completely the spiritual from the physical. The very attempt to do so is,
indeed, a fatal mistake. The man who can only perceive the physical side
of the sexual relationship is, as Hinton was accustomed to say, on a level
with the man who, in listening to a sonata of Beethoven on the violin, is
only conscious of the physical fact that a horse's tail is being scraped
against a sheep's entrails.

The image of the musical instrument constantly recurs to those
who write of the art of love. Balzac's comparison of the
unskilful husband to the orang-utan attempting to play the violin
has already been quoted. Dr. Jules Guyot, in his serious and
admirable little book, _Bréviaire de l'Amour Expérimental_, falls
on to the same comparison: "There are an immense number of
ignorant, selfish, and brutal men who give themselves no trouble
to study the instrument which God has confided to them, and do
not so much as suspect that it is necessary to study it in order
to draw out its slightest chords.... Every direct contact, even
with the clitoris, every attempt at coitus [when the feminine
organism is not aroused], exercises a painful sensation, an
instinctive repulsion, a feeling of disgust and aversion. Any
man, any husband, who is ignorant of this fact, is ridiculous and
contemptible. Any man, any husband, who, knowing it, dares to
disregard it, has committed an outrage.... In the final
combination of man and woman, the positive element, the husband,
has the initiative and the responsibility for the conjugal life.
He is the minstrel who will produce harmony or cacophony by his
hand and his bow. The wife, from this point of view, is really
the many-stringed instrument who will give out harmonious or
discordant sounds, according as she is well or ill handled"
(Guyot, _Bréviaire_, pp. 99, 115, 138).

That such love corresponds to the woman's need there cannot be
any doubt. All developed women desire to be loved, says Ellen
Key, not "en mâle" but "en artiste" (_Liebe und Ehe_, p. 92).
"Only a man of whom she feels that he has also the artist's joy
in her, and who shows this joy through his timid and delicate
touch on her soul as on her body, can keep the woman of to-day.
She will only belong to a man who continues to long for her even
when he holds her locked in his arms. And when such a woman
breaks out: 'You want me, but you cannot caress me, you cannot
tell what I want,' then that man is judged." Love is indeed, as
Remy de Gourmont remarks, a delicate art, for which, as for
painting or music, only some are apt.

It must not be supposed that the demand on the lover and husband to
approach a woman in the same spirit, with the same consideration and
skilful touch, as a musician takes up his instrument is merely a demand
made by modern women who are probably neurotic or hysterical. No reader of
these _Studies_ who has followed the discussions of courtship and of
sexual selection in previous volumes can fail to realize that--although we
have sought to befool ourselves by giving an illegitimate connotation to
the word "brutal"--consideration and respect for the female is all but
universal in the sexual relationships of the animals below man; it is only
at the furthest remove from the "brutes," among civilized men, that sexual
"brutality" is at all common, and even there it is chiefly the result of
ignorance. If we go as low as the insects, who have been disciplined by
no family life, and are generally counted as careless and wanton, we may
sometimes find this attitude towards the female fully developed, and the
extreme consideration of the male for the female whom yet he holds firmly
beneath him, the tender preliminaries, the extremely gradual approach to
the supreme sexual act, may well furnish an admirable lesson.

This greater difficulty and delay on the part of women in responding to
the erotic excitation of courtship is really very fundamental and--as has
so often been necessary to point out in previous volumes of these
_Studies_--it covers the whole of woman's erotic life, from the earliest
age when coyness and modesty develop. A woman's love develops much more
slowly than a man's for a much longer period. There is real psychological
significance in the fact that a man's desire for a woman tends to arise
spontaneously, while a woman's desire for a man tends only to be aroused
gradually, in the measure of her complexly developing relationship to him.
Hence her sexual emotion is often less abstract, more intimately
associated with the individual lover in whom it is centred. "The way to my
senses is through my heart," wrote Mary Wollstonecraft to her lover Imlay,
"but, forgive me! I think there is sometimes a shorter cut to yours." She
spoke for the best, if not for the largest part, of her sex. A man often
reaches the full limit of his physical capacity for love at a single step,
and it would appear that his psychic limits are often not more difficult
to reach. This is the solid fact underlying the more hazardous statement,
so often made, that woman is monogamic and man polygamic.

On the more physical side, Guttceit states that a month after
marriage not more than two women out of ten have experienced the
full pleasure of sexual intercourse, and it may not be for six
months, a year, or even till after the birth of several children,
that a woman experiences the full enjoyment of the physical
relationship, and even then only with a man she completely loves,
so that the conditions of sexual gratification are much more
complex in women than in men. Similarly, on the psychic side,
Ellen Key remarks (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 111): "It is
certainly true that a woman desires sexual gratification from a
man. But while in her this desire not seldom only appears after
she has begun to love a man enough to give her life for him, a
man often desires to possess a woman physically before he loves
her enough to give even his little finger for her. The fact that
love in a woman mostly goes from the soul to the senses and often
fails to reach them, and that in a man it mostly goes from the
senses to the soul and frequently never reaches that goal--this
is of all the existing differences between men and women that
which causes most torture to both." It will, of course, be
apparent to the reader of the fourth volume of these _Studies_ on
"Sexual Selection in Man" that the method of stating the
difference which has commended itself to Mary Wollstonecraft,
Ellen Key, and others, is not strictly correct, and the chastest
woman, after, for example, taking too hot a bath, may find that
her heart is not the only path through which her senses may be
affected. The senses are the only channels to the external world
which we possess, and love must come through these channels or
not at all. The difference, however, seems to be a real one, if
we translate it to mean that, as we have seen reason to believe
in previous volumes of these _Studies_, there are in women (1)
preferential sensory paths of sexual stimuli, such as,
apparently, a predominence of tactile and auditory paths as
compared with men; (2) a more massive, complex, and delicately
poised sexual mechanism; and, as a result of this, (3) eventually
a greater amount of nervous and cerebral sexual irradiation.

It must be remembered, at the same time, that while this
distinction represents a real tendency in sexual differentiation,
with an organic and not merely traditional basis, it has about it
nothing whatever that is absolute. There are a vast number of
women whose sexual facility, again by natural tendency and not
merely by acquired habits, is as marked as that of any man, if
not more so. In the sexual field, as we have seen in a previous
volume (_Analysis of the Sexual Impulse_), the range of
variability is greater in women than in men.

The fact that love is an art, a method of drawing music from an
instrument, and not the mere commission of an act by mutual consent, makes
any verbal agreement to love of little moment. If love were a matter of
contract, of simple intellectual consent, of question and answer, it would
never have come into the world at all. Love appeared as art from the
first, and the subsequent developments of the summary methods of reason
and speech cannot abolish that fundamental fact. This is scarcely realized
by those ill-advised lovers who consider that the first step in
courtship--and perhaps even the whole of courtship--is for a man to ask a
woman to be his wife. That is so far from being the case that it
constantly happens that the premature exhibition of so large a demand at
once and for ever damns all the wooer's chances. It is lamentable, no
doubt, that so grave and fateful a matter as that of marriage should so
often be decided without calm deliberation and reasonable forethought. But
sexual relationships can never, and should never, be merely a matter of
cold calculation. When a woman is suddenly confronted by the demand that
she should yield herself up as a wife to a man who has not yet succeeded
in gaining her affections she will not fail to find--provided she is
lifted above the cold-hearted motives of self-interest--that there are
many sound reasons why she should not do so. And having thus squarely
faced the question in cool blood and decided it, she will henceforth,
probably, meet that wooer with a tunic of steel enclosing her breast.

"Love must be _revealed_ by acts and not _betrayed_ by words. I
regard as abnormal the extraordinary method of a hasty avowal
beforehand; for that represents not the direct but the reflex
path of transmission. However sweet and normal the avowal may be
when once reciprocity has been realized, as a method of conquest
I consider it dangerous and likely to produce the reverse of the
result desired." I take these wise words from a thoughtful "Essai
sur l'Amour" (_Archives de Psychologie_, 1904) by a
non-psychological Swiss writer who is recording his own
experiences, and who insists much on the predominance of the
spiritual and mental element in love.

It is worthy of note that this recognition that direct speech is
out of place in courtship must not be regarded as a refinement of
civilization. Among primitive peoples everywhere it is perfectly
well recognized that the offer of love, and its acceptance or its
refusal, must be made by actions symbolically, and not by the
crude method of question and answer. Among the Indians of
Paraguay, who allow much sexual freedom to their women, but never
buy or sell love, Mantegazza states (_Rio de la Plata e
Tenerife_, 1867, p. 225) that a girl of the people will come to
your door or window and timidly, with a confused air, ask you, in
the Guarani tongue, for a drink of water. But she will smile if
you innocently offer her water. Among the Tarahumari Indians of
Mexico, with whom the initiative in courting belongs to the
women, the girl takes the first step through her parents, then
she throws small pebbles at the young man; if he throws them back
the matter is concluded (Carl Lumholtz, _Scribner's Magazine_,
Sept., 1894, p. 299). In many parts of the world it is the woman
who chooses her husband (see, e.g., M.A. Potter, _Sohrab and
Rustem_, pp. 169 et seq.), and she very frequently adopts a
symbolical method of proposal. Except when the commercial element
predominates in marriage, a similar method is frequently adopted
by men also in making proposals of marriage.

It is not only at the beginning of courtship that the act of love has
little room for formal declarations, for the demands and the avowals that
can be clearly defined in speech. The same rule holds even in the most
intimate relationships of old lovers, throughout the married life. The
permanent element in modesty, which survives every sexual initiation to
become intertwined with all the exquisite impudicities of love, combines
with a true erotic instinct to rebel against formal demands, against
verbal affirmations or denials. Love's requests cannot be made in words,
nor truthfully answered in words: a fine divination is still needed as
long as love lasts.

The fact that the needs of love cannot be expressed but must be
divined has long been recognized by those who have written of the
art of love, alike by writers within and without the European
Christian traditions. Thus Zacchia, in his great medico-legal
treatise, points out that a husband must be attentive to the
signs of sexual desire in his wife. "Women," he says, "when
sexual desire arises within them are accustomed to ask their
husbands questions on matters of love; they flatter and caress
them; they allow some part of their body to be uncovered as if by
accident; their breasts appear to swell; they show unusual
alacrity; they blush; their eyes are bright; and if they
experience unusual ardor they stammer, talk beside the mark, and
are scarcely mistress of themselves. At the same time their
private parts become hot and swell. All these signs should
convince a husband, however inattentive he may be, that his wife
craves for satisfaction" (_Zacchiæ Quæstionum Medico-legalium
Opus_, lib. vii, tit. iii, quæst. I; vol. ii, p. 624 in ed. of
1688).

The old Hindu erotic writers attributed great importance alike to
the man's attentiveness to the woman's erotic needs, and to his
skill and consideration in all the preliminaries of the sexual
act. He must do all that he can to procure her pleasure, says
Vatsyayana. When she is on her bed and perhaps absorbed in
conversation, he gently unfastens the knot of her lower garment.
If she protests he closes her mouth with kisses. Some authors,
Vatsyayana remarks, hold that the lover should begin by sucking
the nipples of her breasts. When erection occurs he touches her
with his hands, softly caressing the various parts of her body.
He should always press those parts of her body towards which she
turns her eyes. If she is shy, and it is the first time, he will
place his hands between her thighs which she will instinctively
press together. If she is young he will put his hands on her
breasts, and she will no doubt cover them with her own. If she is
mature he will do all that may seem fitting and agreeable to both
parties. Then he will take her hair and her chin between his
fingers and kiss them. If she is very young she will blush and
close her eyes. By the way in which she receives his caresses he
will divine what pleases her most in union. The signs of her
enjoyment are that her body becomes limp, her eyes close, she
loses all timidity, and takes part in the movements which bring
her most closely to him. If, on the other hand, she feels no
pleasure, she strikes the bed with her hands, will not allow the
man to continue, is sullen, even bites or kicks, and continues
the movements of coitus when the man has finished. In such cases,
Vatsyayana adds, it is his duty to rub the vulva with his hand
before union until it is moist, and he should perform the same
movements afterwards if his own orgasm has occurred first.

With regard to Indian erotic art generally, and more especially
Vatsyayana, who appears to have lived some sixteen hundred years
ago, information will be found in Valentino, "L'Hygiène conjugale
chez les Hindous," _Archives Générales de Médecine_, Ap. 25,
1905; Iwan Bloch, "Indische Medizin," Puschmann's _Handbuch der
Geschichte der Medizin_, vol. i; Heimann and Stephan, "Beiträge
zur Ehehygiene nach der Lehren des Kamasutram," _Zeitschaft für
Sexualwissenschaft_, Sept., 1908; also a review of Richard
Schmidt's German translation of the _Kamashastra_ of Vatsyayana
in _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1902, Heft 2. There has long
existed an English translation of this work. In the lengthy
preface to the French translation Lamairesse points out the
superiority of Indian erotic art to that of the Latin poets by
its loftier spirit, and greater purity and idealism. It is
throughout marked by respect for women, and its spirit is
expressed in the well-known proverb: "Thou shalt not strike a
woman even with a flower." See also Margaret Noble's _Web of
Indian Life_, especially Ch. III, "On the Hindu Woman as Wife,"
and Ch. IV, "Love Strong as Death."

The advice given to husbands by Guyot (_Bréviaire de l'Amour
Expérimental_, p. 422) closely conforms to that given, under very
different social conditions, by Zacchia and Vatsyayana. "In a
state of sexual need and desire the woman's lips are firm and
vibrant, the breasts are swollen, and the nipples erect. The
intelligent husband cannot be deceived by these signs. If they do
not exist, it is his part to provoke them by his kisses and
caresses, and if, in spite of his tender and delicate
excitations, the lips show no heat and the breasts no swelling,
and especially if the nipples are disagreeably irritated by
slight suction, he must arrest his transports and abstain from
all contact with the organs of generation, for he would certainly
find them in a state of exhaustion and disposed to repulsion. If,
on the contrary, the accessory organs are animated, or become
animated beneath his caresses, he must extend them to the
generative organs, and especially to the clitoris, which beneath
his touch will become full of appetite and ardor."

The importance of the preliminary titillation of the sexual
organs has been emphasized by a long succession alike of erotic
writers and physicians, from Ovid (_Ars Amatoria_ end of Bk. II)
onwards. Eulenburg (_Die Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 79) considers
that titillation is sometimes necessary, and Adler, likewise
insisting on the preliminaries of psychic and physical courtship
(_Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes_, p. 188),
observes that the man who is gifted with insight and skill in
these matters possesses a charm which will draw sparks of
sensibility from the coldest feminine heart. The advice of the
physician is at one in this matter with the maxims of the erotic
artist and with the needs of the loving woman. In making love
there must be no haste, wrote  Ovid:--

"Crede mihi, non est Veneris properanda voluptas,
Sed sensim tarda prolicienda mora."

"Husbands, like spoiled children," a woman has written, "too
often miss the pleasure which might otherwise be theirs, by
clamoring for it at the wrong time. The man who thinks this
prolonged courtship previous to the act of sex union wearisome,
has never given it a trial. It is the approach to the marital
embrace, as well as the embrace itself, which constitutes the
charm of the relation between the sexes."

It not seldom happens, remarks Adler (op. cit., p. 186), that the
insensibility of the wife must be treated--in the husband. And
Guyot, bringing forward the same point, writes (op. cit., p.
130): "If by a delay of tender study the husband has understood
his young bride, if he is able to realize for her the ineffable
happiness and dreams of youth, he will be beloved forever; he
will be her master and sovereign lord. If he has failed to
understand her he will fatigue and exhaust himself in vain
efforts, and finally class her among the indifferent and cold
women. She will be his wife by duty, the mother of his children.
He will take his pleasure elsewhere, for man is ever in pursuit
of the woman who experiences the genesic spasm. Thus the vague
and unintelligent search for a half who can unite in that
delirious finale is the chief cause of all conjugal dissolutions.
In such a case a man resembles a bad musician who changes his
violin in the hope that a new instrument will bring the melody he
is unable to play."

The fact that there is thus an art in love, and that sexual intercourse is
not a mere physical act to be executed by force of muscles, may help to
explain why it is that in so many parts of the world defloration is not
immediately effected on marriage.[404] No doubt religious or magic reasons
may also intervene here, but, as so often happens, they harmonize with the
biological process. This is the case even among uncivilized peoples who
marry early. The need for delay and considerate skill is far greater when,
as among ourselves, a woman's marriage is delayed long past the
establishment of puberty to a period when it is more difficult to break
down the psychic and perhaps even physical barriers of personality.

It has to be added that the art of love in the act of courtship is not
confined to the preliminaries to the single act of coitus. In a sense the
life of love is a continuous courtship with a constant progression. The
establishment of physical intercourse is but the beginning of it. This is
especially true of women. "The consummation of love," says Sénancour,[405]
"which is often the end of love with man is only the beginning of love
with woman, a test of trust, a gage of future pleasure, a sort of
engagement for an intimacy to come." "A woman's soul and body," says
another writer,[406] "are not given at one stroke at a given moment; but
only slowly, little by little, through many stages, are both delivered to
the beloved. Instead of abandoning the young woman to the bridegroom on
the wedding night, as an entrapped mouse is flung to the cat to be
devoured, it would be better to let the young bridal couple live side by
side, like two friends and comrades, until they gradually learn how to
develop and use their sexual consciousness." The conventional wedding is
out of place as a preliminary to the consummation of marriage, if only on
the ground that it is impossible to say at what stage in the endless
process of courtship it ought to take place.

A woman, unlike a man, is prepared by Nature, to play a skilful part in
the art of love. The man's part in courtship, which is that of the male
throughout the zoölogical series, may be difficult and hazardous, but it
is in a straight line, fairly simple and direct. The woman's part, having
to follow at the same moment two quite different impulses, is necessarily
always in a zigzag or a curve. That is to say that at every erotic moment
her action is the resultant of the combined force of her desire (conscious
or unconscious) and her modesty. She must sail through a tortuous channel
with Scylla on the one side and Charybdis on the other, and to avoid
either danger too anxiously may mean risking shipwreck on the other side.
She must be impenetrable to all the world, but it must be an
impenetrability not too obscure for the divination of the right man. Her
speech must be honest, but yet on no account tell everything; her actions
must be the outcome of her impulses, and on that very account be capable
of two interpretations. It is only in the last resort of complete intimacy
that she can become the perfect woman,

"Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought,
Nor Love her body from her soul."

For many a woman the conditions for that final erotic avatar--"that
splendid shamelessness which," as Rafford Pyke says, "is the finest thing
in perfect love"--never present themselves at all. She is compelled to be
to the end of her erotic life, what she must always be at the beginning, a
complex and duplex personality, naturally artful. Therewith she is better
prepared than man to play her part in the art of love.

The man's part in the art of love is, however, by no means easy. That is
not always realized by the women who complain of his lack of skill in
playing it. Although a man has not to cultivate the same natural duplicity
as a woman, it is necessary that he should possess a considerable power of
divination. He is not well prepared for that, because the traditional
masculine virtue is force rather than insight. The male's work in the
world, we are told, is domination, and it is by such domination that the
female is attracted. There is an element of truth in that doctrine, an
element of truth which may well lead astray the man who too exclusively
relies upon it in the art of love. Violence is bad in every art, and in
the erotic art the female desires to be won to love and not to be ordered
to love. That is fundamental. We sometimes see the matter so stated as if
the objection to force and domination in love constituted some quite new
and revolutionary demand of the "modern woman." That is, it need scarcely
be said, the result of ignorance. The art of love, being an art that
Nature makes, is the same now as in essentials it has always been,[407]
and it was well established before woman came into existence. That it has
not always been very skilfully played is another matter. And, so far as
the man is concerned, it is this very tradition of masculine predominance
which has contributed to the difficulty of playing it skilfully. The woman
admires the male's force; she even wishes herself to be forced to the
things that she altogether desires; and yet she revolts from any exertion
of force outside that narrow circle, either before the boundary of it is
reached or after the boundary is passed. Thus the man's position is really
more difficult than the women who complain of his awkwardness in love are
always ready to admit. He must cultivate force, not only in the world but
even for display in the erotic field; he must be able to divine the
moments when, in love, force is no longer force because his own will is
his partner's will; he must, at the same time, hold himself in complete
restraint lest he should fall into the fatal error of yielding to his own
impulse of domination; and all this at the very moment when his emotions
are least under control. We need scarcely be surprised that of the myriads
who embark on the sea of love, so few women, so very few men, come safely
into port.

It may still seem to some that in dwelling on the laws that guide the
erotic life, if that life is to be healthy and complete, we have wandered
away from the consideration of the sexual instinct in its relationship to
society. It may therefore be desirable to return to first principles and
to point out that we are still clinging to the fundamental facts of the
personal and social life. Marriage, as we have seen reason to believe, is
a great social institution; procreation, which is, on the public side, its
supreme function, is a great social end. But marriage and procreation are
both based on the erotic life. If the erotic life is not sound, then
marriage is broken up, practically if not always formally, and the process
of procreation is carried out under unfavorable conditions or not at all.

This social and personal importance of the erotic life, though, under the
influence of a false morality and an equally false modesty, it has
sometimes been allowed to fall into the background in stages of artificial
civilization, has always been clearly realized by those peoples who have
vitally grasped the relationships of life. Among most uncivilized races
there appear to be few or no "sexually frigid" women. It is little to the
credit of our own "civilization" that it should be possible for physicians
to-day to assert, even with the faintest plausibility, that there are some
25 per cent. of women who may thus be described.

The whole sexual structure of the world is built up on the general fact
that the intimate contact of the male and female who have chosen each
other is mutually pleasurable. Below this general fact is the more
specific fact that in the normal accomplishment of the act of sexual
consummation the two partners experience the acute gratification of
simultaneous orgasm. Herein, it has been said, lies the secret of love. It
is the very basis of love, the condition of the healthy exercise of the
sexual functions, and, in many cases, it seems probable, the condition
also of fertilization.

Even savages in a very low degree of culture are sometimes
patient and considerate in evoking and waiting for the signs of
sexual desire in their females. (I may refer to the significant
case of the Caroline Islanders, as described by Kubary in his
ethnographic study of that people and quoted in volume iv of
these _Studies_, "Sexual Selection in Man," Sect. III.) In
Catholic days theological influence worked wholesomely in the
same direction, although the theologians were so keen to detect
the mortal sin of lust. It is true that the Catholic insistence
on the desirability of simultaneous orgasm was largely due to the
mistaken notion that to secure conception it was necessary that
there should be "insemination" on the part of the wife as well as
of the husband, but that was not the sole source of the
theological view. Thus Zacchia discusses whether a man ought to
continue with his wife until she has the orgasm and feels
satisfied, and he decides that that is the husband's duty;
otherwise the wife falls into danger either of experiencing the
orgasm during sleep, or, more probably, by self-excitation, "for
many women, when their desires have not been satisfied by coitus,
place one thigh on the other, pressing and rubbing them together
until the orgasm occurs, in the belief that if they abstain from
using the hands they have committed no sin." Some theologians, he
adds, favor that belief, notably Hurtado de Mendoza and Sanchez,
and he further quotes the opinion of the latter that women who
have not been satisfied in coitus are liable to become hysterical
or melancholic (_Zacchiæ Quæstionum Medico-legalium Opus_, lib.
vii, tit. iii, quæst. VI). In the same spirit some theologians
seem to have permitted _irrumatio_ (without ejaculation), so long
as it is only the preliminary to the normal sexual act.

Nowadays physicians have fully confirmed the belief of Sanchez.
It is well recognized that women in whom, from whatever cause,
acute sexual excitement occurs with frequency without being
followed by the due natural relief of orgasm are liable to
various nervous and congestive symptoms which diminish their
vital effectiveness, and very possibly lead to a breakdown in
health. Kisch has described, as a cardiac neurosis of sexual
origin, a pathological tachycardia which is an exaggeration of
the physiological quick heart of sexual excitement. J. Inglis
Parsons (_British Medical Journal_, Oct. 22, 1904, p. 1062)
refers to the ovarian pain produced by strong unsatisfied sexual
excitement, often in vigorous unmarried women, and sometimes a
cause of great distress. An experienced Austrian gynæcologist
told Hirth (_Wege zur Heimat_, p. 613) that of every hundred
women who come to him with uterine troubles seventy suffered from
congestion of the womb, which he regarded as due to incomplete
coitus.

It is frequently stated that the evil of incomplete gratification
and absence of orgasm in women is chiefly due to male withdrawal,
that is to say _coitus interruptus_, in which the penis is
hastily withdrawn as soon as involuntary ejaculation is
impending; and it is sometimes said that the same widely
prevalent practice is also productive of slight or serious
results in the male (see, e.g., L.B. Bangs, _Transactions New
York Academy of Medicine_, vol. ix, 1893; D.S. Booth, "Coitus
Interruptus and Coitus Reservatus as Causes of Profound Neurosis
and Psychosis," _Alienist and Neurologist_, Nov., 1906; also,
_Alienist and Neurologist_, Oct., 1897, p. 588).

It is undoubtedly true that coitus interruptus, since it involves
sudden withdrawal on the part of the man without reference to the
stage of sexual excitation which his partner may have reached,
cannot fail to produce frequently an injurious nervous effect on
the woman, though the injurious effect on the man, who obtains
ejaculation, is little or none. But the practice is so widespread
that it cannot be regarded as necessarily involving this evil
result. There can, I am assured, be no doubt whatever that
Blumreich is justified in his statement (Senator and Kaminer,
_Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage_, vol. ii, p. 783)
that "interrupted coitus is injurious to the genital system of
those women only who are disturbed in their sensation of delight
by this form of cohabitation, in whom the orgasm is not produced,
and who continue for hours subsequently to be tormented by
feelings of an unsatisfied desire." Equally injurious effects
follow in normal coitus when the man's orgasm occurs too soon.
"These phenomena, therefore," he concludes, "are not
characteristic of interrupted coitus, but consequences of an
imperfectly concluded sexual cohabitation as such." Kisch,
likewise, in his elaborate and authoritative work on _The Sexual
Life of Woman_, also states that the question of the evil results
of _coitus interruptus_ in women is simply a question of whether
or not they receive sexual satisfaction. (Cf. also Fürbringer,
_Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage_, vol. i, pp. 232 _et
seq._) This is clearly the most reasonable view to take
concerning what is the simplest, the most widespread, and
certainly the most ancient of the methods of preventing
conception. In the Book of Genesis we find it practiced by Onan,
and to come down to modern times, in the sixteenth century it
seems to have been familiar to French ladies, who, according to
Brantôme, enjoined it on their lovers.

Coitus reservatus,--in which intercourse is maintained even for
very long periods, during which the woman may have orgasm several
times while the man succeeds in holding back orgasm,--so far from
being injurious to the woman, is probably the form of coitus
which gives her the maximum of gratification and relief. For most
men, however, it seems probable that this self-control over the
processes leading to the involuntary act of detumescence is
difficult to acquire, while in weak, nervous, and erethic persons
it is impossible. It is, however, a desirable condition for
completely adequate coitus, and in the East this is fully
recognized, and the aptitude carefully cultivated. Thus W.D.
Sutherland states ("Einiges über das Alltagsleben und die
Volksmedizin unter den Bauern Britischostindiens," _Münchener
Medizinische Wochenschrift_, No. 12, 1906) that the Hindu smokes
and talks during intercourse in order to delay orgasm, and
sometimes applies an opium paste to the glans of the penis for
the same purpose. (See also vol. iii of these _Studies_, "The
Sexual Impulse in Women.") Some authorities have, indeed, stated
that the prolongation of the act of coitus is injurious in its
effect on the male. Thus R.W. Taylor (_Practical Treatise on
Sexual Disorders_, third ed., p. 121) states that it tends to
cause atonic impotence, and Löwenfeld (_Sexualleben und
Nervenleiden_, p. 74) thinks that the swift and unimpeded
culmination of the sexual act is necessary in order to preserve
the vigor of the reflex reactions. This is probably true of
extreme and often repeated cases of indefinite prolongation of
pronounced erection without detumescence, but it is not true
within fairly wide limits in the case of healthy persons.
Prolonged _coitus reservatus_ was a practice of the complex
marriage system of the Oneida community, and I was assured by the
late Noyes Miller, who had spent the greater part of his life in
the community, that the practice had no sort of evil result.
_Coitus reservatus_ was erected into a principle in the Oneida
community. Every man in the community was theoretically the
husband of every woman, but every man was not free to have
children with every woman. Sexual initiation took place soon
after puberty in the case of boys, some years later in the case
of girls, by a much older person of the opposite sex. In
intercourse the male inserted his penis into the vagina and
retained it there for even an hour without emission, though
orgasm took place in the woman. There was usually no emission in
the case of the man, even after withdrawal, and he felt no need
of emission. The social feeling of the community was a force on
the side of this practice, the careless, unskilful men being
avoided by women, while the general romantic sentiment of
affection for all the women in the community was also a force.
Masturbation was unknown, and no irregular relations took place
with persons outside the community. The practice was maintained
for thirty years, and was finally abandoned, not on its demerits,
but in deference to the opinions of the outside world. Mr. Miller
admitted that the practice became more difficult in ordinary
marriage, which favors a more mechanical habit of intercourse.
The information received from Mr. Miller is supplemented in a
pamphlet entitled _Male Continence_ (the name given to _coitus
reservatus_ in the community), written in 1872 by the founder,
John Humphrey Noyes. The practice is based, he says, on the fact
that sexual intercourse consists of two acts, a social and a
propagative, and that if propagation is to be scientific there
must be no confusion of these two acts, and procreation must
never be involuntary. It was in 1844, he states, that this idea
occurred to him as a result of a resolve to abstain from sexual
intercourse in consequence of his wife's delicate health and
inability to bear healthy children, and in his own case he found
the practice "a great deliverance. It made a happy household." He
points out that the chief members of the Oneida community
"belonged to the most respectable families in Vermont, had been
educated in the best schools of New England morality and
refinement, and were, by the ordinary standards, irreproachable
in their conduct so far as sexual matters are concerned, till
they deliberately commenced, in 1846, the experiment of a new
state of society, on principles which they had been long maturing
and were prepared to defend before the World." In relation to
male continence, therefore, Noyes thought the community might
fairly be considered "the Committee of Providence to test its
value in actual life." He states that a careful medical
comparison of the statistics of the community had shown that the
rate of nervous disease in the community was considerably below
the average outside, and that only two cases of nervous disorder
had occurred which could be traced with any probability to a
misuse of male continence. This has been confirmed by Van de
Warker, who studied forty-two women of the community without
finding any undue prevalence of reproductive diseases, nor could
he find any diseased condition attributable to the sexual habits
of the community (cf. C. Reed, _Text-Book of Gynecology_, 1901,
p. 9).

Noyes believed that "male continence" had never previously been a
definitely recognized practice based on theory, though there
might have been occasional approximation to it. This is probably
true if the coitus is _reservatus_ in the full sense, with
complete absence of emission. Prolonged coitus, however,
permitting the woman to have orgasm more than once, while the man
has none, has long been recognized. Thus in the seventeenth
century Zacchia discussed whether such a practice is legitimate
(_Zacchiæ Quæstionum Opus_, ed. of 1688, lib. vii, tit. iii,
quæst. VI). In modern times it is occasionally practiced, without
any theory, and is always appreciated by the woman, while it
appears to have no bad effect on the man. In such a case it will
happen that the act of coitus may last for an hour and a quarter
or even longer, the maximum of the woman's pleasure not being
reached until three-quarters of an hour have passed; during this
period the woman will experience orgasm some four or five times,
the man only at the end. It may occasionally happen that a little
later the woman again experiences desire, and intercourse begins
afresh in the same way. But after that she is satisfied, and
there is no recurrence of desire.

It may be desirable at this point to refer briefly to the chief
variations in the method of effecting coitus in their
relationship to the art of love and the attainment of adequate
and satisfying detumescence.

The primary and essential characteristic of the specifically
human method of coitus is the fact that it takes place face to
face. The fact that in what is usually considered the typically
normal method of coitus the woman lies supine and the man above
her is secondary. Psychically, this front-to-front attitude
represents a great advance over the quadrupedal method. The two
partners reveal to each other the most important, the most
beautiful, the most expressive sides of themselves, and thus
multiply the mutual pleasure and harmony of the intimate act of
union. Moreover, this face-to-face attitude possesses a great
significance, in the fact that it is the outward sign that the
human couple has outgrown the animal sexual attitude of the
hunter seizing his prey in the act of flight, and content to
enjoy it in that attitude, from behind. The human male may be
said to retain the same attitude, but the female has turned
round; she has faced her partner and approached him, and so
symbolizes her deliberate consent to the act of union.

The human variations in the exercise of coitus, both individual
and national, are, however, extremely numerous. "To be quite
frank," says Fürbringer (Senator and Kaminer, _Health and Disease
in Relation to Marriage_, vol. i, p. 213), "I can hardly think of
any combination which does not figure among my case-notes as
having been practiced by my patients." We must not too hastily
conclude that such variations are due to vicious training. That
is far from being the case. They often occur naturally and
spontaneously. Freud has properly pointed out (in the second
series of his _Beiträge zur Neurosenlehre_, "Bruchstück" etc.)
that we must not be too shocked even when the idea of _fellatio_
spontaneously presents itself to a woman, for that idea has a
harmless origin in the resemblance between the penis and the
nipple. Similarly, it may be added, the desire for
_cunnilinctus_, which seems to be much more often latently
present in women than is the desire for its performance in men,
has a natural analogy in the pleasure of suckling, a pleasure
which is itself indeed often erotically tinged (see vol. iv of
these _Studies_, "Sexual Selection in Man," Touch, Sect. III).

Every variation in this matter, remarks Remy de Gourmont
(_Physique de l'Amour_, p. 264) partakes of the sin of luxury,
and some of the theologians have indeed considered any position
in coitus but that which is usually called normal in Europe as a
mortal sin. Other theologians, however, regarded such variations
as only venial sins, provided ejaculation took place in the
vagina, just as some theologians would permit _irrumatio_ as a
preliminary to coitus, provided there was no ejaculation. Aquinas
took a serious view of the deviations from normal intercourse;
Sanchez was more indulgent, especially in view of his doctrine,
derived from the Greek and Arabic natural philosophers, that the
womb can attract the sperm, so that the natural end may be
attained even in unusual positions.

Whatever difference of opinion there may have been among ancient
theologians, it is well recognized by modern physicians that
variations from the ordinary method of coitus are desirable in
special cases. Thus Kisch points out (_Sterilität des Weibes_, p.
107) that in some cases it is only possible for the woman to
experience sexual excitement when coitus takes place in the
lateral position, or in the _a posteriori_ position, or when the
usual position is reversed; and in his _Sexual Life of Woman_,
also, Kisch recommends several variations of position for coitus.
Adler points out (op. cit., pp. 151, 186) the value of the same
positions in some cases, and remarks that such variations often
call forth latent sexual feelings as by a charm. Such cases are
indeed, by no means infrequent, the advantage of the unusual
position being due either to physical or psychic causes, and the
discovery of the right variation is sometimes found in a merely
playful attempt. It has occasionally happened, also, that when
intercourse has habitually taken place in an abnormal position,
no satisfaction is experienced by the woman until the normal
position is adopted. The only fairly common variation of coitus
which meets with unqualified disapproval is that in the erect
posture. (See e.g., Hammond, op. cit. pp. 257 et seq.)

Lucretius specially recommended the quadrupedal variation of
coitus (Bk. iv, 1258), and Ovid describes (end of Bk. iii of the
_Ars Amatoria_) what he regards as agreeable variations, giving
the preference, as the easiest and simplest method, to that in
which the woman lies half supine on her side. Perhaps, however,
the variation which is nearest to the normal attitude and which
has most often and most completely commended itself is that
apparently known to Arabic erotic writers as _dok el arz_, in
which the man is seated and his partner is astride his thighs,
embracing his body with her legs and his neck with her arms,
while he embraces her waist; this is stated in the Arabic
_Perfumed Garden_ to be the method preferred by most women.

The other most usual variation is the inverse normal position in
which the man is supine, and the woman adapts herself to this
position, which permits of several modifications obviously
advantageous, especially when the man is much larger than his
partner. The Christian as well as the Mahommedan theologians
appear, indeed, to have been generally opposed to this superior
position of the female, apparently, it would seem, because they
regarded the literal subjection of the male which it involves as
symbolic of a moral subjection. The testimony of many people
to-day, however, is decidedly in favor of this position, more
especially as regards the woman, since it enables her to obtain a
better adjustment and greater control of the process, and so
frequently to secure sexual satisfaction which she may find
difficult or impossible in the normal position.

The theologians seem to have been less unfavorably disposed to
the position normal among quadrupeds, _a posteriori_, though the
old Penitentials were inclined to treat it severely, the