etc. The sexual impulse would thus tend to involve to a greater
extent the higher psychic region in women than in men.

Forel likewise (_Die Sexuelle Frage_, 1906, p. 276), remarking on
the much greater prevalence of erotic manifestations among insane
women than insane men (and pointing out that it is by no means
due merely to the presence of a male doctor, for it remains the
same when the doctor is a woman), considers that it proves that
in women the sexual impulse resides more prominently in the
higher nervous centers and in men in the lower centers. (As
regards the great prevalence of erotic manifestations among the
female insane, I may also refer to Claye Shaw's interesting
observations, "The Sexes in Lunacy," _St. Bartholomew's Hospital
Reports_, vol. xxiv, 1888; also quoted in Havelock Ellis, _Man
and Woman_, p. 370 et seq.) Whether or not we may accept Naecke's
and Forel's interpretation of the facts, which is at least
doubtful, there can be little doubt that the sexual impulse is
more fundamental in women. This is indicated by Naecke's
observation that among idiots sexual manifestations are commoner
in females than in males. Of 16 idiot girls, of the age of 16 and
under, 15 certainly masturbated, sometimes as often as fourteen
times a day, while the remaining girl probably masturbated; but
of 25 youthful male idiots only 1 played with his penis. (P.
Naecke, "Die Sexuellen Perversitaeten in der Irrenanstalt,"
_Psychiatrische Bladen_, 1899, No. 2, pp. 9, 12.) On the physical
side Bourneville and Sollier found (_Progres medical_, 1888) that
puberty is much retarded in idiot and imbecile boys, while J.
Voisin (_Annales d'Hygiene Publique_, June, 1894) found that in
idiot and imbecile girls, on the contrary, there is no lack of
full sexual development or retardation of puberty, while
masturbation is common. In women, it may be added, as Ball
pointed out (_Folie erotique_, p. 40), sexual hallucinations are
especially common, while under the influence of anesthetics
erotic manifestations and feelings are frequent in women, but
rare in men. (Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, p. 256.)

The fact that the first coitus has a much more profound moral and
psychic influence on a woman than on a man would also seem to
indicate how much more fundamental the sexual region is in women.
The fact may be considered as undoubted. (It is referred to by
Marro, _La Puberta_, p. 460.) The mere physical fact that, while
in men coitus remains a merely exterior contact, in women it
involves penetration into the sensitive and virginal interior of
the body would alone indicate this difference.

We are told that in the East there was once a woman named Moarbeda who was
a philosopher and considered to be the wisest woman of her time. When
Moarbeda was once asked: "In what part of a woman's body does her mind
reside?" she replied: "Between her thighs." To many women,--perhaps,
indeed, we might even say to most women,--to a certain extent may be
applied--and in no offensive sense--the dictum of the wise woman of the
East; in a certain sense their brains are in their wombs. Their mental
activity may sometimes seem to be limited; they may appear to be passing
through life always in a rather inert or dreamy state; but, when their
sexual emotions are touched, then at once they spring into life; they
become alert, resourceful, courageous, indefatigable. "But when I am not
in love I am nothing!" exclaimed a woman when reproached by a French
magistrate for living with a thief. There are many women who could truly
make the same statement, not many men. That emotion, which, one is tempted
to say, often unmans the man, makes the woman for the first time truly
herself.

"Women are more occupied with love than men," wrote De Senancour
(_De l'Amour_, vol. ii, p. 59); "it shows itself in all their
movements, animates their looks, gives to their gestures a grace
that is always new, to their smiles and voices an inexpressible
charm; they live for love, while many men in obeying love feel
that they are forgetting themselves."

Restif de la Bretonne (_Monsieur Nicolas_, vol. vi, p. 223)
quotes a young girl who well describes the difference which love
makes to a woman: "Before I vegetated; now all my actions have a
motive, an end; they have become important. When I wake my first
thought is 'Someone is occupied with me and desires me.' I am no
longer alone, as I was before; another feels my existence and
cherishes it," etc.

"One is surprised to see in the south," remarks Bonstetten, in
his suggestive book, _L'Homme du Midi et l'Homme du Nord_
(1824),--and the remark by no means applies only to the
south,--"how love imparts intelligence even to those who are most
deficient in ideas. An Italian woman in love is inexhaustible in
the variety of her feelings, all subordinated to the supreme
emotion which dominates her. Her ideas follow one another with
prodigious rapidity, and produce a lambent play which is fed by
her heart alone. If she ceases to love, her mind becomes merely
the scoria of the lava which yesterday had been so bright."

Cabanis had already made some observations to much the same
effect. Referring to the years of nubility following puberty, he
remarks: "I have very often seen the greatest fecundity of ideas,
the most brilliant imagination, a singular aptitude for the arts,
suddenly develop in girls of this age, only to give place soon
afterward to the most absolute mental mediocrity." (Cabanis, "De
l'Influence des Sexes," etc., _Rapports du Physique et du Morale
de l'Homme_.)

This phenomenon seems to be one of the indications of the immense organic
significance of the sexual relations. Woman's part in the world is less
obtrusively active than man's, but there is a moment when nature cannot
dispense with energy and mental vigor in women, and that is during the
reproductive period. The languidest woman must needs be alive when her
sexual emotions are profoundly stirred. People often marvel at the
infatuation which men display for women who, in the eyes of all the world,
seem commonplace and dull. This is not, as we usually suppose, always
entirely due to the proverbial blindness of love. For the man whom she
loves, such a woman is often alive and transformed. He sees a woman who is
hidden from all the world. He experiences something of that surprise and
awe which Dostoieffsky felt when the seemingly dull and brutish criminals
of Siberia suddenly exhibited gleams of exquisite sensibility.

In women, it must further be said, the sexual impulse shows a much more
marked tendency to periodicity than in men; not only is it less apt to
appear spontaneously, but its spontaneous manifestations are in a very
pronounced manner correlated with menstruation. A woman who may experience
almost overmastering sexual desire just before, during, or after the
monthly period may remain perfectly calm and self-possessed during the
rest of the month. In men such irregularities of the sexual impulse are
far less marked. Thus it is that a woman may often appear capricious,
unaccountable, or cold, merely because her moments of strong emotion have
been physiologically confined within a limited period. She may be one day
capable of audacities of which on another the very memory might seem to
have left her.

Not only is the intensity of the sexual impulse in women, as compared to
men, more liable to vary from day to day, or from week to week, but the
same greater variability is marked when we compare the whole cycle of life
in women to that of men. The stress of early womanhood, when the
reproductive functions are in fullest activity, and of late womanhood,
when they are ceasing, produces a profound organic fermentation, psychic
as much as physical, which is not paralleled in the lives of men. This
greater variability in the cycle of a woman's life as compared with a
man's is indicated very delicately and precisely by the varying incidence
of insanity, and is made clearly visible in a diagram prepared by Marro
showing the relative liability to mental diseases in the two sexes
according to age.[180] At the age of 20 the incidence of insanity in both
sexes is equal; from that age onward the curve in men proceeds in a
gradual and equable manner, with only the slightest oscillation, on to old
age. But in women the curve is extremely irregular; it remains high during
all the years from 20 to 30, instead of falling like the masculine curve;
then it falls rapidly to considerably below the masculine curve, rising
again considerably above the masculine level during the climacteric years
from 40 to 50, after which age the two sexes remain fairly close together
to the end of life. Thus, as measured by the test of insanity, the curve
of woman's life, in the sudden rise and sudden fall of its sexual crisis,
differs from the curve of man's life and closely resembles the minor curve
of her menstrual cycle.

The general tendency of this difference in sexual life and impulse is to
show a greater range of variation in women than in men. Fairly uniform, on
the whole, in men generally and in the same man throughout mature life,
sexual impulse varies widely between woman and woman, and even in the same
woman at different periods.


FOOTNOTES:

[169] Ovid remarks (_Ars Amatoria_, bk. i) that, if men were silent, women
would take the active and suppliant part.

[170] Ferrand, _De la Maladie d'Amour_, 1623, ch. ii.

[171] Tarde, _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, May 15, 1897. Marro,
who quotes this observation (_Puberta_, p. 467; in French edition, p. 61),
remarks that his own evidence lends some support to Lombroso's conclusion
that under ordinary circumstances woman's sensory acuteness is less than
that of man. He is, however, inclined to impute this to defective
attention; within the sexual sphere women's attention becomes
concentrated, and their sensory perceptions then go far beyond those of
men. There is probably considerable truth in this subtle observation.

[172] A well-known gynecologist writes from America: "Abhorrence due to
suffering on first nights I have repeatedly seen. One very marked case is
that of a fine womanly young woman with splendid figure; she is a very
good woman, and admires her husband, but, though she tries to develop
desire and passion, she cannot succeed. I fear the man will some day
appear who will be able to develop the latent feelings."

[173] It is curious that, while the sexual impulse in women tends to
develop at a late age more frequently than in men, it would also appear to
develop more frequently at a very early age than in the other sex. The
majority of cases of precocious sexual development seems to be in female
children. W. Roger Williams ("Precocious Sexual Development," _British
Gynaecological Journal_, May, 1902) finds that 80 such cases have been
recorded in females and only 20 in males, and, while 13 is the earliest
age at which boys have proved virile, girls have been known to conceive at
8.

[174] I find the same remark made by Plazzonus in the seventeenth century.

[175] Art. "Fecondation," _Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences
Medicales_.

[176] This also is an ancient remark, for in the early treatise _De
Secretis Mulierum_, once attributed to Michael Scot, it is stated,
concerning the woman who finds pleasure in coitus, "cantat libenter."

[177] It is scarcely necessary to add that prostitutes can furnish little
evidence one way or the other. Not only may prostitutes refuse to
participate in the sexual orgasm, but the evils of a prostitute's life are
obviously connected with causes quite other than mere excess of sexual
gratification.

[178] This is, for instance, indicated by the experiments of Gualino
concerning the sexual sensitiveness of the lips (_Archivio di
Psichiatria_, 1904, fasc. 3). He found that mechanical irritation applied
to the lips produced more or less sexual feeling in 12 out of 20 women,
but in only 10 out of 25 men, i.e., in three-fifths of the women and
two-fifths of the men.

[179] "Adolescence is for women primarily a period of storm and stress,
while for men it is in the highest sense a period of doubt," (Starbuck,
_Psychology of Religion_, p. 241.) It is interesting to note that in the
religious sphere, also, the emotions of women are more diffused than those
of men; Starbuck confirms the conclusion of Professor Coe that, while
women have at least as much religious emotion as men, in them it is more
all pervasive, and they experience fewer struggles and acute crises.
(Ibid., p. 80.)

[180] Marro, _La Puberta_, p. 233. This table covers all those cases,
nearly 3000, of patients entering the Turin asylum, from 1886 to 1895, in
which the age of the first appearance of insanity was known.




III.

Summary of Conclusions.


In conclusion it may be worth while to sum up the main points brought out
in this brief discussion of a very large question. We have seen that there
are two streams of opinion regarding the relative strength of the sexual
impulse in men and women: one tending to regard it as greater in men, the
other as greater in women. We have concluded that, since a large body of
facts may be brought forward to support either view, we may fairly hold
that, roughly speaking, the distribution of the sexual impulse between the
two sexes is fairly balanced.

We have, however, further seen that the phenomena are in reality too
complex to be settled by the usual crude method of attempting to discover
quantitative differences in the sexual impulse. We more nearly get to the
bottom of the question by a more analytic method, breaking up our mass of
facts into groups. In this way we find that there are certain well-marked
characteristics by which the sexual impulse in women differs from the same
impulse in men: 1. It shows greater apparent passivity. 2. It is more
complex, less apt to appear spontaneously, and more often needing to be
aroused, while the sexual orgasm develops more slowly than in men. 3. It
tends to become stronger after sexual relationships are established. 4.
The threshold of excess is less easily reached than in men. 5. The sexual
sphere is larger and more diffused. 6. There is a more marked tendency to
periodicity in the spontaneous manifestations of sexual desire. 7. Largely
as a result of these characteristics, the sexual impulse shows a greater
range of variation in women than in men, both as between woman and woman
and in the same woman at different periods.

It may be added that a proper understanding of these sexual differences in
men and women is of great importance, both in the practical management of
sexual hygiene and in the comprehension of those wider psychological
characteristics by which women differ from men.




APPENDICES.


APPENDIX A.

THE SEXUAL INSTINCT IN SAVAGES.

I.


In the eighteenth century, when savage tribes in various parts of the
world first began to be visited, extravagantly romantic views widely
prevailed as to the simple and idyllic lives led by primitive peoples.
During the greater part of the nineteenth century the tendency of opinion
was to the opposite extreme, and it became usual to insist on the degraded
and licentious morals of savages.[181]

In reality, however, savage life is just as little a prolonged debauch as
a prolonged idyll. The inquiries of such writers as Westermarck, Frazer,
and Crawley are tending to introduce a sounder conception of the actual,
often highly complex, conditions of primitive life in its relations to the
sexual instinct.

At the same time it is not difficult to account for the belief, widely
spread during the nineteenth century, in the unbridled licentiousness of
savages. In the first place, the doctrine of evolution inevitably created
a prejudice in favor of such a view. It was assumed that modesty,
chastity, and restraint were the finest and ultimate flowers of moral
development; therefore at the beginnings of civilization we must needs
expect to find the opposite of these things. Apart, however, from any mere
prejudice of this kind, a superficial observation of the actual facts
necessarily led to much misunderstanding. Just as the nakedness of many
savage peoples led to the belief that they were lacking in modesty,
although, as a matter of fact, modesty is more highly developed in savage
life than in civilization,[182] so the absence of our European rules of
sexual behavior among savages led to the conclusion that they were
abandoned to debauchery. The widespread custom of lending the wife under
certain circumstances was especially regarded as indicating gross
licentiousness. Moreover, even when intercourse was found to be free
before marriage, scarcely any investigator sought to ascertain what amount
of sexual intercourse this freedom involved. It was not clearly understood
that such freedom must by no means be necessarily assumed to involve very
frequent intercourse. Again, it often happened that no clear distinction
was made between peoples contaminated by association with civilization,
and peoples not so contaminated. For instance, when prostitution is
attributed to a savage people we must usually suppose either that a
mistake has been made or that the people in question have been degraded by
intercourse with white peoples, for among unspoilt savages customs that
can properly be called prostitution rarely prevail. Nor, indeed, would
they be in harmony with the conditions of primitive life.

It has been seriously maintained that the chastity of savages, so far as
it exists at all, is due to European civilization. It is doubtless true
that this is the case with individual persons and tribes, but there is
ample evidence from various parts of the world to show that this is by no
means the rule. And, indeed, it may be said--with no disregard of the
energy and sincerity of missionary efforts--that it could not be so. A new
system of beliefs and practices, however excellent it may be in itself,
can never possess the same stringent and unquestionable force as the
system in which an individual and his ancestors have always lived, and
which they have never doubted the validity of. That this is so we may have
occasion to observe among ourselves. Christian teachers question the
wisdom of bringing young people under free-thinking influence, because,
although they do not deny the morals of free-thinkers, they believe that
to unsettle the young may have a disastrous effect, not only on belief,
but also on conduct. Yet this dangerously unsettling process has been
applied by missionaries on a wholesale scale to races which in some
respect are often little more than children. When, therefore, we are
considering the chastity of savages we must not take into account those
peoples which have been brought into close contact with Europeans.

In order to understand the sexual habits of savages generally there are
two points which always have to be borne in mind as of the first
importance: (1) the checks restraining sexual intercourse among savages,
especially as regards time and season, are so numerous, and the sanctions
upholding those checks so stringent, that sexual excess cannot prevail to
the same extent as in civilization; (2) even in the absence of such
checks, that difficulty of obtaining sexual erethism which has been noted
as so common among savages, when not overcome by the stimulating
influences prevailing at special times and seasons, and which is probably
in large measure dependent on hard condition of life as well as an
insensitive quality of nervous texture, still remains an important factor,
tending to produce a natural chastity. There is a third consideration
which, though from the present point of view subsidiary, is not without
bearing on our conception of chastity among savages: the importance, even
sacredness, of procreation is much more generally recognized by savage
than by civilized peoples, and also a certain symbolic significance is
frequently attached to human procreation as related to natural
fruitfulness generally; so that a primitive sexual orgy, instead of being
a mere manifestation of licentiousness, may have a ritual significance, as
a magical means of evoking the fruitfulness of fields and herds.[183]

When a savage practises extraconjugal sexual intercourse, the act is
frequently not, as it has come to be conventionally regarded in
civilization, an immorality or at least an illegitimate indulgence; it is
a useful and entirely justifiable act, producing definite benefits,
conducing alike to cosmic order and social order, although these benefits
are not always such as we in civilization believe to be caused by the act.
Thus, speaking of the northern tribes of central Australia, Spencer and
Gillen remark: "It is very usual amongst all of the tribes to allow
considerable license during the performance of certain of their ceremonies
when a large number of natives, some of them coming often from distant
parts, are gathered together--in fact, on such occasions all of the
ordinary marital rules seem to be more or less set aside for the time
being. Each day, in some tribes, one or more women are told off whose duty
it is to attend at the corrobboree grounds,--sometimes only during the
day, sometimes at night,--and all of the men, except those who are
fathers, elder and younger brothers, and sons, have access to them.... The
idea is that the sexual intercourse assists in some way in the proper
performance of the ceremony, causing everything to work smoothly and
preventing the decorations from falling off."[184]

It is largely this sacred character of sexual intercourse--the fact that
it is among the things that are at once "divine" and "impure," these two
conceptions not being differentiated in primitive thought--which leads to
the frequency with which in savage life a taboo is put upon its exercise.
Robertson Smith added an appendix to his _Religion of the Semites_ on
"Taboo on the Intercourse of the Sexes."[185] Westermarck brought together
evidence showing the frequency with which this and allied causes tended to
the chastity of savages.[186] Frazer has very luminously expounded the
whole primitive conception of sexual intercourse, and showed how it
affected chastity.[187] Warriors must often be chaste; the men who go on
any hunting or other expedition require to be chaste to be successful; the
women left behind must be strictly chaste; sometimes even the whole of the
people left behind, and for long periods, must be chaste in order to
insure the success of the expedition. Hubert and Maus touched on the same
point in their elaborate essay on sacrifice, pointing out how frequently
sexual relationships are prohibited on the occasion of any ceremony
whatever.[188] Crawley, in elaborating the primitive conception of taboo,
has dealt fully with ritual and traditional influences making for chastity
among savages. He brings forward, for instance, a number of cases, from
various parts of the world, in which intercourse has to be delayed for
days, weeks, even months, after marriage. He considers that the sexual
continence prevalent among savages is largely due to a belief in the
enervating effects of coitus; so dangerous are the sexes to each other
that, as he points out, even now sexual separation of the sexes commonly
occurs.[189]

There are thus a great number of constantly recurring occasions in savage
life when continence must be preserved, and when, it is firmly believed,
terrible risks would be incurred by its violation--during war, after
victory, after festivals, during mourning, on journeys, in hunting and
fishing, in a vast number of agricultural and industrial occupations.

It might fairly be argued that the facility with which the savage places
these checks on sexual intercourse itself bears witness to the weakness of
the sexual impulse. Evidence of another order which seems to point to the
undeveloped state of the sexual impulse among savages may be found in the
comparatively undeveloped condition of their sexual organs, a condition
not, indeed, by any means constant, but very frequently noted. As regards
women, it has in many parts of the world been observed to be the rule, and
the data which Ploss and Bartels have accumulated seem to me, on the
whole, to point clearly in this direction.[190]

At another point, also, it may be remarked, the repulsion between the
sexes and the restraints on intercourse may be associated with weak sexual
impulse. It is not improbable that a certain horror of the sexual organs
may be a natural feeling which is extinguished in the intoxication of
desire, yet still has a physiological basis which renders the sexual
organs--disguised and minimized by convention and by artistic
representation--more or less disgusting in the absence of erotic
emotion.[191] And this is probably more marked in cases in which the
sexual instinct is constitutionally feeble. A lady who had no marked
sexual desires, and who considered it well bred to be indifferent to such
matters, on inspecting her sexual parts in a mirror for the first time in
her life was shocked and disgusted at the sight. Certainly many women
could record a similar experience on being first approached by a man,
although artistic conventions present the male form with greater truth
than the female. Moreover,--and here is the significant point,--this
feeling is by no means restricted to the refined and cultured. "When
working at Michelangelo," wrote a correspondent from Italy, "my upper
gondolier used to see photographs and statuettes of all that man's works.
Stopping one day before the Night and Dawn of S. Lorenzo, sprawling naked
women, he exclaimed: 'How hideous they are!' I pressed him to explain
himself. He went on: 'The ugliest man naked is handsomer than the finest
woman naked. Women have crooked legs, and their sexual organs stink. I
only once saw a naked woman. It was in a brothel, when I was 18. The sight
of her "natura" made me go out and vomit into the canal. You know I have
been twice married, but I never saw either of my wives without clothing.'
Of very rank cheese he said one day: 'Puzza come la natura d'una donna.'"
This man, my correspondent added, was entirely normal and robust, but
seemed to regard sexual congress as a mere evacuation, the sexual instinct
apparently not being strong.

It seems possible that, if the sexual impulse had no existence, all men
would regard women with this _horror feminae_. As things are, however, at
all events in civilization, sexual emotions begin to develop even earlier,
usually, than acquaintance with the organs of the other sex begins; so
that this disgust is inhibited. If, however, among savages the sexual
impulse is habitually weak, and only aroused to strength under the impetus
of powerful stimuli, often acting periodically, then we should expect the
_horror_ to be a factor of considerable importance.

The weakness of the physical sexual impulse among savages is reflected in
the psychic sphere. Many writers have pointed out that love plays but a
small part in their lives. They practise few endearments; they often only
kiss children (Westermarck notes that sexual love is far less strong than
parental love); love-poems are among some primitive peoples few (mostly
originating with the women), and their literature often gives little or no
attention to passion.[192] Affection and devotion are, however, often
strong, especially in savage women.

It is not surprising that jealousy should often, though not by any means
invariably, be absent, both among men and among women. Among savages this
is doubtless a proof of the weakness of the sexual impulse. Spencer and
Gillen note the comparative absence of jealousy in men among the Central
Australian tribes they studied.[193] Negresses, it is said by a French
army surgeon in his _Untrodden Fields of Anthropology_, do not know what
jealousy is, and the first wife will even borrow money to buy the second
wife. Among a much higher race, the women in a Korean household, it is
said, live together happily, as an almost invariable rule, though it
appears that this was not always the case among a polygamous people of
European race, the Mormons.

The tendency of the sexual instinct in savages to periodicity, to seasonal
manifestations, I do not discuss here, as I have dealt with it in the
first volume of these _Studies_.[194] It has, however, a very important
bearing on this subject. Periodicity of sexual manifestations is, indeed,
less absolute in primitive man than in most animals, but it is still very
often quite clearly marked. It is largely the occurrence of these violent
occasional outbursts of the sexual instinct--during which the organic
impulse to tumescence becomes so powerful that external stimuli are no
longer necessary--that has led to the belief in the peculiar strength of
the impulse in savages.[195]


FOOTNOTES:

[181] Thus, Lubbock (Lord Avebury), in the _Origin of Civilization_, fifth
edition, 1889, brings forward a number of references in evidence of this
belief. More recently Finck, in his _Primitive Love and Love-stories_,
1899, seeks to accumulate data in favor of the unbounded licentiousness of
savages. He admits, however, that a view of the matter opposed to his own
is now tending to prevail.

[182] See "The Evolution of Modesty" in the first volume of these
_Studies_.

[183] The sacredness of sexual relations often applies also to individual
marriage. Thus, Skeat, in his _Malay Magic_, shows that the bride and
bridegroom are definitely recognized as sacred, in the same sense that the
king is, and in Malay States the king is a very sacred person. See also,
concerning the sacred character of coitus, whether individual or
collective, A. Van Gennep, _Rites de Passage, passim_.

[184] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 136.

[185] _Religion of the Semites_, second edition, 1894, p. 454 _et seq._

[186] _History of Marriage_, pp. 66-70, 150-156, etc.

[187] _Golden Bough_, third edition, part ii, _Taboo and the Perils of the
Soul_. Frazer has discussed taboo generally. For a shorter account of
taboo, see art. "Taboo" by Northcote Thomas in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_,
eleventh edition, 1911. Freud has lately (_Imago_, 1912) made an attempt
to explain the origin of taboo psychologically by comparing it to neurotic
obsessions. Taboo, Freud believes, has its origin in a forbidden act to
perform which there is a strong unconscious tendency; an ambivalent
attitude, that is, combining the opposite tendencies, is thus established.
In this way Freud would account for the fact that tabooed persons and
things are both sacred and unclean.

[188] "Essai sur le Sacrifice," _L'Annee Sociologique_, 1899, pp. 50-51.

[189] _The Mystic Rose_, 1902, p. 187 et seq., 215 et seq., 342 et seq.

[190] _Das Weib_, vol. i, section 6.

[191] This statement has been questioned. It should, however, be fairly
evident that the sexual organs in either sex, when closely examined, can
scarcely be regarded as beautiful except in the eyes of a person of the
opposite sex who is in a condition of sexual excitement, and they are not
always attractive even then. Moreover, it must be remembered that the
snake-like aptitude of the penis to enter into a state of erection apart
from the control of the will puts it in a different category from any
other organ of the body, and could not fail to attract the attention of
primitive peoples so easily alarmed by unusual manifestations. We find
even in the early ages of Christianity that St. Augustine attached immense
importance to this alarming aptitude of the penis as a sign of man's
sinful and degenerate state.

[192] Lubbock, _Origin of Civilization_, fifth edition, pp. 69, 73;
Westermarck, _History of Marriage_, p. 357; Grosse, _Anfaenge der Kunst_,
p. 236; Herbert Spencer, "Origin of Music," _Mind_, Oct., 1890.

[193] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 99; cf.
Finck, _Primitive Love and Love-stories_, p. 89 et seq.

[194] "The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity." The subject has also been
more recently discussed by Walter Heape, "The 'Sexual Season' of Mammals,"
_Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science_, vol. xliv, 1900. See also
F.H.A. Marshall, _The Physiology of Reproduction_, 1910.

[195] This view finds a belated supporter in Max Marcuse
("Geschlechtstrieb des Urmenschens," _Sexual-Probleme_, Oct., 1909), who,
on grounds which I cannot regard as sound, seeks to maintain the belief
that the sexual instinct is more highly developed among savage than among
civilized peoples.




II.


The facts thus seem to indicate that among primitive peoples, while the
magical, ceremonial, and traditional restraints on sexual intercourse are
very numerous, very widespread, and nearly always very stringent, there
is, underlying this prevalence of restraints on intercourse, a fundamental
weakness of the sexual instinct, which craves less, and craves less
frequently, than is the case among civilized peoples, but is liable to be
powerfully manifested at special seasons. It is perfectly true that among
savages, as Sutherland states, "there is no ideal which makes chastity a
thing beautiful in itself"; but when the same writer goes on to state that
"it is untrue that in sexual license the savage has everything to learn,"
we must demand greater precision of statement.[196] Travelers, and too
often would-be scientific writers, have been so much impressed by the
absence among savages of the civilized ideal of chastity, and by the
frequent freedom of sexual intercourse, that they have not paused to
inquire more carefully into the phenomena, or to put themselves at the
primitive point of view, but have assumed that freedom here means all that
it would mean in a European population.

In order to illustrate the actual circumstances of savage life in this
respect from the scanty evidence furnished by the most careful observers,
I have brought together from scattered sources a few statements concerning
primitive peoples in very various parts of the world.[197]

Among the Andamanese, Portman, who knows them well, says that sexual
desire is very moderate; in males it appears at the age of 18, but, as
"their love for sport is greater than their passions, these are not
gratified to any great extent till after marriage, which rarely takes
place till a man is about 26."[198]

Although chastity is not esteemed by the Fuegians, and virginity is lost
at a very early age, yet both men and women are extremely moderate in
sexual indulgence.[199]

Among the Eskimo at the other end of the American continent, according to
Dr. F. Cook, the sexual passions are suppressed during the long darkness
of winter, as also is the menstrual function usually, and the majority of
the children are born nine months after the appearance of the sun.[200]

Among the Indians of North America it is the custom of many tribes to
refrain from sexual intercourse during the whole period of lactation, as
also D'Orbigny found to be the case among South American Indians, although
suckling went on for over three years.[201] Many of the Indian tribes have
now been rendered licentious by contact with civilization. In the
primitive condition their customs were entirely different. Dr. Holder, who
knows many tribes of North American Indians well, has dealt in some detail
with this point. "Several of the virtues," he states, "and among them
chastity, were more faithfully practised by the Indian race before the
invasion from the East than these same virtues are practised by the white
race of the present day.... The race is less salacious than either the
negro or white race.... That the women of some tribes are now more careful
of their virtue than the women of any other community whose history I
know, I am fully convinced."[202] It is not only on the women that sexual
abstinence is imposed. Among some branches of the Salish Indians of
British Columbia a young widower must refrain from sexual intercourse for
a year, and sometimes lives entirely apart during that period.[203]

In many parts of Polynesia, although the sexual impulse seems often to
have been highly developed before the arrival of Europeans, it is very
doubtful whether license, in the European sense, at all generally
prevailed. The Marquesans, who have sometimes been regarded as peculiarly
licentious, are especially mentioned by Foley as illustrating his
statement that sexual erethism is with difficulty attained by primitive
peoples except during sexual seasons.[204] Herman Melville's detailed
account in _Typee_ of the Marquesans (somewhat idealized, no doubt)
reveals nothing that can fairly be called licentiousness. At Rotuma, J.
Stanley Gardiner remarks, before the missionaries came sexual intercourse
before marriage was free, but gross immorality and prostitution and
adultery were unknown. Matters are much worse now.[205] The Maoris of New
Zealand, in the old days, according to one who had lived among them, were
more chaste than the English, and, though a chief might lend his wife to a
friend as an honor, it would be very difficult to take her (_private
communication_).[206] Captain Cook also represented these people as modest
and virtuous.

Among the Papuans of New Guinea and Torres Straits, although intercourse
before marriage is free, it is by no means unbridled, nor is it carried to
excess. There are many circumstances restraining intercourse. Thus,
unmarried men must not indulge in it during October and November at Torres
Straits. It is the general rule also that there should be no sexual
intercourse during pregnancy, while a child is being suckled (which goes
on for three or four years), or even until it can speak or walk.[207] In
Astrolabe Bay, New Guinea, according to Vahness, a young couple must
abstain from intercourse for several weeks after marriage, and to break
this rule would be disgraceful.[208]

As regards Australia, Brough Smyth wrote: "Promiscuous intercourse between
the sexes is not practised by the aborigines, and their laws on the
subject, particularly those of New South Wales, are very strict. When at
camp all the young unmarried men are stationed by themselves at the
extreme end, while the married men, each with his family, occupy the
center. No conversation is allowed between the single men and the girls or
the married women. Infractions of these laws were visited by punishment;
... five or six warriors threw from a comparatively short distance several
spears at him [the offender]. The man was often severely wounded and
sometimes killed."[209] This author mentions that a black woman has been
known to kill a white man who attempted to have intercourse with her by
force. Yet both sexes have occasional sexual intercourse from an early
age. After marriage, in various parts of Australia, there are numerous
restraints on intercourse, which is forbidden not merely during
menstruation, but during the latter part of pregnancy and for one moon
after childbirth.[210]

Concerning the people of the Malay Peninsula, Hrolf Vaughan Stevens
states: "The sexual impulse among the Belendas is only developed to a
slight extent; they are not sensual, and the husband has intercourse with
his wife not oftener than three times a month. The women also are not
ardent.... The Orang Laut are more sensual than the Dyaks, who are,
however, more given to obscene jokes than their neighbors.... With the
Belendas there is little or no love-play in sexual relations".[211] Skeat
tells us also that among Malays in war-time strict chastity must be
observed in a stockade, or the bullets of the garrison will lose their
power.[212]

It is a common notion that the negro and negroid races of Africa are
peculiarly prone to sexual indulgence. This notion is not supported by
those who have had the most intimate knowledge of these peoples. It
probably gained currency in part owing to the open and expansive
temperament of the negro, and in part owing to the extremely sexual
character of many African orgies and festivals, though those might quite
as legitimately be taken as evidence of difficulty in attaining sexual
erethism.

A French army surgeon, speaking from knowledge of the black races in
various French colonies, states in his _Untrodden Fields of Anthropology_
that it is a mistake to imagine that the negress is very amorous. She is
rather cold, and indifferent to the refinements of love, in which respects
she is very unlike the mulatto. The white man is usually powerless to
excite her, partly from his small penis, partly from his rapidity of
emission; the black man, on account of his blunter nervous system, takes
three times as long to reach emission as the white man. Among the
Mohammedan peoples of West Africa, Daniell remarks, as well as in central
and northern Africa, it is usual to suckle a child for two or more years.
From the time when pregnancy becomes apparent to the end of weaning no
intercourse takes place. It is believed that this would greatly endanger
the infant, if not destroy it. This means that for every child the woman,
at all events, must remain continent for about three years.[213] Sir H.H.
Johnston, writing concerning the peoples of central Africa, remarks that
the man also must remain chaste during these periods. Thus, among the
Atonga the wife leaves her husband at the sixth month of pregnancy, and