fear, we need not strictly separate the group of cases in which the sexual
effects are physical only, and fail to be circuited through the brain.

[151] See the article on "Neurasthenia" by Rudolf Arndt in Tuke's
_Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_.

[152] Lunier, _Annales Médico-psychologiques_, 1849, p. 153.

[153] Féré, _Comptes-rendus de la Société de Biologie_, December 15 and
22, 1900; id., _Année Psychologique_, seventh year, 1901, pp. 82-129; more
especially the same author's _Travail et Plaisir_, 1904.




VII.

Summary of Results Reached--The Joy of Emotional Expansion--The
Satisfaction of the Craving for Power--The Influence of Neurasthenic and
Neuropathic Conditions--The Problem of Pain in Love Largely Constitutes a
Special Case of Erotic Symbolism.


It may seem to some that in our discussion of the relationships of love
and pain we have covered a very wide field. This was inevitable. The
subject is peculiarly difficult and complex, and if we are to gain a real
insight into its nature we must not attempt to force the facts to fit into
any narrow and artificial formulas of our own construction. Yet, as we
have unraveled this seemingly confused mass of phenomena it will not have
escaped the careful reader that the apparently diverse threads we have
disentangled run in a parallel and uniform manner; they all have a like
source and they all converge to a like result. We have seen that the
starting-point of the whole group of manifestations must be found in the
essential facts of courtship among animal and primitive human societies.
Pain is seldom very far from some of the phases of primitive courtship;
but it is not the pain which is the essential element in courtship, it is
the state of intense emotion, of tumescence, with which at any moment, in
some shape or another, pain may, in some way or another, be brought into
connection. So that we have come to see that in the phrase "love and pain"
we have to understand by "pain" a state of intense emotional excitement
with which pain in the stricter sense may be associated, but is by no
means necessarily associated. It is the strong emotion which exerts the
irresistible fascination in the lover, in his partner, or in both. The
pain is merely the means to that end. It is the lever which is employed to
bring the emotional force to bear on the sexual impulse. The question of
love and pain is mainly a question of emotional dynamics.

In attaining this view of our subject we have learned that any impulse of
true cruelty is almost outside the field altogether. The mistake was
indeed obvious and inevitable. Let us suppose that every musical
instrument is sensitive and that every musical performance involves the
infliction of pain on the instrument. It would then be very difficult
indeed to realize that the pleasure of music lies by no means in the
infliction of pain. We should certainly find would-be scientific and
analytical people ready to declare that the pleasure of music is the
pleasure of giving pain, and that the emotional effects of music are due
to the pain thus inflicted. In algolagnia, as in music, it is not cruelty
that is sought; it is the joy of being plunged among the waves of that
great primitive ocean of emotions which underlies the variegated world of
our everyday lives, and pain--a pain which, as we have seen, is often
deprived so far as possible of cruelty, though sometimes by very thin and
feeble devices--is merely the channel by which that ocean is reached.

If we try to carry our inquiry beyond the point we have been content to
reach, and ask ourselves why this emotional intoxication exerts so
irresistible a fascination, we might find a final reply in the explanation
of Nietzsche--who regarded this kind of intoxication as of great
significance both in life and in art--that it gives us the consciousness
of energy and the satisfaction of our craving for power.[154] To carry the
inquiry to this point would be, however, to take it into a somewhat
speculative and metaphysical region, and we have perhaps done well not to
attempt to analyze further the joy of emotional expansion. We must be
content to regard the profound satisfaction of emotion as due to a
widespread motor excitement, the elements of which we cannot yet
completely analyze.[155]

It is because the joy of emotional intoxication is the end really sought
that we have to regard the supposed opposition between "sadism" and
"masochism" as unimportant and indeed misleading. The emotional value of
pain is equally great whether the pain is inflicted, suffered, witnessed,
or merely exists as a mental imagination, and there is no reason why it
should not coexist in all these forms in the same person, as, in fact, we
frequently find it.

The particular emotions which are invoked by pain to reinforce the sexual
impulse are more especially anger and fear, and, as we have seen, these
two very powerful and primitive emotions are--on the active and passive
sides, respectively--the emotions most constantly brought into play in
animal and early human courtship; so that they naturally constitute the
emotional reservoirs from which the sexual impulse may still most easily
draw. It is not difficult to show that the various forms in which
"pain"--as we must here understand pain--is employed in the service of the
sexual impulse are mainly manifestations or transformations of anger or
fear, either in their simple or usually more complex forms, in some of
which anger and fear may be mingled.

We thus accept the biological origin of the psychological association
between love and pain; it is traceable to the phenomena of animal
courtship. We do not on this account exclude the more direct physiological
factor. It may seem surprising that manifestations that have their origin
in primeval forms of courtship should in many cases coincide with actual
sensations of definite anatomical base today, and still more surprising
that these traditional manifestations and actual sensations should so
often be complementary to each other in their active and passive aspects:
that is to say, that the pleasure of whipping should be matched by the
pleasure of being whipped, the pleasure of mock strangling by the pleasure
of being so strangled, that pain inflicted is not more desirable than pain
suffered. But such coincidence is of the very essence of the whole group
of phenomena. The manifestations of courtship were from the first
conditioned by physiological facts; it is not strange that they should
always tend to run _pari passu_ with physiological facts. The
manifestations which failed to find anchorage in physiological
relationships might well tend to die out. Even under the most normal
circumstances, in healthy persons of healthy heredity, the manifestations
we have been considering are liable to make themselves felt. Under such
circumstances, however, they never become of the first importance in the
sexual process; they are often little more than play. It is only under
neurasthenic or neuropathic conditions--that is to say, in an organism
which from acquired or congenital causes, and usually perhaps both, has
become enfeebled, irritable, "fatigued"--that these manifestations are
liable to flourish vigorously, to come to the forefront of sexual
consciousness, and even to attain such seriously urgent importance that
they may in themselves constitute the entire end and aim of sexual desire.
Under these pathological conditions, pain, in the broad and special sense
in which we have been obliged to define it, becomes a welcome tonic and a
more or less indispensable stimulant to the sexual system.

It will not have escaped the careful reader that in following out our
subject we have sometimes been brought into contact with manifestations
which scarcely seem to come within any definition of pain. This is
undoubtedly so, and the references to these manifestations were not
accidental, for they serve to indicate the real bearings of our subject.
The relationships of love and pain constitute a subject at once of so
much gravity and so much psychological significance that it was well to
devote to them a special study. But pain, as we have here to understand
it, largely constitutes a special case of what we shall later learn to
know as erotic symbolism: that is to say, the psychic condition in which a
part of the sexual process, a single idea or group of ideas, tends to
assume unusual importance, or even to occupy the whole field of sexual
consciousness, the part becoming a symbol that stands for the whole. When
we come to the discussion of this great group of abnormal sexual
manifestations it will frequently be necessary to refer to the results we
have reached in studying the sexual significance of pain.


FOOTNOTES:

[154] See, for instance, the section "Zur Physiologie der Kunst" in
Nietzsche's fragmentary work, _Der Wille zur Macht_, Werke, Bd. xv. Groos
(_Spiele der Menschen_, p. 89) refers to the significance of the fact that
nearly all races have special methods of procuring intoxication. Cf.
Partridge's study of the psychology of alcohol (_American Journal of
Psychology_, April, 1900). "It is hard to imagine," this writer remarks of
intoxicants, "what the religious or social consciousness of primitive man
would have been without them."

[155] The muscular element is the most conspicuous in emotion, though it
is not possible, as a careful student of the emotions (H.R. Marshall,
_Pain, Pleasure, and Æsthetics_, p. 84) well points out, "to limit the
physical activities involved with the emotions to such effects of
voluntary innervation or alteration of size of blood-vessels or spasm of
organic muscle, as Lange seems to think determines them; nor to increase
or decrease of muscle-power, as Féré's results might suggest; nor to such
changes, in relation of size of capillaries, in voluntary innervation, in
respiratory and heart functioning, as Lehmann has observed. Emotions seem
to me to be coincidents of reactions of the whole organism tending to
certain results."




THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN WOMEN.


A special and detailed study of the normal characters of the sexual
impulse in men seems unnecessary. I have elsewhere discussed various
aspects of the male sexual impulse, and others remain for later
discussion. But to deal with it broadly as a whole seems unnecessary, if
only because it is predominantly open and aggressive. Moreover, since the
constitution of society has largely been in the hands of men, the nature
of the sexual impulse in men has largely been expressed in the written and
unwritten codes of social law. The sexual instinct in women is much more
elusive. This, indeed, is involved at the outset in the organic
psychological play of male and female, manifesting itself in the phenomena
of modesty and courting. The same elusiveness, the same mocking mystery,
meet us throughout when we seek to investigate the manifestations of the
sexual impulse in women. Nor is it easy to find any full and authentic
record of a social state clearly founded in sexual matters on the demands
of woman's nature.

An illustration of our ignorance and bias in these matters is
furnished by the relationship of marriage, celibacy, and divorce
to suicide in the two sexes. There can be no doubt that the
sexual emotions of women have a profound influence in determining
suicide. This is indicated, among other facts, by a comparison of
the suicide-rate in the sexes according to age; while in men the
frequency of suicide increases progressively throughout life, in
women there is an arrest after the age of 30; that is to say,
when the period of most intense sexual emotion has been passed.
This phenomenon is witnessed among peoples so unlike as the
French, the Prussians, and the Italians. Now, how do marriage and
divorce affect the sexual liability to suicide? We are always
accustomed to say that marriage protects women, and it is even
asserted that men have self-sacrificingly maintained the
institution of marriage mainly for the benefit of women.
Professor Durkheim, however, who has studied suicide elaborately
from the sociological standpoint, so far as possible eliminating
fallacies, has in recent years thrown considerable doubt on the
current assumption. He shows that if we take the tendency to
suicide as a test, and eliminate the influence of children, who
are an undoubted protection to women, it is not women, but men,
who are protected by marriage, and that the protection of women
from suicide increases regularly as divorces increase. After
discussing these points exhaustively, "we reach a conclusion," he
states, "considerably removed from the current view of marriage
and the part it plays. It is regarded as having been instituted
for the sake of the wife and to protect her weakness against
masculine caprices. Monogamy, especially, is very often presented
as a sacrifice of man's polygamous instincts, made in order to
ameliorate the condition of woman in marriage. In reality,
whatever may have been the historical causes which determined
this restriction, it is man who has profited most. The liberty
which he has thus renounced could only have been a source of
torment to him. Woman had not the same reasons for abandoning
freedom, and from this point of view we may say that in
submitting to the same rule it is she who has made the
sacrifice." (E. Durkheim, _Le Suicide_, 1897, pp. 186-214,
289-311.)

There is possibly some significance in the varying incidence of
insanity in unmarried men and unmarried women as compared with
the married. At Erlangen, for example, Hagen found that among
insane women the preponderance of the single over the married is
not nearly so great as among insane men, marriage appearing to
exert a much more marked prophylactic influence in the case of
men than of women. (F.W. Hagen, _Statistische Untersuchungen über
Geisteskrankheiten_, 1876, p. 153.) The phenomena are here,
however, highly complex, and, as Hagen himself points out, the
prophylactic influence of marriage, while very probable, is not
the only or even the chief factor at work.

It is worth noting that exactly the same sexual difference may be
traced in England. It appears that, in ratio to similar groups in
the general population (taking the years 1876-1900, inclusive),
the number of admissions to asylums is the same for both sexes
among married people (i.e., 8.5), but for the single it is larger
among the men (4.8 to 4.5), as also it is among the widowed (17.9
to 13.9) (_Fifty-sixth Annual Report of the Commissioners in
Lunacy, England and Wales_, 1902, p. 141). This would seem to
indicate that when living apart from men the tendency to insanity
is less in women, but is raised to the male level when the sexes
live together in marriage.

Much the same seems to hold true of criminality. It was long
since noted by Horsley that in England marriage decidedly
increases the tendency to crime in women, though it decidedly
decreases it in men. Prinzing has shown (_Zeitschrift für
Sozialwissenschaft_, Bd. ii, 1899) that this is also the case in
Germany.

Similarly marriage decreases the tendency of men to become
habitual drunkards and increases that of women. Notwithstanding
the fact that the average age of the men is greater than that of
the women, the majority of the men admitted to the inebriate
reformatories under the English Inebriates Acts are single; the
majority of the women are married; of 865 women so admitted 32
per cent, were single, 50 per cent, married, and 18 per cent,
widows. (_British Medical Journal_, Sept. 2, 1911, p. 518.)

It thus happens that even the elementary characters of the sexual impulse
in women still arouse, even among the most competent physiological and
medical authorities,--not least so when they are themselves women,--the
most divergent opinions. Its very existence even may be said to be
questioned. It would generally be agreed that among men the strength of
the sexual impulse varies within a considerable range, but that it is very
rarely altogether absent, such total absence being abnormal and probably
more or less pathological. But if applied to women, this statement is by
no means always accepted. By many, sexual anesthesia is considered natural
in women, some even declaring that any other opinion would be degrading to
women; even by those who do not hold this opinion it is believed that
there is an unnatural prevalence of sexual frigidity among civilized
women. On these grounds it is desirable to deal generally with this and
other elementary questions of allied character.




I.

The Primitive View of Women--As a Supernatural Element in Life--As
Peculiarly Embodying the Sexual Instinct--The Modern Tendency to
Underestimate the Sexual Impulse in Women--This Tendency Confined to
Recent Times--Sexual Anæsthesia--Its Prevalence--Difficulties in
Investigating the Subject--Some Attempts to Investigate it--Sexual
Anesthesia must be Regarded as Abnormal--The Tendency to Spontaneous
Manifestations of the Sexual Impulse in Young Girls at Puberty.


From very early times it seems possible to trace two streams of opinion
regarding women: on the one hand, a tendency to regard women as a
supernatural element in life, more or less superior to men, and, on the
other hand, a tendency to regard women as especially embodying the sexual
instinct and as peculiarly prone to exhibit its manifestations.

In the most primitive societies, indeed, the two views seem to be to some
extent amalgamated; or, it should rather be said, they have not yet been
differentiated; and, as in such societies it is usual to venerate the
generative principle of nature and its embodiments in the human body and
in human functions, such a co-ordination of ideas is entirely rational.
But with the development of culture the tendency is for this homogeneous
conception to be split up into two inharmonious tendencies. Even apart
from Christianity and before its advent this may be noted. It was,
however, to Christianity and the Christian ascetic spirit that we owe the
complete differentiation and extreme development which these opposing
views have reached. The condemnation of sexuality involved the
glorification of the virgin; and indifference, even contempt, was felt for
the woman who exercised sexual functions. It remained open to anyone,
according to his own temperament, to identify the typical average woman
with the one or with the other type; all the fund of latent sexual emotion
which no ascetic rule can crush out of the human heart assured the
picturesque idealization alike of the angelic and the diabolic types of
woman. We may trace the same influence subtly lurking even in the most
would-be scientific statements of anthropologists and physicians
today.[156]

It may not be out of place to recall at this point, once more,
the fact, fairly obvious indeed, that the judgments of men
concerning women are very rarely matters of cold scientific
observation, but are colored both by their own sexual emotions
and by their own moral attitude toward the sexual impulse. The
ascetic who is unsuccessfully warring with his own carnal
impulses may (like the voluptuary) see nothing in women but
incarnations of sexual impulse; the ascetic who has subdued his
own carnal impulses may see no elements of sex in women at all.
Thus the opinions regarding this matter are not only tinged by
elements of primitive culture, but by elements of individual
disposition. Statements about the sexual impulses of women often
tell us less about women than about the persons who make them.

The curious manner in which for men women become incarnations of
the sexual impulse is shown by the tendency of both general and
personal names for women to become applicable to prostitutes
only. This is the case with the words "garce" and "fille" in
French, "Mädchen" and "Dirne" in German, as well as with the
French "catin" (Catherine) and the German "Metze" (Mathilde).
(See, e.g., R. Kleinpaul, _Die Räthsel der Sprache_, 1890, pp.
197-198.)

At the same time, though we have to recognize the presence of
elements which color and distort in various ways the judgments of
men regarding women, it must not be hastily assumed that these
elements render discussion of the question altogether
unprofitable. In most cases such prejudices lead chiefly to a
one-sided solution of facts, against which we can guard.

While, however, these two opposing currents of opinion are of very ancient
origin, it is only within quite recent times, and only in two or three
countries, that they have led to any marked difference of opinion
regarding the sexual aptitude of women. In ancient times men blamed women
for concupiscence or praised them for chastity, but it seems to have been
reserved for the nineteenth century to state that women are apt to be
congenitally incapable of experiencing complete sexual satisfaction, and
peculiarly liable to sexual anesthesia. This idea appears to have been
almost unknown to the eighteenth century. During the last century,
however, and more especially in England, Germany, and Italy, this opinion
has been frequently set down, sometimes even as a matter of course, with a
tincture of contempt or pity for any woman afflicted with sexual emotions.

In the treatise _On Generation_ (chapter v), which until recent
times was commonly ascribed to Hippocrates, it is stated that men
have greater pleasure in coitus than women, though the pleasure
of women lasts longer, and this opinion, though not usually
accepted, was treated with great respect by medical authors down
to the end of the seventeenth century. Thus A. Laurentius (Du
Laurens), after a long discussion, decides that men have stronger
sexual desire and greater pleasure in coitus than women.
(_Historia Anatomica Humani Corporis_, 1599, lib. viii, quest, ii
and vii.)

About half a century ago a book entitled _Functions and Disorders
of the Reproductive Organs_, by W. Acton, a surgeon, passed
through many editions and was popularly regarded as a standard
authority on the subjects with which it deals. This extraordinary
book is almost solely concerned with men; the author evidently
regards the function of reproduction as almost exclusively
appertaining to men. Women, if "well brought up," are, and should
be, he states, in England, absolutely ignorant of all matters
concerning it. "I should say," this author again remarks, "that
the majority of women (happily for society) are not very much
troubled with sexual feeling of any kind." The supposition that
women do possess sexual feelings he considers "a vile aspersion."

In the article "Generation," contained in another medical work
belonging to the middle of the nineteenth century,--Rees's
_Cyclopedia_,--we find the following statement: "That a mucous
fluid is sometimes found in coition from the internal organs and
vagina is undoubted; but this only happens in lascivious women,
or such as live luxuriously."

Gall had stated decisively that the sexual desires of men are
stronger and more imperious than those of women. (_Fonctions du
Cerveau_, 1825, vol. iii, pp. 241-271.)

Raciborski declared that three-fourths of women merely endure the
approaches of men. (_De la Puberté chez la Femme_, 1844, p. 486.)

"When the question is carefully inquired into and without
prejudice," said Lawson Tait, "it is found that women have their
sexual appetites far less developed than men." (Lawson Tait,
"Remote Effects of Removal of the Uterine Appendages,"
_Provincial Medical Journal_, May, 1891.) "The sexual instinct is
very powerful in man and comparatively weak in women," he stated
elsewhere (_Diseases of Women_, 1889, p. 60).

Hammond stated that, leaving prostitutes out of consideration, it
is doubtful if in one-tenth of the instances of intercourse they
[women] experience the slightest pleasurable sensation from first
to last (Hammond, _Sexual Impotence_, p. 300), and he considered
(p. 281) that this condition was sometimes congenital.

Lombroso and Ferrero consider that sexual sensibility, as well as
all other forms of sensibility, is less pronounced in women, and
they bring forward various facts and opinions which seem to them
to point in the same direction. "Woman is naturally and
organically frigid." At the same time they consider that, while
erethism is less, sexuality is greater than in men. (Lombroso and
Ferrero, _La Donna Delinquente, la Prostituta, e la Donna
Normale_, 1893, pp. 54-58.)

"It is an altogether false idea," Fehling declared, in his
rectorial address at the University of Basel in 1891, "that a
young woman has just as strong an impulse to the opposite sex as
a young man.... The appearance of the sexual side in the love of
a young girl is pathological." (H. Fehling, _Die Bestimmung der
Frau_, 1892, p. 18.) In his _Lehrbuch der Frauenkrankheiten_ the
same gynecological authority states his belief that half of all
women are not sexually excitable.

Krafft-Ebing was of opinion that women require less sexual
satisfaction than men, being less sensual. (Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber
Neurosen und Psychosen durch sexuelle Abstinenz," _Jahrbücher für
Psychiatrie_, 1888, Bd. viii, ht. I and 2.)

"In the normal woman, especially of the higher social classes,"
states Windscheid, "the sexual instinct is acquired, not inborn;
when it is inborn, or awakes by itself, there is abnormality.
Since women do not know this instinct before marriage, they do
not miss it when they have no occasion in life to learn it." (F.
Windscheid, "Die Beziehungen zwischen Gynäkologie und
Neurologie," _Zentralblatt für Gynäkologie_, 1896, No. 22; quoted
by. Moll, _Libido Sexualis_, Bd. i, p. 271.)

"The sensuality of men," Moll states, "is in my opinion very much
greater than that of women." (A. Moll, _Die Konträre
Sexualempfindung_, third edition, 1899, p. 592.)

"Women are, in general, less sensual than men," remarks Näcke,
"notwithstanding the alleged greater nervous supply of their
sexual organs." (P. Näcke, "Kritisches zum Kapitel der
Sexualität," _Archiv für Psychiatrie_, 1899, p. 341.)

Löwenfeld states that in normal young girls the specifically
sexual feelings are absolutely unknown; so that desire cannot
exist in them. Putting aside the not inconsiderable proportion of
women in whom this absence of desire may persist and be
permanent, even after sexual relationships have begun, thus
constituting absolute frigidity, in a still larger number desire
remains extremely moderate, constituting a state of relative
frigidity. He adds that he cannot unconditionally support the
view of Fürbringer, who is inclined to ascribe sexual coldness to
the majority of German married women. (L. Löwenfeld, _Sexualleben
und Nervenleiden_, 1899, second edition, p. 11.)

Adler, who discusses the question at some length, decides that
the sexual needs of women are less than those of men, though in
some cases the orgasm in quantity and quality greatly exceeds
that of men. He believes, not only that the sexual impulse in
women is absolutely less than in men, and requires stronger
stimulation to arouse it, but that also it suffers from a latency
due to inhibition, which acts like a foreign body in the brain
(analogous to the psychic trauma of Breuer and Freud in
hysteria), and demands great skill in the man who is to awaken
the woman to love. (O. Adler, _Die Mangelhafte
Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes_, 1904, pp. 47, 126 et seq.;
also enlarged second edition, 1911; id., "Die Frigide Frau,"
_Sexual-Probleme_, Jan., 1912.)

It must not, however, be supposed that this view of the natural tendency
of women to frigidity has everywhere found acceptance. It is not only an
opinion of very recent growth, but is confined, on the whole, to a few
countries.

"Turn to history," wrote Brierre de Boismont, "and on every page
you will be able to recognize the predominance of erotic ideas in
women." It is the same today, he adds, and he attributes it to
the fact that men are more easily able to gratify their sexual
impulses. (_Des Hallucinations_, 1862, p. 431.)

The laws of Manu attribute to women concupiscence and anger, the
love of bed and of adornment.

The Jews attributed to women greater sexual desire than to men.
This is illustrated, according to Knobel (as quoted by Dillmann),
by _Genesis_, chapter iii, v. 16.

In Greek antiquity the romance and sentiment of love were mainly
felt toward persons of the same sex, and were divorced from the
more purely sexual feelings felt for persons of opposite sex.
Theognis compared marriage to cattle-breeding. In love between
men and women the latter were nearly always regarded as taking
the more active part. In all Greek love-stories of early date the
woman falls in love with the man, and never the reverse. Æschylus
makes even a father assume that his daughters will misbehave if
left to themselves. Euripides emphasized the importance of women;
"The Euripidean woman who 'falls in love' thinks first of all:
'How can I seduce the man I love?"' (E.F.M. Benecke, _Antimachus
of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek Poetry_, 1896, pp.
34, 54.)

The most famous passage in Latin literature as to the question of
whether men or women obtain greater pleasure from sexual
intercourse is that in which Ovid narrates the legend of Tiresias
(_Metamorphoses_, iii, 317-333). Tiresias, having been both a man
and a woman, decided in favor of women. This passage was
frequently quoted down to the eighteenth century.

In a passage quoted from a lost work of Galen by the Arabian
biographer, Abu-l-Faraj, that great physician says of the
Christians "that they practice celibacy, that even many of their
women do so." So that in Galen's opinion it was more difficult
for a woman than for a man to be continent.

The same view is widely prevalent among Arabic authors, and there
is an Arabic saying that "The longing of the woman for the penis
is greater than that of the man for the vulva."

In China, remarks Dr. Coltman, "when an old gentleman of my
acquaintance was visiting me my little daughter, 5 years old, ran
into the room, and, climbing upon my knee, kissed me. My visitor
expressed his surprise, and remarked: 'We never kiss our
daughters when they are so large; we may when they are very
small, but not after they are 3 years old,' said he, 'because it
is apt to excite in them bad emotions.'" (Coltman, _The Chinese_,
1900, p. 99.)

The early Christian Fathers clearly show that they regard women
as more inclined to sexual enjoyment than men. That was, for
instance, the opinion of Tertullian (_De Virginibus Velandis_,
chapter x), and it is clearly implied in some of St. Jerome's
epistles.

Notwithstanding the influence of Christianity, among the vigorous
barbarian races of medieval Europe, the existence of sexual
appetite in women was not considered to be, as it later became, a
matter to be concealed or denied. Thus in 1068 the ecclesiastical
historian, Ordericus Vitalis (himself half Norman and half
English), narrates that the wives of the Norman knights who had
accompanied William the Conqueror to England two years earlier
sent over to their husbands to say that they were consumed by the
fierce names of desire ("sæva libidinis face urebantur"), and
that if their husbands failed to return very shortly they
proposed to take other husbands. It is added that this threat
brought a few husbands back to their wanton ladies ("lascivis
dominabus suis").

During the medieval period in Europe, largely in consequence, no
doubt, of the predominance of ascetic ideals set up by men who
naturally regarded woman as the symbol of sex, the doctrine of
the incontinence of woman became firmly fixed, and it is
unnecessary and unprofitable to quote examples. It is sufficient
to mention the very comprehensive statement of Jean de Meung (in
the _Roman de la Rose_, 9903):--

"Toutes estes, serés, ou fûtes
De fait ou de volunté putes."

The satirical Jean de Meung was, however, a somewhat extreme and
untypical representative of his age, and the fourteenth century
Johannes de Sancto Amando (Jean de St. Amand) gives a somewhat
more scientifically based opinion (quoted by Pagel, _Neue
litterarische Beiträge zur Mittelalterlichen Medicin_, 1896, p.
30) that sexual desire is stronger in women than in men.

Humanism and the spread of the Renaissance movement brought in a
spirit more sympathetic to women. Soon after, especially in Italy
and France, we begin to find attempts at analyzing the sexual
emotions, which are not always without a certain subtlety. In the
seventeenth century a book of this kind was written by Venette.
In matters of love, Venette declared, "men are but children
compared to women. In these matters women have a more lively
imagination, and they usually have more leisure to think of love.
Women are much more lascivious and amorous than men." This is the
conclusion reached in a chapter devoted to the question whether
men or women are the more amorous. In a subsequent chapter,
dealing with the question whether men or women receive more
pleasure from the sexual embrace, Venette concludes, after
admitting the great difficulty of the question, that man's
pleasure is greater, but woman's lasts longer. (N. Venette, _De
la Génération de l'Homme ou Tableau de l'Amour Conjugal_,
Amsterdam, 1688.)

At a much earlier date, however, Montaigne had discussed this
matter with his usual wisdom, and, while pointing out that men
have imposed their own rule of life on women and their own
ideals, and have demanded from them opposite and contradictory
virtues,--a statement not yet antiquated,--he argues that women
are incomparably more apt and more ardent in love than men are,
and that in this matter they always know far more than men can
teach them, for "it is a discipline that is born in their veins."
(Montaigne, _Essais_, book iii, chapter v.)

The old physiologists generally mentioned the appearance of
sexual desire in girls as one of the normal signs of puberty.
This may be seen in the numerous quotations brought together by
Schurig, in his _Parthenologia_, cap. ii.

A long succession of distinguished physicians throughout the
seventeenth century discussed at more or less length the relative
amount of sexual desire in men and women, and the relative degree
of their pleasure in coitus. It is remarkable that, although they
usually attach great weight to the supposed opinion of
Hippocrates in the opposite sense, most of them decide that both
desire and pleasure are greater in women.

Plazzonus decides that women have more sources of pleasure in
coitus than men because of the larger extent of surface excited;
and if it were not so, he adds, women would not be induced to
incur the pains and risks of pregnancy and childbirth.
(Plazzonus, _De Partibus Generationi Inservientibus_, 1621, lib.
ii, cap. xiii.)

"Without doubt," says Ferrand, "woman is more passionate than
man, and more often torn by the evils of love." (Ferrand, _De la
Maladie d'Amour_, 1623, chapter ii.)

Zacchia, mainly on _a priori_ grounds, concludes that women have
more pleasure in coitus than men. (Zacchia, _Quæstiones
Medico-legales_, 1630, lib. iii, quest, vii.)

Sinibaldus, discussing whether men or women have more salacity,
decides in favor of women. (J.B. Sinibaldus, _Geneanthropeia_,
1642, lib. ii, tract. ii, cap. v.)

Hornius believed that women have greater sexual pleasure than
men, though he mainly supported his opinion by the authority of
classical poets. (Hornius, _Historic Naturalis_, 1670, lib. iii,
cap. i.)

Nenter describes what we may now call women's affectability, and
considers that it makes them more prone than men to the sexual
emotions, as is shown by the fact that, notwithstanding their
modesty, they sometimes make sexual advances. This greater
proneness of women to the sexual impulse is, he remarks, entirely
natural and right, for the work of generation is mainly carried
on by women, and love is its basis: "generationis fundamentum est
amor." (G.P. Nenter, _Theoria Hominis Sani_, 1714, cap. v, memb.
ii.)

The above opinions of seventeenth-century physicians are quoted
from the original sources. Schurig, in his _Gynæcologia_, (pp.
46-50 and 71-81), quotes a number of passages on this subject
from medical authorities of the same period, on which I have not
drawn.

Sénancour, in his fine and suggestive book on love, first
published in 1806, asks: "Has sexual pleasure the same power on
the sex which less loudly demands it? It has more, at all events
in some respects. The very vigor and laboriousness of men may
lead them to neglect love, but the constant cares of maternity
make women feel how important it must ever be to them. We must
remember also that in men the special emotions of love only have
a single focus, while in women the organs of lactation are united
to those of conception. Our feelings are all determined by these
material causes." (Sénancour, _De l'Amour_, fourth edition, 1834,
vol. i, p. 68.) A later psychologist of love, this time a woman,
Ellen Key, states that woman's erotic demands, though more
silent than man's, are stronger. (Ellen Key, _Ueber Liebe und
Ehe_, p. 138.)

Michael Ryan considered that sexual enjoyment "is more delicious
and protracted" in women, and ascribed this to a more sensitive
nervous system, a finer and more delicate skin, more acute
feelings, and the fact that in women the mammæ are the seat of a
vivid sensibility in sympathy with the uterus. (M. Ryan,
_Philosophy of Marriage_, 1837, p. 153.)

Busch was inclined to think women have greater sexual pleasure
than men. (D.W.H. Busch, _Das Geschlechtsleben des Weibes_, 1839,
vol. i, p. 69.) Kobelt held that the anatomical conformation of
the sexual organs in women led to the conclusion that this must
be the case.

Guttceit, speaking of his thirty years' medical experience in
Russia, says: "In Russia at all events, a girl, as very many have
acknowledged to me, cannot resist the ever stronger impulses of
sex beyond the twenty-second or twenty-third year. And if she
cannot do so in natural ways she adopts artificial ways. The
belief that the feminine sex feels the stimulus of sex less than
the male is quite false." (Guttceit, _Dreissig Jahre Praxis_,
1873, theil i, p. 313.)

In Scandinavia, according to Vedeler, the sexual emotions are at
least as strong in women as in men (Vedeler, "De Impotentia
Feminarum," _Norsk Magazin for Laegevidenskaben_, March, 1894).
In Sweden, Dr. Eklund, of Stockholm, remarking that from 25 to 33
per cent. of the births are illegitimate, adds: "We hardly ever
hear anyone talk of a woman having been seduced, simply because
the lust is at the worst in the woman, who, as a rule, is the
seducing party." (Eklund, _Transactions of the American
Association of Obstetricians_, Philadelphia, 1892, p. 307.)