countess sink down on a sofa and begin to caress her lover. But a
few moments later the husband, accompanied by two friends, dashed
into the room. Before, however, he could decide which of the
lovers to turn against the Countess had risen and struck him so
powerful a blow in the face with her fist that he fell back
streaming with blood. She then seized a whip, drove all three men
out of the room, and in the confusion the lover slipped away. At
this moment the clothes-rail fell and the child, the involuntary
witness of the scene, was revealed to the Countess, who now fell
on him in anger, threw him to the ground, pressed her knee on his
shoulder, and struck him unmercifully. The pain was great, and
yet he was conscious of a strange pleasure. While this
castigation was proceeding the Count returned, no longer in a
rage, but meek and humble as a slave, and kneeled down before her
to beg forgiveness. As the boy escaped he saw her kick her
husband. The child could not resist the temptation to return to
the spot; the door was closed and he could see nothing, but he
heard the sound of the whip and the groans of the Count beneath
his wife's blows.

It is unnecessary to insist that in this scene, acting on a
highly sensitive and somewhat peculiar child, we have the key to
the emotional attitude which affected so much of Sacher-Masoch's
work. As his biographer remarks, woman became to him, during a
considerable part of his life, a creature at once to be loved and
hated, a being whose beauty and brutality enabled her to set her
foot at will on the necks of men, and in the heroine of his first
important novel, the _Emissaer_, dealing with the Polish
Revolution, he embodied the contradictory personality of Countess
Xenobia. Even the whip and the fur garments, Sacher-Masoch's
favorite emotional symbols, find their explanation in this early
episode. He was accustomed to say of an attractive woman: "I
should like to see her in furs," and, of an unattractive woman:
"I could not imagine her in furs." His writing-paper at one time
was adorned with the figure of a woman in Russian Boyar costume,
her cloak lined with ermine, and brandishing a scourge. On his
walls he liked to have pictures of women in furs, of the kind of
which there is so magnificent an example by Rubens in the gallery
at Munich. He would even keep a woman's fur cloak on an ottoman
in his study and stroke it from time to time, finding that his
brain thus received the same kind of stimulation as Schiller
found in the odor of rotten apples.[97]

At the age of 13, in the revolution of 1848, young Sacher-Masoch
received his baptism of fire; carried away in the popular
movement, he helped to defend the barricades together with a
young lady, a relative of his family, an amazon with a pistol in
her girdle, such as later he loved to depict. This episode was,
however, but a brief interruption of his education; he pursued
his studies with brilliance, and on the higher side his education
was aided by his father's esthetic tastes. Amateur theatricals
were in special favor at his home, and here even the serious
plays of Goethe and Gogol were performed, thus helping to train
and direct the boy's taste. It is, perhaps, however, significant
that it was a tragic event which, at the age of 16, first brought
to him the full realization of life and the consciousness of his
own power. This was the sudden death of his favorite sister. He
became serious and quiet, and always regarded this grief as a
turning-point in his life.

At the Universities of Prague and Graz he studied with such zeal
that when only 19 he took his doctor's degree in law and shortly
afterward became a _privatdocent_ for German history at Graz.
Gradually, however, the charms of literature asserted themselves
definitely, and he soon abandoned teaching. He took part,
however, in the war of 1866 in Italy, and at the battle of
Solferino he was decorated on the field for bravery in action by
the Austrian field-marshal. These incidents, however, had little
disturbing influence on Sacher-Masoch's literary career, and he
was gradually acquiring a European reputation by his novels and
stories.

A far more seriously disturbing influence had already begun to be
exerted on his life by a series of love-episodes. Some of these
were of slight and ephemeral character; some were a source of
unalloyed happiness, all the more so if there was an element of
extravagance to appeal to his Quixotic nature. He always longed
to give a dramatic and romantic character to his life, his wife
says, and he spent some blissful days on an occasion when he ran
away to Florence with a Russian princess as her private
secretary. Most often these episodes culminated in deception and
misery. It was after a relationship of this kind from which he
could not free himself for four years that he wrote _Die
Geschiedene Frau, Passionsgeschichte eines Idealisten_, putting
into it much of his own personal history. At one time he was
engaged to a sweet and charming young girl. Then it was that he
met a young woman at Graz, Laura Ruemelin, 27 years of age,
engaged as a glove-maker, and living with her mother. Though of
poor parentage, with little or no knowledge of the world, she had
great natural ability and intelligence. Schlichtegroll represents
her as spontaneously engaging in a mysterious intrigue with the
novelist. Her own detailed narrative renders the circumstances
more intelligible. She approached Sacher-Masoch by letter,
adopting for disguise the name of his heroine Wanda von Dunajev,
in order to recover possession of some compromising letters which
had been written to him, as a joke, by a friend of hers.
Sacher-Masoch insisted on seeing his correspondent before
returning the letters, and with his eager thirst for romantic
adventure he imagined that she was a married woman of the
aristocratic world, probably a Russian countess, whose simple
costume was a disguise. Not anxious to reveal the prosaic facts,
she humored him in his imaginations and a web of mystification
was thus formed. A strong attraction grew up on both sides and,
though for some time Laura Ruemelin maintained the mystery and
held herself aloof from him, a relationship was formed and a
child born. Thereupon, in 1893, they married. Before long,
however, there was disillusion on both sides. She began to detect
the morbid, chimerical, and unpractical aspects of his character,
and he realized that not only was his wife not an aristocrat,
but, what was of more importance to him, she was by no means the
domineering heroine of his dreams. Soon after marriage, in the
course of an innocent romp in which the whole of the small
household took part, he asked his wife to inflict a whipping on
him. She refused, and he thereupon suggested that the servant
should do it; the wife failed to take this idea seriously; but he
had it carried out, with great satisfaction at the severity of
the castigation he received. When, however, his wife explained to
him that, after this incident, it was impossible for the servant
to stay, Sacher-Masoch quite agreed and she was at once
discharged. But he constantly found pleasure in placing his wife
in awkward or compromising circumstances, a pleasure she was too
normal to share. This necessarily led to much domestic
wretchedness. He had persuaded her, against her wish, to whip him
nearly every day, with whips which he devised, having nails
attached to them. He found this a stimulant to his literary work,
and it enabled him to dispense in his novels with his stereotyped
heroine who is always engaged in subjugating men, for, as he
explained to his wife, when he had the reality in his life he was
no longer obsessed by it in his imaginative dreams. Not content
with this, however, he was constantly desirous for his wife to be
unfaithful. He even put an advertisement in a newspaper to the
effect that a young and beautiful woman desired to make the
acquaintance of an energetic man. The wife, however, though she
wished to please her husband, was not anxious to do so to this
extent. She went to an hotel by appointment to meet a stranger
who had answered this advertisement, but when she had explained
to him the state of affairs he chivalrously conducted her home.
It was some time before Sacher-Masoch eventually succeeded in
rendering his wife unfaithful. He attended to the minutest
details of her toilette on this occasion, and as he bade her
farewell at the door he exclaimed: "How I envy him!" This episode
thoroughly humiliated the wife, and from that moment her love for
her husband turned to hate. A final separation was only a
question of time. Sacher-Masoch formed a relationship with Hulda
Meister, who had come to act as secretary and translator to him,
while his wife became attached to Rosenthal, a clever journalist
later known to readers of the _Figaro_ as "Jacques St.-Cere," who
realized her painful position and felt sympathy and affection for
her. She went to live with him in Paris and, having refused to
divorce her husband, he eventually obtained a divorce from her;
she states, however, that she never at any time had physical
relationships with Rosenthal, who was a man of fragile
organization and health. Sacher-Masoch united himself to Hulda
Meister, who is described by the first wife as a prim and faded
but coquettish old maid, and by the biographer as a highly
accomplished and gentle woman, who cared for him with almost
maternal devotion. No doubt there is truth in both descriptions.
It must be noted that, as Wanda clearly shows, apart from his
abnormal sexual temperament, Sacher-Masoch was kind and
sympathetic, and he was strongly attached to his eldest child.
Eulenburg also quotes the statement of a distinguished Austrian
woman writer acquainted with him that, "apart from his sexual
eccentricities, he was an amiable, simple, and sympathetic man
with a touchingly tender love for his children." He had very few
needs, did not drink or smoke, and though he liked to put the
woman he was attached to in rich furs and fantastically gorgeous
raiment he dressed himself with extreme simplicity. His wife
quotes the saying of another woman that he was as simple as a
child and as naughty as a monkey.

In 1883 Sacher-Masoch and Hulda Meister settled in Lindheim, a
village in Germany near the Taunus, a spot to which the novelist
seems to have been attached because in the grounds of his little
estate was a haunted and ruined tower associated with a tragic
medieval episode. Here, after many legal delays, Sacher-Masoch
was able to render his union with Hulda Meister legitimate; here
two children were in due course born, and here the novelist spent
the remaining years of his life in comparative peace. At first,
as is usual, treated with suspicion by the peasants,
Sacher-Masoch gradually acquired great influence over them; he
became a kind of Tolstoy in the rural life around him, the friend
and confidant of all the villagers (something of Tolstoy's
communism is also, it appears, to be seen in the books he wrote
at this time), while the theatrical performances which he
inaugurated, and in which his wife took an active part, spread
the fame of the household in many neighboring villages. Meanwhile
his health began to break up; a visit to Nauheim in 1894 was of
no benefit, and he died March 9, 1895.

A careful consideration of the phenomena of sadism and masochism may be
said to lead us to the conclusion that there is no real line of
demarcation. Even De Sade himself was not a pure sadist, as Bloch's
careful definition is alone sufficient to indicate; it might even be
argued that De Sade was really a masochist; the investigation of histories
of sadism and masochism, even those given by Krafft-Ebing (as, indeed,
Colin Scott and Fere have already pointed out), constantly reveals traces
of both groups of phenomena in the same individual. They cannot,
therefore, be regarded as opposed manifestations. This has been felt by
some writers, who have, in consequence, proposed other names more clearly
indicating the relationship of the phenomena. Fere speaks of sexual
algophily[98]; he only applies the term to masochism; it might equally
well be applied to sadism. Schrenck-Notzing, to cover both sadism and
masochism, has invented the term algolagnia (algos, pain, and lagnos
sexually excited), and calls the former active, the latter passive,
algolagnia.[99] Eulenburg has also emphasized the close connection between
these groups of perverted sexual manifestations, and has adopted the same
terms, adding the further group of ideal (illusionary) algolagnia, to
cover the cases in which the mere autosuggestive representation of pain,
inflicted or suffered, suffices to give sexual gratification.[100]

A brief discussion of the terms "sadism" and "masochism" has imposed
itself upon us at this point because as soon as, in any study of the
relationship between love and pain, we pass over the limits of normal
manifestations into a region which is more or less abnormal, these two
conceptions are always brought before us, and it was necessary to show on
what grounds they are here rejected as the pivots on which the discussion
ought to turn. We may accept them as useful terms to indicate two groups
of clinical phenomena; but we cannot regard them as of any real scientific
value. Having reached this result, we may continue our consideration of
the love-bite, as the normal manifestation of the connection between love
and pain which most naturally leads us across the frontier of the
abnormal.

The result of the love-bite in its extreme degree is to shed blood. This
cannot be regarded as the direct aim of the bite in its normal
manifestations, for the mingled feelings of close contact, of passionate
gripping, of symbolic devouring, which constitute the emotional
accompaniments of the bite would be too violently discomposed by actual
wounding and real shedding of blood. With some persons, however, perhaps
more especially women, the love-bite is really associated with a conscious
desire, even if more or less restrained, to draw blood, a real delight in
this process, a love of blood. Probably this only occurs in persons who
are not absolutely normal, but on the borderland of the abnormal. We have
to admit that this craving has, however, a perfectly normal basis. There
is scarcely any natural object with so profoundly emotional an effect as
blood, and it is very easy to understand why this should be so.[101]
Moreover, blood enters into the sphere of courtship by virtue of the same
conditions by which cruelty enters into it; they are both accidents of
combat, and combat is of the very essence of animal and primitive human
courtship, certainly its most frequent accompaniment. So that the
repelling or attracting fascination of blood may be regarded as a
by-product of normal courtship, which, like other such by-products, may
become an essential element of abnormal courtship.[102]

Normally the fascination of blood, if present at all during sexual
excitement, remains more or less latent, either because it is weak or
because the checks that inhibit it are inevitably very powerful.
Occasionally it becomes more clearly manifest, and this may happen early
in life. Fere records the case of a man of Anglo-Saxon origin, of sound
heredity so far as could be ascertained and presenting no obvious stigmata
of degeneration, who first experienced sexual manifestations at the age of
5 when a boy cousin was attacked by bleeding at the nose. It was the first
time he had seen such a thing and he experienced erection and much
pleasure at the sight. This was repeated the next time the cousin's nose
bled and also whenever he witnessed any injuries or wounds, especially
when occurring in males. A few years later he began to find pleasure in
pinching and otherwise inflicting slight suffering. This sadism was not,
however, further developed, although a tendency to inversion
persisted.[103]

Somewhat similar may have been the origin of the attraction of
blood in a case which has been reported to me of a youth of 17,
the youngest of a large family who are all very strong and
entirely normal. He is himself, however, delicate, overgrown,
with a narrow chest, a small head, and babyish features, while
mentally he is backward, with very defective memory and scant
powers of assimilation. He is intensely nervous, peevish, and
subject to fits of childish rage. He takes violent fancies to
persons of his own sex. But he appears to have only one way of
obtaining sexual excitement and gratification. It is his custom
to get into a hot bath and there to produce erection and
emission, not by masturbation, but by thinking of flowing blood.
He does not associate himself with the causation of this
imaginary flow of blood; he is merely the passive but pleased
spectator. He is aware of his peculiarity and endeavors to shake
it off, but his efforts to obtain normal pleasure by thinking of
a girl are vain.

I may here narrate a case which has been communicated to me of
algolagnia in a woman, combined with sexual hyperesthesia.

R.D., aged 25, married, and of good social position; she is a
small and dark woman, restless and alert in manner. She has one
child.

She has practised masturbation from an early age--ever since she
can remember--by the method of external friction and pressure.
From the age of 17 she was able (and is still) to produce the
orgasm almost without effort, by calling up the image of any man
who had struck her fancy. She has often done so while seated
talking to such a man, even when he is almost a stranger; in
doing it, she says, a tightening of the muscles of the thighs and
the slightest movement are sufficient. Ugly men (if not
deformed), as well as men with the reputation of being _roues_,
greatly excite her sexually, more especially if of good social
position, though this is not essential.

At the age of 18 she became hysterical, probably, she herself
believes, in consequence of a great increase at that time of
indulgence in masturbation. The doctors, apparently suspecting
her habits, urged her parents to get her married early. She
married, at the age of 20, a man about twice her own age.

As a child (and in a less degree still) she was very fond of
watching dog-fights. This spectacle produced strong sexual
feelings and usually orgasm, especially if much blood was shed
during the fight. Clean cuts and wounds greatly attract her,
whether on herself or a man. She has frequently slightly cut or
scratched herself "to see the blood," and likes to suck the
wound, thinking the taste "delicious." This produces strong
sexual feelings and often orgasm, especially if at the time she
thinks of some attractive man and imagines that she is sucking
his blood. The sight of injury to a woman only very slightly
affects her, and that, she thinks, only because of an involuntary
association of ideas. Nor has the sight of suffering in illness
any exciting effects, only that which is due to violence, and
when there is a visible cause for the suffering, such as cuts and
wounds. (Bruises, from the absence of blood, have only a slight
effect.) The excitement is intensified if she imagines that she
has herself inflicted the injury. She likes to imagine that the
man wished to rape her, and that she fought him in order to make
him more greatly value her favor, so wounding him.

Impersonal ideas of torture also excite her. She thinks Fox's
_Book of Martyrs_ "lovely," and the more horrible and bloody the
tortures described the greater is the sexual excitement produced.
The book excites her from the point of view of the torturer, not
that of the victim. She has frequently masturbated while reading
it.

So far as practicable she has sought to carry out these ideas in
her relations with her husband. She has several times bitten him
till the blood came and sucked the bite during coitus. She likes
to bite him enough to make him wince. The pleasure is greatly
heightened by thinking of various tortures, chiefly by cutting.
She likes to have her husband talk to her, and she to him, of all
the tortures they could inflict on each other. She has, however,
never actually tried to carry out these tortures. She would like
to, but dares not, as she is sure he could not endure them. She
has no desire for her husband to try them on her, although she
likes to hear him talk about it.

She is at the same time fond of normal coitus, even to excess.
She likes her husband to remain entirely passive during
connection, so that he can continue in a state of strong erection
for a long time. She can thus, she says, procure for herself the
orgasm a number of times in succession, even nine or ten, quite
easily. On one occasion she even had the orgasm twenty-six times
within about one and a quarter hours, her husband during this
time having two orgasms. (She is quite certain about the accuracy
of this statement.) During this feat much talk about torture was
indulged in, and it took place after a month's separation from
her husband, during which she was careful not to masturbate, so
that she might have "a real good time" when he came back. She
acknowledges that on this occasion she was a "complete wreck" for
a couple of days afterward, but states that usually ten or a
dozen orgasms (or spasms, as she terms them) only make her "feel
lively." She becomes frenzied with excitement during intercourse
and insensible to everything but the pleasure of it.

She has never hitherto allowed anyone (except her husband after
marriage) to know of her sadistic impulses, nor has she carried
them out with anyone, though she would like to, if she dared. Nor
has she allowed any man but her husband to have connection with
her or to take any liberties.

Outbursts of sadism may occur episodically in fairly normal persons. Thus,
Coutagne describes the case of a lad of 17--always regarded as quite
normal, and without any signs of degeneracy, even on careful examination,
or any traces of hysteria or alcoholism, though there was insanity among
his cousins--who had had occasional sexual relations for a year or two,
and on one occasion, being in a state of erection, struck the girl three
times on the breast and abdomen with a kitchen knife bought for the
purpose. He was much ashamed of his act immediately afterward, and, all
the circumstances being taken into consideration, he was acquitted by the
court.[104] Here we seem to have the obscure and latent fascination of
blood, which is almost normal, germinating momentarily into an active
impulse which is distinctly abnormal, though it produced little beyond
those incisions which Vatsyayana disapproved of, but still regarded as a
part of courtship. One step more and we are amid the most outrageous and
extreme of all forms of sexual perversion: with the heroes of De Sade's
novels, who, in exemplification of their author's most cherished ideals,
plan scenes of debauchery in which the flowing of blood is an essential
element of coitus; with the Marshall Gilles de Rais and the Hungarian
Countess Bathory, whose lust could only be satiated by the death of
innumerable victims.

This impulse to stab--with no desire to kill, or even in most
cases to give pain, but only to draw blood and so either
stimulate or altogether gratify the sexual impulse--is no doubt
the commonest form of sanguinary sadism. These women-stabbers
have been known in France as _piqueurs_ for nearly a century, and
in Germany are termed _Stecher_ or _Messerstecher_ (they have
been studied by Naecke, "Zur Psychologie der sadistischen
Messerstecher," _Archiv fuer Kriminal-Anthropologie_, Bd. 35,
1909). A case of this kind where a man stabbed girls in the
abdomen occurred in Paris in the middle of the eighteenth
century, and in 1819 or 1820 there seems to have been an epidemic
of _piqueurs_ in Paris; as we learn from a letter of Charlotte
von Schiller's to Knebel; the offenders (though perhaps there was
only one) frequented the Boulevards and the Palais Royal and
stabbed women in the buttocks or thighs; they were never caught.
About the same time similar cases of a slighter kind occurred in
London, Brussels, Hamburg, and Munich.

Stabbers are nearly always men, but cases of the same perversion
in women are not unknown. Thus Dr. Kiernan informs me of an Irish
woman, aged 40, and at the beginning of the menopause, who, in
New York in 1909, stabbed five men with a hatpin. The motive was
sexual and she told one of the men that she stabbed him because
she "loved" him.

Gilles de Rais, who had fought beside Joan of Arc, is the classic
example of sadism in its extreme form, involving the murder of
youths and maidens. Bernelle considers that there is some truth
in the contention of Huysmans that the association with Joan of
Arc was a predisposing cause in unbalancing Gilles de Rais.
Another cause was his luxurious habit of life. He himself, no
doubt rightly, attached importance to the suggestions received in
reading Suetonius. He appears to have been a sexually precocious
child, judging from an obscure passage in his confessions. He was
artistic and scholarly, fond of books, of the society of learned
men, and of music. Bernelle sums him up as "a pious warrior, a
cruel and keen artist, a voluptuous assassin, an exalted mystic,"
who was at the same time unbalanced, a superior degenerate, and
morbidly impulsive. (The best books on Gilles de Rais are the
Abbe Bossard's _Gilles de Rais_, in which, however, the author,
being a priest, treats his subject as quite sane and abnormally
wicked; Huysmans's novel, _La-Bas_, which embodies a detailed
study of Gilles de Rais, and F.H. Bernelle's These de Paris, _La
Psychose de Gilles de Rais_, 1910.)

The opinion has been hazarded that the history of Gilles de Rais
is merely a legend. This view is not accepted, but there can be
no doubt that the sadistic manifestations which occurred in the
Middle Ages were mixed up with legendary and folk-lore elements.
These elements centered on the conception of the _werwolf_,
supposed to be a man temporarily transformed into a wolf with
blood-thirsty impulses. (See, e.g., articles "Werwolf" and
"Lycanthropy" in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.) France, especially,
was infested with werwolves in the sixteenth century. In 1603,
however, it was decided at Bordeaux, in a trial involving a
werwolf, that lycanthropy was only an insane delusion. Dumas
("Les Loup-Garous," _Journal de Psychologie Normale et
Pathologique_, May-June, 1907) argues that the medieval werwolves
were sadists whose crimes were largely imaginative, though
sometimes real, the predecessor of the modern Jack the Ripper.
The complex nature of the elements making up the belief in the
werwolf is emphasized by Ernest Jones, _Der Alptraum_, 1912.

Related to the werwolf, but distinct, was the _vampire_, supposed
to be a dead person who rose from the dead to suck the blood of
the living during sleep. By way of reprisal the living dug up,
exorcised, and mutilated the supposed vampires. This was called
vampirism. The name vampire was then transferred to the living
person who had so treated a corpse. All profanation of the
corpse, whatever its origin, is now frequently called vampirism
(Epaulow, _Vampirisme_, These de Lyon, 1901; id., "Le Vampire du
Muy," _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, Sept., 1903). The
earliest definite reference to necrophily is in Herodotus, who
tells (bk. ii, ch. lxxxix) of an Egyptian who had connection with
the corpse of a woman recently dead. Epaulow gives various old
cases and, at full length, the case which he himself
investigated, of Ardisson, the "Vampire du Muy." W.A.F. Browne
also has an interesting article on "Necrophilism" (_Journal of
Mental Science_, Jan., 1875) which he regards as atavistic. When
there is, in addition, mutilation of the corpse, the condition is
termed necrosadism. There seems usually to be no true sadism in
either necrosadism or necrophilism. (See, however, Bloch,
_Beitraege_, vol. ii, p. 284 et seq.)

It must be said also that cases of rape followed by murder are
quite commonly not sadistic. The type of such cases is
represented by Soleilland, who raped and then murdered children.
He showed no sadistic perversion. He merely killed to prevent
discovery, as a burglar who is interrupted may commit murder in
order to escape. (E. Dupre, "L'Affaire Soleilland," _Archives
d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, Jan.-Feb., 1910.)

A careful and elaborate study of a completely developed sadist
has been furnished by Lacassagne, Rousset, and Papillon
("L'Affaire Reidal," _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_,
Oct.-Nov., 1907). Reidal, a youth of 18, a seminarist, was a
congenital sanguinary sadist who killed another youth and was
finally sent to an asylum. From the age of 4 he had voluptuous
ideas connected with blood and killing, and liked to play at
killing with other children. He was of infantile physical
development, with a pleasant, childish expression of face, very
religious, and hated obscenity and immorality. But the love of
blood and murder was an irresistible obsession and its
gratification produced immense emotional relief.

Sadism generally has been especially studied by Lacassagne,
_Vacher l'Eventreur et les Crimes Sadiques_, 1899. Zooesadism, or
sadism toward animals, has been dealt with by P. Thomas, "Le
Sadisme sur les Animaux," _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_,
Sept., 1903. Auto-sadism, or "auto-erotic cruelty," that is to
say, injuries inflicted on a person by himself with a sexual
motive, has been investigated by G. Bach (_Sexuelle Verrirungen
des Menschen und der Nature_, p. 427); this condition seems,
however, a form of algolagnia more masochistic than sadistic in
character.

With regard to the medico-legal aspects, Kiernan ("Responsibility
in Active Algophily," _Medicine_, April, 1903) sets forth the
reasons in favor of the full and complete responsibility of
sadists, and Harold Moyer comes to the same conclusion ("Is
Sexual Perversion Insanity?" _Alienist and Neurologist_, May,
1907). See also Thoinot's _Medico-legal Aspects of Moral
Offenses_ (edited by Weysse, 1911), ch. xviii. While we are
probably justified in considering the sadist as morally not
insane in the technical sense, we must remember that he is, for
the most part, highly abnormal from the outset. As Gaupp points
out (_Sexual-Probleme_, Oct., 1909, p. 797), we cannot measure
the influences which create the sadist and we must not therefore
attempt to "punish" him, but we are bound to place him in a
position where he will not injure society.

It is enough here to emphasize the fact that there is no solution of
continuity in the links that bind the absolutely normal manifestations of
sex with the most extreme violations of all human law. This is so true
that in saying that these manifestations are violations of all human law
we cannot go on to add, what would seem fairly obvious, that they are
violations also of all natural law. We have but to go sufficiently far
back, or sufficiently far afield, in the various zooelogical series to find
that manifestations which, from the human point of view, are in the
extreme degree abnormally sadistic here become actually normal. Among very
various species wounding and rending normally take place at or immediately
after coitus; if we go back to the beginning of animal life in the
protozoa sexual conjugation itself is sometimes found to present the
similitude, if not the actuality, of the complete devouring of one
organism by another. Over a very large part of nature, as it has been
truly said, "but a thin veil divides love from death."[105]

There is, indeed, on the whole, a point of difference. In that abnormal
sadism which appears from time to time among civilized human beings it is
nearly always the female who becomes the victim of the male. But in the
normal sadism which occurs throughout a large part of nature it is nearly
always the male who is the victim of the female. It is the male spider who
impregnates the female at the risk of his life and sometimes perishes in
the attempt; it is the male bee who, after intercourse with the queen,
falls dead from that fatal embrace, leaving her to fling aside his
entrails and calmly pursue her course.[106] If it may seem to some that
the course of our inquiry leads us to contemplate with equanimity, as a
natural phenomenon, a certain semblance of cruelty in man in his relations
with woman, they may, if they will, reflect that this phenomenon is but a
very slight counterpoise to that cruelty which has been naturally exerted
by the female on the male long even before man began to be.


FOOTNOTES:

[83] Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, English translation of tenth
German edition, pp. 80, 209. It should be added that the object of the
sadistic impulse is not necessarily a person of the opposite sex.

[84] A. Moll, _Die Kontraere Sexualempfindung_, third edition, 1899, p.
309.

[85] Fere, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, p. 133.

[86] P. Garnier, "Des Perversions Sexuelles," Thirteenth International
Congress of Medicine, Section of Psychiatry, Paris, 1900.

[87] E. Duehren, _Der Marquis de Sade und Seine Zeit_, third edition, 1901,
p. 449.

[88] See, for instance, Bloch's _Beitraege zur AEtiologie der Psychopathia
Sexualis_, part ii, p. 178.

[89] Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, English translation of tenth
German edition, p. 115. Stefanowsky, who also discussed this condition
(_Archives de l'Anthropologie Criminelle_, May, 1892, and translation,
with notes by Kiernan, _Alienist and Neurologist_, Oct., 1892), termed it
passivism.

[90] _Anatomy of Melancholy_, part iii, section 2, mem. iii, subs, 1.

[91] "Aristoteles als Masochist," _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Bd. ii,
ht. 2.

[92] _Die Kontraere Sexualempfindung_, third edition, p. 277. Cf. C.F. von
Schlichtegroll, _Sacher-Masoch und der Masochismus_, p. 120.

[93] See C.F. von Schlichtegroll, loc. cit., p. 124 et seq.

[94] Iwan Bloch considers that it is the commonest of all sexual
perversions, more prevalent even than homosexuality.

[95] It has no doubt been prominent in earlier civilization. A very
pronounced masochist utterance may be found in an ancient Egyptian
love-song written about 1200 B.C.: "Oh! were I made her porter, I should
cause her to be wrathful with me. Then when I did but hear her voice, the
voice of her anger, a child shall I be for fear." (Wiedemann, _Popular
Literature in Ancient Egypt_, p. 9.) The activity and independence of the
Egyptian women at the time may well have offered many opportunities to the
ancient Egyptian masochist.

[96] Colin Scott, "Sex and Art," _American Journal of Psychology_, vol.
vii, No. 2, p. 208.

[97] It must not be supposed that the attraction of fur or of the whip is
altogether accounted for by such a casual early experience as in
Sacher-Masoch's case served to evoke it. The whip we shall have to
consider briefly later on. The fascination exerted by fur, whether
manifesting itself as love or fear, would appear to be very common in many
children, and almost instinctive. Stanley Hall, in his "Study of Fears"
(_American Journal of Psychology_, vol. viii, p. 213) has obtained as many
as 111 well-developed cases of fear of fur, or, as he terms it,
doraphobia, in some cases appearing as early as the age of 6 months, and
he gives many examples. He remarks that the love of fur is still more
common, and concludes that "both this love and fear are so strong and
instinctive that they can hardly be fully accounted for without recourse
to a time when association with animals was far closer than now, or
perhaps when our remote ancestors were hairy." (Cf. "Erotic Symbolism,"
iv, in the fifth volume of these _Studies_.)

[98] Fere, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, p. 138.

[99] Schrenck-Notzing, _Zeitschrift fuer Hypnotismus_, Bd. ix, ht. 2, 1899.

[100] Eulenburg, _Sadismus und Masochismus_, second edition, 1911, p. 5.

[101] I have elsewhere dealt with this point in discussing the special
emotional tone of red (Havelock Ellis, "The Psychology of Red," _Popular
Science Monthly_, August and September, 1900).

[102] It is probable that the motive of sexual murders is nearly always to
shed blood, and not to cause death. Leppmann (_Bulletin Internationale de
Droit Penal_, vol. vi, 1896, p. 115) points out that such murders are
generally produced by wounds in the neck or mutilation of the abdomen,
never by wounds of the head. T. Claye Shaw, who terms the lust for blood
hemothymia, has written an interesting and suggestive paper ("A Prominent
Motive in Murder," _Lancet_, June 19, 1909) on the natural fascination of
blood. Blumroeder, in 1830, seems to have been the first who definitely
called attention to the connection between lust and blood.

[103] Fere, _Revue de Chirurgie_, March 10, 1905.

[104] H. Coutagne, "Cas de Perversion Sanguinaire de l'Instinct Sexuel,"
_Annales Medico-Psychologiques_, July and August, 1893. D.S. Booth
(_Alienist and Neurologist_, Aug., 1906) describes the case of a man of
neurotic heredity who slightly stabbed a woman with a penknife when on his
way to a prostitute.

[105] Kiernan appears to have been the first to suggest the bearing of
these facts on sadism, which he would regard as the abnormal human form of
phenomena which may be found at the very beginning of animal life, as,
indeed, the survival or atavistic reappearance of a primitive sexual
cannibalism. See his "Psychological Aspects of the Sexual Appetite,"
_Alienist and Neurologist_, April, 1891, and "Responsibility in Sexual
Perversion," _Chicago Medical Recorder_, March, 1892. Penta has also
independently developed the conception of the biological basis of sadism
and other sexual perversions (_I Pervertimenti Sessuali_, 1893). It must
be added that, as Remy de Gourmont points out (_Promenades
Philosophiques_, 2d series, p. 273), this sexual cannibalism exerted by
the female may have, primarily, no erotic significance: "She eats him
because she is hungry and because when exhausted he is an easy prey."

[106] In the chapter entitled "Le Vol Nuptial" of his charming book on the
life of bees Maeterlinck has given an incomparable picture of the tragic
courtship of these insects.




III.

Flagellation as a Typical Illustration of Algolagnia--Causes of Connection
between Sexual Emotion and Whipping--Physical Causes--Psychic Causes
probably more Important--The Varied Emotional Associations of
Whipping--Its Wide Prevalence.


The whole problem of love and pain, in its complementary sadistic and
masochistic aspects, is presented to us in connection with the pleasure
sometimes experienced in whipping, or in being whipped, or in witnessing
or thinking about scenes of whipping. The association of sexual emotion
with bloodshed is so extreme a perversion, it so swiftly sinks to phases
that are obviously cruel, repulsive, and monstrous in an extreme degree,
that it is necessarily rare, and those who are afflicted by it are often
more or less imbecile. With whipping it is otherwise. Whipping has always
been a recognized religious penance; it is still regarded as a beneficial
and harmless method of chastisement; there is nothing necessarily cruel,
repulsive, or monstrous in the idea or the reality of whipping, and it is
perfectly easy and natural for an interest in the subject to arise in an
innocent and even normal child, and thus to furnish a germ around which,
temporarily at all events, sexual ideas may crystallize. For these reasons
the connection between love and pain may be more clearly brought out in
connection with whipping than with blood.

There is, by no means, any necessary connection between flagellation and
the sexual emotions. If there were, this form of penance would not have
been so long approved or at all events tolerated by the Church.[107]

As a matter of fact, indeed, it was not always approved or even tolerated.
Pope Adrian IV in the eighth century forbade priests to beat their
penitents, and at the time of the epidemic of flagellation in the
thirteenth century, which was highly approved by many holy men, the abuses
were yet so frequent that Clement VI issued a bull against these
processions. All such papal prohibitions remained without effect. The
association of religious flagellation with perverted sexual motives is
shown by its condemnation in later ages by the Inquisition, which was
accustomed to prosecute the priests who, in prescribing flagellation as a
penance, exerted it personally, or caused it to be inflicted on the
stripped penitent in his presence, or made a woman penitent discipline
him, such offences being regarded as forms of "solicitation."[108] There
seems even to be some reason to suppose that the religious flagellation
mania which was so prevalent in the later Middle Ages, when processions of
penitents, male and female, eagerly flogged themselves and each other, may
have had something to do with the discovery of erotic flagellation,[109]
which, at all events in Europe, seems scarcely to have been known before
the sixteenth century. It must, in any case, have assisted to create a
predisposition. The introduction of flagellation as a definitely
recognized sexual stimulant is by Eulenburg, in his interesting book,
_Sadismus und Masochismus_, attributed to the Arabian physicians. It would
appear to have been by the advice of an Arabian physician that the Duchess
Leonora Gonzaga, of Mantua, was whipped by her mother to aid her in
responding more warmly to her husband's embraces and to conceive.

Whatever the precise origin of sexual flagellation in Europe, there can be
no doubt that it soon became extremely common, and so it remains at the
present day. Those who possess a special knowledge of such matters declare
that sexual flagellation is the most frequent of all sexual perversions
in England.[110] This belief is, I know, shared by many people both inside
and outside England. However this may be, the tendency is certainly
common. I doubt if it is any or at all less common in Germany, judging by
the large number of books on the subject of flagellation which have been
published in German. In a catalogue of "interesting books" on this and
allied subjects issued by a German publisher and bookseller, I find that,
of fifty-five volumes, as many as seventeen or eighteen, all in German,
deal solely with the question of flagellation, while many of the other
books appear to deal in part with the same subject.[111] It is, no doubt,