June, 1891,
a re-examination of my pulse-records having led to my discovery of a
lunar-monthly rhythm of the pulse, my interest in other physiological
periodicities was reawakened, and I recommenced my records of these
discharges.

[378] As a matter of fact, I take it that we may safely assert that no man
who is content to be guided by his own instinctive cravings, and who
neither suppresses these, on the one hand, nor endeavors to force himself,
on the other hand, will be in any danger of erring by either excess or the
contrary.

[379] [It is obvious that the opportunity of continuing such an inquiry as
that described in this Appendix, ceases with marriage; but I may add
(1906) that certain notes that I have kept with scrupulous exactness
during eight years of married life, lend almost no support to the
suggestion made in the text--i.e., that sexual desire is greater at one
season of the year than at another. The nature of these notes I cannot
discuss; but, they clearly indicate that, although there is a slight
degree more of sexual desire in the second and third quarters of the year,
than in the first and fourth, yet, this difference is so slight as to be
almost negligible. Even if the months be rearranged in the
triplets--November-December-January, etc.,--so as to bring the maximum
months of May, June, and July together, the difference between the highest
quarter and the lowest amounts to an increase of only ten per cent, upon
the latter--after allowing, of course, for the abnormal shortness of
February; and, neglecting February, the increase in the maximum months
(June and July) over the minimum (November) is equal to an increase of
under 14 per cent, upon the latter. These differences are so vastly less
than those shown on Chart 7 that they possess almost no significance: but,
lest too much stress be laid upon the apparently _equalizing_ influence of
married life, it must be added that the records discussed in the text were
obtained during residence in London, whereas, since my marriage, I have
lived in South Cornwall, where the climate is both milder and more
equable.]

[380] Selden's _Uxor Hebraica_ as quoted in Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_,
vol. v, p. 52, of Bonn's edition.

[381] I may add that the curve yielded by 1896-97 is remarkably parallel
with that yielded by the preceding nine years, but I have not thought it
worth while to chart these two additional curves.

[382] See "Rhythm of the Pulse," Chart 4.

[383] As will be observed, I have omitted the results of the incompletely
recorded years of 1889 and 1891. The apparent explanation of this curious
oscillation will be given directly.

[384] See "Rhythm of the Pulse," p. 21.




APPENDIX C.

THE AUTO-EROTIC FACTOR IN RELIGION.


The intimate association between the emotions of love and religion is well
known to all those who are habitually brought into close contact with the
phenomena of the religious life. Love and religion are the two most
volcanic emotions to which the human organism is liable, and it is not
surprising that, when there is a disturbance in one of these spheres, the
vibrations should readily extend to the other. Nor is it surprising that
the two emotions should have a dynamic relation to each other, and that
the auto-erotic impulse, being the more primitive and fundamental of the
two impulses, should be able to pass its unexpended energy over to the
religious emotion, there to find the expansion hitherto denied it, the
love of the human becoming the love of the divine.

"I was not good enough for man,
And so am given to God."

Even when there is absolute physical suppression on the sexual side, it
seems probable that thereby a greater intensity of spiritual fervor is
caused. Many eminent thinkers seem to have been without sexual desire.

It is a noteworthy and significant fact that the age of love is also the
age of conversion. Starbuck, for instance, in his very elaborate study of
the psychology of conversion shows that the majority of conversions take
place during the period of adolescence; that is, from the age of puberty
to about 24 or 25.[385]

It would be easy to bring forward a long series of observations, from the
most various points of view, to show the wide recognition of this close
affinity between the sexual and the religious emotions. It is probable, as
Hahn points out, that the connection between sexual suppression and
religious rites, which we may trace at the very beginning of culture, was
due to an instinctive impulse to heighten rather than abolish the sexual
element. Early religious rites were largely sexual and orgiastic because
they were largely an appeal to the generative forces of Nature to exhibit
a beneficial productiveness. Among happily married people, as Hahn
remarks, the sexual emotions rapidly give place to the cares and anxieties
involved in supporting children; but when the exercise of the sexual
function is prevented by celibacy, or even by castration, the most
complete form of celibacy, the sexual emotions may pass into the psychical
sphere to take on a more pronounced shape.[386] The early Christians
adopted the traditional Eastern association between religion and celibacy,
and, as the writings of the Fathers amply show, they expended on sexual
matters a concentrated fervor of thought rarely known to the Greek and
Roman writers of the best period.[387] As Christian theology developed,
the minute inquisition into sexual things sometimes became almost an
obsession. So far as I am aware, however (I cannot profess to have made
any special investigation), it was not until the late Middle Ages that
there is any clear recognition of the fact that, between the religious
emotions and the sexual emotions, there is not only a superficial
antagonism, but an underlying relationship. At this time so great a
theologian and philosopher as Aquinas said that it is especially on the
days when a man is seeking to make himself pleasing to God that the Devil
troubles him by polluting him with seminal emissions. With somewhat more
psychological insight, the wise old Knight of the Tower, Landry, in the
fourteenth century, tells his daughters that "no young woman, in love,
can ever serve her God with that unfeignedness which she did aforetime.
For I have heard it argued by many who, in their young days, had been in
love that, when they were in the church, the condition and the pleasing
melancholy in which they found themselves would infallibly set them
brooding over all their tender love-sick longings and all their amorous
passages, when they should have been attending to the service which was
going on at the time. And such is the property of this mystery of love
that it is ever at the moment when the priest is holding our Saviour upon
the altar that the most enticing emotions come." After narrating the
history of two queens beyond the seas who indulged in amours even on Holy
Thursday and Good Friday, at midnight in their oratories, when the lights
were put out, he concludes: "Every woman in love is more liable to fall in
church or at her devotion than at any other time."

The connection between religious emotion and sexual emotion was very
clearly set forth by Swift about the end of the seventeenth century, in a
passage which it may be worth while to quote from his "Discourse
Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit." After mentioning that
he was informed by a very eminent physician that when the Quakers first
appeared he was seldom without female Quaker patients affected with
nymphomania, Swift continues: "Persons of a visionary devotion, either men
or women, are, in their complexion, of all others the most amorous. For
zeal is frequently kindled from the same spark with other fires, and from
inflaming brotherly love will proceed to raise that of a gallant. If we
inspect into the usual process of modern courtship, we shall find it to
consist in a devout turn of the eyes, called _ogling_; an artificial form
of canting and whining, by rote, every interval, for want of other matter,
made up with a shrug, or a hum; a sigh or a groan; the style compact of
insignificant words, incoherences, and repetitions. These I take to be the
most accomplished rules of address to a mistress; and where are these
performed with more dexterity than by the _saints_? Nay, to bring this
argument yet closer, I have been informed by certain sanguine brethren of
the first class, that in the height and _orgasmus_ of their spiritual
exercise, it has been frequent with them[388]; ... immediately after
which, they found the _spirit_ to relax and flag of a sudden with the
nerves, and they were forced to hasten to a conclusion. This may be
farther strengthened by observing with wonder how unaccountably all
females are attracted by visionary or enthusiastic preachers, though never
so contemptible in their _outward mien_; which is usually supposed to be
done upon considerations purely spiritual, without any carnal regards at
all. But I have reason to think, the sex hath certain characteristics, by
which they form a truer judgment of human abilities and performings than
we ourselves can possibly do of each other. Let that be as it will, thus
much is certain, that however spiritual intrigues begin, they generally
conclude like all others; they may branch upwards toward heaven, but the
root is in the earth. Too intense a contemplation is not the business of
flesh and blood; it must, by the necessary course of things, in a little
time let go its hold, and fall into _matter_. Lovers for the sake of
celestial converse, are but another sort of Platonics, who pretend to see
stars and heaven in ladies' eyes, and to look or think no lower; but the
same _pit_ is provided for both."

To come down to recent times, in the last century the head-master of
Clifton College, when discussing the sexual vices of boyhood, remarked
that the boys whose temperament exposes them to these faults are usually
far from destitute of religious feelings; that there is, and always has
been, an undoubted co-existence of religion and animalism; that emotional
appeals and revivals are far from rooting out carnal sin; and that in some
places, as is well known, they seem actually to stimulate, even at the
present day, to increased licentiousness.[389]

It is not difficult to see how, even in technique, the method of the
revivalist is a quasi-sexual method, and resembles the attempt of the male
to overcome the sexual shyness of the female. "In each case," as W. Thomas
remarks, "the will has to be set aside, and strong suggestive means are
used; and in both cases the appeal is not of the conflict type, but of an
intimate, sympathetic and pleading kind. In the effort to make a moral
adjustment it consequently turns out that a technique is used which
was derived originally from sexual life, and the use, so to speak,
of the sexual machinery for a moral adjustment involves, in some
cases, the carrying over into the general process of some sexual
manifestations."[390]

The relationship of the sexual and the religious emotions--like so many
other of the essential characters of human nature--is seen in its nakedest
shape by the alienist. Esquirol referred to this relationship, and, many
years ago, J.B. Friedreich, a German alienist of wide outlook and
considerable insight, emphasized the connection between the sexual and the
religious emotions, and brought forward illustrative cases.[391] Schroeder
van der Kolk also remarked: "I venture to express my conviction that we
should rarely err if, in a case of religious melancholy, we assumed the
sexual apparatus to be implicated."[392] Régis, in France, lays it down
that "there exists a close connection between mystic ideas and erotic
ideas, and most often these two orders of conception are associated in
insanity."[393] Berthier considered that erotic forms of insanity are
those most frequently found in convents. Bevan-Lewis points out how
frequently religious exaltation occurs at puberty in women, and religious
depression at the climacteric, the period of sexual decline.[394]
"Religion is very closely allied to love," remarks Savage, "and the love
of woman and the worship of God are constantly sources of trouble in
unstable youth; it is very interesting to note the frequency with which
these two deep feelings are associated."[395] "Closely connected with
salacity, particularly in women," remarks Conolly Norman, when discussing
mania (Tuke's _Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_), "is religious
excitement.... Ecstasy, as we see in cases of acute mental disease, is
probably always connected with sexual excitement, if not with sexual
depravity. The same association is constantly seen in less extreme cases,
and one of the commonest features in the conversation of an acutely
maniacal woman is the intermingling of erotic and religious ideas."
"Patients who believe," remarks Clara Barrus, "that they are the Virgin
Mary, the bride of Christ, the Church, 'God's wife,' and 'Raphael's
consort,' are sure, sooner or later, to disclose symptoms which show that
they are some way or other sexually depraved."[396] Forel, who devotes a
chapter of his book _Die Sexuelle Frage_, to the subject, argues that the
strongest feelings of religious emotion are often unconsciously rooted in
erotic emotion or represent a transformation of such emotion; and, in an
interesting discussion (Ch. VI) of this question in his _Sexualleben
unserer Zeit_, Bloch states that "in a certain sense we may describe the
history of religions as the history of a special manifestation of the
human sexual instinct." Ball, Brouardel, Morselli, Vallon and Marie,[397]
C.H. Hughes,[398] to mention but a few names among many, have emphasized
the same point.[399] Krafft-Ebing deals briefly with the connection
between holiness and the sexual emotion, and the special liability of the
saints to sexual temptations; he thus states his own conclusions:
"Religious and sexual emotional states at the height of their development
exhibit a harmony in quantity and quality of excitement, and can thus in
certain circumstances act vicariously. Both," he adds, "can be converted
into cruelty under pathological conditions."[400]

After quoting these opinions it is, perhaps, not unnecessary to point out
that, while sexual emotion constitutes the main reservoir of energy on
which religion can draw, it is far from constituting either the whole
content of religion or its root. Murisier, in an able study of the
psychology of religious ecstasy, justly protests against too crude an
explanation of its nature, though at the same time he admits that "the
passion of the religious ecstatic lacks nothing of what goes to make up
sexual love, not even jealousy."[401]

Sérieux, in his little work, _Recherches Cliniques sur les Anomalies de
l'Instinct Sexuel_, valuable on account of its instructive cases, records
in detail a case which so admirably illustrates this phase of auto-erotism
on the borderland between ordinary erotic day-dreaming and religious
mysticism, the phenomena for a time reaching an insane degree of
intensity, that I summarize it. "Thérèse M., aged 24, shows physical
stigmata of degeneration. The heredity is also bad; the father is a man of
reckless and irregular conduct; the mother was at one time in a lunatic
asylum. The patient was brought up in an orphanage, and was a troublesome,
volatile child; she treated household occupations with contempt, but was
fond of study. Even at an early age her lively imagination attracted
attention, and the pleasure which she took in building castles in the air.
From the age of seven to ten she masturbated. At her first communion she
felt that Jesus would for ever be the one master of her heart. At
thirteen, after the death of her mother, she seemed to see her, and to
hear her say that she was watching over her child. Shortly afterward she
was overwhelmed by a new grief, the death of a teacher for whom she
cherished great affection on account of her pure character. On the
following day she seemed to see and hear this teacher, and would not leave
the house where the body lay. Tendencies to melancholy appeared. Saddened
by the funeral ceremonies, exhorted by nuns, fed on mystic revery, she
passed from the orphanage to a convent. She devoted herself solely to the
worship of Jesus; to be like Jesus, to be near Jesus, became her constant
pre-occupations. The Virgin's name was rarely seen in her writings, God's
name never. 'I wanted', she said, 'to love Jesus more than any of the nuns
I saw, and I even thought that he had a partiality for me.' She was also
haunted by the idea of preserving her purity. She avoided frivolous
conversation, and left the room when marriage was discussed, such a union
being incompatible with a pure life; 'it was my fixed idea for two years
to make my soul ever more pure in order to be agreeable to Him; the
Beloved is well pleased among the lilies.'

"Already, however, in a rudimentary form appeared contrary tendencies
[strictly speaking they were not contrary, but related, tendencies].
Beneath the mystic passion which concealed it sexual desire was sometimes
felt. At sixteen she experienced emotions which she could not master, when
thinking of a priest who, she said, loved her. In spite of all remorse she
would have been willing to have relations with him. Notwithstanding these
passing weaknesses, the idea of purity always possessed her. The nuns,
however, were concerned about her exaltation. She was sent away from the
convent, became discouraged, and took a place as a servant, but her fervor
continued. Her confessor inspired her with great affection; she sends him
tender letters. She would be willing to have relations with him, even
though she considers the desire a temptation of the devil. The ground was
now prepared for the manifestation of hallucinations. 'One evening in
May', she writes, 'after being absorbed in thoughts of my confessor, and
feeling discouraged, as I thought that Jesus, whom I loved so much, would
have nothing to do with me, "Mother," I cried out, "what must I do to win
your son?" My eyes were fixed on the sky, and I remained in a state of
mad expectation. It was absurd. I to become the mother of the World! My
heart went on repeating: "Yes, he is coming; Jesus is coming!"' The
psychic erethism, reverberating on the sensorial and sensory centres, led
to genital, auditory, and visual hallucinations, which produced the
sensation of sexual connection. 'For the first time I went to bed and was
not alone. As soon as I felt that touch, I heard the words: "Fear not, it
is I." I was lost in Him whom I loved. For many days I was cradled in a
world of pleasure; I saw Him everywhere, overwhelming me with His chaste
caresses.' On the following day at mass she seemed to see Calvary before
her. 'Jesus was naked and surrounded by a thousand voluptuous
imaginations; His arms were loosened from the cross, and he said to me:
"Come!" I longed to fly to Him with my body, but could not make up my mind
to show myself naked. However, I was carried away by a force I could not
control, I threw myself on my Saviour's neck, and felt that all was over
between the world and me.' From that day, 'by sheer reasoning,' she has
understood everything. Previously she thought that the religious life was
a renunciation of the joys of marriage and enjoyment generally; now she
understands its object. Jesus Christ desires that she should have
relations with a priest; he is himself incarnated in priests; just as St.
Joseph was the guardian of the Virgin, so are priests the guardians of
nuns. She has been impregnated by Jesus, and this imaginary pregnancy
pre-occupies her in the highest degree. From this time she masturbated
daily. She cannot even go to communion without experiencing voluptuous
sensations. Her delusions having thus become systematized, nothing shakes
her tenacity in seeking to carry them out; she attempts at all costs to
have relations with her confessor, embraces him, throws herself at his
knees, pursues him, and so becomes a cause of scandal. When brought to the
asylum, there is intense sexual excitement, and she masturbates a dozen
times a day, even when talking to the doctor. The sexual organs are
normal, the vulva moist and red, the vagina is painful to touch; the
contact of the finger causes erectile turgescence. She has had no rest,
she says, since she has learned to love her Jesus. He desires her to have
sexual relations with someone, and she cannot succeed; 'all my soul's
strength is arrested by this constant endeavor.' Her new surroundings
modify her behavior, and now it is the doctor whom she pursues with her
obsessions. 'I expected everything from the charity of the priests I have
known; I have not deserved what I wanted from them. But is not a doctor
free to do everything for the good of the patients intrusted to him by
Providence? Cannot a doctor thus devote himself? Since I have tasted the
tree of life I am tormented by the desire to share it with a loving
friend.' Then she falls in love with an employee, and makes the crudest
advances to him, believing that she is thus executing the will of Jesus.
'Necessity makes laws,' she exclaims to him, 'the moments are pressing, I
have been waiting too long.' She still speaks of her religious vocation
which might be compromised by so long a delay. 'I do not want to get
married.' Gradually a transformation took place; the love of God was
effaced and earthly love became more intense than ever. 'Quitting the
heights in which I wished to soar, I am coming so near to earth that I
shall soon fix my desires there.' In a last letter Thérèse recognizes with
terror the insanity to which the exaltation of her imagination had led
her. 'Now I only believe in God and in suffering; I feel that it is
necessary for me to get married.'"

Mariani[402] has very fully described a case of erotico-religious insanity
(climacteric paranoia on an hysterical basis) in a married woman of 44.
During the early stages of her disorder she inflicted all sorts of
penances upon herself (fasting, constant prayer, drinking her own urine,
cleaning dirty plates with her tongue, etc.). Finally she felt that by her
penances she had obtained forgiveness of her sins, and then began a stage
of joy and satisfaction during which she believed that she had entered
into a state of the most intimate personal relationship with Jesus. She
finally recovered. Mariani shows how closely this history corresponds with
the histories of the saints, and that all the acts and emotions of this
woman can be exactly paralleled in the lives of famous saints.[403]

The justice of these comparisons becomes manifest when we turn to the
records that have been left by holy persons. A most instructive record
from this point of view is the autobiography of Soeur Jeanne des Anges,
superior of the Ursulines of Loudun in the seventeenth century.[404] She
was clever, beautiful, ambitious, fond of pleasure, still more of power.
With this, as sometimes happens, she was highly hysterical, and in the
early years of her religious life was possessed by various demons of
unchastity and blasphemy with whom for many years she was in constant
struggle. She fell in love with a priest of Loudun, Grandier, a man whom
she had never even seen, only knowing of him as a powerful and fascinating
personality at whose feet all women fell, and she imagined that she and
the other nuns of her convent were possessed through his influence. She
was thus the cause of the trial and execution of Grandier, a famous case
in the annals of witchcraft. In her autobiography Soeur Jeanne describes
in detail how the demons assailed her at night, appearing in lascivious
attitudes, making indecent proposals, raising the bed-clothes, touching
all parts of her body, imploring her to yield to them, and she tells how
strong her temptation was to yield. On one night, for instance, she
writes: "I seemed to feel someone's breath, and I heard a voice saying:
'The time for resistance has gone by, you must no longer rebel; by putting
off your consent to what has been proposed you will be injured; you cannot
persist in this resistance; God has subjected you to the demands of a
nature which you must satisfy on occasions so urgent.' Then I felt impure
impressions in my imagination and disordered movements in my body. I
persisted in saying at the bottom of my heart that I would do nothing. I
turned to God and asked Him for strength in this extraordinary struggle.
Then there was a loud noise in my room, and I felt as if someone had
approached me and put his hand into my bed and touched me; and having
perceived this I rose, in a state of restlessness, which lasted for a long
time afterward. Some days later, at midnight, I began to tremble all over
my body as I lay in bed, and to experience much mental anxiety without
knowing the cause. After this had lasted for some time I heard noises in
various parts of my room; the sheet was twice pulled without entirely
uncovering me; the oratory close to my bed was upset. I heard a voice on
the left side, toward which I was lying. I was asked if I had thought over
the advantageous offer that had been made to me. It was added: 'I have
come to know your reply; I will keep my promise if you will give your
consent; if, on the contrary, you refuse, you will be the most miserable
girl in the world, and all sorts of mischances will happen to you.' I
replied: 'If there were no God I would fear those threats; I am
consecrated to Him.' It was replied to me: 'You will not get much help
from God; He will abandon you.' I replied: 'God is my father; He will take
care of me; I have resolved to be faithful to Him.' He said: 'I will give
you three days to think over it.' I rose and went to the Holy Sacrament
with an anxious mind. Having returned to my room, and being seated on a
chair, it was drawn from under me so that I fell on the floor. Then the
same things happened again. I heard a man's voice saying lascivious and
pleasant things to seduce me; he pressed me to give him room in my bed; he
tried to touch me in an indecent way; I resisted and prevented him,
calling the nuns who were near my room; the window had been open, it was
closed; I felt strong movements of love for a certain person, and improper
desire for dishonorable things."

She writes again, at a later period: "These impurities and the fire of
concupiscence which the evil spirit caused me to feel, beyond all that I
can say, forced me to throw myself on to braziers of hot coal, where I
would remain for half an hour at a time, in order to extinguish that other
fire, so that half my body was quite burnt. At other times, in the depth
of winter, I have sometimes passed part of the night entirely naked in the
snow, or in tubs of icy water. I have besides often gone among thorns so
that I have been torn by them; at other times I have rolled in nettles,
and I have passed whole nights defying my enemies to attack me, and
assuring them that I was resolved to defend myself with the grace of God."
With her confessor's permission, she also had an iron girdle made, with
spikes, and wore this day and night for nearly six months until the spikes
so entered her flesh that the girdle could only be removed with
difficulty. By means of these austerities she succeeded in almost
exorcising the demons of unchastity, and a little later, after a severe
illness, of which she believed that she was miraculously cured by St.
Joseph, she appeared before the world almost as a saint, herself
possessing a miraculous power of healing; she traveled through France,
bringing healing wherever she went; the king, the queen, and Cardinal
Richelieu were at her feet, and so great became the fame of her holiness
that her tomb was a shrine for pilgrims for more than a century after her
death. It was not until late in life, and after her autobiography
terminates, that sexual desire in Soeur Jeanne (though its sting seems
never to have quite disappeared) became transformed into passionate love
of Jesus, and it is only in her later letters that we catch glimpses of
the complete transmutation. Thus, in one of her later letters we read: "I
cried with ardor, 'Lord! join me to Thyself, transform Thyself into me!'
It seemed to me that that lovable Spouse was reposing in my heart as on
His throne. What makes me almost swoon with love and admiration is a
certain pleasure which it seems to me that He takes when all my being
flows into His, restoring to Him with respect and love all that He has
given to me. Sometimes I have permission to speak to our Lord with more
familiarity, calling Him my Love, interesting Him in all that I ask of
Him, as well for myself as for others."

The lives of all the great saints and mystics bear witness to operations
similar to those so vividly described by Soeur Jeanne des Anges, though it
is very rarely that any saint has so frankly presented the dynamic
mechanism of the auto-erotic process. The indications they give us,
however, are sufficiently clear. It is enough to refer to the special
affection which the mystics have ever borne toward the Song of
Songs,[405] and to note how the most earthly expressions of love in that
poem enter as a perpetual refrain into their writings.[406]

The courage of the early Christian martyrs, it is abundantly evident, was
in part supported by an exaltation which they frankly drew from the sexual
impulse. Felicula, we are told in the acts of Achilles and Nereus,[407]
preferred imprisonment, torture, and death to marriage or pagan
sacrifices. When on the rack she was bidden to deny Christianity, she
exclaimed: "_Ego non nego amatorem meum!_"--I will not deny my lover who
for my sake has eaten gall and drunk vinegar, crowned with thorns, and
fastened to the cross.

Christian mysticism and its sexual coloring was absorbed by the Islamic
world at a very early period and intensified. In the thirteenth century it
was reintroduced into Christendom in this intensified form by the genius
of Raymond Lull who had himself been born on the confines of Islam, and
his "Book of the Lover and the Friend" is a typical manifestation of
sexual mysticism which inspired the great Spanish school of mystics a few
centuries later. The "delicious agony" the "sweet martyrdom," the strongly
combined pleasure and pain experienced by St. Theresa were certainly
associated with physical sexual sensations.[408]

The case of Marguerite-Marie Alacoque is typical. Jesus, as her
autobiography shows, was always her lover, her husband, her dear master;
she is betrothed to Him, He is the most passionate of lovers, nothing can
be sweeter than His caresses, they are so excessive she is beside herself
with the delight of them. The central imagination of the mystic consists
essentially, as Ribot remarks, in a love romance.[409]

If we turn to the most popular devotional work that was ever written, _The
Imitation of Christ_, we shall find that the "love" there expressed is
precisely and exactly the love that finds its motive power in the emotions
aroused by a person of the other sex. (A very intellectual woman once
remarked to me that the book seemed to her "a sort of religious
aphrodisiac.") If we read, for instance, Book III, Chapter V, of this work
("De Mirabili affectu Divini amoris"), we shall find in the eloquence of
this solitary monk in the Low Countries neither more nor less than the
emotions of every human lover at their highest limit of exaltation.
"Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing
broader, nothing pleasanter, nothing fuller nor better in heaven or in
earth. He who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and cannot be
held. He gives all in exchange for all, and possesses all in all. He looks
not at gifts, but turns to the giver above all good things. Love knows no
measure, but is fervent beyond all measure. Love feels no burden, thinks
nothing of labor, strives beyond its force, reckons not of impossibility,
for it judges that all things are possible. Therefore it attempts all
things, and therefore it effects much when he who is not a lover fails and
falls.... My Love! thou all mine, and I all thine."

There is a certain natural disinclination in many quarters to recognize
any special connection between the sexual emotions and the religious
emotions. But this attitude is not reasonable. A man who is swayed by
religious emotions cannot be held responsible for the indirect emotional
results of his condition; he can be held responsible for their control.
Nothing is gained by refusing to face the possibility that such control
may be necessary, and much is lost. There is certainly, as I have tried to
indicate, good reason to think that the action and interaction between
the spheres of sexual and religious emotion are very intimate. The obscure
promptings of the organism at puberty frequently assume on the psychic
side a wholly religious character; the activity of the religious emotions
sometimes tends to pass over into the sexual region; the suppression of
the sexual emotions often furnishes a powerful reservoir of energy to the
religious emotions; occasionally the suppressed sexual emotions break
through all obstacles.


FOOTNOTES:

[385] Starbuck, _The Psychology of Religion_, 1899. Also, A.H. Daniels,
"The New Life," _American Journal of Psychology_, vol. vi, 1893. Cf.
William James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_.

[386] Ed. Hahn, _Demeter und Baubo_, 1896, pp. 50-51. Hahn is arguing for
the religious origin of the plough, as a generative implement, drawn by a
sacred and castrated animal, the ox. G. Herman, in his _Genesis_, develops
the idea that modern religious rites have arisen out of sexual feasts and
mysteries.

[387] Bloch (_Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, Bd. I, p.
98) points out the great interest taken by the saints and ascetics in sex
matters.

[388] This omission was made by the original publisher of the "Discourse;"
several of the most important passages throughout have been similarly cut
out.

[389] Rev. J.M. Wilson, _Journal of Education_, 1881. At about the same
period (1882) Spurgeon pointed out in one of his sermons that by a
strange, yet natural law, excess of spirituality is next door to
sensuality. Theodore Schroeder has recently brought together a number of
opinions of religious teachers, from Henry More the Platonist to Baring
Gould, concerning the close relationship between sexual passion and
religious passion, _American Journal of Religious Psychology_, 1908.

[390] W. Thomas, "The Sexual Element in Sensibility," _Psychological
Review_, Jan., 1904.

[391] _System der gerichtlichen Psychologie_, second edition, 1842, pp.
266-68; and more at length in his _Allgemeine Diagnostik der psychischen
Krankheiten_, second edition, 1832, pp. 247-51.

[392] _Handboek van de Pathologie en Therapie der Krankzinnigheid_, 1863,
p. 139 of English edition.

[393] _Manuel pratique de Médecine mentale_, 1892, p. 31.

[394] _Text-book of Mental Diseases_, p. 393.

[395] G.H. Savage, _Insanity_, 1886.

[396] _American Journal of Insanity_, April, 1895.

[397] "Des Psychoses Religieuses," _Archives de Neurologie_, 1897.

[398] "Erotopathia," _Alienist and Neurologist_, October, 1893.

[399] Reference may be specially made to the interesting chapter on
"Délire Religieux" in Icard's _La Femme pendant la Période Menstruelle_,
pp. 211-234.

[400] _Psychopathia Sexualis_, eighth edition, pp. 8 and 11. Gannouchkine
("La Volupté, la Cruanté et la Religion," _Annales Medico-Psychologique_,
1901, No. 3) has further emphasized this convertibility.

[401] E. Murisier, "Le Sentiment Religieux dans l'Extase," _Revue
Philosophique_, November, 1898. Starbuck, again (_Psychology of Religion_,
Chapter XXX), in a brief discussion of this point, concludes that "the
sexual life, although it has left its impress on fully developed religion,
seems to have originally given the psychic impulse which called out the
latent possibilities of developments, rather than to have furnished the
raw material out of which religion was constructed."

[402] "Una Santa," _Archivio di Psichiatria_, vol. xix, pp. 438-47, 1898.