I.

The Chief Key to the Relationship between Love and Pain to be Found in

Animal Courtship--Courtship a Source of Combativity and of Cruelty--Human

Play in the Light of Animal Courtship--The Frequency of Crimes Against the

Person in Adolescence--Marriage by Capture and its Psychological

Basis--Man's Pleasure in Exerting Force and Woman's Pleasure in

Experiencing it--Resemblance of Love to Pain even in Outward

Expression--The Love-bite--In what Sense Pain may be Pleasurable--The

Natural Contradiction in the Emotional Attitude of Women Toward

Men--Relative Insensibility to Pain of the Organic Sexual Sphere in

Women--The Significance of the Use of the Ampallang and Similar Appliances

in Coitus--The Sexual Subjection of Women to Men in Part Explainable as

the Necessary Condition for Sexual Pleasure.

The relation of love to pain is one of the most difficult problems, and

yet one of the most fundamental, in the whole range of sexual psychology.

Why is it that love inflicts, and even seeks to inflict, pain? Why is it

that love suffers pain, and even seeks to suffer it? In answering that

question, it seems to me, we have to take an apparently circuitous route,

sometimes going beyond the ostensible limits of sex altogether; but if we

can succeed in answering it we shall have come very near one of the great

mysteries of love. At the same time we shall have made clear the normal

basis on which rest the extreme aberrations of love.

The chief key to the relationship of love to pain is to be found by

returning to the consideration of the essential phenomena of courtship in

the animal world generally. Courtship is a play, a game; even its combats

are often, to a large extent, mock-combats; but the process behind it is

one of terrible earnestness, and the play may at any moment become deadly.

Courtship tends to involve a mock-combat between males for the possession

of the female which may at any time become a real combat; it is a pursuit

of the female by the male which may at any time become a kind of

persecution; so that, as Colin Scott remarks, "Courting may be looked upon

as a refined and delicate form of combat." The note of courtship, more

especially among mammals, is very easily forced, and as soon as we force

it we reach pain.[61] The intimate and inevitable association in the

animal world of combat--of the fighting and hunting impulses--with the

process of courtship alone suffices to bring love into close connection

with pain.

Among mammals the male wins the female very largely by the display of

force. The infliction of pain must inevitably be a frequent indirect

result of the exertion of power. It is even more than this; the infliction

of pain by the male on the female may itself be a gratification of the

impulse to exert force. This tendency has always to be held in check, for

it is of the essence of courtship that the male should win the female, and

she can only be won by the promise of pleasure. The tendency of the male

to inflict pain must be restrained, so far as the female is concerned, by

the consideration of what is pleasing to her. Yet, the more carefully we

study the essential elements of courtship, the clearer it becomes that,

playful as these manifestations may seem on the surface, in every

direction they are verging on pain. It is so among animals generally; it

is so in man among savages. "It is precisely the alliance of pleasure and

pain," wrote the physiologist Burdach, "which constitutes the voluptuous

emotion."

Nor is this emotional attitude entirely confined to the male. The female

also in courtship delights to arouse to the highest degree in the male the

desire for her favors and to withhold those favors from him, thus finding

on her part also the enjoyment of power in cruelty. "One's cruelty is

one's power," Millament says in Congreve's _Way of the World_, "and when

one parts with one's cruelty one parts with one's power."

At the outset, then, the impulse to inflict pain is brought into

courtship, and at the same time rendered a pleasurable idea to the female,

because with primitive man, as well as among his immediate ancestors, the

victor in love has been the bravest and strongest rather than the most

beautiful or the most skilful. Until he can fight he is not reckoned a man

and he cannot hope to win a woman. Among the African Masai a man is not

supposed to marry until he has blooded his spear, and in a very different

part of the world, among the Dyaks of Borneo, there can be little doubt

that the chief incentive to head-hunting is the desire to please the

women, the possession of a head decapitated by himself being an excellent

way of winning a maiden's favor.[62] Such instances are too well known to

need multiplication here, and they survive in civilization, for, even

among ourselves, although courtship is now chiefly ruled by quite other

considerations, most women are in some degree emotionally affected by

strength and courage. But the direct result of this is that a group of

phenomena with which cruelty and the infliction of pain must inevitably be

more or less allied is brought within the sphere of courtship and rendered

agreeable to women. Here, indeed, we have the source of that love of

cruelty which some have found so marked in women. This is a phase of

courtship which helps us to understand how it is that, as we shall see,

the idea of pain, having become associated with sexual emotion, may be

pleasurable to women.

Thus, in order to understand the connection between love and pain, we have

once more to return to the consideration, under a somewhat new aspect, of

the fundamental elements in the sexual impulse. In discussing the

"Evolution of Modesty" we found that the primary part of the female in

courtship is the playful, yet serious, assumption of the rôle of a hunted

animal who lures on the pursuer, not with the object of escaping, but with

the object of being finally caught. In considering the "Analysis of the

Sexual Impulse" we found that the primary part of the male in courtship is

by the display of his energy and skill to capture the female or to arouse

in her an emotional condition which leads her to surrender herself to him,

this process itself at the same time heightening his own excitement. In

the playing of these two different parts is attained in both male and

female that charging of nervous energy, that degree of vascular

tumescence, necessary for adequate discharge and detumescence in an

explosion by which sperm-cells and germ-cells are brought together for the

propagation of the race. We are now concerned with the necessary interplay

of the differing male and female rôles in courtship, and with their

accidental emotional by-products. Both male and female are instinctively

seeking the same end of sexual union at the moment of highest excitement.

There cannot, therefore, be real conflict.[63] But there is the semblance

of a conflict, an apparent clash of aim, an appearance of cruelty.

Moreover,--and this is a significant moment in the process from our

present point of view,--when there are rivals for the possession of one

female there is always a possibility of actual combat, so tending to

introduce an element of real violence, of undisguised cruelty, which the

male inflicts on his rival and which the female views with satisfaction

and delight in the prowess of the successful claimant. Here we are brought

close to the zoölogical root of the connection between love and pain.[64]

In his admirable work on play in man Groos has fully discussed the plays

of combat (_Kampfspiele_), which begin to develop even in childhood and

assume full activity during adolescence; and he points out that, while the

impulse to such play certainly has a wider biological significance, it

still possesses a relationship to the sexual life and to the rivalries of

animals in courtship which must not be forgotten.[65]

Nor is it only in play that the connection between love and combativity

may still be traced. With the epoch of the first sexual relationship,

Marro points out, awakes the instinct of cruelty, which prompts the youth

to acts which are sometimes in absolute contrast to his previous conduct,

and leads him to be careless of the lives of others as well as of his own

life.[66] Marro presents a diagram showing how crimes against the person

in Italy rise rapidly from the age of 16 to 20 and reach a climax between

21 and 25. In Paris, Gamier states, crimes of blood are six times more

frequent in adolescents (aged 16 to 20) than in adults. It is the same

elsewhere.[67] This tendency to criminal violence during the age-period of

courtship is a by-product of the sexual impulse, a kind of tertiary sexual

character.

In the process of what is commonly termed "marriage by capture" we have a

method of courtship which closely resembles the most typical form of

animal courtship, and is yet found in all but the highest and most

artificial stages of human society. It may not be true that, as MacLennan

and others have argued, almost every race of man has passed through an

actual stage of marriage by capture, but the phenomena in question have

certainly been extremely widespread and exist in popular custom even among

the highest races today. George Sand has presented a charming picture of

such a custom, existing in France, in her _Mare au Diable_. Farther away,

among the Kirghiz, the young woman is pursued by all her lovers, but she

is armed with a formidable whip, which she does not hesitate to use if

overtaken by a lover to whom she is not favorable. Among the Malays,

according to early travelers, courtship is carried on in the water in

canoes with double-bladed paddles; or, if no water is near, the damsel,

stripped naked of all but a waistband, is given a certain start and runs

off on foot followed by her lover. Vaughan Stevens in 1896 reported that

this performance is merely a sport; but Skeat and Blagden, in their more

recent and very elaborate investigations in the Malay States, find that it

is a rite.

Even if we regard "marriage by capture" as simply a primitive human

institution stimulated by tribal exigencies and early social conditions,

yet, when we recall its widespread and persistent character, its close

resemblance to the most general method of courtship among animals, and the

emotional tendencies which still persist even in the most civilized men

and women, we have to recognize that we are in presence of a real

psychological impulse which cannot fail in its exercise to introduce some

element of pain into love.

There are, however, two fundamentally different theories concerning

"marriage by capture." According to the first, that of MacLennan, which,

until recently, has been very widely accepted, and to which Professor

Tylor has given the weight of his authority, there has really been in

primitive society a recognized stage in which marriages were effected by

the capture of the wife. Such a state of things MacLennan regarded as once

world-wide. There can be no doubt that women very frequently have been

captured in this way among primitive peoples. Nor, indeed, has the custom

been confined to savages. In Europe we find that even up to comparatively

recent times the abduction of women was not only very common, but was

often more or less recognized. In England it was not until Henry VII's

time that the violent seizure of a woman was made a criminal offense, and

even then the statute was limited to women possessed of lands and goods. A

man might still carry off a girl provided she was not an heiress; but even

the abduction of heiresses continued to be common, and in Ireland remained

so until the end of the eighteenth century. But it is not so clear that

such raids and abductions, even when not of a genuinely hostile character,

have ever been a recognized and constant method of marriage.

According to the second set of theories, the capture is not real, but

simulated, and may be accounted for by psychological reasons. Fustel de

Coulanges, in _La Cité Antique_,[68] discussing simulated marriage by

capture among the Romans, mentioned the view that it was "a symbol of the

young girl's modesty," but himself regarded it as an act of force to

symbolize the husband's power. He was possibly alluding to Herbert

Spencer, who suggested a psychological explanation of the apparent

prevalence of marriage by capture based on the supposition that, capturing

a wife being a proof of bravery, such a method of obtaining a wife would

be practised by the strongest men and be admired, while, on the other

hand, he considered that "female coyness" was "an important factor" in

constituting the more formal kinds of marriage by capture ceremonial.[69]

Westermarck, while accepting true marriage by capture, considers that

Spencer's statement "can scarcely be disproved."[70] In his valuable study

of certain aspects of primitive marriage Crawley, developing the

explanation rejected by Fustel de Coulanges, regards the fundamental fact

to be the modesty of women, which has to be neutralized, and this is done

by "a ceremonial use of force, which is half real and half make-believe."

Thus the manifestations are not survivals, but "arising in a natural way

from normal human feelings. It is not the tribe from which the bride is

abducted, nor, primarily, her family and kindred, but her _sex_"; and her

"sexual characters of timidity, bashfulness, and passivity are

sympathetically overcome by make-believe representations of male

characteristic actions."[71]

It is not necessary for the present purpose that either of these two

opposing theories concerning the origin of the customs and feelings we are

here concerned with should be definitely rejected. Whichever theory is

adopted, the fundamental psychic element which here alone concerns us

still exists intact.[72] It may be pointed out, however, that we probably

have to accept two groups of such phenomena: one, seldom or never existing

as the sole form of marriage, in which the capture is real; and another in

which the "capture" is more or less ceremonial or playful. The two groups

coexist among the Turcomans, as described by Vambery, who are constantly

capturing and enslaving the Persians of both sexes, and, side by side with

this, have a marriage ceremonial of mock-capture of entirely playful

character. At the same time the two groups sometimes overlap, as is

indicated by cases in which, while the "capture" appears to be ceremonial,

the girl is still allowed to escape altogether if she wishes. The

difficulty of disentangling the two groups is shown by the fact that so

careful an investigator as Westermarck cites cases of real capture and

mock-capture together without attempting to distinguish between them. From

our present point of view it is quite unnecessary to attempt such a

distinction. Whether the capture is simulated or real, the man is still

playing the masculine and aggressive part proper to the male; the woman is

still playing the feminine and defensive part proper to the female. The

universal prevalence of these phenomena is due to the fact that

manifestations of this kind, real or pretended, afford each sex the very

best opportunity for playing its proper part in courtship, and so, even

when the force is real, must always gratify a profound instinct.

It is not necessary to quote examples of marriage by capture from

the numerous and easily accessible books on the evolution of

marriage. (Sir A.B. Ellis, adopting MacLennan's standpoint,

presented a concise statement of the facts in an article on

"Survivals from Marriage by Capture," _Popular Science Monthly_,

1891, p. 207.) It may, however, be worth while to bring together

from scattered sources a few of the facts concerning the

phenomena in this group and their accompanying emotional state,

more especially as they bear on the association of love with

force, inflicted or suffered.

In New Caledonia, Foley remarks, the successful coquette goes off

with her lover into the bush. "It usually happens that, when she

is successful, she returns from her expedition, tumbled, beaten,

scratched, even bitten on the nape and shoulders, her wounds thus

bearing witness to the quadrupedal attitude she has assumed amid

the foliage." (Foley, _Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie_,

Paris, November 6, 1879.)

Of the natives of New South Wales, Turnbull remarked at the

beginning of the nineteenth century that "their mode of courtship

is not without its singularity. When a young man sees a female to

his fancy he informs her she must accompany him home; the lady

refuses; he not only enforces compliance with threats but blows;

thus the gallant, according to the custom, never fails to gain

the victory, and bears off the willing, though struggling

pugilist. The colonists for some time entertained the idea that

the women were compelled and forced away against their

inclinations; but the young ladies informed them that this mode

of gallantry was the custom, and perfectly to their taste," (J.

Turnbull, _A Voyage Round the World_, 1813, p. 98; cf. Brough

Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, 1878, vol. i, p. 81.)

As regards capture of women among Central Australian tribes,

Spencer and Gillen remark: "We have never in any of these central

tribes met with any such thing, and the clubbing part of the

story may be dismissed, so far as the central area of the

continent is concerned. To the casual observer what looks like a

capture (we are, of course, only speaking of these tribes) is in

reality an elopement, in which the woman is an aiding and

abetting party." (_Northern Tribes of Central Australia_. p. 32.)

"The New Zealand method of courtship and matrimony is a most

extraordinary one. A man sees a woman whom he fancies he should

like for a wife; he asks the consent of her father, or, if an

orphan, of her nearest relative, which, if he obtain, he carries

his intended off by force, she resisting with all her strength,

and, as the New Zealand girls are generally fairly robust,

sometimes a dreadful struggle takes place; both are soon stripped

to the skin and it is sometimes the work of hours to remove the

fair prize a hundred yards. It sometimes happens that she secures

her retreat into her father's house, and the lover loses all

chance of ever obtaining her." (A. Earle, _Narratives of

Residence in New Zealand_, 1832, p. 244.)

Among the Eskimos (probably near Smith Sound) "there is no

marriage ceremony further than that the boy is required to carry

off his bride by main force, for even among these blubber-eating

people the woman only saves her modesty by a show of resistance,

although she knows years beforehand that her destiny is sealed

and that she is to become the wife of the man from whose

embraces, when the nuptial day comes, she is obliged by the

inexorable law of public opinion to free herself, if possible, by

kicking and screaming with might and main until she is safely

landed in the hut of her future lord, when she gives up the

combat very cheerfully and takes possession of her new abode. The

betrothal often takes place at a very early period of life and at

very dissimilar ages." Marriage only takes place when the lover

has killed his first seal; this is the test of manhood and

maturity. (J.J. Hayes, _Open Polar Sea_, 1867, p. 432.)

Marriage by "capture" is common in war and raiding in central

Africa. "The women, as a rule," Johnston says, "make no very

great resistance on these occasions. It is almost like playing a

game. A woman is surprised as she goes to get water at the

stream, or when she is on the way to or from the plantation. The

man has only got to show her she is cornered and that escape is

not easy or pleasant and she submits to be carried off. As a

general rule, they seem to accept very cheerfully these abrupt

changes in their matrimonial existence." (Sir H.H. Johnston,

_British Central Africa_, p. 412.)

Among the wild tribes of the Malay Peninsula in one form of

wedding rite the bridegroom is required to run seven times around

an artificial mound decorated with flowers and the emblem of the

people's religion. In the event of the bridegroom failing to

catch the bride the marriage has to be postponed. Among the Orang

Laut, or sea-gipsies, the pursuit sometimes takes the form of a

canoe-race; the woman is given a good start and must be overtaken

before she has gone a certain distance. (W.W. Skeat, _Journal

Anthropological Institute_, Jan.-June, 1902, p. 134; Skeat and

Blagden, _Pagan Races of the Malay_, vol. ii, p. 69 et seq.,

fully discuss the ceremony around the mound.)

"Calmuck women ride better than the men. A male Calmuck on

horseback looks as if he was intoxicated, and likely to fall off

every instant, though he never loses his seat; but the women sit

with more ease, and ride with extraordinary skill. The ceremony

of marriage among the Calmucks is performed on horseback. A girl

is first mounted, who rides off at full speed. Her lover pursues,

and if he overtakes her she becomes his wife and the marriage is

consummated upon the spot, after which she returns with him to

his tent. But it sometimes happens that the woman does not wish

to marry the person by whom she is pursued, in which case she

will not suffer him to overtake her; and we were assured that no

instance occurs of a Calmuck girl being thus caught, unless she

has a partiality for her pursuer. If she dislikes him, she rides,

to use the language of English sportsmen, 'neck or nothing,'

until she has completely escaped or until the pursuer's horse is

tired out, leaving her at liberty to return, to be afterward

chased by some more favored admirer." (E.D. Clarke, _Travels_,

1810, vol. i, p. 333.)

Among the Bedouins marriage is arranged between the lover and the

girl's father, often without consulting the girl herself. "Among

the Arabs of Sinai the young maid comes home in the evening with

the cattle. At a short distance from the camp she is met by the

future spouse and a couple of his young friends and carried off

by force to her father's tent. If she entertains any suspicion of

their designs she defends herself with stones, and often inflicts

wounds on the young men, even though she does not dislike the

lover, for, according to custom, the more she struggles, bites,

kicks, cries, and strikes, the more she is applauded ever after

by her own companions." After being taken to her father's tent,

where a man's cloak is thrown over her by one of the bridegroom's

relations, she is dressed in garments provided by her future

husband, and placed on a camel, "still continuing to struggle in

a most unruly manner, and held by the bridegroom's friends on

both sides." She is then placed in a recess of the husband's

tent. Here the marriage is finally consummated, "the bride still

continuing to cry very loudly. It sometimes happens that the

husband is obliged to tie his bride, and even to beat her, before

she can be induced to comply with his desires." If, however, she

really does not like her husband, she is perfectly free to leave

him next morning, and her father is obliged to receive her back

whether he wishes to or not. It is not considered proper for a

widow or divorced woman to make any resistance on being married.

(J.L. Burckhardt, _Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys_, 1830, p.

149 et seq.)

Among the Turcomans forays for capturing and enslaving their

Persian neighbors were once habitual. Vambery describes their

"marriage ceremonial when the young maiden, attired in bridal

costume, mounts a high-bred courser, taking on her lap the

carcass of a lamb or goat, and setting off at full gallop,

followed by the bridegroom and other young men of the party, also

on horseback; she is always to strive, by adroit turns, etc., to

avoid her pursuers, that no one approach near enough to snatch

from her the burden on her lap. This game, called _kökbüri_

(green wolf), is in use among all the nomads of central Asia."

(A. Vambery, _Travels in Central Asia_, 1864, p. 323.)

In China, a missionary describes how, when he was called upon to

marry the daughter of a Chinese Christian brought up in native

customs, he was compelled to wait several hours, as the bride

refused to get up and dress until long after the time appointed

for the wedding ceremony, and then only by force. "Extreme

reluctance and dislike and fear are the true marks of a happy and

lively wedding." (A.E. Moule, _New China and Old_, p. 128.)

It is interesting to find that in the Indian art of love a kind

of mock-combat, accompanied by striking, is a recognized and

normal method of heightening tumescence. Vatsyayana has a

chapter "On Various Manners of Striking," and he approves of the

man striking the woman on the back, belly, flanks, and buttocks,

before and during coitus, as a kind of play, increasing as sexual

excitement increases, which the woman, with cries and groans,

pretends to bid the man to stop. It is mentioned that, especially

in southern India, various instruments (scissors, needles, etc.)

are used in striking, but this practice is condemned as barbarous

and dangerous. (_Kama Sutra_, French translation, iii, chapter

v.)

In the story of Aladdin, in the _Arabian Nights_, the bride is

undressed by the mother and the other women, who place her in the

bridegroom's bed "as if by force, and, according to the custom of

the newly married, she pretends to resist, twisting herself in

every direction, and seeking to escape from their hands." (_Les

Mille Nuits_, tr. Mardrus, vol. xi, p. 253.)

It is said that in those parts of Germany where preliminary

_Probenächte_ before formal marriage are the rule it is not

uncommon for a young woman before finally giving herself to a man

to provoke him to a physical struggle. If she proves stronger she

dismisses him; if he is stronger she yields herself willingly.

(W. Henz, "Probenächte," _Sexual-Probleme_, Oct., 1910, p. 743.)

Among the South Slavs of Servia and Bulgaria, according to

Krauss, it is the custom to win a woman by seizing her by the

ankle and bringing her to the ground by force. This method of

wooing is to the taste of the woman, and they are refractory to

any other method. The custom of beating or being beaten before

coitus is also found among the South Slavs. (Kryptadia, vol. vi,

p. 209.)

In earlier days violent courtship was viewed with approval in the

European world, even among aristocratic circles. Thus in the

medieval _Lai de Graélent_ of Marie de France this Breton knight

is represented as very chaste, possessing a high ideal of love

and able to withstand the wiles of women. One day when he is

hunting in a forest he comes upon a naked damsel bathing,

together with her handmaidens. Overcome by her beauty, he seizes

her clothes in case she should be alarmed, but is persuaded to

hand them to her; then he proceeds to make love to her. She

replies that his love is an insult to a woman of her high

lineage. Finding her so proud, Graélent sees that his prayers are

in vain. He drags her by force into the depth of the forest, has

his will of her, and begs her very gently not to be angry,

promising to love her loyally and never to leave her. The damsel

saw that he was a good knight, courteous, and wise. She thought

within herself that if she were to leave him she would never find

a better friend.

Brantôme mentions a lady who confessed that she liked to be

"half-forced" by her husband, and he remarks that a woman who is

"a little difficult and resists" gives more pleasure also to her

lover than one who yields at once, just as a hard-fought battle

is a more notable triumph than an easily won victory. (Brantôme,

_Vie des Dames Galantes_, discours i.) Restif de la Bretonne,

again, whose experience was extensive, wrote in his

_Anti-Justine_ that "all women of strong temperament like a sort

of brutality in sexual intercourse and its accessories."

Ovid had said that a little force is pleasing to a woman, and

that she is grateful to the ravisher against whom she struggles

(_Ars Amatoria_, lib. i). One of Janet's patients (Raymond and

Janet, _Les Obsessions et la Psychasthénie_, vol. ii, p. 406)

complained that her husband was too good, too devoted. "He does

not know how to make me suffer a little. One cannot love anyone

who does not make one suffer a little." Another hysterical woman

(a silk fetichist, frigid with men) had dreams of men and animals

abusing her: "I cried with pain and was happy at the same time."

(Clérambault, _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, June, 1908,

p. 442.)

It has been said that among Slavs of the lower class the wives

feel hurt if they are not beaten by their husbands. Paullinus, in

the seventeenth century, remarked that Russian women are never

more pleased and happy than when beaten by their husbands, and

regard such treatment as proof of love. (See, e.g., C.F. von

Schlichtegroll, _Sacher-Masoch und der Masochismus_, p. 69.)

Krafft-Ebing believes that this is true at the present day, and

adds that it is the same in Hungary, a Hungarian official having

informed him that the peasant women of the Somogyer Comitate do

not think they are loved by their husbands until they have

received the first box on the ear. (Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia

Sexualis_, English translation of the tenth edition, p. 188.) I

may add that a Russian proverb says "Love your wife like your

soul and beat her like your _shuba_" (overcoat); and, according

to another Russian proverb, "a dear one's blows hurt not long."

At the same time it has been remarked that the domination of men

by women is peculiarly frequent among the Slav peoples. (V.

Schlichtegroll, op. cit., p. 23.) Cellini, in an interesting

passage in his _Life_ (book ii, chapters xxxiv-xxxv), describes

his own brutal treatment of his model Caterina, who was also his

mistress, and the pleasure which, to his surprise, she took in

it. Dr. Simon Forman, also, the astrologist, tells in his

_Autobiography_ (p. 7) how, as a young and puny apprentice to a

hosier, he was beaten, scolded, and badly treated by the servant

girl, but after some years of this treatment he turned on her,

beat her black and blue, and ever after "Mary would do for him

all that she could."

That it is a sign of love for a man to beat his sweetheart, and a

sign much appreciated by women, is illustrated by the episode of

Cariharta and Repolido, in "Rinconete and Cortadillo," one of

Cervantes's _Exemplary Novels_. The Indian women of South

America feel in the same way, and Mantegazza when traveling in

Bolivia found that they complained when they were not beaten by

their husbands, and that a girl was proud when she could say "He

loves me greatly, for he often beats me." (_Fisiologia della

Donna_, chapter xiii.) The same feeling evidently existed in

classic antiquity, for we find Lucian, in his "Dialogues of

Courtesans," makes a woman say: "He who has not rained blows on

his mistress and torn her hair and her garments is not yet in

love," while Ovid advises lovers sometimes to be angry with their

sweethearts and to tear their dresses.

Among the Italian Camorrista, according to Russo, wives are very

badly treated. Expression is given to this fact in the popular

songs. But the women only feel themselves tenderly loved when

they are badly treated by their husbands; the man who does not

beat them they look upon as a fool. It is the same in the east

end of London. "If anyone has doubts as to the brutalities

practised on women by men," writes a London magistrate, "let him

visit the London Hospital on a Saturday night. Very terrible

sights will meet his eye. Sometimes as many as twelve or fourteen

women may be seen seated in the receiving room, waiting for their

bruised and bleeding faces and bodies to be attended to. In nine

cases out of ten the injuries have been inflicted by brutal and

perhaps drunken husbands. The nurses tell me, however, that any

remarks they may make reflecting on the aggressors are received

with great indignation by the wretched sufferers. They positively

will not hear a single word against the cowardly ruffians.

'Sometimes,' said a nurse to me, 'when I have told a woman that

her husband is a brute, she has drawn herself up and replied:

"You mind your own business, miss. We find the rates and taxes,

and the likes of you are paid out of 'em to wait on us."'"

(Montagu Williams, _Round London_, p. 79.)

"The prostitute really loves her _souteneur_, notwithstanding all

the persecutions he inflicts on her. Their torments only increase

the devotion of the poor slaves to their 'Alphonses.'

Parent-Duchâtelet wrote that he had seen them come to the

hospital with their eyes out of their heads, faces bleeding, and

bodies torn by the blows of their drunken lovers, but as soon as

they were healed they went back to them. Police-officers tell us

that it is very difficult to make a prostitute confess anything

concerning her _souteneur_. Thus, Rosa L., whom her 'Alphonse'

had often threatened to kill, even putting the knife to her

throat, would say nothing, and denied everything when the

magistrate questioned her. Maria R., with her face marked by a

terrible scar produced by her _souteneur_, still carefully

preserved many years afterward the portrait of the aggressor, and

when we asked her to explain her affection she replied: 'But he

wounded me because he loved me.' The _souteneur's_ brutality only

increases the ill-treated woman's love; the humiliation and

slavery in which the woman's soul is drowned feed her love."

(Niceforo, _Il Gergo_, etc., 1897, p. 128.)

In a modern novel written in autobiographic form by a young

Australian lady the heroine is represented as striking her

betrothed with a whip when he merely attempts to kiss her. Later

on her behavior so stings him that his self-control breaks down

and he seizes her fiercely by the arms. For the first time she

realizes that he loves her. "I laughed a joyous little laugh,

saying 'Hal, we are quits'; when on disrobing for the night I

discovered on my soft white shoulders and arms--so susceptible to

bruises--many marks, and black. It had been a very happy day for

me." (Miles Franklin, _My Brilliant Career_.)

It is in large measure the existence of this feeling of

attraction for violence which accounts for the love-letters

received by men who are accused of crimes of violence. Thus in

one instance, in Chicago (as Dr. Kiernan writes to me), "a man

arrested for conspiracy to commit abortion, and also suspected of

being a sadist, received many proposals of marriage and other

less modest expressions of affection from unknown women. To judge

by the signatures, these women belonged to the Germans and Slavs

rather than to the Anglo-Celts."

Neuropathic or degenerative conditions sometimes serve to

accentuate or reveal ancestral traits that are very ancient in

the race. Under such conditions the tendency to find pleasure in

subjection and pain, which is often faintly traceable even in

normal civilized women, may become more pronounced. This may be

seen in a case described in some detail in the _Archivio di

Psichiatria_. The subject was a young lady of 19, of noble

Italian birth, but born in Tunis. On the maternal side there is a

somewhat neurotic heredity, and she is herself subject to attacks

of hystero-epileptoid character. She was very carefully, but

strictly, educated; she knows several languages, possesses marked

intellectual aptitudes, and is greatly interested in social and

political questions, in which she takes the socialistic and

revolutionary side. She has an attractive and sympathetic

personality; in complexion she is dark, with dark eyes and very

dark and abundant hair; the fine down on the upper lip and lower

parts of the cheeks is also much developed; the jaw is large, the

head acrocephalic, and the external genital organs of normal

size, but rather asymmetric. Ever since she was a child she has

loved to work and dream in solitude. Her dreams have always been

of love, since menstruation began as early as the age of 10, and

accompanied by strong sexual feelings, though at that age these

feelings remained vague and indefinite; but in them the desire

for pleasure was always accompanied by the desire for pain, the

desire to bite and destroy something, and, as it were, to

annihilate herself. She experienced great relief after periods of

"erotic rumination," and if this rumination took place at night

she would sometimes masturbate, the contact of the bedclothes,

she said, giving her the illusion of a man. In time this vague

longing for the male gave place to more definite desires for a

man who would love her, and, as she imagined, strike her.

Eventually she formed secret relationships with two or three

lovers in succession, each of these relationships being, however,

discovered by her family and leading to ineffectual attempts at

suicide. But the association of pain with love, which had

developed spontaneously in her solitary dreams, continued in her

actual relations with her lovers. During coitus she would bite

and squeeze her arms until the nails penetrated the flesh. When

her lover asked her why at the moment of coitus she would

vigorously repel him, she replied: "Because I want to be

possessed by force, to be hurt, suffocated, to be thrown down in

a struggle." At another time she said: "I want a man with all his

vitality, so that he can torture and kill my body." We seem to

see here clearly the ancient biological character of animal

courtship, the desire of the female to be violently subjugated by

the male. In this case it was united to sensitiveness to the

sexual domination of an intellectual man, and the subject also

sought to stimulate her lovers' intellectual tastes. (_Archivio

di Psichiatria_, vol. xx, fasc. 5-6, p. 528.)

This association between love and pain still persists even among the most

normal civilized men and women possessing well-developed sexual impulses.

The masculine tendency to delight in domination, the feminine tendency to

delight in submission, still maintain the ancient traditions when the male

animal pursued the female. The phenomena of "marriage by capture," in its

real and its simulated forms, have been traced to various causes. But it

has to be remembered that these causes could only have been operative in

the presence of a favorable emotional aptitude, constituted by the

zoölogical history of our race and still traceable even today. To exert

power, as psychologists well recognize, is one of our most primary

impulses, and it always tends to be manifested in the attitude of a man

toward the woman he loves.[73]

It might be possible to maintain that the primitive element of more or

less latent cruelty in courtship tends to be more rather than less marked

in civilized man. In civilization the opportunity of dissipating the

surplus energy of the courtship process by inflicting pain on rivals

usually has to be inhibited; thus the woman to be wooed tends to become

the recipient of the whole of this energy, both in its pleasure-giving and

its pain-giving aspects. Moreover, the natural process of courtship, as it

exists among animals and usually among the lower human races, tends to

become disguised and distorted in civilization, as well by economic

conditions as by conventional social conditions and even ethical

prescription. It becomes forgotten that the woman's pleasure is an

essential element in the process of courtship. A woman is often reduced to

seek a man for the sake of maintenance; she is taught that pleasure is

sinful or shameful, that sex-matters are disgusting, and that it is a

woman's duty, and also her best policy, to be in subjection to her

husband. Thus, various external checks which normally inhibit any passing

over of masculine sexual energy into cruelty are liable to be removed.

We have to admit that a certain pleasure in manifesting his power over a

woman by inflicting pain upon her is an outcome and survival of the

primitive process of courtship, and an almost or quite normal constituent

of the sexual impulse in man. But it must be at once added that in the

normal well-balanced and well-conditioned man this constituent of the

sexual impulse, when present, is always held in check. When the normal man

inflicts, or feels the impulse to inflict, some degree of physical pain on

the woman he loves he can scarcely be said to be moved by cruelty. He

feels, more or less obscurely, that the pain he inflicts, or desires to

inflict, is really a part of his love, and that, moreover, it is not

really resented by the woman on whom it is exercised. His feeling is by

no means always according to knowledge, but it has to be taken into

account as an essential part of his emotional state. The physical force,

the teasing and bullying, which he may be moved to exert under the stress

of sexual excitement, are, he usually more or less unconsciously persuades

himself, not really unwelcome to the object of his love.[74] Moreover, we

have to bear in mind the fact--a very significant fact from more than one

point of view--that the normal manifestations of a woman's sexual pleasure

are exceedingly like those of pain. "The outward expressions of pain," as

a lady very truly writes,--"tears, cries, etc.,--which are laid stress on

to prove the cruelty of the person who inflicts it, are not so different

from those of a woman in the ecstasy of passion, when she implores the man

to desist, though that is really the last thing she desires."[75] If a man

is convinced that he is causing real and unmitigated pain, he becomes

repentant at once. If this is not the case he must either be regarded as a

radically abnormal person or as carried away by passion to a point of

temporary insanity.

The intimate connection of love with pain, its tendency to approach

cruelty, is seen in one of the most widespread of the occasional and

non-essential manifestations of strong sexual emotion, especially in

women, the tendency to bite. We may find references to love-bites in the

literature of ancient as well as of modern times, in the East as well as

in the West. Plautus, Catullus, Propertius, Horace, Ovid, Petronius, and

other Latin writers refer to bites as associated with kisses and usually

on the lips. Plutarch says that Flora, the mistress of Cnæus Pompey, in

commending her lover remarked that he was so lovable that she could never

leave him without giving him a bite. In the Arabic _Perfumed Garden_ there

are many references to love-bites, while in the Indian _Kama Sutra_ of

Vatsyayana a chapter is devoted to this subject. Biting in love is also

common among the South Slavs.[76] The phenomenon is indeed sufficiently

familiar to enable Heine, in one of his _Romancero_, to describe those

marks by which the ancient chronicler states that Edith Swanneck

recognized Harold, after the Battle of Hastings, as the scars of the bites

she had once given him.

It would be fanciful to trace this tendency back to that process of

devouring to which sexual congress has, in the primitive stages of its

evolution, been reduced. But we may probably find one of the germs of the

love-bite in the attitude of many mammals during or before coitus; in

attaining a firm grip of the female it is not uncommon (as may be observed

in the donkey) for the male to seize the female's neck between his teeth.

The horse sometimes bites the mare before coitus and it is said that among

the Arabs when a mare is not apt for coitus she is sent to pasture with a

small ardent horse, who excites her by playing with her and biting

her.[77] It may be noted, also, that dogs often show their affection for

their masters by gentle bites. Children also, as Stanley Hall has pointed

out, are similarly fond of biting.

Perhaps a still more important factor is the element of combat in

tumescence, since the primitive conditions associated with tumescence

provide a reservoir of emotions which are constantly drawn on even in the

sexual excitement of individuals belonging to civilization. The tendency

to show affection by biting is, indeed, commoner among women than among

men and not only in civilization. It has been noted among idiot girls as

well as among the women of various savage races. It may thus be that the

conservative instincts of women have preserved a primitive tendency that

at its origin marked the male more than the female. But in any case the

tendency to bite at the climax of sexual excitement is so common and

widespread that it must be regarded, when occurring in women, as coming

within the normal range of variation in such manifestations. The

gradations are of wide extent; while in its slight forms it is more or

less normal and is one of the origins of the kiss,[78] in its extreme

forms it tends to become one of the most violent and antisocial of sexual

aberrations.

A correspondent writes regarding his experience of biting and

being bitten: "I have often felt inclination to bite a woman I

love, even when not in coitus or even excited. (I like doing so

also with my little boy, playfully, as a cat and kittens.) There

seem to be several reasons for this: (1) the muscular effect

relieves me; (2) I imagine I am giving the woman pleasure; (3) I

seem to attain to a more intimate possession of the loved one. I

cannot remember when I first felt desire to be bitten in coitus,

or whether the idea was first suggested to me. I was initiated

into pinching by a French prostitute who once pinched my nates in

coitus, no doubt as a matter of business; it heightened my

pleasure, perhaps by stimulating muscular movement. It does not

occur to me to ask to be pinched when I am very much excited

already, but only at an earlier stage, no doubt with the object

of promoting excitement. Apart altogether from sexual excitement,

being pinched is unpleasant to me. It has not seemed to me that

women usually like to be bitten. One or two women have bitten and

sucked my flesh. (The latter does not affect me.) I like being

bitten, partly for the same reason as I like being pinched,

because if spontaneous it is a sign of my partner's amorousness

and the biting never seems too hard. Women do not usually seem to

like being bitten, though there are exceptions; 'I should like to

bite you and I should like you to bite me,' said one woman; I did

so hard, in coitus, and she did not flinch." "She is particularly

anxious to eat me alive," another correspondent writes, "and

nothing gives her greater satisfaction than to tear open my

clothes and fasten her teeth into my flesh until I yell for

mercy. My experience has generally been, however," the same

correspondent continues, "that the cruelty is _unconscious_. A

woman just grows mad with the desire to squeeze or bite

something, with a complete unconsciousness of what result it will

produce in the victim. She is astonished when she sees the result

and will hardly believe she has done it." It is unnecessary to

accumulate evidence of a tendency which is sufficiently common to

be fairly well known, but one or two quotations may be presented

to show its wide distribution. In the _Kama Sutra_ we read: "If

she is very exalted, and if in the exaltation of her passionate

transports she begins a sort of combat, then she takes her lover

by the hair, draws his head to hers, kisses his lower lip, and

then in her delirium bites him all over his body, shutting her

eyes"; it is added that with the marks of such bites lovers can

remind each other of their affections, and that such love will

last for ages. In Japan the maiden of Ainu race feels the same

impulse. A.H. Savage Landor (_Alone with the Hairy Ainu_, 1893,

p. 140) says of an Ainu girl: "Loving and biting went together

with her. She could not do the one without the other. As we sat

on a stone in the twilight she began by gently biting my fingers

without hurting me, as affectionate dogs do to their masters. She

then bit my arm, then my shoulder, and when she had worked

herself up into a passion she put her arms around my neck and bit

my cheeks. It was undoubtedly a curious way of making love, and,

when I had been bitten all over, and was pretty tired of the new

sensation, we retired to our respective homes. Kissing,

apparently, was an unknown art to her."

The significance of biting, and the close relationship which, as

will have to be pointed out later, it reveals to other phenomena,

may be illustrated by some observations which have been made by

Alonzi on the peasant women of Sicily. "The women of the people,"

he remarks, "especially in the districts where crimes of blood

are prevalent, give vent to their affection for their little ones

by kissing and sucking them on the neck and arms till they make

them cry convulsively; all the while they say: 'How sweet you

are! I will bite you, I will gnaw you all over,' exhibiting every

appearance of great pleasure. If a child commits some slight

fault they do not resort to simple blows, but pursue it through

the street and bite it on the face, ears, and arms until the

blood flows. At such moments the face of even a beautiful woman

is transformed, with injected eyes, gnashing teeth, and

convulsive tremors. Among both men and women a very common threat

is 'I will drink your blood.' It is told on ocular evidence that

a man who had murdered another in a quarrel licked the hot blood

from the victim's hand." (G. Alonzi, _Archivio di Psichiatria_,

vol. vi, fasc. 4.) A few years ago a nurse girl in New York was

sentenced to prison for cruelty to the baby in her charge. The

mother had frequently noticed that the child was in pain and at

last discovered the marks of teeth on its legs. The girl admitted

that she had bitten the child because that action gave her

intense pleasure. (_Alienist and Neurologist_, August, 1901, p.

558.) In the light of such observations as these we may

understand a morbid perversion of affection such as was recorded

in the London police news some years ago (1894). A man of 30 was

charged with ill-treating his wife's illegitimate daughter, aged

3, during a period of many months; her lips, eyes, and hands were

bitten and bruised from sucking, and sometimes her pinafore was

covered with blood. "Defendant admitted he had bitten the child

because he loved it."

It is not surprising that such phenomena as these should

sometimes be the stimulant and accompaniment to the sexual act.

Ferriani thus reports such a case in the words of the young man's

mistress: "Certainly he is a strange, maddish youth, though he is

fond of me and spends money on me when he has any. He likes much

sexual intercourse, but, to tell the truth, he has worn out my

patience, for before our embraces there are always struggles

which become assaults. He tells me he has no pleasure except when

he sees me crying on account of his bites and vigorous pinching.

Lately, just before going with me, when I was groaning with

pleasure, he threw himself on me and at the moment of emission

furiously bit my right cheek till the blood came. Then he kissed

me and begged my pardon, but would do it again if the wish took

him." (L. Ferriani, _Archivio di Psicopatie Sessuale_, vol. i,

fasc. 7 and 8, 1896, p. 107.)

In morbid cases biting may even become a substitute for coitus.

Thus, Moll (_Die Konträre Sexualempfindung_, second edition, p.

323) records the case of a hysterical woman who was sexually

anesthetic, though she greatly loved her husband. It was her

chief delight to bite him till the blood flowed, and she was

content if, instead of coitus, he bit her and she him, though she

was grieved if she inflicted much pain. In other still more

morbid cases the fear of inflicting pain is more or less

abolished.

An idealized view of the impulse of love to bite and devour is

presented in the following passage from a letter by a lady who

associates this impulse with the idea of the Last Supper: "Your

remarks about the Lord's Supper in 'Whitman' make it natural to

me to tell you my thoughts about that 'central sacrament of

Christianity.' I cannot tell many people because they

misunderstand, and a clergyman, a very great friend of mine, when

I once told what I thought and felt, said I was carnal. He did

not understand the divinity and intensity of human love as I

understand it. Well, when one loves anyone very much,--a child, a

woman, or a man,--one loves everything belonging to him: the

things he wears, still more his hands, and his face, every bit of

his body. We always want to have all, or part, of him as part of

ourselves. Hence the expression: I could _devour_ you, I love you

so. In some such warm, devouring way Jesus Christ, I have always

felt, loved each and every human creature. So it was that he took

this mystery of food, which by eating became part of ourselves,

as the symbol of the most intense human love, the most intense

Divine love. Some day, perhaps, love will be so understood by all

that this sacrament will cease to be a superstition, a bone of

contention, an 'article' of the church, and become, in all

simplicity, a symbol of pure love."

While in men it is possible to trace a tendency to inflict pain, or the

simulacrum of pain, on the women they love, it is still easier to trace in

women a delight in experiencing physical pain when inflicted by a lover,

and an eagerness to accept subjection to his will. Such a tendency is

certainly normal. To abandon herself to her lover, to be able to rely on

his physical strength and mental resourcefulness, to be swept out of

herself and beyond the control of her own will, to drift idly in delicious

submission to another and stronger will--this is one of the commonest

aspirations in a young woman's intimate love-dreams. In our own age these

aspirations most often only find their expression in such dreams. In ages

when life was more nakedly lived, and emotion more openly expressed, it

was easier to trace this impulse. In the thirteenth century we have found

Marie de France--a French poetess living in England who has been credited

with "an exquisite sense of the generosities and delicacy of the heart,"

and whose work was certainly highly appreciated in the best circles and

among the most cultivated class of her day--describing as a perfect, wise,

and courteous knight a man who practically commits a rape on a woman who

has refused to have anything to do with him, and, in so acting, he wins

her entire love. The savage beauty of New Caledonia furnishes no better

illustration of the fascination of force, for she, at all events, has done

her best to court the violence she undergoes. In Middleton's _Spanish

Gypsy_ we find exactly the same episode, and the unhappy Portuguese nun

wrote: "Love me for ever and make me suffer still more." To find in

literature more attenuated examples of the same tendency is easy.

Shakespeare, whose observation so little escaped, has seldom depicted the

adult passion of a grown woman, but in the play which he has mainly

devoted to this subject he makes Cleopatra refer to "amorous pinches," and

she says in the end: "The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, which

hurts and is desired." "I think the Sabine woman enjoyed being carried off

like that," a woman remarked in front of Rubens's "Rape of the Sabines,"

confessing that such a method of love-making appealed strongly to

herself, and it is probable that the majority of women would be prepared

to echo that remark.

It may be argued that pain cannot give pleasure, and that when

what would usually be pain is felt as pleasure it cannot be

regarded as pain at all. It must be admitted that the emotional

state is often somewhat complex. Moreover, women by no means

always agree in the statement of their experience. It is

noteworthy, however, that even when the pleasurableness of pain

in love is denied it is still admitted that, under some

circumstances, pain, or the idea of pain, is felt as pleasurable.

I am indebted to a lady for a somewhat elaborate discussion of

this subject, which I may here quote at length: "As regards

physical pain, though the idea of it is sometimes exciting, I

think the reality is the reverse. A very slight amount of pain

destroys my pleasure completely. This was the case with me for

fully a month after marriage, and since. When pain has

occasionally been associated with passion, pleasure has been

sensibly diminished. I can imagine that, when there is a want of

sensitiveness so that the tender kiss or caress might fail to

give pleasure, more forcible methods are desired; but in that

case what would be pain to a sensitive person would be only a

pleasant excitement, and it could not be truly said that such

obtuse persons liked pain, though they might appear to do so. I

cannot think that anyone enjoys what is pain _to them_, if only

from the fact that it detracts and divides the attention. This,

however, is only my own idea drawn from my own negative

experience. No woman has ever told me that she would like to have

pain inflicted on her. On the other hand, the desire to inflict

pain seems almost universal among men. I have only met one man in

whom I have never at any time been able to detect it. At the same

time most men shrink from putting their ideas into practice. A

friend of my husband finds his chief pleasure in imagining women

hurt and ill-treated, but is too tender-hearted ever to inflict

pain on them in reality, even when they are willing to submit to

it. Perhaps a woman's readiness to submit to pain to please a man

may sometimes be taken for pleasure in it. Even when women like

the idea of pain, I fancy it is only because it implies

subjection to the man, from association with the fact that

physical pleasure must necessarily be preceded by submission to

his will."

In a subsequent communication this lady enlarged and perhaps

somewhat modified her statements on this point:--

"I don't think that what I said to you was quite correct.

_Actual_ pain gives me no pleasure, yet the _idea_ of pain does,

_if inflicted by way of discipline and for the ultimate good of

the person suffering it_. This is essential. For instance, I once

read a poem in which the devil and the lost souls in hell were

represented as recognizing that they could not be good except

under torture, but that while suffering the purifying actions of

the flames of hell they so realized the beauty of holiness that

they submitted willingly to their agony and praised God for the

sternness of his judgment. This poem gave me decided physical

pleasure, yet I know that if my hand were held in a fire for five

minutes I should feel nothing but the pain of the burning. To get

the feeling of pleasure, too, I must, for the moment, revert to

my old religious beliefs and my old notion that mere suffering

has an elevating influence; one's emotions are greatly modified

by one's beliefs. When I was about fifteen I invented a game

which I played with a younger sister, in which we were supposed

to be going through a process of discipline and preparation for

heaven after death. Each person was supposed to enter this state

on dying and to pass successively into the charge of different

angels named after the special virtues it was their function to

instill. The last angel was that of Love, who governed solely by

the quality whose name he bore. In the lower stages, we were

under an angel called Severity who prepared us by extreme

harshness and by exacting implicit obedience to arbitrary orders

for the acquirement of later virtues. Our duties were to

superintend the weather, paint the sunrise and sunset, etc., the

constant work involved exercising us in patience and submission.

The physical pleasure came in in inventing and recounting to each

other our day's work and the penalties and hardships we had been

subjected to. We never told each other that we got any physical

pleasure out of this, and I cannot therefore be sure that my

sister did so; I only imagine she did because she entered so

heartily into the spirit of the game. I could get as much

pleasure by imagining myself the angel and inflicting the pain,

under the conditions mentioned; but my sister did not like this

so much, as she then had no companion in subjection. I could not,

however, thus reverse my feelings in regard to a man, as it would

appear to me unnatural, and, besides, the greater physical

strength is essential in the superior position. I can, however,

by imagining myself a man, sometimes get pleasure in conceiving

myself as educating and disciplining a woman by severe measures.

There is, however, no real cruelty in this idea, as I always

imagine her liking it.

"I only get pleasure in the idea of a woman submitting herself to

pain and harshness from the man she loves when the following

conditions are fulfilled: 1. She must be absolutely sure of the

man's love. 2. She must have perfect confidence in his judgment.

3. The pain must be deliberately inflicted, not accidental. 4. It

must be inflicted in kindness and for her own improvement, not in

anger or with any revengeful feelings, as that would spoil one's

ideal of the man. 5. The pain must not be excessive and must be

what when we were children we used to call a 'tidy' pain; i.e.,

there must be no mutilation, cutting, etc. 6. Last, one would

have to feel very sure of one's own influence over the man. So

much for the idea. As I have never suffered pain under a

combination of all these conditions, I have no right to say that

I should or should not experience pleasure from its infliction in

reality."

Another lady writes: "I quite agree that the idea of pain may be

pleasurable, but must be associated with something to be gained

by it. My experience is that it [coitus] does often hurt for a

few moments, but that passes and the rest is easy; so that the

little hurt is nothing terrible, but all the same annoying if

only for the sake of a few minutes' pleasure, which is not long

enough. I do not know how my experience compares with other

women's, but I feel sure that in my case the time needed is

longer than usual, and the longer the better, always, with me. As

to liking pain--no, I do not really like it, although I can

tolerate pain very well, of any kind; but I like to feel force

and strength; this is usual, I think, women being--or supposed to

be--passive in love. I have not found that 'pain at once kills

pleasure.'"

Again, another lady briefly states that, for her, pain has a

mental fascination, and that such pain as she has had she has

liked, but that, if it had been any stronger, pleasure would have

been destroyed.

The evidence thus seems to point, with various shades of

gradation, to the conclusion that the idea or even the reality of

pain in sexual emotion is welcomed by women, provided that this

element of pain is of small amount and subordinate to the

pleasure which is to follow it. Unless coitus is fundamentally

pleasure the element of pain must necessarily be unmitigated

pain, and a craving for pain unassociated with a greater

satisfaction to follow it cannot be regarded as normal.

In this connection I may refer to a suggestive chapter on "The

Enjoyment of Pain" in Hirn's _Origins of Art_. "If we take into

account," says Hirn, "the powerful stimulating effect which is

produced by acute pain, we may easily understand why people

submit to momentary unpleasantness for the sake of enjoying the

subsequent excitement. This motive leads to the deliberate

creation, not only of pain-sensations, but also of emotions in

which pain enters as an element. The violent activity which is

involved in the reaction against fear, and still more in that

against anger, affords us a sensation of pleasurable excitement

which is well worth the cost of the passing unpleasantness. It

is, moreover, notorious that some persons have developed a

peculiar art of making the initial pain of anger so transient

that they can enjoy the active elements in it with almost

undivided delight. Such an accomplishment is far more difficult

in the case of sorrow.... The creation of pain-sensations may be

explained as a desperate device for enhancing the intensity of

the emotional state."

The relation of pain and pleasure to emotion has been thoroughly

discussed, I may add, by H.R. Marshall in his _Pain, Pleasure,

and Æsthetics_. He contends that pleasure and pain are "general

qualities, one of which must, and either of which may, belong to

any fixed element of consciousness." "Pleasure," he considers,

"is experienced whenever the physical activity coincident with

the psychic state to which the pleasure is attached involves the

use of surplus stored force." We can see, therefore, how, if pain

acts as a stimulant to emotion, it becomes the servant of

pleasure by supplying it with surplus stored force.

This problem of pain is thus one of psychic dynamics. If we

realize this we shall begin to understand the place of cruelty in

life. "One ought to learn anew about cruelty," said Nietzsche

(_Beyond Good and Evil_, 229), "and open one's eyes. Almost

everything that we call 'higher culture' is based upon the

spiritualizing and intensifying of _cruelty_.... Then, to be

sure, we must put aside teaching the blundering psychology of

former times, which could only teach with regard to cruelty that

it originated at the sight of the suffering of _others_; there is

an abundant, superabundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering,

in causing one's own suffering." The element of paradox

disappears from this statement if we realize that it is not a

question of "cruelty," but of the dynamics of pain.

Camille Bos in a suggestive essay ("Du Plaisir de la Douleur,"

_Revue Philosophique_, July, 1902) finds the explanation of the

mystery in that complexity of the phenomena to which I have

already referred. Both pain and pleasure are complex feelings,

the resultant of various components, and we name that resultant

in accordance with the nature of the strongest component. "Thus

we give to a complexus a name which strictly belongs only to one

of its factors, _and in pain all is not painful_." When pain

becomes a desired end Camille Bos regards the desire as due to

three causes: (1) the pain contrasts with and revives a pleasure

which custom threatens to dull; (2) the pain by preceding the

pleasure accentuates the positive character of the latter; (3)

pain momentarily raises the lowered level of sensibility and

restores to the organism for a brief period the faculty of

enjoyment it had lost.

It must therefore be said that, in so far as pain is pleasurable,

it is so only in so far as it is recognized as a prelude to

pleasure, or else when it is an actual stimulus to the nerves

conveying the sensation of pleasure. The nymphomaniac who

experienced an orgasm at the moment when the knife passed through

her clitoris (as recorded by Mantegazza) and the prostitute who

experienced keen pleasure when the surgeon removed vegetations

from her vulva (as recorded by Féré) took no pleasure in pain,

but in one case the intense craving for strong sexual emotion,

and in the other the long-blunted nerves of pleasure, welcomed

the abnormally strong impulse; and the pain of the incision, if

felt at all, was immediately swallowed up in the sensation of

pleasure. Moll remarks (_Konträre Sexualempfindung_, third

edition, p. 278) that even in man a trace of physical pain may be

normally combined with sexual pleasure, when the vagina

contracts on the penis at the moment of ejaculation, the pain,

when not too severe, being almost immediately felt as pleasure.

That there is no pleasure in the actual pain, even in masochism,

is indicated by the following statement which Krafft-Ebing gives

as representing the experiences of a masochist (_Psychopathia

Sexualis_ English translation, p. 201): "The relation is not of

such a nature that what causes physical pain is simply perceived

as physical pleasure, for the person in a state of masochistic

ecstasy feels no pain, either because by reason of his emotional

state (like that of the soldier in battle) the physical effect on

his cutaneous nerves is not apperceived, or because (as with

religious martyrs and enthusiasts) in the preoccupation of

consciousness with sexual emotion the idea of maltreatment

remains merely a symbol, without its quality of pain. To a

certain extent there is overcompensation of physical pain in

psychic pleasure, and only the excess remains in consciousness as

psychic lust. This also undergoes an increase, since, either

through reflex spinal influence or through a peculiar coloring in

the sensorium of sensory impressions, a kind of hallucination of

bodily pleasure takes place, with a vague localization of the

objectively projected sensation. In the self-torture of religious

enthusiasts (fakirs, howling dervishes, religious flagellants)

there is an analogous state, only with a difference in the

quality of pleasurable feeling. Here the conception of martyrdom

is also apperceived without its pain, for consciousness is filled

with the pleasurably colored idea of serving God, atoning for

sins, deserving Heaven, etc., through martyrdom." This statement

cannot be said to clear up the matter entirely; but it is fairly

evident that, when a woman says that she finds pleasure in the

pain inflicted by a lover, she means that under the special

circumstances she finds pleasure in treatment which would at

other times be felt as pain, or else that the slight real pain

experienced is so quickly followed by overwhelming pleasure that

in memory the pain itself seems to have been pleasure and may

even be regarded as the symbol of pleasure.

There is a special peculiarity of physical pain, which may be

well borne in mind in considering the phenomena now before us,

for it helps to account for the tolerance with which the idea of

pain is regarded. I refer to the great ease with which physical

pain is forgotten, a fact well known to all mothers, or to all

who have been present at the birth of a child. As Professor von

Tschisch points out ("Der Schmerz," _Zeitschrift für Psychologie

und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane_, Bd. xxvi, ht. 1 and 2, 1901),

memory can only preserve impressions as a whole; physical pain

consists of a sensation and of a feeling. But memory cannot

easily reproduce the definite sensation of the pain, and thus the

whole memory is disintegrated and speedily forgotten. It is quite

otherwise with moral suffering, which persists in memory and has

far more influence on conduct. No one wishes to suffer moral pain

or has any pleasure even in the idea of suffering it.

It is the presence of this essential tendency which leads to a certain

apparent contradiction in a woman's emotions. On the one hand, rooted in

the maternal instinct, we find pity, tenderness, and compassion; on the

other hand, rooted in the sexual instinct, we find a delight in roughness,

violence, pain, and danger, sometimes in herself, sometimes also in

others. The one impulse craves something innocent and helpless, to cherish

and protect; the other delights in the spectacle of recklessness,

audacity, sometimes even effrontery.[79] A woman is not perfectly happy in

her lover unless he can give at least some satisfaction to each of these

two opposite longings.

The psychological satisfaction which women tend to feel in a certain

degree of pain in love is strictly co-ordinated with a physical fact.

Women possess a minor degree of sensibility in the sexual region. This

fact must not be misunderstood. On the one hand, it by no means begs the

question as to whether women's sensibility generally is greater or less

than that of men; this is a disputed question and the evidence is still

somewhat conflicting.[80] On the other hand, it also by no means involves

a less degree of specific sexual pleasure in women, for the tactile

sensibility of the sexual organs is no index to the specific sexual

sensibility of those organs when in a state of tumescence. The real

significance of the less tactile sensibility of the genital region in

women is to be found in parturition and the special liability of the

sexual region in women to injury.[81] The women who are less sensitive in

this respect would be better able and more willing to endure the risks of

childbirth, and would therefore tend to supplant those who were more

sensitive. But, as a by-product of this less degree of sensibility, we

have a condition in which physical irritation amounting even to pain may

become to normal women in the state of extreme tumescence a source of

pleasurable excitement, such as it would rarely be to normal men.

To Calmann appear to be due the first carefully made observations

showing the minor sensibility of the genital tract in women.

(Adolf Calmann, "Sensibilitütsprufungen am weiblicken Genitale

nach forensichen Gesichtspunkten," _Archiv für Gynäkologie_,

1898, p. 454.) He investigated the vagina, urethra, and anus in

eighteen women and found a great lack of sensibility, least

marked in anus, and most marked in vagina. [This distribution of

the insensitiveness alone indicates that it is due, as I have

suggested, to natural selection.] Sometimes a finger in the

vagina could not be felt at all. One woman, when a catheter was

introduced into the anus, said it might be the vagina or urethra,

but was certainly not the anus. (Calmann remarks that he was

careful to put his questions in an intelligible form.) The women

were only conscious of the urine being drawn off when they heard

the familiar sound of the stream or when the bladder was very

full; if the sound of the stream was deadened by a towel they

were quite unconscious that the bladder had been emptied. [In

confirmation of this statement I have noticed that in a lady

whose distended bladder it was necessary to empty by the catheter

shortly before the birth of her first child--but who had, indeed,

been partly under the influence of chloroform--there was no

consciousness of the artificial relief; she merely remarked that

she thought she could now relieve herself.] There was some sense

of temperature, but sense of locality, tactile sense, and

judgment of size were often widely erroneous. It is significant

that virgins were just as insensitive as married women or those

who had had children. Calmann's experiments appear to be

confirmed by the experiments of Marco Treves, of Turin, on the

thermoesthesiometry of mucous membranes, as reported to the Turin

International Congress of Physiology (and briefly noted in

_Nature_, November 21, 1901). Treves found that the sensitivity

of mucous membranes is always less than that of the skin. The

mucosa of the urethra and of the cervix uteri was quite incapable

of heat and cold sensations, and even the cautery excited only

slight, and that painful, sensation.

In further illustration of this point reference may be made to

the not infrequent cases in which the whole process of

parturition and the enormous distention of tissues which it

involves proceed throughout in an almost or quite painless

manner. It is sufficient to refer to two cases reported in Paris

by Macé and briefly summarized in the _British Medical Journal_,

May 25, 1901. In the first the patient was a primipara 20 years

of age, and, until the dilatation of the cervix was complete and

efforts at expulsion had commenced, the uterine contractions were

quite painless. In the second case, the mother, aged 25, a

tripara, had previously had very rapid labors; she awoke in the

middle of the night without pains, but during micturition the

fetal head appeared at the vulva, and was soon born.

Further illustration may be found in those cases in which severe

inflammatory processes may take place in the genital canal

without being noticed. Thus, Maxwell reports the case of a young

Chinese woman, certainly quite normal, in whom after the birth of

her first child the vagina became almost obliterated, yet beyond

slight occasional pain she noticed nothing wrong until the

husband found that penetration was impossible (_British Medical

Journal_, January 11, 1902, p. 78). The insensitiveness of the

vagina and its contrast, in this respect, with the penis--though

we are justified in regarding the penis as being, like organs of

special sense, relatively deficient in general sensibility--are

vividly presented in such an incident as the following, reported

a few years ago in America by Dr. G.W. Allen in the _Boston

Medical and Surgical Journal_: A man came under observation with

an edematous, inflamed penis. The wife, the night previous, on

advice of friends, had injected pure carbolic acid into the

vagina just previous to coitus. The husband, ignorant of the

fact, experienced untoward burning and smarting during and after

coitus, but thought little of it, and soon fell asleep. The next

morning there were large blisters on the penis, but it was no

longer painful. When seen by Dr. Allen the prepuce was retracted

and edematous, the whole penis was much swollen, and there were

large, perfectly raw surfaces on either side of the glans.

In this connection we may well bring into line a remarkable group of

phenomena concerning which much evidence has now accumulated. I refer to

the use of various appliances, fixed in or around the penis, whether

permanently or temporarily during coitus, such appliance being employed at

the woman's instigation and solely in order to heighten her excitement in

congress. These appliances have their great center among the Indonesian

peoples (in Borneo, Java, Sumatra, the Malay peninsula, the Philippines,

etc.), thence extending in a modified form through China, to become, it

appears, considerably prevalent in Russia; I have also a note of their

appearance in India. They have another widely diffused center, through

which, however, they are more sparsely scattered, among the American

Indians of the northern and more especially of the southern continents.

Amerigo Vespucci and other early travelers noted the existence of some of

these appliances, and since Miklucho-Macleay carefully described them as

used in Borneo[82] their existence has been generally recognized. They are

usually regarded merely as ethnological curiosities. As such they would

not concern us here. Their real significance for us is that they

illustrate the comparative insensitiveness of the genital canal in women,

while at the same time they show that a certain amount of what we cannot

but regard as painful stimulation is craved by women, in order to heighten

tumescence and increase sexual pleasure, even though it can only by

procured by artificial methods. It is, of course, possible to argue that

in these cases we are not concerned with pain at all, but with a strong

stimulation that is felt as purely pleasurable. There can be no doubt,

however, that in the absence of sexual excitement this stimulation would

be felt as purely painful, and--in the light of our previous

discussion--we may, perhaps, fairly regard it as a painful stimulation

which is craved, not because it is itself pleasurable, but because it

heightens the highly pleasurable state of tumescence.

Borneo, the geographical center of the Indonesian world, appears

also to be the district in which these instruments are most

popular. The _ampallang, palang, kambion_, or _sprit-sail yard_,

as it is variously termed, is a little rod of bone or metal

nearly two inches in length, rounded at the ends, and used by the

Kyans and Dyaks of Borneo. Before coitus it is inserted into a

transverse orifice in the penis, made by a painful and somewhat

dangerous operation and kept open by a quill. Two or more of

these instruments are occasionally worn. Sometimes little brushes

are attached to each end of the instrument. Another instrument,

used by the Dyaks, but said to have been borrowed from the

Malays, is the _palang anus_, which is a ring or collar of

plaited palm-fiber, furnished with a pair of stiffish horns of

the same wiry material; it is worn on the neck of the glans and

fits tight to the skin so as not to slip off. (Brooke Low, "The

Natives of Borneo," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_,

August and November, 1892, p. 45; the _ampallang_ and similar

instruments are described by Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, Bd.

i, chapter xvii; also in _Untrodden Fields of Anthropology_, by a

French army surgeon, 1898, vol. ii, pp. 135-141; also Mantegazza,

_Gli Amori degli Uomini_, French translation, p. 83 et seq.)

Riedel informed Miklucho-Macleay that in the Celebes the Alfurus

fasten the eyelids of goats with the eyelashes round the corona

of the glans penis, and in Java a piece of goatskin is used in a

similar way, so as to form a hairy sheath (_Zeitschrift für

Ethnologie_, 1876, pp. 22-25), while among the Batta, of Sumatra,

Hagen found that small stones are inserted by an incision under

the skin of the penis (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1891, ht. 3,

p. 351).

In the Malay peninsula Stevens found instruments somewhat similar

to the _ampallang_ still in use among some tribes, and among

others formerly in use. He thinks they were brought from Borneo.

(H.V. Stevens, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1896, ht. 4, p.

181.) Bloch, who brings forward other examples of similar devices

(_Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, pp. 56-58),

considers that the Australian mica operation may thus in part be

explained.

Such instruments are not, however, entirely unknown in Europe. In

France, in the eighteenth century, it appears that rings,

sometimes set with hard knobs, and called "aides," were

occasionally used by men to heighten the pleasure of women in

intercourse. (Dühren, _Marquis de Sade_, 1901, p. 130.) In

Russia, according to Weissenberg, of Elizabethsgrad, it is not

uncommon to use elastic rings set with little teeth; these rings

are fastened around the base of the glans. (Weissenberg,

_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1893, ht. 2, p. 135.) This

instrument must have been brought to Russia from the East, for

Burton (in the notes to his _Arabian Nights_) mentions a

precisely similar instrument as in use in China. Somewhat similar

is the "Chinese hedgehog," a wreath of fine, soft feathers with

the quills solidly fastened by silver wire to a ring of the same

metal, which is slipped over the glans. In South America the

Araucanians of Argentina use a little horsehair brush fastened

around the penis; one of these is in the museum at La Plata; it

is said the custom may have been borrowed from the Patagonians;

these instruments, called _geskels_, are made by the women and

the workmanship is very delicate. (Lehmann-Nitsche, _Zeitschrift

für Ethnologie_, 1900, ht. 6, p. 491.) It is noteworthy that a

somewhat similar tuft of horsehair is also worn in Borneo.

(Breitenstein, _21 Jahre in India_, 1899, pt. i, p. 227.) Most of

the accounts state that the women attach great importance to the

gratification afforded by such instruments. In Borneo a modest

woman symbolically indicates to her lover the exact length of the

ampallang she would prefer by leaving at a particular spot a

cigarette of that length. Miklucho-Macleay considers that these

instruments were invented by women. Brooke Low remarks that "no

woman once habituated to its use will ever dream of permitting

her bedfellow to discontinue the practice of wearing it," and

Stevens states that at one time no woman would marry a man who

was not furnished with such an apparatus. It may be added that a

very similar appliance may be found in European countries

(especially Germany) in the use of a condom furnished with

irregularities, or a frill, in order to increase the woman's

excitement. It is not impossible to find evidence that, in

European countries, even in the absence of such instruments, the

craving which they gratify still exists in women. Thus, Mauriac

tells of a patient with vegetations on the glans who delayed

treatment because his mistress liked him so best (art.

"Végétations," _Dictionnaire de Médecine et Chirurgie pratique_).

It may seem that such impulses and such devices to gratify them

are altogether unnatural. This is not so. They have a zoölogical

basis and in many animals are embodied in the anatomical

structure. Many rodents, ruminants, and some of the carnivora

show natural developments of the penis closely resembling some of

those artificially adopted by man. Thus the guinea-pigs possess

two horny styles attached to the penis, while the glans of the

penis is covered with sharp spines. Some of the Caviidæ also have

two sharp, horny saws at the side of the penis. The cat, the

rhinoceros, the tapir, and other animals possess projecting

structures on the penis, and some species of ruminants, such as

the sheep, the giraffe, and many antelopes, have, attached to the

penis, long filiform processes through which the urethra passes.

(F.H.A. Marshall, _The Physiology of Reproduction_, pp. 246-248.)

We find, even in creatures so delicate and ethereal as the

butterflies, a whole armory of keen weapons for use in coitus.

These were described in detail in an elaborate and fully

illustrated memoir by P.H. Gosse ("On the Clasping Organs

Ancillary to Generation in Certain Groups of the Lepidoptera,"

_Transactions of the Linnæan Society_, second series, vol. ii,

Zoölogy, 1882). These organs, which Gosse terms _harpes_ (or

grappling irons), are found in the Papilionidæ and are very

beautiful and varied, taking the forms of projecting claws,

hooks, pikes, swords, knobs, and strange combinations of these,

commonly brought to a keen edge and then cut into sharp teeth.

It is probable that all these structures serve to excite the

sexual apparatus of the female and to promote tumescence.

To the careless observer there may seem to be something vicious

or perverted in such manifestations in man. That opinion becomes

very doubtful when we consider how these tendencies occur in

people living under natural conditions in widely separated parts

of the world. It becomes still further untenable if we are

justified in believing that the ancestors of men possessed

projecting epithelial appendages attached to the penis, and if we

accept the discovery by Friedenthal of the rudiment of these

appendages on the penis of the human fetus at an early stage

(Friedenthal, "Sonderformen der menschlichen Leibesbildung,"

_Sexual-Probleme_, Feb., 1912, p. 129). In this case human

ingenuity would merely be seeking to supply an organ which nature

has ceased to furnish, although it is still in some cases needed,

especially among peoples whose aptitude for erethism has remained

at, or fallen to, a subhuman level.

At first sight the connection between love and pain--the tendency of men

to delight in inflicting it and women in suffering it--seems strange and

inexplicable. It seems amazing that a tender and even independent woman

should maintain a passionate attachment to a man who subjects her to

physical and moral insults, and that a strong man, often intelligent,

reasonable, and even kind-hearted, should desire to subject to such

insults a woman whom he loves passionately and who has given him every

final proof of her own passion. In understanding such cases we have to

remember that it is only within limits that a woman really enjoys the

pain, discomfort, or subjection to which she submits. A little pain which

the man knows he can himself soothe, a little pain which the woman gladly

accepts as the sign and forerunner of pleasure--this degree of pain comes

within the normal limits of love and is rooted, as we have seen, in the

experience of the race. But when it is carried beyond these limits, though

it may still be tolerated because of the support it receives from its

biological basis, it is no longer enjoyed. The natural note has been too

violently struck, and the rhythm of love has ceased to be perfect. A woman

may desire to be forced, to be roughly forced, to be ravished away beyond

her own will. But all the time she only desires to be forced toward those

things which are essentially and profoundly agreeable to her. A man who

fails to realize this has made little progress in the art of love. "I like

being knocked about and made to do things I don't want to do," a woman

said, but she admitted, on being questioned, that she would not like to

have _much_ pain inflicted, and that she might not care to be made to do

important things she did not want to do. The story of Griselda's unbounded

submissiveness can scarcely be said to be psychologically right, though it

has its artistic rightness as an elaborate fantasia on this theme

justified by its conclusion.

This point is further illustrated by the following passage from a

letter written by a lady: "Submission to the man's will is still,

and always must be, the prelude to pleasure, and the association

of ideas will probably always produce this much misunderstood

instinct. Now, I find, indirectly from other women and directly

from my own experience, that, when the point in dispute is very

important and the man exerts his authority, the desire to get

one's own way completely obliterates the sexual feeling, while,

conversely, in small things the sexual feeling obliterates the

desire to have one's own way. Where the two are nearly equal a

conflict between them ensues, and I can stand aside and wonder

which will get the best of it, though I encourage the sexual

feeling when possible, as, if the other conquers, it leaves a

sense of great mental irritation and physical discomfort. A man

should command in small things, as in nine cases out of ten this

will produce excitement. He should _advise_ in large matters, or

he may find either that he is unable to enforce his orders or

that he produces a feeling of dislike and annoyance he was far

from intending. Women imagine men must be stronger than

themselves to excite their passion. I disagree. A passionate man

has the best chance, for in him the primitive instincts are

strong. The wish to subdue the female is one of them, and in

small things he will exert his authority to make her feel his

power, while she knows that on a question of real importance she

has a good chance of getting her own way by working on his

greater susceptibility. Perhaps an illustration will show what I

mean. I was listening to the band and a girl and her _fiancé_

came up to occupy two seats near me. The girl sank into one seat,

but for some reason the man wished her to take the other. She

refused. He repeated his order twice, the second time so

peremptorily that she changed places, and I heard him say: 'I

don't think you heard what I said. I don't expect to give an

order three times.'

"This little scene interested me, and I afterward asked the girl

the following questions:--

"'Had you any reason for taking one chair more than the other?'

"'No.'

"'Did Mr. ----'s insistence on your changing give you any

pleasure?'

"'Yes' (after a little hesitation).

"'Why?'

"'I don't know.'

"'Would it have done so if you had particularly wished to sit in

that chair; if, for instance, you had had a boil on your cheek

and wished to turn that side away from him?'

"'No; certainly not. The worry of thinking he was looking at it

would have made me too cross to feel pleased.'

"Does this explain what I mean? The occasion, by the way, need

not be really important, but, as in this imaginary case of the

boil, if it _seems important_ to the woman, irritation will

outweigh the physical sensation."

I am well aware that in thus asserting a certain tendency in women to

delight in suffering pain--however careful and qualified the position I

have taken--many estimable people will cry out that I am degrading a whole

sex and generally supporting the "subjection of women." But the day for

academic discussion concerning the "subjection of women" has gone by. The

tendency I have sought to make clear is too well established by the

experience of normal and typical women--however numerous the exceptions

may be--to be called in question. I would point out to those who would

deprecate the influence of such facts in relation to social progress that

nothing is gained by regarding women as simply men of smaller growth. They

are not so; they have the laws of their own nature; their development must

be along their own lines, and not along masculine lines. It is as true now

as in Bacon's day that we only learn to command nature by obeying her. To

ignore facts is to court disappointment in our measure of progress. The

particular fact with which we have here come in contact is very vital and

radical, and most subtle in its influence. It is foolish to ignore it; we

must allow for its existence. We can neither attain a sane view of life

nor a sane social legislation of life unless we possess a just and

accurate knowledge of the fundamental instincts upon which life is built.