(Féré, _Archives de Neurologie_ No. 30, 1903). Icard refers to
the case of a woman who sought to become pregnant solely for the
sake of the voluptuous sensations she derived from suckling, and
Yellowlees (Art. "Masturbation," _Dictionary of Psychological
Medicine_) speaks of the overwhelming character of "the storms of
sexual feeling sometimes observed during lactation."

It may be remarked that the frequency of the association between
lactation and the sexual sensations is indicated by the fact
that, as Savage remarks, lactational insanity is often
accompanied by fancies regarding the reproductive organs.

When we have realized the special sensitivity of the orificial regions and
the peculiarly close relationships between the breasts and the sexual
organs we may easily understand the considerable part which they normally
play in the art of love. As one of the chief secondary sexual characters
in women, and one of her chief beauties, a woman's breasts offer
themselves to the lover's lips with a less intimate attraction than her
mouth only because the mouth is better able to respond. On her side, such
contact is often instinctively desired. Just as the sexual disturbance of
pregnancy is accompanied by a sympathetic disturbance in the breasts, so
the sexual excitement produced by the lover's proximity reacts on the
breasts; the nipple becomes turgid and erect in sympathy with the
clitoris; the woman craves to place her lover in the place of the child,
and experiences a sensation in which these two supreme objects of her
desire are deliciously mingled.

The powerful effect which stimulation of the nipple produces on
the sexual sphere has led to the breasts playing a prominent part
in the erotic art of those lands in which this art has been most
carefully cultivated. Thus in India, according to Vatsyayana,
many authors are of the opinion that in approaching a woman a
lover should begin by sucking the nipples of her breasts, and in
the songs of the Bayaderes of Southern India sucking the nipple
is mentioned as one of the natural preliminaries of coitus.

In some cases, and more especially in neurotic persons, the
sexual pleasure derived from manipulation of the nipple passes
normal limits and, being preferred even to coitus, becomes a
perversion. In girls' schools, it is said, especially in France,
sucking and titillation of the breasts are not uncommon; in men,
also, titillation of the nipples occasionally produces sexual
sensations (Féré, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, p. 132).
Hildebrandt recorded the case of a young woman whose nipples had
been sucked by her lover; by constantly drawing her breasts she
became able to suck them herself and thus attained extreme sexual
pleasure. A.J. Bloch, of New Orleans, has noted the case of a
woman who complained of swelling of the breasts; the gentlest
manipulation produced an orgasm, and it was found that the
swelling had been intentionally produced for the sake of this
manipulation. Moraglia in Italy knew a very beautiful woman who
was perfectly cold in normal sexual relationships, but madly
excited when her husband pressed or sucked her breasts. Lombroso
(_Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1885, fasc. IV) has described the
somewhat similar case of a woman who had no sexual sensitivity in
the clitoris, vagina, or labia, and no pleasure in coitus except
in very strange positions, but possessed intense sexual feelings
in the right nipple as well as in the upper third of the thigh.

It is remarkable that not only is suckling apt to be accompanied
by sexual pleasure in the mother, but that, in some cases, the
infant also appears to have a somewhat similar experience. This
is, at all events, indicated in a remarkable case recorded by
Féré (_L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, p. 257). A female
infant child of slightly neurotic heredity was weaned at the age
of 14 months, but so great was her affection for her mother's
breasts, though she had already become accustomed to other food,
that this was only accomplished with great difficulty and by
allowing her still to caress the naked breasts several times a
day. This went on for many months, when the mother, becoming
again pregnant, insisted on putting an end to it. So jealous was
the child, however, that it was necessary to conceal from her the
fact that her younger sister was suckled at her mother's breasts,
and once at the age of 3, when she saw her father aiding her
mother to undress, she became violently jealous of him. This
jealousy, as well as the passion for her mother's breasts,
persisted to the age of puberty, though she learned to conceal
it. At the age of 13, when menstruation began, she noticed in
dancing with her favorite girl friends that when her breasts came
in contact with theirs she experienced a very agreeable
sensation, with erection of the nipples; but it was not till the
age of 16 that she observed that the sexual region took part in
this excitement and became moist. From this period she had erotic
dreams about young girls. She never experienced any attraction
for young men, but eventually married; though having much esteem
and affection for her husband, she never felt any but the
slightest sexual enjoyment in his arms, and then only by evoking
feminine images. This case, in which the sensations of an infant
at the breast formed the point of departure of a sexual
perversion which lasted through life, is, so far as I am aware,
unique.


FOOTNOTES:

[17] Jonas Cohn (_Allgemeine Æsthetik_, 1901, p. 11) lays it down that
psychology has nothing to do with good or bad taste. "The distinction
between good and bad taste has no meaning for psychology. On this account,
the fundamental conceptions of æsthetics cannot arise from psychology." It
may be a question whether this view can be accepted quite absolutely.

[18] See Appendix A: "The Origins of the Kiss."

[19] See J.B. Hellier, "On the Nipple Reflex," _British Medical Journal_,
November 7, 1896.

[20] Féré, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, p. 147.




IV.

The Bath--Antagonism of Primitive Christianity to the Cult of the
Skin--Its Cult of Personal Filth--The Reasons which Justified this
Attitude--The World-wide Tendency to Association between Extreme
Cleanliness and Sexual Licentiousness--The Immorality Associated with
Public Baths in Europe down to Modern Times.


The hygiene of the skin, as well as its special cult, consists in bathing.
The bath, as is well known, attained under the Romans a degree of
development which, in Europe at all events, it has never reached before or
since, and the modern visitor to Rome carries away with him no more
impressive memory than that of the Baths of Caracalla. Since the coming of
Christianity the cult of the skin, and even its hygiene, have never again
attained the same general and unquestioned exaltation. The Church killed
the bath. St. Jerome tells us with approval that when the holy Paula noted
that any of her nuns were too careful in this matter she would gravely
reprove them, saying that "the purity of the body and its garments means
the impurity of the soul."[21] Or, as the modern monk of Mount Athos still
declares: "A man should live in dirt as in a coat of mail, so that his
soul may sojourn more securely within."

Our knowledge of the bathing arrangements of Roman days is
chiefly derived from Pompeii. Three public baths (two for both
men and women, who were also probably allowed to use the third
occasionally) have so far been excavated in this small town, as
well as at least three private bathing establishments (at least
one of them for women), while about a dozen houses contain
complete baths for private use. Even in a little farm house at
Boscoreale (two miles out of Pompeii) there was an elaborate
series of bathing rooms. It may be added that Pompeii was well
supplied with water. All houses but the poorest had flowing
jets, and some houses had as many as ten jets. (See Man's
_Pompeii_, Chapters XXVI-XXVIII.)

The Church succeeded to the domination of imperial Rome, and
adopted many of the methods of its predecessor. But there could
be no greater contrast than is presented by the attitude of
Paganism and of Christianity toward the bath.

As regards the tendencies of the public baths in imperial Rome,
some of the evidence is brought together in the section on this
subject in Rosenbaum's _Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthume_.
As regards the attitude of the earliest Christian ascetics in
this matter I may refer the reader to an interesting passage in
Lecky's _History of European Morals_ (vol. ii, pp. 107-112), in
which are brought together a number of highly instructive
examples of the manner in which many of the most eminent of the
early saints deliberately cultivated personal filth.

In the middle ages, when the extreme excesses of the early
ascetics had died out, and monasticiam became regulated, monks
generally took two baths a year when in health; in illness they
could be taken as often as necessary. The rules of Cluny only
allowed three towels to the community: one for the novices, one
for the professed, and one for the lay brothers. At the end of
the seventeenth century Madame de Mazarin, having retired to a
convent of Visitandines, one day desired to wash her feet, but
the whole establishment was set in an uproar at such an idea, and
she received a direct refusal. In 1760 the Dominican Richard
wrote that in itself the bath is permissible, but it must be
taken solely for necessity, not for pleasure. The Church taught,
and this lesson is still inculcated in convent schools, that it
is wrong to expose the body even to one's own gaze, and it is not
surprising that many holy persons boasted that they had never
even washed their hands. (Most of these facts have been taken
from A. Franklin, _Les Soins de Toilette_, one of the _Vie Privée
d'Autrefois_ series, in which further details may be found.)

In sixteenth-century Italy, a land of supreme elegance and
fashion, superior even to France, the conditions were the same,
and how little water found favor even with aristocratic ladies we
may gather from the contemporary books on the toilet, which
abound with recipes against itch and similar diseases. It should
be added that Burckhardt (_Die Cultur der Renaissance in
Italien_, eighth edition, volume ii, p. 92) considers that in
spite of skin diseases the Italians of the Renaissance were the
first nation in Europe for cleanliness.

It is unnecessary to consider the state of things in other
European countries. The aristocratic conditions of former days
are the plebeian conditions of to-day. So far as England is
concerned, such documents as Chadwick's _Report on the Sanitary
Condition of the Laboring Population of Great Britain_ (1842)
sufficiently illustrate the ideas and the practices as regards
personal cleanliness which prevailed among the masses during the
nineteenth century and which to a large extent still prevail.

A considerable amount of opprobrium has been cast upon the Catholic Church
for its direct and indirect influence in promoting bodily uncleanliness.
Nietzsche sarcastically refers to the facts, and Mr. Frederick Harrison
asserts that "the tone of the middle ages in the matter of dirt was a form
of mental disease." It would be easy to quote many other authors to the
same effect.

It is necessary to point out, however, that the writers who have committed
themselves to such utterances have not only done an injustice to
Christianity, but have shown a lack of historical insight. Christianity
was essentially and fundamentally a rebellion against the classic world,
against its vices, and against their concomitant virtues, against both its
practices and its ideals. It sprang up in a different part of the
Mediterranean basin, from a different level of culture; it found its
supporters in a new and lower social stratum. The cult of charity,
simplicity, and faith, while not primarily ascetic, became inevitably
allied with asceticism, because from its point of view: sexuality was the
very stronghold of the classic world. In the second century the genius of
Clement of Alexandria and of the great Christian thinkers who followed him
seized on all those elements in classic life and philosophy which could be
amalgamated with Christianity without, as they trusted, destroying its
essence, but in the matter of sexuality there could be no compromise, and
the condemnation of sexuality involved the condemnation of the bath. It
required very little insight and sagacity for the Christians to
see--though we are now apt to slur over the fact--that the cult of the
bath was in very truth the cult of the flesh.[22] However profound their
ignorance of anatomy, physiology, and psychology might be, they had
before them ample evidence to show that the skin is an outlying sexual
zone and that every application which promoted the purity, brilliance, and
healthfulness of the skin constituted a direct appeal, feeble or strong as
the case might be, to those passions against which they were warring. The
moral was evident: better let the temporary garment of your flesh be
soaked with dirt than risk staining the radiant purity of your immortal
soul. If Christianity had not drawn that moral with clear insight and
relentless logic Christianity would never have been a great force in the
world.

If any doubt is felt as to the really essential character of the
connection between cleanliness and the sexual impulse it may be
dispelled by the consideration that the association is by no
means confined to Christian Europe. If we go outside Europe and
even Christendom altogether, to the other side of the world, we
find it still well marked. The wantonness of the luxurious people
of Tahiti when first discovered by European voyagers is
notorious. The Areoi of Tahiti, a society largely constituted on
a basis of debauchery, is a unique institution so far as
primitive peoples are concerned. Cook, after giving one of the
earliest descriptions of this society and its objects at Tahiti
(Hawkesworth, _An Account of Voyages_, etc., 1775, vol. ii, p.
55), immediately goes on to describe the extreme and scrupulous
cleanliness of the people of Tahiti in every respect; they not
only bathed their bodies and clothes every day, but in all
respects they carried cleanliness to a higher point than even
"the politest assembly in Europe." Another traveler bears similar
testimony: "The inhabitants of the Society Isles are, among all
the nations of the South Seas, the most cleanly; and the better
sort of them carry cleanliness to a very great length"; they
bathe morning and evening in the sea, he remarks, and afterward
in fresh water to remove the particles of salt, wash their hands
before and after meals, etc. (J.R. Forster, "_Observations made
during a Voyage round the World_," 1798, p. 398.) And William
Ellis, in his detailed description of the people of Tahiti
(_Polynesian Researches_, 1832, vol. i, especially Chapters VI
and IX), while emphasizing their extreme cleanliness, every
person of every class bathing at least once or twice a day,
dwells on what he considers their unspeakable moral debasement;
"notwithstanding the apparent mildness of their disposition and
the cheerful vivacity of their conversation, no portion of the
human race was ever perhaps sunk lower in brutal licentiousness
and moral degradation."

After leaving Tahiti Cook went on to New Zealand. Here he found
that the people were more virtuous than at Tahiti, and also, he
found, less clean.

It is, however, a mistake to suppose that physical uncleanliness ruled
supreme through mediæval and later times. It is true that the eighteenth
century, which saw the birth of so much that marks our modern world,
witnessed a revival of the old ideal of bodily purity. But the struggle
between two opposing ideals had been carried on for a thousand years or
more before this. The Church, indeed, was in this matter founded on an
impregnable rock. But there never has been a time when influences outside
the Church have not found a shelter somewhere. Those traditions of the
classic world which Christianity threw aside as useless or worse quietly
reappeared. In no respect was this more notably the case than in regard to
the love of pure water and the cult of the bath. Islam adopted the
complete Roman bath, and made it an institution of daily life, a necessity
for all classes. Granada is the spot in Europe where to-day we find the
most exquisite remains of Mohammedan culture, and, though the fury of
Christian conquest dragged the harrow over the soil of Granada, even yet
streams and fountains spring up there and gush abundantly and one seldom
loses the sound of the plash of water. The flower of Christian chivalry
and Christian intelligence went to Palestine to wrest the Holy Sepulchre
from the hands of pagan Mohammedans. They found there many excellent
things which they had not gone out to seek, and the Crusaders produced a
kind of premature and abortive Renaissance, the shadow of lost classic
things reflected on Christian Europe from the mirror of Islam.

Yet it is worth while to point out, as bearing on the
associations of the bath here emphasized, that even in Islam we
may trace the existence of a religious attitude unfavorable to
the bath. Before the time of Mohammed there were no public baths
in Arabia, and it was and is believed that baths are specially
haunted by the djinn--the evil spirits. Mohammed himself was at
first so prejudiced against public baths that he forbade both men
and women to enter them. Afterward, however, he permitted men to
use them provided they wore a cloth round the loins, and women
also when they could not conveniently bathe at home. Among the
Prophet's sayings is found the assertion: "Whatever woman enters
a bath the devil is with her," and "All the earth is given to me
as a place of prayer, and as pure, except the burial ground and
the bath." (See, e.g., E.W. Lane, _Arabian Society in the Middle
Ages_, 1883, pp. 179-183.) Although, therefore, the bath, or
_hammam_, on grounds of ritual ablution, hygiene, and enjoyment
speedily became universally popular in Islam among all classes
and both sexes, Mohammed himself may be said to have opposed it.

Among the discoveries which the Crusaders made and brought home with them
one of the most notable was that of the bath, which in its more elaborate
forms seems to have been absolutely forgotten in Europe, though Roman
baths might everywhere have been found underground. All authorities seem
to be agreed in finding here the origin of the revival of the public bath.
It is to Rome first, and later to Islam, the lineal inheritor of classic
culture, that we owe the cult of water and of physical purity. Even to-day
the Turkish bath, which is the most popular of elaborate methods of
bathing, recalls by its characteristics and its name the fact that it is a
Mohammedan survival of Roman life.

From the twelfth century onward baths have repeatedly been introduced from
the East, and reintroduced afresh in slightly modified forms, and have
flourished with varying degrees of success. In the thirteenth century they
were very common, especially in Paris, and though they were often used,
more especially in Germany, by both sexes in common, every effort was made
to keep them orderly and respectable. These efforts were, however, always
unsuccessful in the end. A bath always tended in the end to become a
brothel, and hence either became unfashionable or was suppressed by the
authorities. It is sufficient to refer to the reputation in England of
"hot-houses" and "bagnios." It was not until toward the end of the
eighteenth century that it began to be recognized that the claims of
physical cleanliness were sufficiently imperative to make it necessary
that the fairly avoidable risks to morality in bathing should be avoided
and the unavoidable risks bravely incurred. At the present day, now that
we are accustomed to weave ingeniously together in the texture of our
lives the conflicting traditions of classic and Christian days, we have
almost persuaded ourselves that the pagan virtue of cleanliness comes next
after godliness, and we bathe, forgetful of the great moral struggle which
once went on around the bath. But we refrain from building ourselves
palaces to bathe in, and for the most part we bathe with exceeding
moderation.[23] It is probable that we may best harmonize our conflicting
traditions by rejecting not only the Christian glorification of dirt, but
also, save for definitely therapeutic purposes, the excessive heat,
friction, and stimulation involved by the classic forms of bathing. Our
reasonable ideal should render it easy and natural for every man, woman,
and child to have a simple bath, tepid in winter, cold in summer, all the
year round.

For the history of the bath in mediæval times and later Europe,
see A. Franklin, _Les Soins de Toilette_, in the _Vie Privée
d'Autrefois_ series; Rudeck, _Geschichte der öffentlichen
Sittlichkeit in Deutschland_; T. Wright, _The Homes of Other
Days_; E. Dühren, _Das Geschlechtsleben in England_, bd. 1.

Outside the Church, there was a greater amount of cleanliness
than we are sometimes apt to suppose. It may, indeed, be said
that the uncleanliness of holy men and women would have attracted
no attention if it had corresponded to the condition generally
prevailing. Before public baths were established bathing in
private was certainly practiced; thus Ordericus Vitalis, in
narrating the murder of Mabel, the Countess de Montgomery, in
Normandy in 1082, casually mentions that she was lying on the bed
after her bath (_Ecclesiastical History_, Book V, Chapter XIII).
In warm weather, it would appear, mediæval ladies bathed in
streams, as we may still see countrywomen do in Russia, Bohemia,
and occasionally nearer home. The statement of the historian
Michelet, therefore, that Percival, Iseult, and the other
ethereal personages of mediæval times "certainly never washed"
(_La Sorcière_, p. 110) requires some qualification.

In 1292 there were twenty-six bathing establishments in Paris,
and an attendant would go through the streets in the morning
announcing that they were ready. One could have a vapor bath only
or a hot bath to succeed it, as in the East. No woman of bad
reputation, leper, or vagabond was at this time allowed to
frequent the baths, which were closed on Sundays and feast-days.
By the fourteenth century, however, the baths began to have a
reputation for immorality, as well as luxury, and, according to
Dufour, the baths of Paris "rivaled those of imperial Rome: love,
prostitution, and debauchery attracted the majority to the
bathing establishments, where everything was covered by a decent
veil." He adds that, notwithstanding the scandal thus caused and
the invectives of preachers, all went to the baths, young and
old, rich and poor, and he makes the statement, which seems to
echo the constant assertion of the early Fathers, that "a woman
who frequented the baths returned home physically pure only at
the expense of her moral purity."

In Germany there was even greater freedom of manners in bathing,
though, it would seem, less real licentiousness. Even the
smallest towns had their baths, which were frequented by all
classes. As soon as the horn blew to announce that the baths were
ready all hastened along the street, the poorer folk almost
completely undressing themselves before leaving their homes.
Bathing was nearly always in common without any garment being
worn, women attendants commonly rubbed and massaged both sexes,
and the dressing room was frequently used by men and women in
common; this led to obvious evils. The Germans, as Weinhold
points out (_Die Deutschen Frauen im Mittelalter_, 1882, bd. ii,
pp. 112 et seq.), have been fond of bathing in the open air in
streams from the days of Tacitus and Cæsar until comparatively
modern times, when the police have interfered. It was the same in
Switzerland. Poggio, early in the sixteenth century, found it the
custom for men and women to bathe together at Baden, and said
that he seemed to be assisting at the _floralia_ of ancient Rome,
or in Plato's Republic. Sénancour, who quotes the passage (_De
l'Amour_, 1834, vol. i, p. 313), remarks that at the beginning of
the nineteenth century there was still great liberty at the Baden
baths.

Of the thirteenth century in England Thomas Wright (_Homes of
Other Days_, 1871, p. 271) remarks: "The practice of warm bathing
prevailed very generally in all classes of society, and is
frequently alluded to in the mediæval romances and stories. For
this purpose a large bathing-tub was used. People sometimes
bathed immediately after rising in the morning, and we find the
bath used after dinner and before going to bed. A bath was also
often prepared for a visitor on his arrival from a journey; and,
what seems still more singular, in the numerous stories of
amorous intrigues the two lovers usually began their interviews
by bathing together."

In England the association between bathing and immorality was
established with special rapidity and thoroughness. Baths were
here officially recognized as brothels, and this as early as the
twelfth century, under Henry II. These organized bath-brothels
were confined to Southwark, outside the walls of the city, a
quarter which was also given up to various sports and amusements.
At a later period, "hot-houses," bagnios, and hummums (the
eastern _hammam_) were spread all over London and remained
closely identified with prostitution, these names, indeed,
constantly tending to become synonymous with brothels. (T.
Wright, _Homes of Other Days_, 1871, pp. 494-496, gives an
account of them.)

In France the baths, being anathematized by both Catholics and
Huguenots, began to lose vogue and disappear. "Morality gained,"
remarks Franklin, "but cleanliness lost." Even the charming and
elegant Margaret of Navarre found it quite natural for a lady to
mention incidentally to her lover that she had not washed her
hands for a week. Then began an extreme tendency to use
cosmetics, essences, perfumes, and a fierce war with vermin, up
to the seventeenth century, when some progress was made, and
persons who desired to be very elegant and refined were
recommended to wash their faces "nearly every day." Even in 1782,
however, while a linen cloth was advised for the purpose of
cleaning the face and hands, the use of water was still somewhat
discountenanced. The use of hot and cold baths was now, however,
beginning to be established in Paris and elsewhere, and the
bathing establishments at the great European health resorts were
also beginning to be put on the orderly footing which is now
customary. When Casanova, in the middle of the eighteenth
century, went to the public baths at Berne he was evidently
somewhat surprised when he found that he was invited to choose
his own attendant from a number of young women, and when he
realized that these attendants were, in all respects, at the
disposition of the bathers. It is evident that establishments of
this kind were then already dying out, although it may be added
that the customs described by Casanova appear to have persisted
in Budapest and St. Petersburg almost or quite up to the present.
The great European public baths have long been above suspicion in
this respect (though homosexual practices are not quite
excluded), while it is well recognized that many kinds of hot
baths now in use produce a powerfully stimulating action upon the
sexual system, and patients taking such baths for medical
purposes are frequently warned against giving way to these
influences.

The struggle which in former ages went on around bathing
establishments has now been in part transferred to massage
establishments. Massage is an equally powerful stimulant to the
skin and the sexual sphere,--acting mainly by friction instead of
mainly by heat,--and it has not yet attained that position of
general recognition and popularity which, in the case of bathing
establishments, renders it bad policy to court disrepute.

Like bathing, massage is a hygienic and therapeutic method of
influencing the skin and subjacent tissues which, together with
its advantages, has certain concomitant disadvantages in its
liability to affect the sexual sphere. This influence is apt to
be experienced by individuals of both sexes, though it is perhaps
specially marked in women. Jouin (quoted in Paris _Journal de
Médecine_, April 23, 1893) found that of 20 women treated by
massage, of whom he made inquiries, 14 declared that they
experienced voluptuous sensations; 8 of these belonged to
respectable families; the other 6 were women of the _demimonde_
and gave precise details; Jouin refers in this connection to the
_aliptes_ of Rome. It is unnecessary to add that the
gynæcological massage introduced in recent years by the Swedish
teacher of gymnastics, Thure-Brandt, as involving prolonged
rubbing and kneading of the pelvic regions, "_pression glissante
du vagin_" etc. (_Massage Gynécologique_, by G. de Frumerie,
1897), whatever its therapeutic value, cannot fail in a large
proportion of cases to stimulate the sexual emotions. (Eulenburg
remarks that for sexual anæsthesia in women the Thure-Brandt
system of massage may "naturally" be recommended, _Sexuale
Neuropathie_, p. 78.) I have been informed that in London and
elsewhere massage establishments are sometimes visited by women
who seek sexual gratification by massage of the genital regions
by the _masseuse_.


FOOTNOTES:

[21] "_Dicens munditiam corporis atque vestitus animæ esse
immunditiam_"--St. Jerome, _Ad Eustochium Virginem_.

[22] With regard to the physiological mechanism by which bathing produces
its tonic and stimulating effects Woods Hutchinson has an interesting
discussion (Chapter VII) in his _Studies in Human and Comparative
Pathology_.

[23] Thus among the young women admitted to the Chicago Normal School to
be trained as teachers, Miss Lura Sanborn, the director of physical
training, states (_Doctor's Magazine_, December, 1900) that a bath once a
fortnight is found to be not unusual.




V.

Summary--Fundamental Importance of Touch--The Skin the Mother of All the
Other Senses.


The sense of touch is so universally diffused over the whole skin, and in
so many various degrees and modifications, and it is, moreover, so truly
the Alpha and the Omega of affection, that a broken and fragmentary
treatment of the subject has been inevitable.

The skin is the archæological field of human and prehuman experience, the
foundation on which all forms of sensory perception have grown up, and as
sexual sensibility is among the most ancient of all forms of sensibility,
the sexual instinct is necessarily, in the main, a comparatively slightly
modified form of general touch sensibility. This primitive character of
the great region of tactile sensation, its vagueness and diffusion, the
comparatively unintellectual as well as unæsthetic nature of the mental
conceptions which arise on the tactile basis make it difficult to deal
precisely with the psychology of touch. The very same qualities, however,
serve greatly to heighten the emotional intensity of skin sensations. So
that, of all the great sensory fields, the field of touch is at once the
least intellectual and the most massively emotional. These qualities, as
well as its intimate and primitive association with the apparatus of
tumescence and detumescence, make touch the readiest and most powerful
channel by which the sexual sphere may be reached.

In disentangling the phenomena of tactile sensibility ticklishness has
been selected for special consideration as a kind of sensation, founded on
reflexes developing even before birth, which is very closely related to
sexual phenomena. It is, as it were, a play of tumescence, on which
laughter supervenes as a play of detumescence. It leads on to the more
serious phenomena of tumescence, and it tends to die out after
adolescence, at the period during which sexual relationships normally
begin. Such a view of ticklishness, as a kind of modesty of the skin,
existing merely to be destroyed, need only be regarded as one of its
aspects. Ticklishness certainly arose from a non-sexual starting-point,
and may well have protective uses in the young animal.

The readiness with which tactile sensibility takes on a sexual character
and forms reflex channels of communication with the sexual sphere proper
is illustrated by the existence of certain secondary sexual foci only
inferior in sexual excitability to the genital region. We have seen that
the chief of these normal foci are situated in the orificial regions where
skin and mucous membrane meet, and that the contact of any two orificial
regions between two persons of different sex brought together under
favorable conditions is apt, when prolonged, to produce a very intense
degree of sexual erethism. This is a normal phenomenon in so far as it is
a part of tumescence, and not a method of obtaining detumescence. The kiss
is a typical example of these contacts, while the nipple is of special
interest in this connection, because we are thereby enabled to bring the
psychology of lactation into intimate relationship with the psychology of
sexual love.

The extreme sensitiveness of the skin, the readiness with which its
stimulation reverberates into the sexual sphere, clearly brought out by
the present study, enable us to understand better a very ancient
contest--the moral struggle around the bath. There has always been a
tendency for the extreme cultivation of physical purity to lead on to the
excessive stimulation of the sexual sphere; so that the Christian ascetics
were entirely justified, on their premises, in fighting against the bath
and in directly or indirectly fostering a cult of physical uncleanliness.
While, however, in the past there has clearly been a general tendency for
the cult of physical purity to be associated with moral licentiousness,
and there are sufficient grounds for such an association, it is important
to remember that it is not an inevitable and fatal association; a
scrupulously clean person is by no means necessarily impelled to
licentiousness; a physically unclean person is by no means necessarily
morally pure. When we have eliminated certain forms of the bath which must
be regarded as luxuries rather than hygienic necessities, though they
occasionally possess therapeutic virtues, we have eliminated the most
violent appeals of the bath to the sexual impulse. So imperative are the
demands of physical purity now becoming, in general opinion, that such
small risks to moral purity as may still remain are constantly and wisely
disregarded, and the immoral traditions of the bath now, for the most
part, belong to the past.




SMELL.

I.

The Primitiveness of Smell--The Anatomical Seat of the Olfactory
Centres--Predominance of Smell among the Lower Mammals--Its Diminished
Importance in Man--The Attention Paid to Odors by Savages.


The first more highly organized sense to arise on the diffused tactile
sensitivity of the skin is, in most cases, without doubt that of smell. At
first, indeed, olfactory sensibility is not clearly differentiated from
general tactile sensibility; the pit of thickened and ciliated epithelium
or the highly mobile antennæ which in many lower animals are sensitive to
odorous stimuli are also extremely sensitive to tactile stimuli; this is,
for instance, the case with the snail, in whom at the same time olfactive
sensibility seems to be spread over the whole body.[24] The sense of smell
is gradually specialized, and when taste also begins to develop a kind of
chemical sense is constituted. The organ of smell, however, speedily
begins to rise in importance as we ascend the zoölogical scale. In the
lower vertebrates, when they began to adopt a life on dry land, the sense
of smell seems to have been that part of their sensory equipment which
proved most useful under the new conditions, and it developed with
astonishing rapidity. Edinger finds that in the brain of reptiles the
"area olfactoria" is of enormous extent, covering, indeed, the greater
part of the cortex, though it may be quite true, as Herrick remarks, that,
while smell is preponderant, it is perhaps not correct to attribute an
exclusively olfactory tone to the cerebral activities of the _Sauropsida_
or even the _Ichthyopsida_. Among most mammals, however, in any case,
smell is certainly the most highly developed of the senses; it gives the
first information of remote objects that concern them; it gives the most
precise information concerning the near objects that concern them; it is
the sense in terms of which most of their mental operations must be
conducted and their emotional impulses reach consciousness. Among the apes
it has greatly lost importance and in man it has become almost
rudimentary, giving place to the supremacy of vision.

Prof. G. Elliot Smith, a leading authority on the brain, has well
summarized the facts concerning the predominance of the olfactory
region in the mammal brain, and his conclusions may be quoted. It
should be premised that Elliot Smith divides the brain into
rhinencephalon and neopallium. Rhinencephalon designates the
regions which are pre-eminently olfactory in function: the
olfactory bulb, its peduncle, the tuberculum olfactorium and
locus perforatus, the pyriform lobe, the paraterminal body, and
the whole hippocampal formation. The neopallium is the dorsal cap
of the brain, with frontal, parietal, and occipital areas,
comprehending all that part of the brain which is the seat of the
higher associative activities, reaching its fullest development
in man.

"In the early mammals the olfactory areas form by far the greater
part of the cerebral hemisphere, which is not surprising when it
is recalled that the forebrain is, in the primitive brain,
essentially an appendage, so to speak, of the smell apparatus.
When the cerebral hemisphere comes to occupy such a dominant
position in the brain it is perhaps not unnatural to find that
the sense of smell is the most influential and the chief source
of information to the animal; or, perhaps, it would be more
accurate to say that the olfactory sense, which conveys general
information to the animal such as no other sense can bring
concerning its prey (whether near or far, hidden or exposed), is
much the most serviceable of all the avenues of information to
the lowly mammal leading a terrestrial life, and therefore
becomes predominant; and its particular domain--the
forebrain--becomes the ruling portion of the nervous system.

"This early predominance of the sense of smell persists in most
mammals (unless an aquatic mode of life interferes and deposes
it: compare the _Cetacea, Sirenia_, and _Pinnipedia_, for
example) even though a large neopallium develops to receive
visual, auditory, tactile, and other impressions pouring into the
forebrain. In the _Anthropoidea_ alone of nonaquatic mammals the
olfactory regions undergo an absolute (and not only relative, as
in the _Carnivora_ and _Ungulata_) dwindling, which is equally
shared by the human brain, in common with those of the other
_Simiidæ_, the _Cercopithecidæ_, and the _Cebidæ_. But all the
parts of the rhinencephalon, which are so distinct in macrosmatic
mammals, can also be recognized in the human brain. The small
ellipsoidal olfactory bulb is moored, so to speak, on the
cribriform plate of the ethmoid bone by the olfactory nerves; so
that, as the place of attachment of the olfactory peduncle to the
expanding cerebral hemisphere becomes removed (as a result of the
forward extension of the hemisphere) progressively farther and
farther backward, the peduncle becomes greatly stretched and
elongated. And, as this stretching involves the gray matter
without lessening the number of nerve-fibres in the olfactory
tract, the peduncle becomes practically what it is usually
called--i.e., the olfactory 'tract.' The tuberculum olfactorium
becomes greatly reduced and at the same time flattened; so that
it is not easy to draw a line of demarcation between it and the
anterior perforated space. The anterior rhinal fissure, which is
present in the early human foetus, vanishes (almost, if not
altogether) in the adult. Part of the posterior rhinal fissure is
always present in the 'incisura temporalis,' and sometimes,
especially in some of the non-European races, the whole of the
posterior rhinal fissure is retained in that typical form which
we find in the anthropoid apes." (G. Elliot Smith, in
_Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological
Series of Comparative Anatomy Contained in the Museum of the
Royal College of Surgeons of England_, second edition, vol. ii.)
A full statement of Elliot Smith's investigations, with diagrams,
is given by Bullen, _Journal of Mental Science_, July, 1899. It
may be added that the whole subject of the olfactory centres has
been thoroughly studied by Elliot Smith, as well as by Edinger,
Mayer, and C.L. Herrick. In the _Journal of Comparative
Neurology_, edited by the last named, numerous discussions and
summaries bearing on the subject will be found from 1896 onward.
Regarding the primitive sense-organs of smell in the various
invertebrate groups some information will be found in A.B.
Griffiths's _Physiology of the Invertebrata_, Chapter XI.

The predominance of the olfactory area in the nervous system of the
vertebrates generally has inevitably involved intimate psychic
associations between olfactory stimuli and the sexual impulse. For most
mammals not only are all sexual associations mainly olfactory, but the
impressions received by this sense suffice to dominate all others. An
animal not only receives adequate sexual excitement from olfactory
stimuli, but those stimuli often suffice to counterbalance all the
evidence of the other senses.

We may observe this very well in the case of the dog. Thus, a