“The sexually mature body of a woman has always during the

intermenstrual period to make good the loss undergone during

menstruation. Hardly has this been effected and the climax of vital

energy been once more attained, when a new follicle ruptures in the

ovary, and the menstrual hæmorrhage recurs; thus continually, month

after month, the vital undulation and the vital energy rises and

falls. =The energy periodically expended in woman’s principal function

has for thousands of years ceased to be available for her own internal

development.= The actual loss on each occasion is so trifling that

numerous women hardly find it disagreeable. The effect depends upon

summation. The earnings are almost immediately spent, =not for the

purpose of her own domestic economy, but for the sake of another, in

the service of reproduction=; this comes first, for the species must

be preserved. =To accumulate capital for her personal needs has been

rendered more difficult for woman than it is for man.=”

The previously quoted biological law of Spencer (regarding the

antagonism between reproduction and the higher evolutionary tendency),

of which menstruation affords so interesting an illustration, explains

also the fact pointed out by Milne Edwards, Darwin, Brooks, Lombroso,

Alfons Bilharz, and other investigators--to wit, the greater simplicity

and primitiveness of woman as compared with the more complicated and

more variable nature of man--more variable, because it oscillates within

wider boundaries. Paracelsus long ago enunciated the profound saying,

“=Woman is nearer to the world than man.=”

It would be =fundamentally erroneous= to deduce from these

considerations any inferiority or comparative inutility of woman.

Rather, indeed, the nature of her bodily structure in relation to the

purposes it has to fulfil is comparatively nearer perfection; and this

admirable adaptation has undergone an increase in the course of the

evolution of civilization. We have already noted the fact that under the

influence of the continually increasing predominance of the brain in the

male, certain retrogressive processes have also made themselves manifest

(as, for example, the increasing loss of hair); and these processes in

woman have gone farther than in man, because in her case the progressive

development is =in its very nature= less extensive. Hence recent

investigators, such as Havelock Ellis, have actually come to the

conclusion that the ideal type, towards which the bodily development of

mankind is striving, is represented by the feminine--that is, by a

youthful type.[19]

It is, however, very doubtful if this evolution will ever go so far that

the =primitive= difference between man and woman, founded as it is in

the very nature of the sexual, will ever pass away. On the contrary,

notwithstanding the retrogressive changes associated with the excessive

development of the brain, we find that there is =an increasing

differentiation of the sexes induced by civilization=. To this fact,

which possesses great importance in connexion with the discussion of the

woman’s question and the problem of homosexuality, W. H. Riehl, the

historian of civilization, in his work on the family, published in 1885,

was the first to draw attention. He devotes the second chapter of this

book to the differentiation of the sexes in the course of civilized

life. He was astonished by the fact that in almost all the portraits of

celebrated beauties of previous centuries the heads appeared to him too

=masculine= in type when compared with the ideal of feminine beauty

which now appeals to us.

“The medieval painters, when representing the general type of angels

and saints, van Eyck and Memmling in their Madonnas and female saints,

paint heads exhibiting the most clearly defined individual

characteristics, but into these feeling representations of delicate

virginity there intrude certain harsh lineaments, so that the heads

strike us as masculine, or as a little too old. Van Eyck’s Madonnas,

with the Christ-child at their breast, frequently look to us like

women of thirty years old. But the painter must have followed Nature;

=it is Nature which since his time has changed. The tender virgin of

three hundred years ago had more masculine lineaments than she has at

the present day=, and he who in the portrait of a Maria Stuart expects

to find a face like one he would meet in a modern journal of fashion

will find himself greatly disappointed by certain traits in the

pictures of this celebrated beauty, traits which to the nineteenth

century would seem almost masculine.”

The contrast between the sexes becomes with advancing civilization

continually sharper and more individualized, whereas in primitive

conditions, and even at the present day among agricultural labourers and

the proletariat, it is less sharp and to some extent even obliterated.

Let the reader familiarize himself with the likenesses of modern women

of the working classes; they seem to us almost to resemble disguised

men. In the stature, also, of the sexes among savage peoples, and among

the lower classes of the civilized nations, the sexual differences are

much less marked than in our cultivated large towns. Very characteristic

of the differentiating influence of civilization is, moreover, the

effect on the voice. Riehl remarks on this subject:

“The tone of the voice even, in simpler conditions of civilization, is

generally far more alike in the two sexes. The high tenor, the

feminine man’s voice, and the deep alto, the masculine woman’s voice,

are among civilized peoples far rarer than among savage races, in whom

masculine and feminine varieties sometimes seem hardly

distinguishable. Our bandmasters travel to Hungary and Galicia to find

clear high tenors, whilst deep alto voices are now increasingly

difficult to find, for the reason that among the civilized peoples the

masculine-feminine contraltos die out. =Dominant, on the other side,

is the distinct contrast between the two sexual tones of

voices--soprano and bass.= This fact has already had a determining

influence in our school of song; it affects our vocal

tone-teaching--to such a hidden, out-of-the-way path have we been led

by our recognition of the continually increasing contrast between man

and woman.”

Certain phenomena and aberrations of the movement for the emancipation

of women, such as the adoption of a masculine style of dress and the use

of tobacco, are no more than =relapses= into a primitive condition,

which among the common people has persisted unaltered to the present

day. We need merely allude to the man’s hat, the short coat, and the

high-laced boot of the Tyrolese women, and to the tobacco-smoking of the

women at the wedding festivals among the German peasantry. A false

“emancipation” of this kind is frequently encountered among peasants,

vagabonds, and gipsies, to which, moreover, the neuter designation of

the women of this class as _das Mensch_ and “woman-fellow,” etc., bears

witness; we have herein characteristic indications of the fact that

“peculiar to the woman of the people is a self-conscious, actively

progressive masculine nature.”

That the comparative obliteration of sexual contrasts among the lower

orders of modern society is a vestigial relic of primitive conditions,

is shown also by the primeval history of the nations. The idea appearing

already in the Biblical creation myth, and the thought later expressed

by Plato, and recently by Jacob Böhme, that the first human being was

originally both man and woman, and that the woman was subsequently

formed out of this primeval human being Adam--this pregnant thought

merely expresses the fact of the indifference of the sexes among savage

people and in the primitive history of mankind. The hermaphrodite of

ancient art is, like the man-woman of the modern woman’s movement, an

atavism, a retrogression to these long-past stages, of which we have

only the above-mentioned vestiges to remind us.[20]

Friedrich Ratzel, in the introduction to his great work on “The Races of

Man,” also alludes to this primitive obscuration of sexual contrasts in

earlier stages of civilization, and draws therefrom interesting

conclusions regarding the existence of a primordial gynecocracy, a

“regiment of women.” I have myself discussed this question in the second

volume of my book, “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia

Sexualis,” and shall return to the subject when dealing with masochism.

W. H. Riehl, and after him Heinrich Schurtz, have laid stress on the

dangers to civilization involved in the obliteration of sexual

differences. Sexual differentiation stands and falls with civilization.

The former is the indispensable preliminary of the latter. Destroy it,

and the whole course of development will be reversed.

Sexual differences comprise for the most part the diverse development of

the so-called “secondary sexual characters”--that is to say, all the

differential characteristics which distinguish man from woman, over and

above those strictly related to the work of sex--for instance, stature,

skeleton, muscles, skin, voice, etc.

The masculine body has evolved to a greater extent than the feminine

body as a force-producing machine, for in man the bones and the muscles

have a larger development, whereas in woman we observe a greater

development of fat, whereby the plasticity of the body is enhanced, but

its mechanical utility and energy are impaired.

According to the most recent scientific representation of sexual

differences, as we find them enumerated in the monograph of Oskar

Schultze, based upon his own observations, and also on the earlier works

of Vierordt, Quetelet, Topinard, Pfitzner, Waldeyer, C. H. Stratz, J.

Ranke, E. von Lange, Havelock Ellis, Merkel, Bischoff, Rebentisch,

Welcker, Schwalbe, Marchand, and others, the most important physical

differentiæ between man and woman are the following:

The supporting framework of the body, the osseous skeleton, exhibits

important differences in man and woman. The bones of women are on the

whole smaller and weaker. Especially extensive sexual differences are

noticeable in the pelvis. Wiedersheim regards these sexual differences

of the woman’s pelvis as a specific characteristic of the human species.

In all the anthropoid apes they are far less strongly marked than in

man. Moreover, these differences exhibit a progressive development,

which is to an important extent dependent upon advancing civilization.

For this reason, as G. Fritsch, Alsberg, and others, point out, among

the majority of savage races the differences between the male and the

female pelvis are far less extensive than among civilized nations. The

characteristic peculiarities of the pelvis of the European woman, which

can be distinguished from the male pelvis at a glance--namely, its

greater extent in transverse diameter, the greater depression and the

wider opening of the anterior osseous arch--are far less marked among

women of the South African races and among the South Sea Islanders.

The enlargement of the female pelvis in the course of human evolution is

dependent upon the most important of all the factors of civilization,

the =brain=. Even in the human fœtus the great size of the brain gives

rise to a far greater proportionate development of the skull than we

find in the fœtus of any other mammal. This influences the pelvic inlet

and the sacrum, but also the large pelvis, since, in consequence of the

adoption by man of the upright posture, the pregnant uterus expands more

laterally, and thus opens out the iliac fossæ. In the lower races of

man, it is precisely this plate-like expansion of the iliac fossæ which

is so much less developed than in the case of civilized races.

Another physical difference between the sexes concerns =stature= and

=body-weight=.

The mean stature of woman is somewhat less than that of man. Among

Europeans it is about 1·60 metres (5 feet 3 inches), as compared with

1·72 metres (5 feet 7-3/4 inches) for the average stature of the male.

According to Vierordt, the new-born boy is already on the average from

1/2 to 1 centimetre (1/5 to 2/5 inch) longer than the new-born girl.

Johannes Ranke characterizes the individual factors which give rise to

these differences in the following manner:

“The typical bodily development of the human male is characterized by

a trunk relatively shorter in relation to the whole stature; but in

relation to the length of the trunk, the upper and the lower

extremities are longer, the thighs and the legs longer, the hand and

the foot also longer; relatively to the long upper arm and to the long

thigh respectively, the forearm and the leg are still longer; and

relatively to the entire upper extremity, the entire lower extremity

is also longer.

“On the other hand, the feminine proportions, remaining more

approximate to those of the youthful state, as compared with those of

the fully developed male, are distinguished by the following

characteristics: comparatively greater length of the trunk; relatively

to the length of the trunk, comparatively shorter arms and lower

extremities, shorter upper arm and forearm, shorter thigh and leg,

shorter hands and feet; relatively to the shorter upper arm, still

shorter forearm, and relatively to the shorter thigh, still shorter

leg; finally, relatively to the entire upper extremity, shorter lower

extremities.”

This difference in the stature is found also in primitive peoples. Among

the savage races of Brazil, who are still living in the stone age, Karl

von den Steinen found that the average height of the men was 162

centimetres (5 feet 3·8 inches), whilst that of the women was 10·5

centimetres (4·14 inches) less. This difference corresponds exactly with

that given in Topinard’s figures as corresponding to the average male

height of 162 centimetres (5 feet 3·8 inches).

In relation to the greater length of the body, the other proportions of

the male body also exhibit greater figures. More particularly, the width

of the shoulders is greater in man as compared with woman.

The body-weight of man is likewise notably greater than that of woman.

According to Vierordt, the average weight of a new-born boy in middle

Europe is 3,333 grammes (7·348 pounds), as compared with that of a

new-born girl 3,200 grammes (7·055 pounds). The difference, therefore,

is 133 grammes (0·293 pounds = about 4-1/2 ounces). In the case of

adults, the mean difference amounts to 7 kilogrammes (15 pounds), since

the average weight of man is 65 kilogrammes (143 pounds), that of woman

58 kilogrammes (128 pounds).

Corresponding with the slighter development of the skeleton, the

=muscular system= in woman is also less strongly developed; the muscles

contain a larger percentage of water than those of man, and in this

point also we find a resemblance to the juvenile state.

On the other hand, =the development of fat= in woman is much greater

than in man. Bischoff investigated the relations between muscle and fat

in man and woman, and found that in the entire body in the male there

was 41·8 per cent. muscle and 18·2 per cent. fat; in the female 35·8 per

cent. muscle and 28·2 per cent. fat. In the female two regions of the

body are distinguished by a specially abundant deposit of fat, the

breast and the buttocks, whereby both parts receive the stamp of

extremely prominent secondary sexual characters. Upon this greater

deposit of fat depends the softer, more rounded form of the feminine

body; whilst the muscular system is less developed than in man. Man, on

the other hand, is especially powerful in the head, neck, breast, and

upper extremities. The contrast between the typical beauty of man and

woman, respectively, is mainly explicable by the differences just

enumerated.

Woman’s =skin= is clearer and more delicate than that of man.

More important is the fact that the blood of man contains a notably

larger quantity of =red blood-corpuscles= (erythrocytes) than that of

woman. Woman’s blood is richer in water. Welcker found in a cubic

millimetre of man’s blood 5,000,000, and in the same quantity of woman’s

blood 4,500,000 blood-discs. In correspondence with this, the hæmoglobin

content and the specific weight of woman’s blood are both less than

those of man’s. Since the red blood-corpuscles play a very important

part in the human economy as oxygen-carriers, this sexual difference in

the corpuscular richness of the blood is very important, and influences

to a high degree the bodily organization of both sexes.

=Larynx= and =voice= remain infantile in woman. Woman’s larynx is

notably smaller than man’s. After puberty woman’s voice is, on the

average, in the deep tones an octave, in the high tones two octaves,

higher than man’s.

According to the investigations of Pfitzner, the measurements of the

=head= (length, breadth, height, circumference) are smaller in woman

than in man. Woman’s skull remains, in respect of numerous

peculiarities of structure, strikingly like the skull of the child.[21]

This infantile quality of a woman’s skull, we must again point out,

justifies =no= conclusion regarding the inferiority of woman. Schultze,

when presenting these data for our consideration, rightly reminds us of

the well-known fact that the man of genius is also frequently

distinguished by infantile peculiarities.

Woman’s skull is absolutely smaller than man’s; hence, of course, her

brain is also absolutely smaller. Waldeyer gives as the mean weight of a

man’s brain 1,372 grammes (44·12 ounces), and of a woman’s brain, 1,231

grammes (39·58 ounces); Schwalbe’s figures are respectively 1,375

grammes (44·21 ounces) and 1,245 grammes (40·03 ounces).

In this connexion O. Schultze remarks:

“The question immediately arises, whether we are justified in speaking

of the mental ‘inferiority’ of woman, because her brain weighs less

than that of man.

“Now, in the first place, it is obvious that the greater body-weight

of man demands a greater weight of brain. And there is nothing

remarkable about the fact that the greater size exhibited by many

organs of the male should be exhibited also by the brain. It seems

very natural that the unquestionably greater functional activity which

has distinguished the masculine brain for many thousand years should

be manifested by the notably greater size of that organ, just as a

larger muscle generally performs more work than a small one.

“As a matter of fact, among the numerous investigators occupied with

this question, many have assumed that differences in the psychical

power of human brains are dependent upon differences in their size.

But this is an =assumption= merely, and with Bischoff, who as long as

forty years ago conducted an exhaustive investigation into the problem

of the relations between brain-weight and intellectual capacity, we

must say also to-day that ‘the proof of any such connexion has =not=

yet been offered us.’”

Whether the study of the finer structure of the brain in man and woman

will enable us to form more trustworthy conclusions regarding their

respective intellectual valuation, is a question whose answer must for

the present be postponed. According to Rüdinger and Passet, in new-born

boys and girls there exist very remarkable differences in the formation

and development of the brain. In the male fœtal brain the frontal lobes

are larger, wider, and higher; the convolutions, especially those of

the parietal lobe, are better formed than in the female fœtal brain.

Waldeyer was able to confirm this observation, and he considers it of

great importance, especially in view of the large share which the

frontal lobes have in the performance of purely intellectual functions.

Broca, however, was unable to detect a lesser development of the frontal

lobes in woman. Eberstaller and Cunningham even believed that they could

establish that this portion of the brain was more powerfully developed

in woman! Finally, the great Swedish cerebral anatomist, G. Retzius,

made an exact investigation of the sexual differences between the brains

of man and woman in the adult state. According to O. Schultze, his

results can be regarded as authoritative. Retzius stated that =hitherto

no specific invariably recurrent peculiarity had been found by which the

female brain could always with certainty be distinguished from the male;

still, he was inclined to attribute to woman’s brain a greater

simplicity of structure; it showed less divergence from the fundamental

type=.

This coincides with the fact to which we have already alluded, that

woman as compared with man possesses less variability, that she is the

simpler, more primitive being. Similarly, experience teaches

ethnologists that the men of a race differ from one another to a much

greater extent than the women.[22]

If we wish to sum up in a word the =nature= of the physical sexual

differences, we must say: =Woman remains more akin to the child than

man.=

This, however, in no way constitutes an inferiority, as Havelock Ellis

and Oskar Schultze have convincingly shown. It is only the expression of

=a primitive difference in nature=, brought about by the adaptation of

the female body to the purposes of reproduction. This is the cause of

the more infantile habitus of women (according to the above-quoted

biological law of Herbert Spencer).

The observation of the physical differences between man and woman also

teaches us the futility of the old dispute as to whether man’s body or

woman’s was the more beautiful.[23] The different tasks which lie

before the male and female bodies respectively give rise to different

development of individual parts. If this development is complete in its

kind, the body is beautiful. Stratz, in the introduction to his book on

“The Beauty of the Female Body,” has rightly =identified perfect beauty

with perfect health=. Man’s body and woman’s will alike be beautiful if

all secondary sexual characters are developed in a harmonious and not

excessive degree, if the idea of “manliness in man” and “womanliness in

woman” have attained full expression, and have not been unduly limited

by isolated peculiarities and variations.

Masculine and feminine beauty are different. There can be no question

regarding the superiority of one or the other.

[19] Another author--H. Quensel--goes even farther than this in his

book (in some respects most fantastic), “Do We Advance? An Ideal

Philosophical Hypothesis of the Evolution of the Human Psyche based

upon Natural Science,” pp. 152, 153 (Cologne, 1904). He writes: “When

we compare the position in civilization of man and woman, we find that

man unquestionably takes the higher position in respect of those

intellectual impulses which serve as the basis of the higher and the

highest stages of civilization, especially the impulse of building and

construction, of the collection and the elaboration of scientific

facts, in regard to the science of statesmanship and social

activities, in respect also of the study of the connexion between

cause and effect, and in respect of art. When, however, we apply to

the problem before us the data I have obtained concerning the details

of physical retrogression and of psychical advance, it appears that

woman in many relations stands unquestionably higher than man; for

woman, in her development, not alone in bodily relations, as regards

the retrogression of the skeletal and muscular systems and the

delicacy of constitution dependent thereon, as regards the cutaneous

covering of the body, and as regards speech and voice, has advanced

much farther than man on the path of bodily retrogression necessary

for the progress of civilization. Positively, also, in all that

concerns the development of the highest psychical impulses, the

development of general nervous sensibility, of a finer discrimination

of moral values and of idealism, of general charity and capacity for

self-sacrifice in association with diminishing egoism, of

transcendental piety and religious sentiment, and also of clearness of

vision, and, finally, in all that concerns the development of an

adaptability disclosing supreme psychical differentiation--associated,

indeed, with deficient fixity of purpose--woman has advanced far

beyond man on the forward path of civilization; that is to say, in

respect of civilization, woman unquestionably excels man.”

[20] W. Havelburg, in his essay, “Climate, Race, and Nationality in

Relation to Marriage,” published in “Health and Disease in Relation to

Marriage and the Married State,” by Senator and Kaminer, p. 127

(London, Rebman, Limited, 1904), also alludes to the significance of

progressive sexual differentiation in the process of civilization, and

draws attention to the increase in feminine beauty.

[21] We may refer also to Paul Bartel’s valuable work, “Ueber

Geschlechtsunterschiede am Schädel”--“Sexual Differences in the Skull”

(Berlin, 1898). The author concludes: “We are unable to recognize any

important difference between man’s skull and woman’s--probably,

indeed, no such difference exists.”

[22] We must not ignore the fact, that other distinguished

anthropologists, such as Manouvrier, Pearson, Frassetto, and

especially Giuffrida-Ruggieri, have recently contested the slighter

variability and the infantile character of woman. _Cf._

Giuffrida-Ruggieri, “Anthropological Considerations regarding

Infantilism, and Conclusions regarding the Origin of the Varieties of

the Human Species” (_Italian Zoological Review_, 1903, vol. xiv., Nos.

4, 5). _Cf._ also the interesting remarks of Näcke in the “German

Archives for Criminal Anthropology,” 1903, vol. xiii., pp. 292, 293.

[23] Konrad Lange--“Das Wesen der Kunst” (“The Nature of Art”), pp.

361-364; Berlin, 1901--has ably exposed the subjective grounds of this

ancient dispute, and has shown their untenability.

CHAPTER V

PSYCHICAL DIFFERENTIAL SEXUAL CHARACTERS--THE WOMAN’S QUESTION

(Appendix: SEXUAL SENSIBILITY IN WOMAN)

“_Among all the higher activities and movements of our time, the

struggle of our sisters to attain an equality of position with the

strong, the dominant, the oppressive sex, appears to me, from the purely

human point of view, most beautiful and most interesting; indeed, I

regard it as possible that the coming century will obtain its historical

characterization, not from any of the social and economical

controversies of the world of men, but that this century will be known

to subsequent history distinctively as that in which the solution of the

‘woman’s question’ was obtained._”--GEORG HIRTH.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER V

The fact of psychical sexual differences -- Attempts to deny their

existence -- Rosa Mayreder’s “Critique of Femininity” -- The sexual

nuances of the psyche -- Ineradicability of these -- Condemnation of

psychical bisexuality -- Expression of psychical difference in the

demeanour of the sperm cell and the germ cell -- Original

representatives of the differing natures of man and woman -- Recent

researches regarding psychical sexual differences -- Sensory

sensations -- Intellectual differences -- Experiments of Jastrow,

Minot, and others -- Inquiries of Delaunay and Havelock Ellis --

Readier suggestibility of women -- Tendencies to independent activity

on the part of women -- Higher spiritual activities in man and woman

-- Woman’s talent for politics -- Emotivity of woman -- Greater

susceptibility to fatigue -- Decline of emotivity in the modern woman

-- Artistic talents of man and woman -- Greater variability of man --

Influence of menstruation on the feminine physique -- Psychological

experiments of H. B. Thompson -- Woman and man heterogeneous natures

-- Comparison by Alfons Bilharz -- The enigmatical in woman -- Poets

and thinkers on this question -- A saying of Theodor Mundt --

Antipathy of the sexes -- Love as the solution of the enigma --

Significance of psychical differences for the woman’s question -- Part

played by women in civilization -- Retrospect of primeval history --

Women as the discoverers of handicrafts and arts -- As the teachers of

man -- Thomas Henry Huxley on the woman’s question -- The value of

work for woman -- Improvement of domestic service according to

Schmoller -- The woman of the future.

_Appendix: Sexual Sensibility in Woman._ -- An old topic of dispute --

Sexual sensibility in man -- Feminine erotic types -- Theory of

Lombroso and Ferrero -- Adler’s monograph -- Refutation of the theory

of the lesser sensual sensibility of woman -- Diffuse character of the

feminine sexual sphere -- Researches of Havelock Ellis regarding the

sexual impulse in woman -- Experience of alienists regarding sexuality

in woman -- A case of temporary sexual anæsthesia -- Causes of sexual

frigidity.

CHAPTER V

The unquestionably existing physical differences between the sexes

respectively, correspond equally without question to existing

=psychical= differences. Psychically, also, man and woman are completely

=different= beings. We must not employ the word “psychical,” as it is so

often employed, in the sense of pure “intelligence”; we must understand

the term to relate to the entire conception and content of the psyche,

to the whole spiritual being--the spiritual habitus, emotional

character, feelings, and will: we shall then immediately be convinced

that masculine and feminine beings differ through and through, that they

are heterogeneous, incomparable natures.

Under the influence of Weininger’s book, the attempt has recently been

made to deny the existence of sexual differences in the psychical

sphere, and especially to contest the origin of these differences from

the fundamentally different nature of the masculine and feminine types.

(Weininger himself not only went so far as to declare the obliteration

and equalization of sexual differences, but he even asserted that all

feminine nature was a personification of nothingness, of evil; he wished

to annihilate femininity, in order to allow the existence of one sex

only, the male, this being to him the embodiment of the objective and

the good.) I recently read with great interest a most intelligent book,

one full of new ideas, by Rosa Mayreder--“Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit”

(A Critique of Femininity), Jena, 1905--in which the author maintains

what she calls the “primitively teleological character of sexuality”;

that is, she considers the different sexual functions of man and woman

to be comparatively unimportant for the determination of their spiritual

nature, and regards the individual psychical differentiation as

independent of sexuality and of the different sexual natures. In her

opinion, sexual polarity does not extend to the “higher nature” of

mankind, to the spiritual sphere. She offers as a proof of this, among

other points, the fact that by crossed inheritance spiritual

peculiarities of the father can be transmitted to the daughter. Very

true. Moreover, no objective student of Nature will deny that a woman

can attain the same degree of individual psychical differentiation as a

man, or that she can bring her “higher nature” to an equally great

development. But quite as incontestable is the fact which Rosa Mayreder

keeps too much in the background: =that everything psychical, the

entire emotional and voluntary life, receives from the particular sexual

nature a peculiar characterization, a distinctive colouring, and a

specific nuance=; and that these precisely constitute the heterogeneous

and the incomparable in the masculine and the feminine natures.

The attempts to annihilate sexual differences in theory are very

old,[24] but they have always proved untenable in practice. They have

invariably been shattered by contact with--sexual differences.

_Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret_ (You may drive out Nature

with a pitchfork, but she will inevitably return). And this return of

Nature is, in fact, a =step forward=, in advance of primitive

hermaphroditic states. Sexual differences are ineradicable; civilization

shows an unmistakable tendency to increase them. There is also an

individual differentiation of sexual characters. It is proportional to

the differentiation of the psychical characters of man and woman. And

the problem is this: How is it possible for woman to ensure the

development and perfectibility of her higher nature, without eliminating

and obscuring her peculiar character as a sexual being?

When Rosa Mayreder herself, at the end of her book (p. 278), comes to

the conclusion--

“In the province of the physical, about which no doubt is possible,

the development towards ‘homologous monosexuality,’ towards =the

unconditional sexual differentiation of individuals=, =constitutes the

most desirable aim=. Every =divergence= from the normal renders the

individual an imperfect being; =physical hermaphroditism is repulsive=

because it represents a state of insufficiency, an inadequate and

malformed structure. It appertains to the qualities of beautiful and

healthy human beings that the body should be that of an entire man or

an entire woman, just as it is desirable that the body should be

intact in all other respects”

--she has at the same time expressed a judgment regarding the value of

psychical bisexuality which =must ever be a rudiment merely= in the

“entire man” or the “entire woman,” and can never attain the

transcendent importance, can never represent the progress towards higher

altitudes, which the author, in her singular misunderstanding of the

true relations, wishes to ascribe to that condition. We may admit that

the bisexual character is more or less strongly developed in the

individual male or female, without thereby abandoning the fundamental

natural difference between man and woman, which involves not merely the

physical, but also the psychical sphere.

I disbelieve, therefore, in Rosa Mayreder’s “synthetic human being,” who

is “subordinate alike to the conditions of the masculine and the

feminine” but I do believe, as I have already stated in earlier

writings, in an individualization of love, in an ennobling and deepening

of the relationship between the sexes, such as is possible only to free

personalities. This is easily attainable in conjunction with the

retention of all bodily and mental peculiarities, as these have

developed during the process of sexual differentiation between man and

woman.

There can be no possible doubt that psychically woman is a different

creature from man. And quite rightly Mantegazza declares the opinion of

Mirabeau, that the soul has no sex, but only the body, to be a great

blunder.

Let us now return to the directly visible elementary phenomenon of love,

to the process of coalescence of the spermatozoon and the ovum. From our

study of other natural processes we feel we are justified by analogy in

drawing the conclusion that the observed kinetic difference between the

spermatozoon and the ovum is the expression also of different psychical

processes. Georg Hirth draws attention to these remarkable =differences

in respect of their modes of energy= between spermatozoa and ova.[25] He

also infers from the greater variability of the spermatozoa in the

different animal species, as compared with the usual spherical form of

the ova, that to the spermatozoon is allotted the most important kinetic

function in the process of reproduction, to which opinion its aggressive

mobility would also lead us, whereas the ovum rather represents

potential energy.

“We can indeed hardly believe that anywhere in the entire organic

world is there anything, of the same minute size, endowed with like

energy and enterprise as these so-called spermatozoa (‘little sperm

animals’), which are indeed not animals, and which yet prepare for us

more joy and more sorrow than any animal does. There everything is

busy. With what turbulence they hurry along until they attain their

ardently desired goal, and having attained it, thrust themselves head

first into the interior of the ovum! In this we have a drama for the

gods. To doubt the energy of these structures would be preposterous.”

Spermatozoa and ova are the original representatives of the respective

spiritual natures of man and woman. Disregarding all further

differentiation and individualization, the =fundamental lineaments= of

the masculine and feminine natures harmonize with the demeanour of the

reproductive cells; and we are able to recognize that for each is

provided a =different= task, and yet that =the task of each is no less

important than that of the other=. Quite rightly Rosa Mayreder points

out, that the male sex stands biologically no higher than the female

from the reproductive and procreative point of view; that in the

continued reproduction of life male and female have equal share.

No less true, on the other hand, is the remark of Havelock Ellis, whose

position in relation to the woman question is throughout objective:

“As long as women are distinguished from men by primary sexual

characters--as long, that is to say, as they conceive and bear--so

long will they remain unequal to man in the highest psychical

processes” (“Man and Woman,” p. 21).

The nature of man is aggressive, progressive, variable; that of woman is

receptive, more susceptible to stimuli, simpler.

Numerous exact, scientific, ethnological, and psychological

investigations concerning the sexes, among the most important of which

we may mention those of Darwin, Allan, Münsterberg, C. Vogt,

Ploss-Bartels, Jastrow, Lombroso and Ferrero, Shaw, Havelock Ellis, and

Helen Bradford Thompson, have confirmed the existence of these

differences in the nature of the two sexes. Many individual points still

remain obscure, but the above-mentioned sexual difference is everywhere

recognizable, and can never be entirely eradicated, even by a higher

psychical differentiation. Even the author of the “Critique of

Femininity,” who would open an unlimited perspective to the freedom of

individuality, is still compelled to admit that the majority of women

differ from men, no less in character than in intellect.

Havelock Ellis, in his classical work “Man and Woman” (London, 1892),

has given a summary of the psychical differences between the sexes,

based upon the most recent anthropological and psychological

investigations. This work forms the foundation for all later researches.

Of the individual psychical phenomena in man and woman, the sensory

sensations first demand consideration. In these no absolute and general

superiority of one sex over the other can be shown to exist. The

assumption that women have a more delicate power of sensory receptivity

cannot be sustained; indeed, the contrary appears the truer view. It is

true that women can be more readily excited by sensory stimuli, but they

do not possess a more delicate sensory receptivity.

As regards the general =intellectual endowment= of the sexes, the

interesting experimental researches of Jastrow into the psychology of

woman show that she possesses a greater interest in her immediate

environment, in the finished product, in the decorative, the individual,

and the concrete; man, on the other hand, exhibits a preference for the

more remote, for that which is in process of construction or growth, for

the useful, the general, and the abstract.

In agreement with these views is a report in the _Berliner Städtischen

Jahrbuch_ (1870, pp. 59-77), concerning the knowledge possessed by

several thousands of boys and girls at the time of their entry into

school. The report states:

“The more usual, the more approximate, and the easier an idea is, the

greater is the probability that the girls will excel the boys, and

_vice versa_. In boys more frequently than in girls do we find that

they know nothing of quite common things in their immediate

environment.”

Professor Minot arranged that persons of both sexes should cover ten

cards with sketches of any subject they chose. It appeared from this

experiment that the sketches of the men embraced a greater variety of

subjects than those of the women.

In respect of quickness of comprehension and intellectual mobility woman

is distinctly superior to man. Women, for example, read faster than men,

and can give a better account of what they have read. From this fact,

however, no conclusion can be drawn regarding their higher intellectual

capacity, for many men of exceptional intelligence read very slowly.

Delaunay inquired of a number of merchants regarding the industrial

capacity of the two sexes, and was informed that women are more diligent

than men, but less intelligent, so that they can be trusted only in

routine work.

In general, the experience of the postal service coincided with what has

already been stated. Havelock Ellis regarded the result of an inquiry

made at several of the large English post-offices as “typical and

trustworthy.” One of the chief postmasters was of the opinion that as

counter and instrumental clerks, doing concurrently money-order and

savings-bank business, taking in telegrams and signalling and receiving,

and in attending to rough and illiterate persons, women clerks were

preferable to men. Women telegraphists work as intelligently and as

exactly as their male colleagues. They do not, however, like the men,

exhibit an interest in the technical working of telegraphy; and, owing

to a lack of staying power, they are unable to compete with the men in

times of pressure. The comparatively slighter strength of the wrist made

it difficult for women telegraphists to write at the desired speed, and

to produce the requisite number of copies.

All the reports agree in this--that

“Women are more docile and amenable to discipline, they do light work

as well as men, and are steadier in some respects; on the other hand,

they more often remain away from work on the ground of trifling

indisposition, are more likely to fail to meet severe demands, and

show less intelligence in respect of tasks lying outside the course of

their current work, and in general show less desire and less capacity

for self-culture.”

Unquestionable is the =greater suggestibility= of women, doubtless

dependent on organic peculiarities, in consequence of which they so

quickly become subject to the influence of persons and opinions, when

the latter exercise a sufficiently powerful effect upon their emotional

life. The independent, the poietic,[26] are more distant from women, are

more foreign to their nature, than in the case of men. But that these

are quite impossible to them I am compelled to doubt. And when, for

example, Havelock Ellis considers it unthinkable that a woman should

have discovered the Copernican system, I need merely call to mind the

widely known physical discoveries of Madame Curie, whose thoroughly

independent work qualified her to succeed her husband as professor at

the Sorbonne. We cannot therefore exclude the possibility that in the

sphere of the natural sciences notable discoveries and inventions may be

made in the future in consequence of the independent work of women.

Very interesting are the observations of Paul Lafitte on the differences

between the higher intellectual qualities of man and woman. After

drawing attention to the greater receptivity of woman, he says:

“When children of both sexes are educated together, during the first

year the girls lead; at this time they have to do chiefly with the

reception and retention of impressions, and we see every day that

women put men in the shade by the vividness of their impressions and

the excellence of their memory. In addition to this we must take into

account the inborn sense of women for symmetry, from which it is

readily explicable that they generally receive geometrical instruction

with very beneficial results. In correspondence with this, we find

that woman students of medicine excel in the examinations in

physiology and general pathology, and show a clearness of apprehension

of series of facts which is really remarkable; on the other hand, they

are distinctly inferior in clinical investigations, in which other

intellectual qualities are involved. In general, women are more

receptive for facts than for laws, more for the concrete than for

general ideas. If we chance to hear an opinion expressed regarding

someone with whom we are acquainted, a man’s opinion will probably be

more accurate in the general outlines, but a woman’s will show a

clearer perception of the nuances of character.”

Thus it is that among women concrete philosophers are greater favourites

than abstract metaphysicians. According to the experience of a London

bookseller, ladies of the West End of London prefer Schopenhauer, Plato,

Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Renan; that is to say, the most

concrete, the most personal, the most poetical, and the most religious

of thinkers. This last quality especially fascinates the mind of woman.

At the same time, want of relationship between the strong suggestibility

of woman and her slight power of independent production also strikingly

manifests itself in woman’s position with regard to the =religious=

phenomena of the spiritual life. Havelock Ellis shows that ninety-nine

in every hundred of the great religious movements of the world have

received their initial impulse from men. And yet it has always been

women who have been the first to attach themselves to the founders of

religions.

In contrast with this, women appear to possess more independent

significance in the sphere of =politics=, as is shown by the fact that

there has been such a large number of celebrated women rulers.

Diplomatic adroitness, finesse, and self-command, to the extent to which

these qualities favour political activity, are indeed specific feminine

peculiarities.

The above-mentioned greater suggestibility of woman is connected with

her greater =emotivity=; that is, woman reacts to physical and psychical

stimuli more quickly than man. The “vasomotor theory” of the emotions,

originated by Mosso and C. Lange, is true to a greater extent of woman

than of man. Woman’s neuro-muscular system is more irritable, as is

especially shown in the case of the pupil of the eye, and in that of the

urinary bladder. By Mosso and Pellacani the bladder is termed the most

sensitive psychometer in the body. Contraction of the bladder is well

known to occur in many emotional states, such as fear, expectation,

tension, and bashfulness. This is much commoner in women and children

than in men. The fact that in women under the influence of strong

excitement there arises a powerful impulse to urinate, is a fact

extremely well known to medical men and others with special

opportunities for observation.

The greater neuro-muscular irritability of woman may also be explained

as the result of the relatively greater size of her abdominal organs.

To this greater =irritability= of woman there corresponds a =greater

susceptibility to fatigue=. It appears as a result of any long-lasting

task; it is, in fact, a safeguard against over-exertion, which in man so

commonly leads to complete exhaustion, because he works =too= long. The

ease with which a woman becomes exhausted is no doubt partly dependent

upon the physiological anæmia to which we alluded in the last

chapter--to the larger quantity of water and the smaller quantity of red

blood-corpuscles (erythrocytes) in her blood.

Havelock Ellis has detected a decline in the emotivity of modern woman,

under the influence of custom and education, especially as a result of

the great diffusion of bodily sports among girls. But he does not

believe that anything of the kind can lead to a complete abolition of

the emotional differences between the sexes, since these depend upon

firmly established bodily differences, such as the greater extension of

the sexual sphere and of the visceral functions in woman, upon woman’s

physiological anæmia, and upon the more marked periodicity of her vital

processes.

“So many factors work in combination, in order to give a basis for the

play of the emotions, whose greater extension can be overcome by no

alteration of the _milieu_, or of custom. The emotivity of woman may

be reduced to finer and more delicate shades, but it can never be

brought down to the level of the emotivity of the male sex.”

In respect of =artistic endowment= the male sex is unquestionably

superior to the female. The long series of male poets, musicians,

painters, sculptors, of the highest genius cannot be matched by any

notable number of striking female personalities in the same sphere of

artistic activity. Even the art of cooking has been further developed by

men. Without doubt the differences in sexuality are the principal causes

of this deficiency. The impetuous, aggressive character of the male

sexual impulse also favours poietic endeavours, the transformation of

sexual energy into higher plastic activity, as it fulfils itself in the

moments of most exalted artistic conception. The greater variability of

the male also serves to explain the greater frequency of male artists

of the first rank.

John Hunter, Burdach, Darwin, Havelock Ellis, and others, have shown

that there exists a greater tendency on the part of man to divergence

from type. In the course of evolution, man represents the more variable

and progressive, woman the more monotonous and conservative, moiety

of mankind. These differences find no less clear expression in

the psychical sphere. Notwithstanding increasing individual

differentiation--in truth, affecting only the minority, the _élite_

among women, as Rosa Mayreder very rightly insists--this great

difference in the variability of the sexes will ever continue. This

biological fact is certainly of great importance in respect of

civilization and of the relation between the sexes.

In a comparison between man and woman, the important fact of

=menstruation= must never be forgotten. Menstruation is only the

expression, only a phase, of a continuous undulatory movement in the

entire feminine organism. The intellectual and emotional state of woman

is, beyond question, a different one in different phases of the monthly

cycle. Icard, and recently Francillon (“Essai sur la Puberté chez la

Femme”--“Essay on Puberty in Woman,” pp. 189-198; Paris, 1906), have

given us exact information on this subject.

“In all tests of strength and cleverness,” says Havelock Ellis, “the

woman’s degree of strength and exactitude is related to the level of

her monthly curve. Moreover, in every criminal procedure, the relation

between the time of occurrence of the alleged crime and the accused’s

monthly cycle should invariably be taken into consideration.”

The results obtained by Helen Bradford Thompson by experimental research

in her “Comparative Psychology of the Sexes” (Würzburg, 1905) agree in

general with the details we have already given as the result of earlier

researches. In her experiment also

“man proved better developed in respect of motor capacity and accuracy

of judgment. Woman had, indeed, sharper senses and a better memory.

The opinion, however, that emotional excitement plays a greater part

in the life of woman has not been confirmed. On the contrary, woman’s

greater tendency towards religion and towards superstition is a proof

of her conservative nature, of her function to guard established

beliefs and modes of action.”

Thus we cannot expel from the world the fact that man and woman are

eminently =different= alike physically and mentally. Whether, as Alfons

Bilharz declares, they are really throughout equivalent opposites, or,

as he expresses the comparison, like +1 and -1, their sum is equivalent

to nil, must remain at present undetermined. But that ineradicable

differences exist is certain. There is no question here of an

inferiority to man. What woman lacks on one side she has more of on

another. She is through and through a creature =constructed on other

lines=, standing nearer to Nature than man, and for this reason, like

Nature, =problematical=, the great guardian of the secrets of Nature

(Bärenbach).

“Who shall explain the wonderful

Magic power of woman?”

says Platen, thus touching an aspect of ancient German sentiment, which

has also found expression in the _sanctum aut providum_ of Tacitus.

Ovid, Byron, Börne, and Rousseau, have also described the wonderful and

mysterious influence of woman’s nature, fundamentally different from

that of man. Most beautifully has it been described by Theodor Mundt in

the following magnificent passage of his book on Charlotte Stieglitz:

“The most secret elements of woman’s nature, in association with the

magic mystery of her organization, indicate the existence in her of

peculiar and deep-lying creative ideas, and in this wonderful riddle

of love we find the sympathetic of the entire universe expressed. The

sympathetic, which attracts and binds forces, the silent music in the

innermost being of the world’s soul, by means of which the stars, the

suns, bodies, spirits, are compelled to move in this eternal,

changeable rhythm, and in this continuous opposition--is the feminine

of the universe. This is the eternal feminine, of which Goethe says

that it draws us heavenward. Therefore there is nothing deeper, more

gentle, more unsearchable, than a woman’s heart. All-movable, it

extends into that wonderful distance of existence, and hears with fine

nerves the most hidden elements of existence. Touched and shaken by

every sound, like a spiritual harp, the most hidden aspects of nature

and of life often evoke in its strings prophetic oscillations. The

feminine is something common to all life, the most gentle psyche of

existence, and hence the fine connexion of the feminine nature with

the general organizations, operations, and world forces; hence the

mysterious force of attraction which exercises itself in such a magic

manner as the true pole of sex, as though each one only in, and with,

the true feminine could first find peace.... The ancients made a

remarkable use of this idea of a common feminine element in human

nature, inasmuch as by the name they gave to the pupil of the eye they

expressed the idea that =a young girl was to be found in every man’s

eye=. Young girls (pupillæ, κοραι)--these formed the centre of the

human eye, as Winkelmann points out; and is it possible to describe

the eye more aptly and distinctively, this radiant chiaroscuro of the

hidden basis of the soul, than by ascribing femininity to

it--femininity, which rises from that hidden basis of the soul as an

Anadyomene rises from the deep?”

Nietzsche speaks also of the “veil” of beautiful possibilities with

which woman is covered, and which makes the charm of her life. This

undefinable spiritual emanation, this dark, irrational element in woman,

led von Hippel to coin the clever phrase that woman is a comma, man a

full-stop. “With man, you know where you are--you have come to an end;

but with woman, there is something more to be expected.” From this

inward nature of woman there proceed immense results: the feminine

essence is a civilizing factor of the first rank; were woman wanting,

civilization would be non-existent. Very beautifully has the great

Buckle drawn attention to the indispensability of woman for the

spiritual progress of mankind. He remarks that men, the slaves of

experience and of fact, have only the women to thank for the fact that

their slavery has not become much more complete and more narrowing.

Women’s way of thinking, their spiritual care, their intercourse, their

influence, diffuse themselves unnoticed through the whole of society,

and take their place throughout its entire structure. By means of this

influence, more than by any other cause, we men have been conducted,

says Buckle, to a completely thought-out world.

This obscure, wonderful nature of woman has, however, its shadowy side.

Upon it depends that primitive, deeply-rooted =antipathy of the sexes=,

which is due to their profound heterogeneity, to the impossibility that

they can ever really understand one another. Herein lie the roots of the

brutal enslavement of woman by man in the course of history; of the

belief in witchcraft; of contempt for women, and the continued renewal

of theoretical misogyny. The victory of sexual love over this contrast

is often apparent only. Leopardi, and Theophile Gautier (in

“Mademoiselle de Maupin”), have shown how little woman understands the

inner nature of man; how little man understands woman has been

poetically described by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff.

For this reason, true love is an understanding of the contrasted

natures, a solution of the riddle. “Être aimé, c’est être compris,” says

Delphine de Girardin.

What significance for the so-called “woman’s question” has the

determination of the existence of psychical sexual differences? We

answer: =The nature of woman, completely developed in all her

peculiarities, and enriched throughout her being by all the spiritual

elements of our times adequate to her being, ensures her an equal share

in civilization and in the progress of humanity.=

Complete equality between man and woman is impossible. But are all

sides of woman’s nature as yet adequately worked upon, fully developed?

Is not the civilized woman of the future still to be created? The true

nucleus of the woman’s movement is, I conceive, to be found in the

emancipation of woman from the dominion of pure sensuality, and from the

not less disastrous dominion of masculine spiritual arrogance. Have we

men really any right to pride ourselves to such a degree upon our

knowledge and intelligence? Should we =without= woman have advanced

anything like so far?

A glance at the beginnings of human civilization should teach us a

little modesty, for there we see that woman was equal, if not superior,

to man in productive, poietic activity. Gradually only, in the progress

of civilization, man supplanted woman, and monopolized all spheres of

productive activity, whilst woman was limited more and more to domestic

occupations. According to Karl Bücher, to women were originally allotted

all the labours connected with the obtaining and subsequent utilization

of vegetable materials, also the provision of the apparatus and vessels

necessary for this purpose; to man, on the other hand, were allotted the

chase, fishing, herding, and the provision of weapons and tools. Thus

woman was engaged in threshing and grinding the grain, in baking bread,

in the preparation of food and drink, in the making of pots, and in

spinning. Since these occupations are largely conducted in a rhythmical

manner, and the women worked together in the fields or in their huts,

while the men hunted singly in the forests, it resulted that women were

the first creators of poetry and music.

“Not,” writes Bücher, “upon the steep summits of society did poetry

originate; it sprung rather from the depths of the pure strong soul of

the people. =Women have striven to produce it; and as civilized man

owes to woman’s work much the best of his possessions, so also are her

thought and her poetry interwoven in the spiritual treasure handed

down from generation to generation.= To follow the traces of woman’s

poetry farther, in the intellectual life of the people, would be a

valuable exercise. Although these traces have to a large extent

disappeared, during the subsequent period of man’s poetic activity,

which appears to have gained predominance in proportion as men

monopolized the labours of material production, still, in a number of

races the influence of woman’s poetry can be followed for a long way

into the literary period.”

=To a large extent men first learned from women the elements of the

various handicrafts.= For instance, as Mason says, primeval woman gave

her “ulu”[27] to the saddler, and taught him the mode of preparing

leather. Women were the first discoverers of numerous industries and

handicrafts. The further development of these in later times was the

work of men; men alone understood how to differentiate their work, while

from the first it was inevitable that motherhood should greatly limit

the working powers of woman.

In the middle ages there still existed in Europe, especially in Germany

and France, certain industries which were exclusively in the hands of

women--for instance, the silk-spinners, silk-weavers, tailoresses, and

girdle-makers. In all these occupations there were mistresses, maids,

and female apprentices. It was not until the sixteenth century that

manufactures became a monopoly of the male sex. In the eighteenth

century women were actually forbidden by law to take part in

manufactures, until in recent times a reaction in their favour took

place.

Therefore we must not from the present conditions judge the capacity of

women for practical activity outside the home. I quite agree with

Gerland, who assumes that during this oppression of the female sex for

thousands of years, a certain deteriorating influence must have been

exercised, and I agree also with Havelock Ellis, who hopes much from the

development in the civilization of the future of an equal freedom for

man and woman, and who demands that we should acquire experience by

unlimited experiment regarding the qualifications of the female sex for

all departments of activity. Golden words as to the necessity for a

comprehensive emancipation of woman were uttered in 1865 by the

celebrated anthropologist Thomas Huxley, in his essay on

“Emancipation--Black and White,” in which he strongly condemns the

present system for the education of girls:

“Let us have ‘sweet girl graduates’ by all means. They will be none

the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the ‘golden hair’ will not

curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains

within. Nay, if obvious practical difficulties can be overcome, let

those women who feel inclined to do so descend into the gladiatorial

arena of life, not merely in the guise of _retiariæ_, as heretofore,

but as bold _sicariæ_, breasting the open fray. Let them, if they so

please, become merchants, barristers, politicians. Let them have a

fair field, but let them understand, as the necessary correlative,

that they are to have no favour. Let Nature alone sit high above the

lists, ‘rain influence and judge the prize.’”

And that men would maintain their old position cannot be doubted. The

only change would be that women, too, would take part in the work of

civilization.[28] They would introduce a new and fresh element into

this work; and inasmuch as every woman would be brought up

systematically with a view to her life’s work, the physically and

psychically disastrous idleness of unmarried young girls, of “old

maids,” and of “misunderstood women,” would come to an end, and these

unattractive types would pass away for ever. The work of mother and

housewife must, in correspondence with these changes, be more highly

esteemed than has hitherto been the case. The technique and the theory

of domestic economy can even now, with sufficient intelligence devoted

to the question, be remodelled and transformed to a satisfying

activity.[29]

Woman is an integral constituent of the processes of civilization,

which, without her, becomes unthinkable. The present moment is a

turning-point in the history of the feminine world. The woman of the

past is disappearing, to give place to the woman of the future; instead

of the bound, there appears the =free personality=.

APPENDIX: SEXUAL SENSIBILITY IN WOMAN

An old and still unsettled subject of dispute is the strength and nature

of sexual sensibility in woman. Whilst the manifestation of sexual

appetite and sexual enjoyment in the male are fairly simple--and in man,

as A. Eulenburg has proved, the copulatory impulse is much more powerful

than the reproductive impulse--the sexual sensibility of woman is still

involved in obscurity. Magendie remarked that no two women are exactly

alike in respect of their sexual sensations and perceptions. There is no

question that among women the varieties of erotic type are far more

numerous than among men. Rosa Mayreder, for instance, distinguishes an

erotic-eccentric, an altruistic-sentimental, and an egoistic-frigid

type. The attempt has been made to prove that the last-named type is the

most widely diffused--that it is, in fact, the characteristic type of

woman. Lombroso and Ferrero were the first to maintain the slight sexual

sensibility of woman; Harry Campbell took the same view; and recently a

Berlin physician--Dr. O. Adler--has published a book on the “Deficient

Sexual Sensibility of Woman,” the conclusions of which are that

“the sexual impulse (desire, libido) of woman is, alike in its first

spontaneous origin and in its later manifestation, notably less

intense than that of man; and further, that libido must first be

aroused in a suitable manner, and that often it never appears at all.”

Albert Eulenburg, in an article in _Zukunft_ (December 2, 1893), and

later in his “Sexual Neuropathy,” pp. 88, 89 (Leipzig, 1895), first

opposed this doctrine of the physiological sexual anæsthesia of woman,

and quoted in support of his view the following passage from the

writings of the celebrated gynæcologist Kisch:

“The sexual impulse is so powerful, in certain life periods it is an

elementary force which so overwhelmingly dominates the entire organism

of woman, that it leaves no room in her mind for thoughts of

reproduction; on the contrary, she greatly desires sexual intercourse

even when she is very much afraid of becoming pregnant or when there

can be no question of any pregnancy occurring” (see Kisch, “The Sexual

Life of Woman,” English translation, Rebman, 1908).

I have myself asked a great many cultured women about this matter.

=Without exception=, they declared the theory of the lesser sexual

sensibility of women to be erroneous; many were even of opinion that

sexual sensibility was greater and more enduring in woman than in

man.[30]

When we actually consider the physical bases of feminine sexuality, we

must admit that women’s sexual sphere is a much =more widely extended=

one than that of men. The author of “Splitter” has very well

characterized this fact when he says:

“Women are in fact pure sex from knees to neck. We men have

concentrated our apparatus in a single place, we have extracted it,

separated it from the rest of the body, because _prèt à partir_. They

(women) are a great sexual =surface= or target; we =have= only a

sexual =arrow=. Procreation is their proper element, and when they are

engaged in it they remain at home in their own sphere; we for this

purpose must go elsewhere out of ourselves. In the matter of time also

our part in procreation is concentrated. We may devote to the matter

barely ten minutes; women give as many months. Properly speaking, they

procreate unceasingly, they stand continually at the witches’

cauldron, boiling and brewing; while we lend a hand merely in passing,

and do no more than throw one or two fragments into the vessel.”

It is possible, however, that the greater extension of the sexual sphere

in woman gives rise, if one may use the expression, to a greater

dispersal of sexual sensations, which are not, as they are in man,

closely concentrated to a particular point, and for this reason the

spontaneous resolution of the libido (in the form of the sexual orgasm)

is rendered more difficult.

Recently Havelock Ellis has made a searching investigation into the

nature of the sexual impulse in woman. He found the following

differences by which it was distinguished from the sexual impulse of the

male:

1. The sexual impulse of woman shows greater external passivity.

2. It is more complicated, less readily arises spontaneously, more

frequently needs external stimulus, while the orgasm develops more

slowly than in man.

3. It develops in its full strength only after the commencement of

regular sexual intercourse.

4. The boundary beyond which sexual excess begins is less easily reached

than in man.

5. The sexual sphere has a greater extension, and is more diffusely

distributed than in man.

6. The spontaneous appearances of sexual desire have a marked tendency

to periodicity.[31]

7. The sexual impulse exhibits in woman greater variability, a greater

extent of variation, than in man--alike when we examine separate

feminine individuals, and when we compare the different phases in the

life of the same woman.

This great extension of the feminine sexual sphere is illustrated, for

example, by the case reported by Moraglia, of a woman who was able to

induce sexual excitement by the masturbation of fourteen different areas

of her body.

How much more woman is sexuality than man is can be observed in asylums,

where the conventional inhibitions are withdrawn. Here, according to

Shaw’s observations, the women greatly exceed the men in fluency,

malignity, and =obscenity=; and in this relation there is no difference

between the shameless virago from the most depraved classes of London

and the elegant lady of the upper circles. Noise, uncleanliness, and

sexual depravity in speech and demeanour, are much commoner in the

women’s wards of asylums than on the male side. In all forms of acute

mental disorder, according to Shaw, the sexual element plays a much more

prominent part in woman than in man.

Another experienced alienist, Dr. E. Bleuler, confirms this permeation

of woman with sexuality. In a recently published work he remarks:

“The whole ‘career’ in the average woman depends on sexuality;

marriage, or some equivalent of marriage, signifies to her what to man

a position in business signifies--viz., her ambition in all relations,

the happily conducted struggle for simple existence, as well as for

pleasure and for all else that life can bring, and only after these,

sexuality also, and the joy of having children. Not to marry, and also

extra-conjugal sexual indulgence, induce in woman inevitable

consequences, with strongly marked emotional colouring; to the average

man all this is a trifling affair, or it may even be a matter of

absolute indifference. And we have further to consider the limits

imposed by our civilization, which make it impossible for the

well-brought-up woman to live, and even to think, as she pleases in

sexual matters, and which demand the actual suppression of sexual

emotions, not merely of the outward manifestation of these emotions.

Is it to be wondered at that in these circumstances, in mentally

disordered women, we encounter once more the suppressed sexual

feelings, those sexual feelings which really comprise at least half of

our natural existence?--I say =at least= half, for the analogous

impulse, the nutritive impulse, seems really to be inferior in

strength to the sexual impulse, in civilized as well as in savage

human beings.”

In the majority of cases the sexual frigidity of woman is, in fact,

apparent merely--either because behind the veil prescribed by

conventional morality, behind the apparent coldness, there is concealed

an ardent sexuality, or else because the particular man with whom she

has had intercourse has not succeeded rightly in awakening her erotic

sensibility, so complicated and so difficult to arouse.[32] When he has

succeeded in doing so, the sexual insensibility will in the majority of

cases disappear. A striking example of this is seen in the following

case:

=Case of Temporary Sexual Anæsthesia.=--Girl twenty years of age.

Early awakening of the sexual impulses. Already practised onanism at

the age of five years; often for the sake of sexual stimulation

introduced hairpins into the vagina, until one day one of these

remained, and had to be removed by operation. Notwithstanding this,

she soon resumed masturbation, using for this purpose a finger, a

candle, etc. Ultimately this became a daily practice, which she

continued until she was eighteen years of age. She then first had

sexual intercourse with a man, in which, however, she remained quite

cold; this was the case also in subsequent attempts with this man and

with others. Finally she met a man with whom she was in sympathy, who

succeeded in inducing in her sexual gratification, by exchange of

rôles, and corresponding alteration in the position in intercourse.

Later, intercourse in the normal position also induced complete sexual

gratification; since then onanism has been entirely discontinued, and

in coitus the orgasm occurs speedily in one or two minutes.

Where sexual frigidity in woman is enduring in character, we have to do

either with inherited influences, with sexual developmental inhibition,

the psycho-sexual infantilism of Eulenburg, or with some disease

(especially hysteria and other nervous disorders), and with the

consequences of habitual masturbation.

Speaking generally, the sexual sensibility of woman is, as we have seen,

of quite a different nature from that of man; but in intensity it is at

least as great as that of man.

[24] The hermaphroditic idea of antiquity has repeatedly fascinated

the human spirit. It certainly cannot be denied that something great

and noble underlay this idea of overcoming sex. As long as eighty

years before, Weininger and the modern apostles of bisexuality, Johann

Michael Leupoldt, Professor of Medicine at the University of Erlangen,

made the following prophecy: “_The reconciliation of the sexual

contrast in every human individual will some day proceed so far_ that,

dynamically understood, _with the general attainment of a kind of

hermaphroditism_, humanity, having reached its earthly goal, will

become totally extinct” (“Eubiotik oder Grundzüge der Kunst, als

Mensch richtig, tüchtig, wohl und lang zu leben”--“Eubiotics, or

Principles of the Art of Living as Man Rightly, Virtuously, Well, and

Long,” pp. 232, 233; Berlin and Leipzig, 1828). This would amount to a

kind of natural realization of E. von Hartmann’s ideal of conscious

self-annihilation at the end of time!

[25] G. Hirth, “Entropy of the Germinal System and Hereditary

Enfranchisement,” pp. 89, 90 (Munich, 1900).

[26] See note (^{36}), p. 94.

[27] The “ulu” is a kind of knife used by Eskimo women.

[28] _Cf._ in this connexion, Alice Salomon, “The Choice of a

Profession for Girls”; Josephine Levy-Rathenau, “A Consideration of

the Various Professions for Women, Qualifications and Prospects”;

Elizabeth Altmann-Gottheiner, “A Study of Woman.” These are all

published in “Das Buch vom Kinde” (“The Book of the Child”), edited by

Adele Schreiber, Leipzig and Berlin, 1907, vol. ii., Div. 2, pp.

182-188, 189-209, 210-216 (contains an abstract of the most important

literature of the subject).

[29] On this subject one of our most celebrated economists writes as

follows: “Let us observe what to-day a good housewife of the middle

class is able to get through in the way of domestic and hygienic

activity, and of the education of children, and by means of the

knowledge and employment of domestic machines; let us not overlook in

what a one-sided way the great advances in natural science and in the

mechanical arts have hitherto been devoted to the service of the great

industries, what enormous economies are still possible if the same

knowledge and intelligence are devoted to the amelioration of domestic

service. Only the rough, barbarous housewife of the lower classes can

say, ‘I have no more to-day to do in the house.’ When the mode of life

is a healthy one, when to every dwelling-house is attached a garden,

the housewife even to-day is fully occupied, and in the future will be

still more so, notwithstanding all the schools that come to her

assistance, all the shops, all the trades; notwithstanding all the

products, including food-products, which nowadays she buys ready-made.

And besides her domestic activity, she has to find time for lectures,

for culture, for music, and for various socially useful

activities--even women of quite the lower classes. Without this no

social cure is possible.”--G. SCHMOLLER, “Elements of General Domestic

Economy,” vol. i., p. 253 (Leipzig, 1901).

THE SIMPLIFICATION OF HOUSEHOLD DUTIES.--English readers will find the

questions briefly touched upon in this note--the enslavement of woman

by an unceasing round of petty domestic toil, the necessity for

devoting the same amount of finished intelligence to these domestic

problems that has been devoted to “labour-saving” in most departments

of masculine activity, and the lines on which future progress may be

expected to move, bringing about in this way alone a much-needed

“emancipation” of women--fully discussed by Mr. H. G. Wells in his

sociological studies. See “Anticipations,” “Mankind in the Making,” “A

New Utopia,” “In the Days of the Comet.”--TRANSLATOR.

[30] Noteworthy is the following utterance of a clergyman regarding

the sensuality of country girls: “Young women are in no way behind

young men in the strength of their fleshly lusts; they are only too

willing to be seduced--so =willing= that even older girls frequently

give themselves to half-grown boys, and =girls give themselves to

several men in brief succession=. Moreover, it is by no means always

the young men by whom the seduction is effected. Often enough =it is

the girls who lure the lads to sexual intercourse=, in which case they

do not wait till the lads come to their rooms, but they go themselves

to the young men’s bedrooms, or wait for them in their beds.”--C.

WAGNER, “The State of Affairs as Regards Sexual Morality among the

Evangelical Agricultural Population of the German Empire,” vol. i.,

sec. 2, p. 213 (Leipzig, 1897).

[31] E. Heinrich Kisch (“The Sexual Life of Woman,” English

translation, Rebman, 1908) names the =ovaries= “regulators of the

sexual impulse.” In the ovary, and in the periodical changes that

occur in that organ, are to be found the fundamental cause, and the

means of regulation, of the =sexual impulse=; in the clitoris is the

seat of =voluptuous sensibility=.

[32] Georg Hirth remarks very aptly (“Ways to Love,” Munich, 1906, p.

570): “For it is the task of the man to summon his whole power of

self-command, to employ all his skill, to take all the care in his

power, that the woman may be, as one says, ‘ready.’ The man who thinks

only of his own gratification, and who leaves his partner ungratified,

is a brutal being, or, if not brutal, he is simply ignorant of the

harm he is doing.... In general, the man has the _tempo_ of

gratification much better and more securely under control than the

woman; in many women, indeed, the sexual orgasm is very difficult to

induce, and in such cases the man must help with skill and

tenderness.”

CHAPTER VI

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT IN LOVE--RELIGION AND SEXUALITY

“_The more dearly we understand how the indeterminate sexual attractive

force of the most lowly organisms has, by a continuous addition of

psychical elements, slowly developed into the love of the higher species

of animals and of mankind, the sooner shall we be inclined to attribute

to this sentiment the importance which it deserves. Then we shall no

longer be able to regard it as an individual imagination, which has no

relation to reality and no roots in the depths of life. It will become

to us a measuring rule for the stage of evolution to which we have

attained._”--CHARLES ALBERT.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VI

Influence of the development of the brain upon the sexual impulse --

Relations between speech and love -- The psychic-emotional roots of

love -- Love as a product of civilization -- Relation between the

physical and the spiritual poietic impulse -- The “function-impulse”

of Dr. Santlus -- Psychical sexual equivalents -- Schopenhauer, Hirth,

and Mantagazza, on this subject -- Rôle of sexuality in the feelings

of life -- The organic necessity of love -- Sexual philosophy -- The

Marquis de Sade -- Otto Weininger -- Max Zeiss -- Relations of love to

the individual feelings of personality -- The reproductive impulse and

the conjugative impulse -- Love and love’s embrace as a personal aim.

The psychogenetic fundamental law of love -- The way of the spirit in

love -- Its tendency from the general to the individual -- From the

remote to the proximate -- Love as a transcendental and as a personal

relationship.

The association of religio-metaphysical ideas with the sexual life --

A general anthropological phenomenon -- Anthropomorphistic-animistic

explanation of the relation between religion and the sexual life --

Billroth’s scientific analysis of religious perception -- L.

Feuerback, M’Lennan, and Tylor on this subject -- My own description

of the psychological processes in the association between the

religious and the sexual life -- The deification of love according to

E. von Mayer -- Strongest in women -- Vicarious religions and sexual

perceptions -- History of religio-sexual phenomena -- Religious

prostitution -- Single and repeated acts of religious prostitution --

Sexual self-surrender to the deity or his representative --

Defloration by divine symbols -- Defloration deities among the

Indians, the Jews, and the Romans -- Religious defloration by

representatives of the deity -- The Babylonian Mylitta-cult --

Diffusion and explanation thereof -- Religious prostitution in India

-- Among primitive peoples -- Bachofen’s brilliant explanation of

religious prostitution as a counteraction to the individualization of

love -- Contempt for virginity among primitive peoples -- Permanent

religious prostitution -- Sexual intercourse as a consecrated act --

The temple-girls of the Greeks, Phœnicians, and Indians -- The Indian

“nautch-girls” -- The sense of eternity in the religious and the

sexual impulse -- Sexual mysticism -- Religio-erotic festivals --

Their wide diffusion -- Examples from antiquity, from India, and from

Central and South America -- Sexual mysticism in Christianity --

Religio-sexual sects -- The “unio mystica” -- The primiz, or mystical

marriage -- Mariolatry -- A religious poem.

Asceticism -- Its origin -- Metchnikoffs explanation of the origin of

asceticism -- Disharmonies of the sexual life -- Psychology of

ascetics -- Their hypersexuality -- Great antiquity and ubiquity of

asceticism -- The asceticism of the Indians, Mohammedans, and

Christians -- Preoccupation of Christian ascetics with sexual matters

-- Sexual visions -- Dissolute sects -- Monastic and cloistral life --

Modern asceticism -- Its difference from ancient asceticism -- Its

connexion with actual experiences -- Example of Schopenhauer --

Hitherto unpublished evidence of the relationship between his ascetic

views and his own life -- Tolstoi on the sorrows of voluptuousness --

His relative asceticism -- Weininger’s renewal of early Christian

asceticism -- Its cause -- Characteristics of Weininger’s book.

The belief in witchcraft -- The principal source of all misogyny and

contempt of women -- Not a Christian discovery -- Primeval association

between sexuality and magic -- The sexual origin of the belief in

witchcraft -- Devil’s mistresses -- The predisponents of the medieval

belief in witchcraft -- Continuance of this belief into our own times

-- Rôle of sexuality in pastoral medicine -- External and internal

causation of the theological treatment of sexual problems -- Sexual

casuistic literature -- The religious factor in the sexual life of the

present day -- Sexual excesses of modern sects -- The revival of

romanticism -- Experiences of an elderly physician regarding religion

and sexuality -- Deprivation of love and satiety of love as sources of

religious needs -- Significance of the religious factor in the history

of love -- Subordinate rôle of this in the individualization of the

sentiment of love.

CHAPTER VI

If, with Friedrich Ratzel, we understand by civilization the sum total

of all the mental acquirements of a period, then also human love, this

specific product of civilization, is merely a mirrored picture of the

mental activities of the existing epoch of civilization. We can follow

this =way of the spirit in love= from the primitive age down to the

present day, and we can detect, in each successive epoch of

civilization, the association with sexuality of peculiar spiritual

states; and after thus passing in review the thousands of years of human

history, we can discern once more in our own epoch the individual

psychical elements which characterize the love of modern civilized man.

The increasing spiritualization and idealization of sensuality in the

course of civilization, =notwithstanding= the persistence of the

elementary intensity of the sexual impulse, is associated with the fact

to which we have already alluded--namely, the preponderance of the brain

characteristic of the genus homo--a preponderance which was

unquestionably gradually acquired, and arose in consequence of an

accumulation of original variations which gave their possessors a

certain advantage in the struggle for existence.

Thus very gradually the primary, instinctive, still powerful animal ego

underwent expansion into the secondary ego (in Meynert’s sense), into

the =spiritual personality=, to which a fixed foundation was given by

the possession of =speech=. With some justice the origin of speech has

been singled out as extremely significant for the development of the

feeling of love; and the conquest of the primitive animal instinct has

been, above all, attributed to this faculty. A. Cabral, in his

interesting work, “La Vénus Génitrix” (Paris, 1882, p. 155), expresses

the opinion that speech and song developed solely on account of sexual

relations; and he alludes in support of this view to the well-known

manifold noises made by various animals in conditions of sexual

excitement. It is very significant in this connexion that

anthropological science has proved, as an important fact in racial

psychology, that the development of poetry =preceded= that of prose.[33]

The original form of speech was rhythmical noise, a poem, a song. And

we saw above that this was subservient to more suggestive purposes, and,

above all, to sexual allurement. Thus the primitive natural connexion

between speech and sexuality appears somewhat probable. With these

earlier erotic noises and alluring tones were subsequently associated

the first elements of intellectual comprehension, the first =thoughts=.

This “withdrawal of mankind from pure instinct,” which Schiller, in his

essay on the earliest human society, describes as the “most fortunate

and most important occurrence in human history,” from which time the

struggle towards freedom may be said to begin, gradually enabled the

higher =feeling-tones= of sensation to become more predominant. The

elementary impulses became associated with sensations of pleasure and

pain as psychical reactions. The “organic sensations” entered the sphere

of consciousness, and so gave rise, in association and reciprocal

working with the higher sensory stimuli, to the psychico-emotional roots

of the impulses. Thus, in the sexual sphere, out of pure voluptuousness,

the simple instinctive impulse towards copulation, arose =love=, whose

essence is an intimate association of physical sensations with feelings

and thoughts, with the entire spiritual and emotional being of

mankind.[34]

“Love,” says Charles Albert, “is the result of all the forward steps

of human activity in all departments, and in every direction, as

manifested in their effects upon the sexual life. It is an advance

which goes hand in hand with all other advances. Man is an inseparable

whole, and in theory only can he be subdivided into separate

faculties. In reality, indeed, all departments of human development

are so intimately associated that progress in any one of them must

place something to the credit of all.”

Increasing psychical refinement and differentiation of the human type,

domination of the intelligence and of emotion over brute force,

transformation of the social relations between man and woman in

consequence of economic conditions or of religious and moral ideas,

respect for personality, a secured provision for the most pressing vital

needs, and a consequent elevation and complication of the sexual life,

the influence of a longing for ideal beauty in a psychical and moral

sense--all these and much more have contributed to constitute sexual

love in the sense in which we understand and experience it at the

present day. The speech of the lover of our own time is the

comprehensive expression of all human progress. The difference between

animal rutting and the lofty sensation of love corresponds exactly to

the gulf which separates primitive man, capable only of chipping for

himself a few almost useless flint tools, from civilized man who, with

the aid of innumerable machines, has tamed to his service the elementary

forces of Nature.

We must recur to the earliest beginnings of the evolution of the human

psyche in its association with sexuality, in order to understand the

=profound= and =primitive= connexion between the bodily and the

spiritual formative impulse; this connexion has been expressed by the

saying that the sexual impulse is the father of all those intellectual

impulses peculiar to man which have made him a thinker and a discoverer.

In the time of Schelling’s natural philosophy, they went so far as to

speak of the “testicular hemispheres” as analogous to the hemispheres of

the brain. And is not this connexion also expressed etymologically (in

German) in the verbal association of _Zeugung_ (procreation) and

_Ueberzeugung_ (certainty, _i.e._, higher, or intellectual,

procreation), and, further, by the fact that in the Hebrew tongue the

ideas of “procreation” and “cognition” are jointly represented by a

=single= term? And, returning to the physical sphere, it may be

mentioned that, according to Moebius (“Ueber die Wirkungen der

Kastration”--“Concerning the Effects of Castration,” Halle, 1906),

sexuality is the common product of testicular and cerebral activity.

Plato was already aware of this relationship when he called thought a

sublimated sexual impulse, and Buffon likewise when he described love as

“le premier essor de la sensibilité, qui se porte ensuite à d’autres

objets.” In more recent times, Dr. Santlus, in his valuable essay, “On

the Psychology of the Human Impulses” (_Archiv für Psychiatrie_, 1864,

vol. vi., pp. 244 and 262), alluded to this combination of the sexual

sphere with the highest spiritual interests of mankind under the name of

the “function-impulse.”

From these intimate relations between sexual and spiritual productivity

is to be explained the remarkable fact that certain spiritual creations

may take the place of the purely physical sexual impulse; that there are

psychical =sexual equivalents= into which the potential energy of the

sexual impulse may be transformed. Here belong numerous emotions, such

as ferocity, anger, pain, and the productive spiritual activities which

find their vent in poetry, art, and religion--in short, the whole

=imaginative life= of mankind in the widest sense is able, when the

natural activity of the sexual impulse is inhibited, to find such sexual

equivalents, the importance of which in the evolutionary history of

human love we shall have later to study in further detail.

Interesting observations regarding this intimate connexion between the

spiritual and the physical procreative impulse are to be found in the

work of a thinker who made no secret of his intense sensuality, and in

whose life and thought sexuality played a peculiar part--in the work of

Schopenhauer. In his “New Paralipomena” he lays stress on the similarity

between the work of productive genius and the modification of the sexual

impulse peculiar to the human race. In another place in which, as

Frauenstädt also insists, he is speaking from personal experience, he

writes: “In the days and hours when the =voluptuous= impulse is most

powerful, not a dull desire, arising from emptiness and dullness of the

consciousness, but a burning longing, a violent ardour, =precisely then

also are the highest powers of the spirit available, the finest

consciousness is prepared for its intensest activity=, although at the

moment when the consciousness has given itself up to desire they are

=latent=; but it needs merely a powerful effort to turn their direction,

and instead of that tormenting, despairing lust (the kingdom of

darkness), the activity of the highest spiritual powers fills the

consciousness (the kingdom of light).”

Georg Hirth, who, in the section of his “Ways to Love” entitled

“Stark-naked Thoughts,” gives in aphorisms an interesting account of the

psychology of love, affirms the “delightful phenomenon of a peculiarly

active enhancement of our impulse to thought and production,” =after=

erotic satisfaction, =after= a fortunate love-night. Very ably, also,

has Mantegazza described the spiritual activity produced by a happy and

victorious love.[35]

Many great thinkers have complained of the alleged impairment of pure

spirituality by the sexual life, and have recommended asceticism in

order to arrive at a truer internal enlightenment. This, however, would

imply pulling up the roots of spiritual poietic[36] activity, the

suppression of a rich inner life of thought and feeling, the

destruction of all true poetry and art. There would be left behind only

the wilderness of a cold abstraction. Look at the letters of Abelard

before and after his emasculation. Sexuality first breathes into our

spiritual being the warm and blooming life.

“The world,” says Philipp Frey, “would be conceived by us in sharply

bounded intellectual pictures, unless we saw it in the changing lights

of our sexuality. From the green of gently dreaming desire, through

the yellow of surging emotion, and from the blood-red of eager desire

to the cool blue of satisfaction--all things appear to us in the light

of our sexuality. Life would be better ordered if we were purely

intelligible machines for the purposes of nutrition, work, and

production. But without the dualism of desire and satisfaction, the

world would become torpid in a great yawn.”

This intimate connexion between the psychic-emotional being and the

sexual impulse gave rise to a deepening, a concentration, and an

increasing intensity, of the feeling of love, whereby the latter becomes

the most powerful influence affecting mankind in bodily and spiritual

relations. Voltaire, in his “Pensées Philosophiques,” says aptly:

“L’amour est de toutes les passions la plus forte, parce qu’elle attaque

à la fois la tête, le cœur, et le corps.” That it is in love that the

immediate admixture of organic processes most clearly manifests itself

is a fact pointed out already by Aristotle, and among modems emphasized

by Griesinger.[37]

Thus love discloses itself as a =nucleus=, the =axis= of the individual,

and therewith also of the social life, a fact indicated already in

Schopenhauer’s phrase, describing love as the “focus of the will,” and

in Weismann’s expression “the continuity of the germ-plasma.” And we can

easily understand that there are literary advocates of a consequent

“=sexual philosophy=,” who base their view of the universe solely and

entirely upon the sexual. To them the sexual problem becomes a world

problem, eroticism expands into metaphysics. These sexual philosophers

start from love to unveil the mysteries of life. The most celebrated

advocate of such a sexual philosophy was the Marquis de Sade, of whom I

have myself given an account in a pseudonymous work entitled “New

Researches concerning the Marquis de Sade” (Berlin, 1904). According to

de Sade, it is only through the sexual that the world can be grasped and

understood.

In a certain sense the antipodes of the Marquis de Sade is a remarkable

sexual philosopher of our own time, the author of “Sex and Character,”

Dr. Otto Weininger. His whole circle of thought also revolves

exclusively round the sexual. It forms the basis, the starting-point of

his exposition; though, indeed, it does so in a purely negative sense.

For Weininger is the apostle of =asexuality=; to him the highest type of

human being is the non-sexual, the one who renounces all sexuality. And

woman, as the incorporation of sexuality, is to him “nothingness,” the

“radically evil” which must be annihilated.

A positive sexual philosopher of a nobler kind than these two anomalous

spirits is Max Zeiss, whose book, “Ragnarök, a Philosophico-Social

Study,” was published at Strasburg in 1904. He regards work, effort,

creation, the strife for material position, for honour and renown, only

as subordinate aims for the attainment of one aim--=love=.

The ever more intimate association of love with the spiritual life, its

increasing depth, the inclusion within its sphere of influence of all

feelings and thoughts, necessarily give rise to a stronger development

of the =feeling of individual personality=, which, in contrast with the

earlier instinctive impulse, came more and more to dominate the amatory

life. Now love gained at least an =equal= importance for the individual

that in former conditions it had for the purposes of reproduction, and

therewith subjectively the reproductive idea was unquestionably thrust

into the background, in comparison with the idea of personal living, of

personal enrichment and development, by means of love. Hegel says aptly

(“Æsthetics,” Berlin, 1837, vol. ii., p. 186): “The sorrows of love,

these frustrate hopes, the very state of being in love, the never-ending

pains which the lover actually experiences, this never-ending happiness

and joy to which he looks forward in imagination--these are matters

devoid of all general interest; =they concern only the lover himself=.”

Schleiermacher also insists, in his letters concerning “Lucinde,” on the

great importance of love for the spiritual development of the

individual.

The individualization of love has certainly resulted in a great decline

in the predominance of the reproductive idea, of the subjective sense of

race, without it ever being possible for it to lose its eminent

=objective= significance. Nietzsche, therefore, declares a

“reproductive impulse” to be pure “mythology;”[38] and Carpenter, also,

in his book, “Love’s Coming of Age,” says that human love is mainly a

desire for complete union, and only in much less degree a wish for the

reproduction of the race. The profound significance of individual love

in the =promotion of civilization= is exceedingly well described by him

when he says:

“Taking union as the main point, we may look upon the idealized

sex-love as a sense of contact pervading the whole mind and

body--while the sex-organs are a specialization of this faculty of

union in the outermost sphere: union in the bodily sphere giving rise

to bodily generation, the same as union in the mental and emotional

spheres occasions generation of another kind.”

Proof of the fact that love, in its purely individual relations, is also

of great importance for human civilization, that it is profoundly

significant for the higher evolution of humanity, =in addition to= its

importance for the perpetuation of the species--the proof of this thesis

is very important in view of certain problems connected with the theory

of population and in view of the practical conclusions deduced from that

theory, as, for example, the doctrine of neo-malthusianism. =Love and

love’s embrace do not exist only for the purposes of the species: they

are also of importance to the ego; they are necessary for the life, the

evolution, and the internal growth of the individual himself.=

And we must not fail to recognize to what extent the fact that the

individual has gained much from love ultimately reacts also to the

advantage of the species. For the species, as well as for the

individual, the true path of progress lies in the direction of the

individualization of the sexual impulses.

* * * * *

When we study in detail the gradual permeation of sexuality with

spiritual elements, the gradual development of love, and its advance

towards perfection by means of civilization, we ascertain that for the

love of the modern civilized man there exists a kind of biogenetic, or

rather psychogenetic, fundamental law. In modern love we encounter all

the spiritual elements which were actively operative in the love of past

times; the love of the civilized man of the present day is an extracted,

shortened, compressed repetition of the entire developmental course of

love from the earliest times to the present day. And the general course

of this development reappears also in the love of the individual.

This course is, to put the matter shortly, from the general to

the individual, from the remote to the proximate. We can further

divide the history of human love into two great epochs. In the first

epoch, love was, above all, a =transcendental relationship= of a

religio-metaphysical nature. The transcendental relationships played a

more important part than the purely human and personal. Everywhere an

ulterior element played its part. In the second epoch, love underwent an

evolution into a more =personal= relationship, in which the human being

himself took foremost place, as compared with any transcendental

considerations. The history of love is, in fact, an illustration of

Compte’s replacement of the theologico-metaphysical epoch of mental

development by the anthropological. In individual love, however, there

still remain active and demonstrable many transcendental elements. The

oldest spiritual elements of love continue to form a portion of the

content of modern love, and to play a more or less dominant part in its

genesis.

To this primeval and psychical phenomenon belongs, above all, an

intimate association between =religious= ideas and feelings and the

sexual life. In a certain sense, the history of religion can be regarded

as the history of a peculiar mode of manifestation of the human sexual

impulse, especially in its influence on the imagination and its

products.

Certain modern writers, members of the laity far from learned in the

history of civilization, have considered the Roman Catholic Church

pre-eminently responsible for the appearance of this sexual element in

ritual and dogma. This, however, is grossly unjust. A =scientific= study

of these relations teaches us that =all= religions exhibit to a greater

or less degree this sexual admixture, and if this appears more prominent

in the Roman Catholic Church, it is due, in the first place, to the fact

that this religion is nearer to us in time than many of the religions of

antiquity, and, in the second place, it is explicable on the ground that

the Roman Catholic Church has always displayed greater openness and less

hypocrisy than, for example, the Protestant pietists, who, as the

Königsberg scandal, the Eva van Buttler affair, etc., show, are no less

blameworthy in respect of sexual vagaries.

A really =objective= basis for an opinion regarding the relations

between religion and sexuality can only be obtained when we cease to

consider these relations as an affair of dogma and of the confessional,

and study them upon the basis to which they properly belong--to wit, the

=anthropological=. For these relationships are peculiar to the genus

homo as such. The sexual element is quite as prominent in the religions

of primitive peoples as in those of modern civilized nations.

Anthropological science has hitherto been occupied more with the fact

than with the explanation of the remarkable relations between religion

and sexuality. There can, however, be no doubt that these relations

arise out of the very nature of mankind. The various anthropologists and

physicians who have occupied themselves with these problems are in

agreement upon this point: that the connexion between religion and the

sexual life can be explained only on =anthropomorphic-animistic=

grounds--that is, by the same kind of ideas which Tylor has proved to be

the foundation of the primitive mental life.

Thus, the great physician and anthropologist Theodor Billroth doubts the

existence of any pure religious perception entirely free from all

sensual elements. In a letter to Hanslick, dated February 21, 1891, he

writes:

“In my opinion, it is nonsensical to speak of a special religious

perception. What we call by this name is either a purely fanciful and

imaginative opinion, which may rise to the intensity of hallucination,

and has for substratum any kind of imaginative product which excites a

yearning in the believing or loving individual--or else, in fanatics,

it is an actual erotic excitement, like the rhythmical

prayer-movements of the Mohammedans, the dancing of the Dervishes, or

the jumping of the Flagellants. The Church as bridegroom for the nun,

as bride for the monk, has a similar signification. It is, in a

certain sense, the continuation of the service of Isis, and of the

festivals of Aphrodite and Bacchus. Man has always created his gods or

his god in his own image, and prays and sings to him--that is,

properly speaking, to himself--in the artistic forms of the period.

Since the so-called divine is always a mere abstraction or

personification of one or several human attributes in the highest

conceivable potency, it follows that human and divine, worldly and

religious, cannot really be of differing natures. Man cannot, in fact,

think anything supernatural, nor can he do anything unnatural, because

he never can think or act except with human attributes.”

This explanation coincides with the view of Ludwig Feuerbach, who has

especially insisted on the anthropomorphistic element in religio-sexual

phenomena in his essay “Concerning Mariolatry.”

M’Lennan and Tylor were among the chief discoverers of the animistic

aspect of religio-sexual ideas. In a way analogous to his attitude

towards other phenomena, primitive man assumed the activity of spirits

in explanation of the sexual impulse and everything associated

therewith; and he paid divine worship to the sexual impulse, as the

visible and palpable manifestation of those spirits.

I myself have more fully described this physiological process in a

somewhat different manner (“Contributions to the Etiology of

Psychopathia Sexualis,” vol. i., pp. 76, 77), and I quote here my

account of the primitive deification of the sexual.

As something elemental, incredible, supernatural, the sexual impulse

made its appearance in man’s life at the time of puberty; by its

overwhelming force, by the intensity, spontaneity, and multiplicity, of

the perceptions to which it gave rise, it awakened feelings which

enriched, vivified, and inflamed the imagination in an unexpected

manner. This phenomenon, overwhelming him with elemental force, filled

primitive man with a holy fear. He ascribed it to a supernatural

influence, =and this supernatural influence became associated in his

circle of perceptions with those others which he had previously

experienced=, and which had aroused in him the feeling of =dependence

upon one or several higher powers=, before which he knelt in worship. To

what an extent the =metaphysical= invaded the whole sexual life of man,

Schopenhauer has clearly shown in his “Metaphysic of Sexual Love.”

Religion and sexuality come into the most intimate association in this

perception of the metaphysical and in this feeling of dependence; hence

arise the remarkable relations between the two, and that easy transition

of religious feelings into sexual feelings which is manifest in all the

relations of life. In both cases the surrender, the renunciation, of the

individual personality is experienced as a pleasurable sensation.

Schopenhauer has described in a classical manner the metaphysical

impulsive force of love striving onward towards the infinite and the

divine, whose analogy with the religious impulse we cannot fail to

recognize.

In his thoughtful book, “The Vital Laws of Civilization” (Halle, 1904,

p. 52), Eduard von Mayer has also discussed the religio-sexual problem.

He starts from the idea that man regarded as higher than himself that

which he was unable to master, and, above all, hunger and love.

“The pains of ungratified hunger or love plough deep furrows, into

which falls the seed of voluptuousness, of satisfied hunger, or of the

joys of love. And to primitive man, to whom the entire universe is

full of living beings, hunger and love also appear as =divine powers=,

which pain and plague him until their will is satisfied.”

The association of sexuality with religion affects both sexes equally,

although the phenomenon appears more intense in woman, and is more

enduring in her, owing to the greater depth of her emotional life. The

brothers de Goncourt, in their diary, describe religion as simply a

portion of woman’s sexual life. Feminine sexual activity thus appears

something religious, pious, holy. And those priests who pretended to

“sanctify” by their love the women whom they seduced, were certainly

more accurate, from the =physiological= point of view, than the Church

was in its condemnation of carnal lust as sin and the work of the devil.

In the middle ages it was a view commonly held in France that women who

had intercourse with priests were in some sort sanctified thereby. The

mistresses of priests were called the “consecrated.”

The identity of religious and sexual perceptions explains the frequent

transformation of one into the other, and the continuous association

between the two. A sexual emotion will often function vicariously for a

religious emotion, in part or wholly.

The unusually interesting history of the complicated and remarkable

religio-sexual phenomena renders clear to us individual processes of

this kind and certain peculiarities of racial psychology; and thereby we

are led to understand the powerful after-effects of these phenomena in

the customs, the morals, and the conventions of our time, and we are

enlightened as to the rôle still played by the religio-sexual factor in

the life of many men even of our own day.

One of the oldest, if not the oldest, of religio-sexual phenomena is

=religious prostitution=--the “lust-sacrifice,” as Eduard von Mayer

happily expresses it--since therein the sexual act is regarded as a

sacrifice made to the deity. We have here the unrestricted offering by a

woman of her body to every chance comer without love, =as an act of

simple sensuality, and for payment=, and thus we find all the

characteristics of what at the present day we term “prostitution.”

According to the researches I have myself previously published regarding

religious prostitution, this may be divided into two great groups:

1. =A single act of prostitution in honour of the deity.=

2. =Permanent religious prostitution.=

A single act of religious prostitution mostly consists in the offering

of virginity; sometimes also in the single, not repeated, offering of an

already deflowered woman. In the single act of religious prostitution,

the woman either offers herself =directly to the deity=, the bodily act

of defloration being effected by a divine physical symbol--as, for

instance, by a penis made of stone, ivory, or wood--or by direct

intercourse with the statue of the god; or else the woman gives herself

to a =human representative= of the deity--for instance, to the king, to

a priest, to a blood-relative (not seldom to her own father, this being

a variety of religious incest), and sometimes to a passing stranger.[39]

With regard to the first mode of defloration, by means of a divine

symbol, we have especially full reports from the East Indies. Here, in

the sixteenth century, in the Southern Deccan, the Portuguese Duarte

Barbosa first saw the religious defloration of girls effected by means

of the “lingam,” the divine phallus. Girls aged ten years only were

sacrificed to the deity in this brutal manner. From a later time come

the accounts of Jan Huygen van Linschoten and Gasparo Balbi, regarding

the customs of the inhabitants of Goa. The bride was taken into the

temple, where a penis of iron or ivory was thrust into the vagina, so

that the hymen was destroyed. In other cases, the girl’s genitals were

brought into contact with the stone penis of an image of the god, at a

shrine eighteen miles distant from Goa. W. Schultze, in his “East Indian

Journey” (Amsterdam, 1676, p. 161_a_), relates:

“By means of this priapus, with the assistance of friends and

relatives, the maiden was deprived of her virginity with force and in

a painful manner; at the same time the bridegroom rejoiced that the

foul and accursed idol had done him this honour, in the hope that as a

result of this sacrifice he would enjoy greater happiness in his

marriage.”

This process of defloration of Indian virgins by the lingam idol is

confirmed by the reports of John Fryer, Roe, Jeon Moquet, Abbé Guyon,

Démeunier, and others.

The god Baal Peor, worshipped by the Moabites and Jews, seems also to

have possessed such a divine power of defloration. His name, “Peor,” “to

open,” is supposed to relate to the destruction of the hymen.[40]

This relationship is more distinctly expressed in the names of certain

gods of the ancient Romans, such as Dea Perfica, Dea Pertunda, Mutunus

Tutunus, regarding whose functions in connexion with defloration, shown

unquestionably by the etymology of their names, I have referred to at

greater length in my essay on “Ancient Roman Medicine” (published in

Puschmann’s “Handbook of the History of Medicine,” p. 407; Jena, 1902).

For the honour of the sexual divinities, the bride was compelled, as

Augustine, Lactantius, and Arnobius report, to seat herself upon the

“fascinum”--that is, the _membrum virile_ of the priapus statue--and in

this way, either physically, or at least symbolically, sacrifice her

virginity to the deity. According to the legend, the conception of

Ocrisia was actually effected in this way![41]

According to the second method by which single acts of religious

prostitution are effected, a representative of the deity exercises the

latter’s right of defloration. It is a form of religious _jus primæ

noctis_, which is given to the king, the priest, the father, and, above

all, to a casual stranger, before the girl becomes the property of her

husband or master. In cases in which the husband has effected

defloration, the deity may be satisfied by the woman later giving

herself once to his representative.

The best-known form of religious prostitution is the Mylittacult of the

Babylonians, the worship of that goddess who, according to Bachofen,

represents the uncontrolled life of Nature in its fullest creative

activity, unchecked by any man-made laws--the goddess whose free nature

is opposed to the constraining bonds of marriage. For this reason the

goddess, as representative of the unrestrained nature principle, demands

from every girl a free gift of herself to any man wishing to have

intercourse with her. This demand is made in the name of Mylitta and in

the temple devoted to her. The money paid by the man in return for his

sexual indulgence belongs to the goddess, and is added to the treasures

of the temple.[42]

Herodotus and Strabo give us additional accounts of this remarkable

service of Mylitta. Women of rank, as well as those of the lower

classes, must allow themselves to be possessed once by a stranger, and

were not permitted to return home until they had given their tribute to

the goddess. Moreover, the woman might not refuse herself to any

stranger, whilst the man, on the other hand, had a free choice. Thus in

this account we find all the characteristics of “prostitution” according

to our present ideas.

This custom was abolished by the Emperor Constantine, as Eusebius

informs us, in his biography of this Emperor. The accounts of Strabo and

of Quintus Curtius show us that it had persisted from the time of

Herodotus to the time of Constantine; in Cyprus, Phœnicia, Carthage,

Judea, Armenia, and Lokris, the Mylittacult was diffused.[43]

The true origin of this cult was a consecration to the deity, a tribute

to the goddess of voluptuousness. Secondarily only, other elements may

have entered into the practice, as, for instance, the later widely

diffused assumption of the uncleanness and poisonous properties of the

blood which was shed in the act of defloration. At the same time the

religious idea of a “sacrifice” may have become associated with the idea

of “self-surrender” to an utterly strange and unloved man, so that it is

possible that at the root of this peculiar custom there lay a kind of

masochism on the part of the woman, whilst we cannot fail to recognize

the existence of a sadistic basis in the demeanour of the betrothed man

or husband, surrendering the woman to a strange man; both of these

elements--sadism and masochism--having here a religious signification.

In Eastern Asia, and among many savage races, priests played the part of

representatives of the deity to whom the defloration of the girls and

the newly-married was assigned; for instance, in the Indian sect of the

“Mahārājas,” founded by Vallabha, in which “=immorality was elevated to

the level of a divine law=.”[44]

These “great kings” assumed the part of deities who had an unlimited

right of possession over the wives of the faithful--above all, the right

of defloration. They proclaimed as the most perfect mode of honouring

the god a complete surrender of the woman to the spiritual chief of the

sect, for purposes of carnal lust--in exact imitation of the

shepherdesses (“gopis”), the mistresses of the god Krishna. This took

place during the pastoral games “rasmandali” in the autumn.[45] In

addition, on account of his activity as deflorator, the priest received

a present in the name of the deity. Abel Rémusat reports in his

“Nouveaux Mélanges Asiatiques” (Paris, 1824, vol. i., p. 16 _et seq._),

following the account of a Chinese author of the thirteenth century, the

peculiar methods employed in Cambodia for the purpose of religious

defloration. Here the priests of Buddha or the priests of the Tao

religion were carried in sedan-chairs to the girls awaiting them. Each

girl had a candle with a mark on it. The “tshin-than” (= adjustment of

posture--that is, sexual intercourse) must be finished before the candle

had burnt down to this mark!

The medicine-men and wizards among the Caribs of Central and South

America, the “piaches” or “pajes,” had to effect the defloration of the

young girls;[46] whilst among other primitive peoples this right was

assigned to the chiefs.[47]

The talented and far-seeing Bachofen, one of the greatest of our

investigators into the history and psychology of civilization, in his

classical works upon “Matriarchy” and upon “The Legend of Tanaquil,” has

very cleverly pointed out that religious prostitution in general arises

from the primitive =opposition= to the individualization of love,

instinctively felt by primitive peoples. In fact, in the religious view

of sexual matters more value is placed upon the act than the person, the

individual. Hence arises the slight esteem--so strongly opposed to our

modern view--felt for physical and moral virginity in woman, which to us

(whether rightly or not we will not now discuss) appears the symbol of

feminine individuality. Waitz, Bachofen, Kulischer, Post, Ploss-Bartels,

Rottmann, and other ethnologists, give additional accounts of the

contempt, to us so remarkable, felt in primitive states for the virgin

woman. The tragi-comic position of our own “old maids” is closely

connected with this primeval sentiment.[48]

The facts we have just given regarding single acts of religious

prostitution will pave the way for the understanding of =permanent

temple prostitution= as a historical phenomenon.

Sexual self-surrender as a purely sensual act is associated with

religious feeling. Thus in some cases a woman would experience a

combination of ardent sensuality with intense religious feeling, would

devote herself wholly to the service of the god, and in his name would

permanently surrender her body; whilst in other cases the idea of a

divine harem--in Indian belief every god has a harem--would find its

earthly exemplar in temple prostitution, by means of which the deity

would enjoy a number of women through the intermediation of men; or,

finally, this custom would arise out of the primitive practice,

according to which sexual intercourse, regarded as a religious act,

=customarily= took place in a temple, or in some consecrated room of a

house. In support of this view, we may quote a significant utterance

from Herodotus (chapter lxiv. of the second book of his “History”), who

in ethnological matters had such accurate discrimination. He reports

that among the Egyptians intercourse was strictly forbidden in the

temples, and then says:

“For people of all nations, except the Egyptians and the Hellenes, are

accustomed to copulate in holy places, and proceed after intercourse

unwashed into the holy places; and they are of opinion that men

resemble animals, and every one sees beasts and birds copulating in

the temples of the gods, and in the consecrated groves. Now, =if this

were displeasing to the gods, the animals would not do it=. Men,

therefore, do this, and give this reason for it.”

This custom arose, without doubt, from the need for a religious

sentiment, and from the wish to enter into direct communion with the

deity, by remaining in the temple during the sexual act. When later the

divine beings obtained their own consecrated women in the form of the

=temple-girls=, it was no longer necessary for a man to take his own

wife or some other woman into the temple, for now communion with the

deity could be obtained by means of intercourse with the temple-girls.

In the case of =feminine= deities a fourth cause or influence comes into

operation in the production of temple prostitution, inasmuch as the

courtesans, on account of their extreme beauty and their remarkable

intellectual powers, were often regarded as representatives of the

goddess. This explains how it happened that among the Greeks beautiful

hetairae served as models for Praxiteles and Apelles, when these

sculptors were making statues for the temple.

The sacred priests of Venus, the “kade-girls” of the Phœnicians, and the

“hierodules” of the Greeks, were the servants of Aphrodite, and dwelt

within the precincts of the temple. Their number was often very great.

Thus in Corinth more than 1,000 female hierodules prostituted themselves

in the precincts of the temple of Aphrodite Porne, and even within the

temple.[49]

India, where the primitive phenomena of the amatory life can best be

studied, is also the favourite seat of temple prostitution, since the

religious view of the sexual life is nowhere so prominent as in the

Indian beliefs.[50] The temple girls of India are known as

“nautch-girls,” or “nautch-women.” Warneck writes regarding them:

“Every Hindu temple of any importance possesses an arsenal of

=nautch-girls=--that is, dancing-girls--who, next to the sacrificial

priests, are the most highly respected among the personnel of the

temple. It is not long since these temple-girls (just like the

hetairae of Ancient Greece) were among the only educated women in

India. These =priestesses, betrothed to the gods= from early

childhood, were under the professional obligation to prostitute

themselves to every one without distinction of caste. This

self-surrender is so far from being regarded as a disgrace that even

the most =highly placed= families regarded it as an honour to devote

their daughters to the service of the temple. In the Madras Presidency

alone there are about 12,000 of these temple prostitutes.”[51]

Shortt gives further interesting details of these temple prostitutes,

who are also known as “thassee.”

Religious prostitution is to a certain extent still practised in

Southern Borneo; and in a newspaper published at Amsterdam--_The German

Weekly News of the Netherlands_--the following account of the practice

appears in the issue of July 30, 1907:

“In the Dyak country there are to be found in nearly every _kampong_

(village) individuals known as ‘balians’ and ‘basirs.’ The balians are

prostitutes who also perform medical services. The basirs are men who

dress in women’s clothing, and in other respects perform the same

functions as the balians, but not all the basirs act in this way.

Balians and basirs are also commonly employed to perform certain

religious ceremonies, on festal occasions, at marriages, funerals,

births, etc. According to the nature of the festivity, five to fifteen

of them officiate. The president of the balians and basirs goes by the

name of the ‘upu’; usually the oldest and most experienced is chosen

for this office. The upu sits in the middle, with the others to right

and left. At an important festival the upu receives from twenty to

thirty gulden; the others one to fifteen gulden. The further away that

a balian sits from the upu, the smaller is her honorarium; the

honorarium is called ‘laluh.’ The principal balians and basirs are

known as ‘bawimait maninjan sangjang’--that is, ‘holy women.’ At the

present time the basirs no longer exercise the immoral portions of

their duties, because the Government inflicts severe penalties if they

do so; moreover, they are not allowed now to appear in public in

women’s clothing.”

Religion shares with the sexual impulse the unceasing yearning, the

sentiment of everlastingness, the mystic absorption into the depths of

life, the longing for the coalescence of individualities in an eternally

blessed union, free from earthly fetters. Hence the longing for death

felt by lovers and by mystically enraptured pietists, which has been so

wonderfully described by Leopardi. “The yearning for death felt by

lovers is identical with the yearning for sexual union,” aptly remarks

H. Swoboda, and he very rightly points out that many a suicide ascribed

to “unfortunate love” is rather the result of a happy love.

Among primitive peoples, and in ancient times, =religio-erotic

festivals= first gave an opportunity for the manifestation of this

religio-sexual mysticism. In this the transition of religious ecstasy

into sexual perceptions is very clearly visible, and in the sexual

orgies in which these religious frenzies often found an appropriate

finale we see the crudest expression of the relationship between

religion and sexuality. In such cases sexual ardour appears to be

equivalent to a =prolongation= and an =increase= of the religious

ardour--fundamentally, radically coincident, as the natural earthly

discharge of an ecstatic tension directed to the sphere of the remote

and the metaphysical.

The fact that such sexual excesses are =throughout the world= found in

association with religion, that since the very earliest times they have

been connected with the =most various forms= of religion, proves once

more that the origin of this relationship is dependent on the very

nature of religion as such, and that it is =not in any way= due to the

individual historic character of any one belief. It is, moreover, quite

uncritical and altogether without justification for any modern writer to

endeavour to make Roman Catholicism responsible for such an association;

Roman Catholicism as such has as little to do with the matter as all

other beliefs. Religio-sexual phenomena belong to the everywhere

recurring =elementary ideas= of the human race (elementary ideas in the

sense of Bastian); and the only way of regarding such phenomena that can

be considered scientifically sound, is from the anthropological and

ethnological standpoint.

This sexual religious mysticism meets us everywhere--in the religious

festivals of antiquity, the festivals of Isis in Egypt, and the

festivals of imperial Rome, both alike accompanied by the wildest sexual

orgies; in the festivals of Baal Peor, among the Jews, in the Venus and

Adonis festivals of the Phœnicians, in Cyprus and Byblos, in the

Aphrodisian, the Dionysian, and the Eleusinian festivals of the

Hellenes; in the festival of Flora in Rome, in which prostitutes ran

about naked; in the Roman Bacchanalia; and in the festival of the _bona

dea_, the wild sexual licence of which is only too clearly presented to

our eyes in the celebrated account of Juvenal.

In India, the sect of Caitanya, founded in the sixteenth century,

celebrated the maddest religio-sexual orgies. Their ritual consisted

principally of long litanies and hymns, stuffed full with unbridled

eroticism, and followed by wild dances, all leading up to the sexual

culmination, in which “the love of God” (_bhakti_) was to be made as

clearly perceptible as possible.[52] Even worse were the Sakta sects

(the name is derived from _sakti_, force--that is, the sensuous

manifestation of the god Siva). They gave themselves up with ardent

sensuality to the service of the female emanations of Siva, all

distinctions of caste being ignored, and wild sensual promiscuity

prevailing. Divine service always preceded the act of sexual

intercourse.

Among the Kauchiluas, one of these Sakta sects, each of the women who

took part in these divine services threw a small ornament into a box

kept by the priests. After the termination of the religious festival,

each male member of the congregation took one of these articles out of

the box, whereupon the possessor of the article must give herself to him

in the subsequent unbridled sexual excesses, even if the two should

happen to be brother and sister.[53]

Ancient Central and South America were also familiar with wild outbreaks

of a sexual-religious character. In Guatemala, on the days of the great

sacrifices, there occurred sexual orgies of the worst kind, men having

intercourse promiscuously with mothers, sisters, daughters, children,

and concubines; and at the “Akhataymita festivals” of the ancient

Peruvians, the religious observances terminated in a race between

completely nude men and women, in which each man overtaking a woman

immediately had sexual intercourse with her.[54]

Sexual mysticism found its way also into Christianity. When the renowned

theologian Usener, in his work “Mythology,” writes in relation to these

matters, “the whole of paganism found its way into Christianity,” we

must point out that in our view what “corrupted” Christianity was not

“paganism,” but the =fundamental phenomena of primitive human nature=,

the primordial connexion between religion and sexuality, which by a

natural necessity manifested itself in Christianity not less than in

other religions.

=Thus down to the present day= we encounter the most peculiar

manifestations of sexual mysticism in the most diverse Christian sects,

and not merely in Roman Catholicism.