Howard remarks, "that a great nation, priding herself on a love of equity
and social liberty, should thus for five generations tolerate an invidious
indulgence, rather than frankly and courageously to free herself from the
shackles of an ecclesiastical tradition."
[338] "The enforced continuance of an unsuccessful union is perhaps the
most immoral thing which a civilized society ever countenanced, far less
encouraged," says Godfrey (_Science of Sex_, p. 123). "The morality of a
union is dependent upon mutual desire, and a union dictated by any other
cause is outside the moral pale, however custom may sanction it, or
religion and law condone it."
[339] Adultery in most savage and barbarous societies is regarded, in the
words of Westermarck, as "an illegitimate appropriation of the exclusive
claims which the husband has acquired by the purchase of his wife, as an
offence against property;" the seducer is, therefore, punished as a thief,
by fine, mutilation, even death (_Origin of the Moral Ideas_, vol. ii, pp.
447 et seq.; id., _History of Human Marriage_, p. 121). Among some peoples
it is the seducer who alone suffers, and not the wife.
[340] It is sometimes said in defence of the claim for damages for
seducing a wife that women are often weak and unable to resist masculine
advances, so that the law ought to press heavily on the man who takes
advantage of that weakness. This argument seems a little antiquated. The
law is beginning to accept the responsibility even of married women in
other respects, and can scarcely refuse to accept it for the control of
her own person. Moreover, if it is so natural for the woman to yield, it
is scarcely legitimate to punish the man with whom she has performed that
natural act. It must further be said that if a wife's adultery is only an
irresponsible feminine weakness, a most undue brutality is inflicted on
her by publicly demanding her pecuniary price from her lover. If, indeed,
we accept this argument, we ought to reintroduce the mediæval girdle of
chastity.
[341] Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 114.
[342] This rule is, in England, by no means a dead letter. Thus, in 1907,
a wife who had left her home, leaving a letter stating that her husband
was not the father of her child, subsequently brought an action for
divorce, which, as the husband made no defence, she obtained. But, the
King's Proctor having learnt the facts, the decree was rescinded. Then the
husband brought an action for divorce, but could not obtain it, having
already admitted his own adultery by leaving the previous case undefended.
He took the matter up to the Court of Appeal, but his petition was
dismissed, the Court being of opinion that "to grant relief in such a case
was not in the interest of public morality." The safest way in England to
render what is legally termed marriage absolutely indissoluble is for both
parties to commit adultery.
[343] Magnus Hirschfeld, _Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, Oct., 1908.
[344] H. Adner, "Die Richterliche Beurteilung der 'Zerrütteten' Ehe,"
_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Bd. ii, Teil 8.
[345] Gross-Hoffinger, _Die Schichsale der Frauen und die Prostitution_,
1847; Bloch presents a full summary of the results of this inquiry in an
_Appendix_ to Ch. X of his _Sexual Life of Our Times_.
[346] Divorce in the United States is fully discussed by Howard, op. cit.,
vol. iii.
[347] H. Münsterberg, _The Americans_, p. 575. Similarly, Dr. Felix Adler,
in a study of "The Ethics of Divorce" (_The Ethical Record_, 1890, p.
200), although not himself an admirer of divorce, believes that the first
cause of the frequency of divorce in the United States is the high
position of women.
[348] In an important article, with illustrative cases, on "The
Neuro-psychical Element in Conjugal Aversion" (_Journal of Nervous and
Mental Diseases_, Sept., 1892) Smith Baker refers to the cases in which "a
man may find himself progressively becoming antipathetic, through
recognition of the comparatively less developed personality of the one to
whom he happens to be married. Marrying, perhaps, before he has learned to
accurately judge of character and its tendencies, he awakens to the fact
that he is honorably bound to live all his physiological life with, not a
real companion, but a mere counterfeit." The cases are still more
numerous, the same writer observes, in which the sexual appetite of the
wife fails to reveal itself except as the result of education and
practice. "This sort of natural-unnatural condition is the source of much
disappointment, and of intense suffering on the part of the woman as well
as of family dissatisfaction." Yet such causes for divorce are far too
complex to be stated in statute-books, and far too intimate to be pleaded
in courts of justice.
[349] Ten years ago, if not still, the United States came fourth in order
of frequency of divorce, after Japan, Denmark, and Switzerland.
[350] Lecky, the historian of European morals, has pointed out (_Democracy
and Liberty_, vol. ii, p. 172) the close connection generally between
facility of divorce and a high standard of sexual morality.
[351] So, e.g., Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_, vol. i, p. 237.
[352] In England this step was taken in the reign of Henry VII, when the
forcible marriage of women against their will was forbidden by statute (3
Henry VII, c. 2). Even in the middle of the seventeenth century, however,
the question of forcible marriage had again to be dealt with (_Inderwick_,
Interregnum, pp. 40 et seq.).
[353] Woods Hutchinson (_Contemporary Review_, Sept., 1905) argues that
when there is epilepsy, insanity, moral perversion, habitual drunkenness,
or criminal conduct of any kind, divorce, for the sake of the next
generation, should be not permissive but compulsory. Mere divorce,
however, would not suffice to attain the ends desired.
[354] Similarly in Germany, Wanda von Sacher-Masoch, who had suffered much
from marriage, whatever her own defects of character may have been, writes
at the end of _Meine Lebensbeichte_ that "as long as women have not the
courage to regulate, without State-interference or Church-interference,
relationships which concern themselves alone, they will not be free." In
place of this old decayed system of marriage so opposed to our modern
thoughts and feelings, she would have private contracts made by a lawyer.
In England, at a much earlier period, Charles Kingsley, who was an ardent
friend to women's movements, and whose feeling for womanhood amounted
almost to worship, wrote to J.S. Mill: "There will never be a good world
for women until the last remnant of the Canon law is civilized off the
earth."
[355] "No fouler institution was ever invented," declared Auberon Herbert
many years ago, expressing, before its time, a feeling which has since
become more common; "and its existence drags on, to our deep shame,
because we have not the courage frankly to say that the sexual relations
of husband and wife, or those who live together, concern their own selves,
and do not concern the prying, gloating, self-righteous, and intensely
untruthful world outside."
[356] Hobhouse, op. cit. vol. i, p. 237.
[357] The same conception of marriage as a contract still persists to some
extent also in the United States, whither it was carried by the early
Protestants and Puritans. No definition of marriage is indeed usually laid
down by the States, but, Howard says (op. cit., vol. ii, p. 395), "in
effect matrimony is treated as a relation partaking of the nature of both
status and contract."
[358] This point of view has been vigorously set forth by Paul and Victor
Margueritte, _Quelques Idées_.
[359] I may remark that this was pointed out, and its consequences
vigorously argued, many years ago by C.G. Garrison, "Limits of Divorce,"
_Contemporary Review_, Feb., 1894. "It may safely be asserted," he
concludes, "that marriage presents not one attribute or incident of
anything remotely resembling a contract, either in form, remedy,
procedure, or result; but that in all these aspects, on the contrary, it
is fatally hostile to the principles and practices of that division of the
rights of persons." Marriage is not contract, but conduct.
[360] See, e.g., P. and V. Margueritte, op. cit.
[361] As quoted by Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 29.
[362] Ellen Key similarly (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 343) remarks that to
talk of "the duty of life-long fidelity" is much the same as to talk of
"the duty of life-long health." A man may promise, she adds, to do his
best to preserve his life, or his love; he cannot unconditionally
undertake to preserve them.
[363] Hobhouse, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 159, 237-9; cf. P. and V.
Margueritte, _Quelques Idées_.
[364] "Divorce," as Garrison puts it ("Limits of Divorce," _Contemporary
Review_, Feb., 1894), "is the judicial announcement that conduct once
connubial in character and purpose, has lost these qualities.... Divorce
is a question of fact, and not a license to break a promise."
[365] See, _ante_, p. 425.
[366] It has been necessary to discuss reproduction in the first chapter
of the present volume, and it will again be necessary in the concluding
chapter. Here we are only concerned with procreation as an element of
marriage.
[367] Nietzold, _Die Ehe in Ægypten zur Ptolemäisch-römischen Zeit_, 1903,
p. 3. This bond also accorded rights to any children that might be born
during its existence.
[368] See, e.g., Ellen Key, _Mutter und Kind_, p. 21. The necessity for
the combination of greater freedom of sexual relationships with greater
stringency of parental relationships was clearly realized at an earlier
period by another able woman writer, Miss J.H. Clapperton, in her notable
book, _Scientific Meliorism_, published in 1885. "Legal changes," she
wrote (p. 320), "are required in two directions, viz., towards greater
freedom as to marriage and greater strictness as to parentage. The
marriage union is essentially a private matter with which society has no
call and no right to interfere. Childbirth, on the contrary, is a public
event. It touches the interests of the whole nation."
[369] Ellen Key, _Liebe und Ehe_, p. 168; cf. the same author's _Century
of the Child_.
[370] In Germany alone 180,000 "illegitimate" children are born every
year, and the number is rapidly increasing; in England it is only 40,000
per annum, the strong feeling which often exists against such births in
England (as also in France) leading to the wide adoption of methods for
preventing conception.
[371] "Where are real monogamists to be found?" asked Schopenhauer in his
essay, "Ueber die Weibe." And James Hinton was wont to ask: "What is the
meaning of maintaining monogamy? Is there any chance of getting it, I
should like to know? Do you call English life monogamous?"
[372] "Almost everywhere," says Westermarck of polygyny (which he
discusses fully in Chs. XX-XXII of his _History of Human Marriage_) "it is
confined to the smaller part of the people, the vast majority being
monogamous." Maurice Gregory (_Contemporary Review_, Sept., 1906) gives
statistics showing that nearly everywhere the tendency is towards equality
in number of the sexes.
[373] In a polygamous land a man is of course as much bound by his
obligations to his second wife as to his first. Among ourselves the man's
"second wife" is degraded with the name of "mistress," and the worse he
treats her and her children the more his "morality" is approved, just as
the Catholic Church, when struggling to establish sacerdotal celibacy,
approved more highly the priest who had illegitimate relations with women
than the priest who decently and openly married. If his neglect induces a
married man's mistress to make known her relationship to him the man is
justified in prosecuting her, and his counsel, assured of general
sympathy, will state in court that "this woman has even been so wicked as
to write to the prosecutor's wife!"
[374] Howard, in his judicial _History of Matrimonial Institutions_ (vol.
ii. pp. 96 et seq.), cannot refrain from drawing attention to the almost
insanely wild character of the language used in England not so many years
ago by those who opposed marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and he
contrasts it with the much more reasonable attitude of the Catholic
Church. "Pictures have been drawn," he remarks, "of the moral anarchy such
marriages must produce, which are read by American, Colonial, and
Continental observers with a bewilderment that is not unmixed with
disgust, and are, indeed, a curious illustration of the extreme insularity
of the English mind." So recently as A.D. 1908 a bill was brought into the
British House of Lords proposing that desertion without cause for two
years shall be a ground for divorce, a reasonable and humane measure which
is law in most parts of the civilized world. The Lord Chancellor (Lord
Loreburn), a Liberal, and in the sphere of politics an enlightened and
sagacious leader, declared that such a proposal was "absolutely
impossible." The House rejected the proposal by 61 votes to 2. Even the
marriage decrees of the Council of Trent were not affirmed by such an
overwhelming majority. In matters of marriage legislation England has
scarcely yet emerged from the Middle Ages.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ART OF LOVE.
Marriage Not Only for Procreation--Theologians on the _Sacramentum
Solationis_--Importance of the _Art of Love_--The Basis of Stability in
Marriage and the Condition for Right Procreation--The Art of Love the
Bulwark Against Divorce--The Unity of Love and Marriage a Principle of
Modern Morality--Christianity and the Art of Love--Ovid--The Art of Love
Among Primitive Peoples--Sexual Initiation in Africa and Elsewhere--The
Tendency to Spontaneous Development of the Art of Love in Early
Life--Flirtation--Sexual Ignorance in Women--The Husband's Place in Sexual
Initiation--Sexual Ignorance in Men--The Husband's Education for
Marriage--The Injury Done by the Ignorance of Husbands--The Physical and
Mental Results of Unskilful Coitus--Women Understand the Art of Love
Better Than Men--Ancient and Modern Opinions Concerning Frequency of
Coitus--Variation in Sexual Capacity--The Sexual Appetite--The Art of Love
Based on the Biological Facts of Courtship--The Art of Pleasing Women--The
Lover Compared to the Musician--The Proposal as a Part of
Courtship--Divination in the Art of Love--The Importance of the
Preliminaries in Courtship--The Unskilful Husband Frequently the Cause of
the Frigid Wife--The Difficulty of Courtship--Simultaneous Orgasm--The
Evils of Incomplete Gratification in Women--Coitus Interruptus--Coitus
Reservatus--The Human Method of Coitus--Variations in Coitus--Posture in
Coitus--The Best Time for Coitus--The Influence of Coitus in Marriage--The
Advantages of Absence in Marriage--The Risks of Absence--Jealousy--The
Primitive Function of Jealousy--Its Predominance Among Animals, Savages,
etc., and in Pathological States--An Anti-Social Emotion--Jealousy
Incompatible with the Progress of Civilization--The Possibility of Loving
More Than One Person at a Time--Platonic Friendship--The Conditions Which
Make It Possible--The Maternal Element in Woman's Love--The Final
Development of Conjugal Love--The Problem of Love One of the Greatest of
Social Questions.
It will be clear from the preceding discussion that there are two elements
in every marriage so far as that marriage is complete. On the one hand
marriage is a union prompted by mutual love and only sustainable as a
reality, apart from its mere formal side, by the cultivation of such love.
On the other hand marriage is a method for propagating the race and
having its end in offspring. In the first aspect its aim is erotic, in the
second parental. Both these ends have long been generally recognized. We
find them set forth, for instance, in the marriage service of the Church
of England, where it is stated that marriage exists both for "the mutual
society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other," and
also for "the procreation of children." Without the factor of mutual love
the proper conditions for procreation cannot exist; without the factor of
procreation the sexual union, however beautiful and sacred a relationship
it may in itself be, remains, in essence, a private relationship,
incomplete as a marriage and without public significance. It becomes
necessary, therefore, to supplement the preceding discussion of marriage
in its general outlines by a final and more intimate consideration of
marriage in its essence, as embracing the art of love and the science of
procreation.
There has already been occasion from time to time to refer to
those who, starting from various points of view, have sought to
limit the scope of marriage and to suppress one or other of its
elements. (See e.g., _ante_, p. 135.)
In modern times the tendency has been to exclude the factor of
procreation, and to regard the relationship of marriage as
exclusively lying in the relationship of the two parties to each
other. Apart from the fact, which it is unnecessary again to call
attention to, that, from the public and social point of view, a
marriage without children, however important to the two persons
concerned, is a relationship without any public significance, it
must further be said that, in the absence of children, even the
personal erotic life itself is apt to suffer, for in the normal
erotic life, especially in women, sexual love tends to grow into
parental love. Moreover, the full development of mutual love and
dependence is with difficulty attained, and there is absence of
that closest of bonds, the mutual coöperation of two persons in
producing a new person. The perfect and complete marriage in its
full development is a trinity.
Those who seek to eliminate the erotic factor from marriage as
unessential, or at all events as only permissible when strictly
subordinated to the end of procreation, have made themselves
heard from time to time at various periods. Even the ancients,
Greeks and Romans alike, in their more severe moments advocated
the elimination of the erotic element from marriage, and its
confinement to extra-marital relationships, that is so far as men
were concerned; for the erotic needs of married women they had no
provision to make. Montaigne, soaked in classic traditions, has
admirably set forth the reasons for eliminating the erotic
interest from marriage: "One does not marry for oneself, whatever
may be said; a man marries as much, or more, for his posterity,
for his family; the usage and interest of marriage touch our race
beyond ourselves.... Thus it is a kind of incest to employ, in
this venerable and sacred parentage, the efforts and the
extravagances of amorous license" (_Essais_, Bk. i, Ch. XXIX; Bk.
iii, Ch. V). This point of view easily commended itself to the
early Christians, who, however, deliberately overlooked its
reverse side, the establishment of erotic interests outside
marriage. "To have intercourse except for procreation," said
Clement of Alexandria (_Pædagogus_, Bk. ii, Ch. X), "is to do
injury to Nature." While, however, that statement is quite true
of the lower animals, it is not true of man, and especially not
true of civilized man, whose erotic needs are far more developed,
and far more intimately associated with the finest and highest
part of the organism, than is the case among animals generally.
For the animal, sexual desire, except when called forth by the
conditions involved by procreative necessities, has no existence.
It is far otherwise in man, for whom, even when the question of
procreation is altogether excluded, sexual love is still an
insistent need, and even a condition of the finest spiritual
development. The Catholic Church, therefore, while regarding with
admiration a continence in marriage which excluded sexual
relations except for the end of procreation, has followed St.
Augustine in treating intercourse apart from procreation with
considerable indulgence, as only a venial sin. Here, however, the
Church was inclined to draw the line, and it appears that in 1679
Innocent XI condemned the proposition that "the conjugal act,
practiced for pleasure alone, is exempt even from venial sin."
Protestant theologians have been inclined to go further, and
therein they found some authority even in Catholic writers. John
à Lasco, the Catholic Bishop who became a Protestant and settled
in England during Edward VI's reign, was following many mediæval
theologians when he recognized the _sacramentum solationis_, in
addition to _proles_, as an element of marriage. Cranmer, in his
marriage service of 1549, stated that "mutual help and comfort,"
as well as procreation, enter into the object of marriage
(Wickham Legg, _Ecclesiological Essays_, p. 204; Howard,
_Matrimonial Institutions_, vol. i, p. 398). Modern theologians
speak still more distinctly. "The sexual act," says Northcote
(_Christianity and Sex Problems_, p. 55), "is a love act. Duly
regulated, it conduces to the ethical welfare of the individual
and promotes his efficiency as a social unit. The act itself and
its surrounding emotions stimulate within the organism the
powerful movements of a vast psychic life." At an earlier period
also, Schleiermacher, in his _Letters on Lucinde_, had pointed
out the great significance of love for the spiritual development
of the individual.
Edward Carpenter truly remarks, in _Love's Coming of Age_, that
sexual love is not only needed for physical creation, but also
for spiritual creation. Bloch, again, in discussing this question
(_The Sexual Life of Our Time_, Ch. VI) concludes that "love and
the sexual embrace have not only an end in procreation, they
constitute an end in themselves, and are necessary for the life,
development, and inner growth of the individual himself."
It is argued by some, who admit mutual love as a constituent part of
marriage, that such love, once recognized at the outset, may be taken for
granted, and requires no further discussion; there is, they believe, no
art of love to be either learnt or taught; it comes by nature. Nothing
could be further from the truth, most of all as regards civilized man.
Even the elementary fact of coitus needs to be taught. No one could take a
more austerely Puritanic view of sexual affairs than Sir James Paget, and
yet Paget (in his lecture on "Sexual Hypochondriasis") declared that
"Ignorance about sexual affairs seems to be a notable characteristic of
the more civilized part of the human race. Among ourselves it is certain
that the method of copulating needs to be taught, and that they to whom it
is not taught remain quite ignorant about it." Gallard, again, remarks
similarly (in his _Clinique des Maladies des Femmes_) that young people,
like Daphnis in Longus's pastoral, need a beautiful Lycenion to give them
a solid education, practical as well as theoretical, in these matters, and
he considers that mothers should instruct their daughters at marriage, and
fathers their sons. Philosophers have from time to time recognized the
gravity of these questions and have discoursed concerning them; thus
Epicurus, as Plutarch tells us,[375] would discuss with his disciples
various sexual matters, such as the proper time for coitus; but then, as
now, there were obscurantists who would leave even the central facts of
life to the hazards of chance or ignorance, and these presumed to blame
the philosopher.
There is, however, much more to be learnt in these matters than the mere
elementary facts of sexual intercourse. The art of love certainly includes
such primary facts of sexual hygiene, but it involves also the whole
erotic discipline of marriage, and that is why its significance is so
great, for the welfare and happiness of the individual, for the stability
of sexual unions, and indirectly for the race, since the art of love is
ultimately the art of attaining the right conditions for procreation.
"It seems extremely probable," wrote Professor E.D. Cope,[376] "that if
this subject could be properly understood, and become, in the details of
its practical conduct, a part of a written social science, the monogamic
marriage might attain a far more general success than is often found in
actual life." There can be no doubt whatever that this is the case. In the
great majority of marriages success depends exclusively upon the knowledge
of the art of love possessed by the two persons who enter into it. A
life-long monogamic union may, indeed, persist in the absence of the
slightest inborn or acquired art of love, out of religious resignation or
sheer stupidity. But that attitude is now becoming less common. As we have
seen in the previous chapter, divorces are becoming more frequent and more
easily obtainable in every civilized country. This is a tendency of
civilization; it is the result of a demand that marriage should be a real
relationship, and that when it ceases to be real as a relationship it
should also cease as a form. That is an inevitable tendency, involved in
our growing democratization, for the democracy seems to care more for
realities than for forms, however venerable. We cannot fight against it;
and we should be wrong to fight against it even if we could.
Yet while we are bound to aid the tendency to divorce, and to insist that
a valid marriage needs the wills of two persons to maintain it, it is
difficult for anyone to argue that divorce is in itself desirable. It is
always a confession of failure. Two persons, who, if they have been moved
in the slightest degree by the normal and regular impulse of sexual
selection, at the outset regarded each other as lovable, have, on one
side or the other or on both, proved not lovable. There has been a failure
in the fundamental art of love. If we are to counterbalance facility of
divorce our only sound course is to increase the stability of marriage,
and that is only possible by cultivating the art of love, the primal
foundation of marriage.
It is by no means unnecessary to emphasize this point. There are still
many persons who have failed to realize it. There are even people who seem
to imagine that it is unimportant whether or not pleasure is present in
the sexual act. "I do not believe mutual pleasure in the sexual act has
any particular bearing on the happiness of life," once remarked Dr. Howard
A. Kelly.[377] Such a statement means--if indeed it means anything--that
the marriage tie has no "particular bearing" on human happiness; it means
that the way must be freely opened to adultery and divorce. Even the most
perverse ascetic of the Middle Ages scarcely ventured to make a statement
so flagrantly opposed to the experiences of humanity, and the fact that a
distinguished gynecologist of the twentieth century can make it, with
almost the air of stating a truism, is ample justification for the
emphasis which it has nowadays become necessary to place on the art of
love. "Uxor enim dignitatis nomen est, non voluptatis," was indeed an
ancient Pagan dictum. But it is not in harmony with modern ideas. It was
not even altogether in harmony with Christianity. For our modern morality,
as Ellen Key well says, the unity of love and marriage is a fundamental
principle.[378]
The neglect of the art of love has not been a universal phenomenon; it is
more especially characteristic of Christendom. The spirit of ancient Rome
undoubtedly predisposed Europe to such a neglect, for with their rough
cultivation of the military virtues and their inaptitude for the finer
aspects of civilization the Romans were willing to regard love as a
permissible indulgence, but they were not, as a people, prepared to
cultivate it as an art. Their poets do not, in this matter, represent the
moral feeling of their best people. It is indeed a highly significant
fact that Ovid, the most distinguished Latin poet who concerned himself
much with the art of love, associated that art not so much with morality
as with immorality. As he viewed it, the art of love was less the art of
retaining a woman in her home than the art of winning her away from it; it
was the adulterer's art rather than the husband's art. Such a conception
would be impossible out of Europe, but it proved very favorable to the
growth of the Christian attitude towards the art of love.
Love as an art, as well as a passion, seems to have received
considerable study in antiquity, though the results of that study
have perished. Cadmus Milesius, says Suidas, wrote fourteen great
volumes on the passion of love, but they are not now to be found.
Rohde (_Das Griechische Roman_, p. 55) has a brief section on the
Greek philosophic writers on love. Bloch (_Beiträge zur
Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil I, p. 191) enumerates the ancient
women writers who dealt with the art of love. Montaigne
(_Essais_, liv. ii, Ch. V) gives a list of ancient classical lost
books on love. Burton (_Anatomy of Melancholy_, Bell's edition,
vol. iii, p. 2) also gives a list of lost books on love. Burton
himself dealt at length with the manifold signs of love and its
grievous symptoms. Boissier de Sauvages, early in the eighteenth
century, published a Latin thesis, _De Amore_, discussing love
somewhat in the same spirit as Burton, as a psychic disease to be
treated and cured.
The breath of Christian asceticism had passed over love; it was
no longer, as in classic days, an art to be cultivated, but only
a malady to be cured. The true inheritor of the classic spirit in
this, as in many other matters, was not the Christian world, but
the world of Islam. _The Perfumed Garden_ of the Sheik Nefzaoui
was probably written in the city of Tunis early in the sixteenth
century by an author who belonged to the south of Tunis. Its
opening invocation clearly indicates that it departs widely from
the conception of love as a disease: "Praise be to God who has
placed man's greatest pleasures in the natural parts of woman,
and has destined the natural parts of man to afford the greatest
enjoyments to woman." The Arabic book, _El Ktab_, or "The Secret
Laws of Love," is a modern work, by Omer Haleby Abu Othmân, who
was born in Algiers of a Moorish mother and a Turkish father.
For Christianity the permission to yield to the sexual impulse at all was
merely a concession to human weakness, an indulgence only possible when it
was carefully hedged and guarded on every side. Almost from the first the
Christians began to cultivate the art of virginity, and they could not so
dislocate their point of view as to approve of the art of love. All their
passionate adoration in the sphere of sex went out towards chastity.
Possessed by such ideals, they could only tolerate human love at all by
giving to one special form of it a religious sacramental character, and
even that sacramental halo imparted to love a quasi-ascetic character
which precluded the idea of regarding love as an art.[379] Love gained a
religious element but it lost a moral element, since, outside
Christianity, the art of love is part of the foundation of sexual
morality, wherever such morality in any degree exists. In Christendom love
in marriage was left to shift for itself as best it might; the art of love
was a dubious art which was held to indicate a certain commerce with
immorality and even indeed to be itself immoral. That feeling was
doubtless strengthened by the fact that Ovid was the most conspicuous
master in literature of the art of love. His literary reputation--far
greater than it now seems to us[380]--gave distinction to his position as
the author of the chief extant text-book of the art of love. With Humanism
and the Renaissance and the consequent realization that Christianity had
overlooked one side of life, Ovid's _Ars Amatoria_ was placed on a
pedestal it had not occupied before or since. It represented a step
forward in civilization; it revealed love not as a mere animal instinct or
a mere pledged duty, but as a complex, humane, and refined relationship
which demanded cultivation; "_arte regendus amor_." Boccaccio made a wise
teacher put Ovid's _Ars Amatoria_ into the hands of the young. In an age
still oppressed by the mediæval spirit, it was a much needed text-book,
but it possessed the fatal defect, as a text-book, of presenting the
erotic claims of the individual as divorced from the claims of good social
order. It never succeeded in establishing itself as a generally accepted
manual of love, and in the eyes of many it served to stamp the subject it
dealt with as one that lies outside the limits of good morals.
When, however, we take a wider survey, and inquire into the discipline for
life that is imparted to the young in many parts of the world, we shall
frequently find that the art of love, understood in varying ways, is an
essential part of that discipline. Summary, though generally adequate, as
are the educational methods of primitive peoples, they not seldom include
a training in those arts which render a woman agreeable to a man and a man
agreeable to a woman in the relationship of marriage, and it is often more
or less dimly realized that courtship is not a mere preliminary to
marriage, but a biologically essential part of the marriage relationship
throughout.
Sexual initiation is carried out very thoroughly in Azimba land,
Central Africa. H. Crawford Angus, the first European to visit
the Azimba people, lived among them for a year, and has described
the Chensamwali, or initiation ceremony, of girls. "At the first
sign of menstruation in a young girl, she is taught the mysteries
of womanhood, and is shown the different positions for sexual
intercourse. The vagina is handled freely, and if not previously
enlarged (which may have taken place at the harvest festival when
a boy and girl are allowed to 'keep house' during the day-time by
themselves, and when quasi-intercourse takes place) it is now
enlarged by means of a horn or corn-cob, which is inserted and
secured in place by bands of bark cloth. When all signs [of
menstruation] have passed, a public announcement of a dance is
given to the women in the village. At this dance no men are
allowed to be present, and it was only with a great deal of
trouble that I managed to witness it. The girl to be 'danced' is
led back from the bush to her mother's hut where she is kept in
solitude to the morning of the dance. On that morning she is
placed on the ground in a sitting position, while the dancers
form a ring around her. Several songs are then sung with
reference to the genital organs. The girl is then stripped and
made to go through the mimic performance of sexual intercourse,
and if the movements are not enacted properly, as is often the
case when the girl is timid and bashful, one of the older women
will take her place and show her how she is to perform. Many
songs about the relation between men and women are sung, and the
girl is instructed as to all her duties when she becomes a wife.
She is also instructed that during the time of her menstruation
she is unclean, and that during her monthly period she must close
her vulva with a pad of fibre used for the purpose. The object of
the dance is to inculcate to the girl the knowledge of married
life. The girl is taught to be faithful to her husband and to try
to bear children, and she is also taught the various arts and
methods of making herself seductive and pleasing to her husband,
and of thus retaining him in her power." (H. Crawford Angus, "The
Chensamwali," _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1898, Heft 6, p.
479).
In Abyssinia, as well as on the Zanzibar coast, according to
Stecker (quoted by Ploss-Bartels, _Das Weib_, Section 119) young
girls are educated in buttock movements which increase their
charm in coitus. These movements, of a rotatory character, are
called Duk-Duk. To be ignorant of Duk-Duk is a great disgrace to
a girl. Among the Swahili women of Zanzibar, indeed, a complete
artistic system of hip-movements is cultivated, to be displayed
in coitus. It prevails more especially on the coast, and a
Swahili woman is not counted a "lady" (bibi) unless she is
acquainted with this art. From sixty to eighty young women
practice this buttock dance together for some eight hours a day,
laying aside all clothing, and singing the while. The public are
not admitted. The dance, which is a kind of imitation of coitus,
has been described by Zache ("Sitten und Gebräuche der Suaheli,"
_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1899, Heft 2-3, p. 72). The more
accomplished dancers excite general admiration. During the latter
part of this initiation various feats are imposed, to test the
girl's skill and self-control. For instance, she must dance up to
a fire and remove from the midst of the fire a vessel full of
water to the brim, without spilling it. At the end of three
months the training is over, and the girl goes home in festival
attire. She is now eligible for marriage. Similar customs are
said to prevail in the Dutch East Indies and elsewhere.
The Hebrews had erotic dances, which were doubtless related to
the art of love in marriage, and among the Greeks, and their
disciples the Romans, the conception of love as an art which
needs training, skill, and cultivation, was still extant. That
conception was crushed by Christianity which, although it
sanctified the institution of matrimony, degraded that sexual
love which is normally the content of marriage.
In 1176 the question was brought before a Court of Love by a
baron and lady of Champagne, whether love is compatible with
marriage. "No," said the baron, "I admire and respect the sweet
intimacy of married couples, but I cannot call it love. Love
desires obstacles, mystery, stolen favors. Now husbands and wives
boldly avow their relationship; they possess each other without
contradiction and without reserve. It cannot then be love that
they experience." And after mature deliberation the ladies of the
Court of Love adopted the baron's conclusions (E. de la
Bedollière, _Histoire des Moeurs des Français_, vol. iii, p.
334). There was undoubtedly an element of truth in the baron's
arguments. Yet it may well be doubted whether in any
non-Christian country it would ever have been possible to obtain
acceptance for the doctrine that love and marriage are
incompatible. This doctrine was, however, as Ribot points out in
his _Logique des Sentiments_, inevitable, when, as among the
medieval nobility, marriage was merely a political or domestic
treaty and could not, therefore, be a method of moral elevation.
"Why is it," asked Rétif de la Bretonne, towards the end of the
eighteenth century, "that girls who have no morals are more
seductive and more loveable than honest women? It is because,
like the Greek courtesans to whom grace and voluptuousness were
taught, they have studied the art of pleasing. Among the foolish
detractors of my _Contemporaines_, not one guessed the
philosophic aim of nearly everyone of these tales, which is to
suggest to honest women the ways of making themselves loved. I
should like to see the institution of initiations, such as those
of the ancients.... To-day the happiness of the human species is
abandoned to chance; all the experience of women is individual,
like that of animals; it is lost with those women who, being
naturally amiable, might have taught others to become so.
Prostitutes alone make a superficial study of it, and the lessons
they receive are, for the most part, as harmful as those of
respectable Greek and Roman matrons were holy and honorable, only
tending to wantonness, to the exhaustion alike of the purse and
of the physical faculties, while the aim of the ancient matrons
was the union of husband and wife and their mutual attachment
through pleasure. The Christian religion annihilated the
Mysteries as infamous, but we may regard that annihilation as one
of the wrongs done by Christianity to humanity, as the work of
men with little enlightenment and bitter zeal, dangerous puritans
who were the natural enemies of marriage" (Rétif de la Bretonne,
_Monsieur Nicolas_, reprint of 1883, vol. x, pp. 160-3). It may
be added that Dühren (Dr. Iwan Bloch) regards Rétif as "a master
in the _Ars Amandi_," and discusses him from this point of view
in his _Rétif de la Bretonne_ (pp. 362-371).
Whether or not Christianity is to be held responsible, it cannot be
doubted that throughout Christendom there has been a lamentable failure to
recognize the supreme importance, not only erotically but morally, of the
art of love. Even in the great revival of sexual enlightenment now taking
place around us there is rarely even the faintest recognition that in
sexual enlightenment the one thing essentially necessary is a knowledge of
the art of love. For the most part, sexual instruction as at present
understood, is purely negative, a mere string of thou-shalt-nots. If that
failure were due to the conscious and deliberate recognition that while
the art of love must be based on physiological and psychological
knowledge, it is far too subtle, too complex, too personal, to be
formulated in lectures and manuals, it would be reasonable and sound. But
it seems to rest entirely on ignorance, indifference, or worse.
Love-making is indeed, like other arts, an art that is partly natural--"an
art that nature makes"--and therefore it is a natural subject for learning
and exercising in play. Children left to themselves tend, both playfully
and seriously, to practice love, alike on the physical and the psychic
sides.[381] But this play is on its physical side sternly repressed by
their elders, when discovered, and on its psychic side laughed at. Among
the well-bred classes it is usually starved out at an early age.
After puberty, if not before, there is another form in which the art of
love is largely experimented and practised, especially in England and
America, the form of flirtation. In its elementary manifestations flirting
is entirely natural and normal; we may trace it even in animals; it is
simply the beginning of courtship, at the early stage when courtship may
yet, if desired, be broken off. Under modern civilized conditions,
however, flirtation is often more than this. These conditions make
marriage difficult; they make love and its engagements too serious a
matter to be entered on lightly; they make actual sexual intercourse
dangerous as well as disreputable. Flirtation adapts itself to these
conditions. Instead of being merely the preliminary stage of normal
courtship, it is developed into a form of sexual gratification as complete
as due observation of the conditions already mentioned will allow. In
Germany, and especially in France where it is held in great abhorrence,
this is the only form of flirtation known; it is regarded as an
exportation from the United States and is denominated "flirtage." Its
practical outcome is held to be the "demi-vierge," who knows and has
experienced the joys of sex while yet retaining her hymen intact.
This degenerate form of flirtation, cultivated not as a part of
courtship, but for its own sake, has been well described by Forel
(_Die Sexuelle Frage_, pp. 97-101). He defines it as including
"all those expressions of the sexual instinct of one individual
towards another individual which excite the other's sexual
instinct, coitus being always excepted." In the beginning it may
be merely a provocative look or a simple apparently unintentional
touch or contact; and by slight gradations it may pass on to
caresses, kisses, embraces, and even extend to pressure or
friction of the sexual parts, sometimes leading to orgasm. Thus,
Forel mentions, a sensuous woman by the pressure of her garments
in dancing can produce ejaculation in her partner. Most usually
the process is that voluptuous contact and revery which, in
English slang, is called "spooning." From first to last there
need not be any explicit explanations, proposals, or declarations
on either side, and neither party is committed to any
relationship with the other beyond the period devoted to
flirtage. In one form, however, flirtage consists entirely in the
excitement of a conversation devoted to erotic and indecorous
topics. Either the man or the woman may take the active part in
flirtage, but in a woman more refinement and skill is required to
play the active part without repelling the man or injuring her
reputation. Indeed, much the same is true of men also, for women,
while they often like flirting, usually prefer its more refined
forms. There are infinite forms of flirtage, and while as a
preliminary part of courtship, it has its normal place and
justification, Forel concludes that "as an end in itself, and
never passing beyond itself, it is a phenomenon of degeneration."
From the French point of view, flirtage and flirtation generally
have been discussed by Madame Bentzon ("Family Life in America,"
_Forum_, March, 1896) who, however, fails to realize the natural
basis of flirtation in courtship. She regards it as a sin against
the law "Thou shalt not play with love," for it ought to have the
excuse of an irresistible passion, but she thinks it is
comparatively inoffensive in America (though still a
deteriorating influence on the women) on account of the
temperament, education, and habits of the people. It must,
however, be remembered that play has a proper relationship to all
vital activities, and that a reasonable criticism of flirtation
is concerned rather with its normal limitations than with its
right to exist (see the observations on the natural basis of
coquetry and the ends it subserves in "The Evolution of Modesty"
in volume i of these _Studies_).
While flirtation in its natural form--though not in the perverted form of
"flirtage"--has sound justification, alike as a method of testing a lover
and of acquiring some small part of the art of love, it remains an
altogether inadequate preparation for love. This is sufficiently shown by
the frequent inaptitude for the art of love, and even for the mere
physical act of love, so frequently manifested both by men and women in
the very countries where flirtation most flourishes.
This ignorance, not merely of the art of love but even of the physical
facts of sexual love, is marked not only in women, especially women of the
middle class, but also in men, for the civilized man, as Fritsch long ago
remarked, often knows less of the facts of the sexual life than a
milkmaid. It shows itself differently, however, in the two sexes.
Among women sexual ignorance ranges from complete innocence of the fact
that it involves any intimate bodily relationship at all to
misapprehensions of the most various kind; some think that the
relationship consists in lying side by side, many that intercourse takes
place at the navel, not a few that the act occupies the whole night. It
has been necessary in a previous chapter to discuss the general evils of
sexual ignorance; it is here necessary to refer to its more special evils
as regards the relationship of marriage. Girls are educated with the vague
idea that they will marry,--quite correctly, for the majority of them do
marry,--but the idea that they must be educated for the career that will
naturally fall to their lot is an idea which as yet has never seemed to
occur to the teachers of girls. Their heads are crammed to stupidity with
the knowledge of facts which it is no one's concern to know, but the
supremely important training for life they are totally unable to teach.
Women are trained for nearly every avocation under the sun; for the
supreme avocation of wifehood and motherhood they are never trained at
all!
It may be said, and with truth, that the present incompetent training of
girls is likely to continue so long as the mothers of girls are content to
demand nothing better. It may also be said, with even greater truth, that
there is much that concerns the knowledge of sexual relationships which
the mother herself may most properly impart to her daughter. It may
further be asserted, most unanswerably, that the art of love, with which
we are here more especially concerned, can only be learnt by actual
experience, an experience which our social traditions make it difficult
for a virtuous girl to acquire with credit. Without here attempting to
apportion the share of blame which falls to each cause, it remains
unfortunate that a woman should so often enter marriage with the worst
possible equipment of prejudices and misapprehensions, even when she
believes, as often happens, that she knows all about it. Even with the
best equipment, a woman, under present conditions, enters marriage at a
disadvantage. She awakes to the full realization of love more slowly than
a man, and, on the average, at a later age, so that her experiences of the
life of sex before marriage have usually been of a much more restricted
kind than her husband's.[382] So that even with the best preparation, it
often happens that it is not until several years after marriage that a
woman clearly realizes her own sexual needs and adequately estimates her
husband's ability to satisfy those needs. We cannot over-estimate the
personal and social importance of a complete preparation for marriage, and
the greater the difficulties placed in the way of divorce the more weight
necessarily attaches to that preparation.[383]
Everyone is probably acquainted with many cases of the extreme
ignorance of women on entering marriage. The following case
concerning a woman of twenty-seven, who had been asked in
marriage, is somewhat extreme, but not very exceptional. "She did
not feel sure of her affection and she asked a woman cousin
concerning the meaning of love. This cousin lent her Ellis
Ethelmer's pamphlet, _The Human Flower_. She learnt from this
that men desired the body of a woman, and this so appalled her
that she was quite ill for several days. The next time her lover
attempted a caress she told him that it was 'lust.' Since then
she has read George Moore's _Sister Teresa_, and the knowledge
that 'women can be as bad as men' has made her sad." The
"Histories" contained in the Appendices to previous volumes of
these _Studies_ reveal numerous instances of the deplorable
ignorance of young girls concerning the most central facts of the
sexual life. It is not surprising, under such circumstances, that
marriage leads to disillusionment or repulsion.
It is commonly said that the duty of initiating the wife into the
privileges and obligations of marriage properly belongs to the
husband. Apart, however, altogether from the fact that it is
unjust to a woman to compel her to bind herself in marriage
before she has fully realized what marriage means, it must also
be said that there are many things necessary for women to know
that it is unreasonable to expect a husband to explain. This is,
for instance, notably the case as regards the more fatiguing and
exhausting effects of coitus on a man as compared with a woman.
The inexperienced bride cannot know beforehand that the
frequently repeated orgasms which render her vigorous and radiant
exert a depressing effect on her husband, and his masculine pride
induces him to attempt to conceal that fact. The bride, in her
innocence, is unconscious that her pleasure is bought at her
husband's expense, and that what is not excess to her, may be a
serious excess to him. The woman who knows (notably, for
instance, a widow who remarries) is careful to guard her
husband's health in this respect, by restraining her own ardor,
for she realizes that a man is not willing to admit that he is
incapable of satisfying his wife's desires. (G. Hirth has also
pointed out how important it is that women should know before
marriage the natural limits of masculine potency, _Wege zur
Liebe_, p. 571.)
The ignorance of women of all that concerns the art of love, and their
total lack of preparation for the natural facts of the sexual life, would
perhaps be of less evil augury for marriage if it were always compensated
by the knowledge, skill, and considerateness of the husband. But that is
by no means always the case. Within the ordinary range we find, at all
events in England, the large group of men whose knowledge of women before
marriage has been mainly confined to prostitutes, and the important and
not inconsiderable group of men who have had no intimate intercourse with
women, their sexual experiences having been confined to masturbation or
other auto-erotic manifestations, and to flirtation. Certainly the man of
sensitive and intelligent temperament, whatever his training or lack of
training, may succeed with patience and consideration in overcoming all
the difficulties placed in the way of love by the mixture of ignorances
and prejudices which so often in woman takes the place of an education for
the erotic part of her life. But it cannot be said that either of these
two groups of men has been well equipped for the task. The training and
experience which a man receives from a prostitute, even under fairly
favorable conditions, scarcely form the right preparation for approaching
a woman of his own class who has no intimate erotic experiences.[384] The
frequent result is that he is liable to waver between two opposite courses
of action, both of them mistaken. On the one hand, he may treat his bride
as a prostitute, or as a novice to be speedily moulded into the sexual
shape he is most accustomed to, thus running the risk either of perverting
or of disgusting her. On the other hand, realizing that the purity and
dignity of his bride place her in an altogether different class from the
women he has previously known, he may go to the opposite extreme of
treating her with an exaggerated respect, and so fail either to arouse or
to gratify her erotic needs. It is difficult to say which of these two
courses of action is the more unfortunate; the result of both, however, is
frequently found to be that a nominal marriage never becomes a real
marriage.[385]
Yet there can be no doubt whatever that the other group of men, the men
who enter marriage without any erotic experiences, run even greater risks.
These are often the best of men, both as regards personal character and
mental power. It is indeed astonishing to find how ignorant, both
practically and theoretically, very able and highly educated men may be
concerning sexual matters.
"Complete abstinence during youth," says Freud (_Sexual-Probleme_,
March, 1908), "is not the best preparation for marriage in
a young man. Women divine this and prefer those of their
wooers who have already proved themselves to be men with
other women." Ellen Key, referring to the demand sometimes made
by women for purity in men (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 96), asks
whether women realize the effect of their admiration of the
experienced and confident man who knows women, on the shy and
hesitating youth, "who perhaps has been struggling hard for his
erotic purity, in the hope that a woman's happy smile will be the
reward of his conquest, and who is condemned to see how that
woman looks down on him with lofty compassion and gazes with
admiration at the leopard's spots." When the lover, in Laura
Marholm's _Was war es_? says to the heroine, "I have never yet
touched a woman," the girl "turns from him with horror, and it
seemed to her that a cold shudder went through her, a chilling
deception." The same feeling is manifested in an exaggerated form
in the passion often experienced by vigorous girls of eighteen to
twenty-four for old roués. (This has been discussed by Forel,
_Die Sexuelle Frage_, pp. 217 et seq.)
Other factors may enter in a woman's preference for the man who
has conquered other women. Even the most religious and moral
young woman, Valera remarks (_Doña Luz_, p. 205), likes to marry
a man who has loved many women; it gives a greater value to his
choice of her; it also offers her an opportunity of converting
him to higher ideals. No doubt when the inexperienced man meets
in marriage the equally inexperienced woman they often succeed in
adapting themselves to each other and a permanent _modus vivendi_
is constituted. But it is by no means so always. If the wife is
taught by instinct or experience she is apt to resent the
awkwardness and helplessness of her husband in the art of love.
Even if she is ignorant she may be permanently alienated and
become chronically frigid, through the brutal inconsiderateness
of her ignorant husband in carrying out what he conceives to be
his marital duties. (It has already been necessary to touch on
this point in discussing "The Sexual Impulse in Women" in vol.
iii of these _Studies_.) Sometimes, indeed, serious physical
injury has been inflicted on the bride owing to this ignorance of
the husband.
"I take it that most men have had pre-matrimonial
sex-relationships," a correspondent writes. "But I have known one
man at least who, up till the age of twenty, had not even a
rudimentary idea of sex matters. At twenty-nine, a few months
before marriage, he came to ask me how coitus was performed, and
displayed an ignorance that I could not believe to exist in the
mind of an otherwise intelligent man. He had evidently no
instinct to guide him, as the brutes have, and his reason was
unable to supply the necessary knowledge. It is very curious that
man should lose this instinctive knowledge. I have known another
man almost equally ignorant. He also came to me for advice in
marital duties. Both of these men masturbated, and they were
normally passionate." Such cases are not so very rare. Usually,
however, a certain amount of information has been acquired from
some for the most part unsatisfactory source, and the ignorance
is only partial, though not on that account less dangerous.
Balzac has compared the average husband to an orang-utan trying
to play the violin. "Love, as we instinctively feel, is the most
melodious of harmonies. Woman is a delicious instrument of
pleasure, but it is necessary to know its quivering strings,
study the pose of it, its timid keyboard, the changing and
capricious fingering. How many orangs--men, I mean, marry without
knowing what a woman is!... Nearly all men marry in the most
profound ignorance of women and of love" (Balzac, _Physiologie du
Mariage_, Meditation VII).
Neugebauer (_Monatsschrift für Geburtshülfe_, 1889, Bk. ix, pp.
221 et seq.) has collected over one hundred and fifty cases of
injury to women in coitus inflicted by the penis. The causes were
brutality, drunkenness of one or both parties, unusual position
in coitus, disproportion of the organs, pathological conditions
of the woman's organs (Cf. R.W. Taylor, _Practical Treatise on
Sexual Disorders_, Ch. XXXV). Blumreich also discusses the
injuries produced by violent coitus (Senator and Kaminer, _Health
and Disease in Relation to Marriage_, vol. ii, pp. 770-779). C.M.
Green (_Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, 13 Ap., 1893)
records two cases of rupture of vagina by sexual intercourse in
newly-married ladies, without evidence of any great violence.
Mylott (_British Medical Journal_, Sept. 16, 1899) records a
similar case occurring on the wedding night. The amount of force
sometimes exerted in coitus is evidenced by the cases, occurring
from time to time, in which intercourse takes place by the
urethra.
Eulenburg finds (_Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 69) that vaginismus, a
condition of spasmodic contraction of the vulva and exaggerated
sensibility on the attempt to effect coitus, is due to forcible
and unskilful attempts at the first coitus. Adler (_Die
Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes_, p. 160) also
believes that the scarred remains of the hymen, together with
painful memories of a violent first coitus, are the most frequent
cause of vaginismus.
The occasional cases, however, of physical injury or of
pathological condition produced by violent coitus at the
beginning of marriage constitute but a very small portion of the
evidence which witnesses to the evil results of the prevalent
ignorance regarding the art of love. As regards Germany,
Fürbringer writes (Senator and Kaminer, _Health and Disease in
Relation to Marriage_, vol. i, p. 215): "I am perfectly satisfied
that the number of young married women who have a lasting painful
recollection of their first sexual intercourse exceeds by far the
number of those who venture to consult a doctor." As regards
England, the following experience is instructive: A lady asked
six married women in succession, privately, on the same day
concerning their bridal experiences. To all, sexual intercourse
had come as a shock; two had been absolutely ignorant about
sexual matters; the others had thought they knew what coitus was,
but were none the less shocked. These women were of the middle
class, perhaps above the average in intelligence; one was a
doctor.
Breuer and Freud, in their _Studien über Hysterie_ (p. 216),
pointed out that the bridal night is practically often a rape,
and that it sometimes leads to hysteria, which is not cured until
satisfying sexual relationships are established. Even when there
is no violence, Kisch (_Sexual Life of Woman_, Part II) regards
awkward and inexperienced coitus, leading to incomplete
excitement of the wife, as the chief cause of dyspareunia, or
absence of sexual gratification, although gross disproportion in
the size of the male and female organs, or disease in either
party, may lead to the same result. Dyspareunia, Kisch adds, is
astonishingly frequent, though sometimes women complain of it
without justification in order to arouse sympathy for themselves
as sacrifices on the altar of marriage; the constant sign is
absence of ejaculation on the woman's part. Kisch also observes
that wedding night deflorations are often really rapes. One young
bride, known to him, was so ignorant of the physical side of
love, and so overwhelmed by her husband's first attempt at
intercourse, that she fled from the house in the night, and
nothing would ever persuade her to return to her husband. (It is
worth noting that by Canon law, under such circumstances, the
Church might hold the marriage invalid. See Thomas Slater's
_Moral Theology_, vol. ii, p. 318, and a case in point, both
quoted by Rev. C.J. Shebbeare, "Marriage Law in the Church of
England," _Nineteenth Century_, Aug., 1909, p. 263.) Kisch
considers, also, that wedding tours are a mistake; since the
fatigue, the excitement, the long journeys, sight-seeing, false
modesty, bad hotel arrangements, often combine to affect the
bride unfavorably and produce the germs of serious illness. This
is undoubtedly the case.
The extreme psychic importance of the manner in which the act of
defloration is accomplished is strongly emphasized by Adler. He
regards it as a frequent cause of permanent sexual anæsthesia.
"This first moment in which the man's individuality attains its
full rights often decides the whole of life. The unskilled,
over-excited husband can then implant the seed of feminine
insensibility, and by continued awkwardness and coarseness
develop it into permanent anæsthesia. The man who takes
possession of his rights with reckless brutal masculine force
merely causes his wife anxiety and pain, and with every
repetition of the act increases her repulsion.... A large
proportion of cold-natured women represent a sacrifice by men,
due either to unconscious awkwardness, or, occasionally, to
conscious brutality towards the tender plant which should have
been cherished with peculiar art and love, but has been robbed of
the splendor of its development. All her life long, a wistful and
trembling woman will preserve the recollection of a brutal
wedding night, and, often enough, it remains a perpetual source
of inhibition every time that the husband seeks anew to gratify
his desires without adapting himself to his wife's desires for
love" (O. Adler, _Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des
Weibes_, pp. 159 et seq., 181 et seq.). "I have seen an honest
woman shudder with horror at her husband's approach," wrote
Diderot long ago in his essay "Sur les Femmes"; "I have seen her
plunge in the bath and feel herself never sufficiently washed
from the stain of duty." The same may still be said of a vast
army of women, victims of a pernicious system of morality which
has taught them false ideas of "conjugal duty" and has failed to
teach their husbands the art of love.
Women, when their fine natural instincts have not been hopelessly
perverted by the pruderies and prejudices which are so diligently
instilled into them, understand the art of love more readily than men.
Even when little more than children they can often completely take the cue
that is given to them. Much more than is the case with men, at all events
under civilized conditions, the art of love is with them an art that
Nature makes. They always know more of love, as Montaigne long since said,
than men can teach them, for it is a discipline that is born in their
blood.[386]
The extensive inquiries of Sanford Bell (loc. cit.) show that the
emotions of sex-love may appear as early as the third year. It
must also be remembered that, both physically and psychically,
girls are more precocious, more mature, than boys (see, e.g.,
Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, fourth edition, pp. 34 _et
seq._, 200, etc.). Thus, by the time she has reached the age of
puberty a girl has had time to become an accomplished mistress of
the minor arts of love. That the age of puberty is for girls the
age of love seems to be widely recognized by the popular mind.
Thus in a popular song of Bresse a girl sings:--
"J'ai calculé mon âge,
J'ai quatorze à quinze ans.
Ne suis-je pas dans l'âge
D'y avoir un amant?"
This matter of the sexual precocity of girls has an important
bearing on the question of the "age of consent," or the age at
which it should be legal for a girl to consent to sexual
intercourse. Until within the last twenty-five years there has
been a tendency to set a very low age (even as low as ten) as the
age above which a man commits no offence in having sexual
intercourse with a girl. In recent years there has been a
tendency to run to the opposite and equally unfortunate extreme
of raising it to a very late age. In England, by the Criminal Law
Amendment Act of 1885, the age of consent was raised to sixteen
(this clause of the bill being carried in the House of Commons by
a majority of 108). This seems to be the reasonable age at which
the limit should be set and its extreme high limit in temperate
climates. It is the age recognized by the Italian Criminal Code,
and in many other parts of the civilized world. Gladstone,
however, was in favor of raising it to eighteen, and Howard, in
discussing this question as regards the United States
(_Matrimonial Institutions_, vol. iii, pp. 195-203), thinks it
ought everywhere to be raised to twenty-one, so coinciding with
the age of legal majority at which a woman can enter into
business or political relations. There has been, during recent
years, a wide limit of variation in the legislation of the
different American States on this point, the differences of the
two limits being as much as eight years, and in some important
States the act of intercourse with a girl under eighteen is
declared to be "rape," and punishable with imprisonment for life.
Such enactments as these, however, it must be recognized, are
arbitrary, artificial, and unnatural. They do not rest on a sound
biological basis, and cannot be enforced by the common sense of
the community. There is no proper analogy between the age of
legal majority which is fixed, approximately, with reference to
the ability to comprehend abstract matters of intelligence, and
the age of sexual maturity which occurs much earlier, both
physically and psychically, and is determined in women by a very
precise biological event: the completion of puberty in the onset
of menstruation. Among peoples living under natural conditions in
all parts of the world it is recognized that a girl becomes
sexually a woman at puberty; at that epoch she receives her
initiation into adult life and becomes a wife and a mother. To
declare that the act of intercourse with a woman who, by the
natural instinct of mankind generally, is regarded as old enough
for all the duties of womanhood, is a criminal act of rape,
punishable by imprisonment for life, can only be considered an
abuse of language, and, what is worse, an abuse of law, even if
we leave all psychological and moral considerations out of the
question, for it deprives the conception of rape of all that
renders it naturally and properly revolting.
The sound view in this question is clearly the view that it is
the girl's puberty which constitutes the criterion of the man's
criminality in sexually approaching her. In the temperate regions
of Europe and North America the average age of the appearance of
menstruation, the critical moment in the establishment of
complete puberty, is fifteen (see, e.g., Havelock Ellis, _Man and
Woman_, Ch. XI; the facts are set forth at length in Kisch's
_Sexual Life of Woman_, 1909). Therefore it is reasonable that
the act of an adult man in having sexual connection with a girl
under sixteen, with or without her consent, should properly be a
criminal act, severely punishable. In those lands where the
average age of puberty is higher or lower, the age of consent
should be raised or lowered accordingly. (Bruno Meyer, arguing
against any attempt to raise the age of consent above sixteen,
considers that the proper age of consent is generally fourteen,
for, as he rightly insists, the line of division is between the
ripe and the unripe personality, and while the latter should be
strictly preserved from the sphere of sexuality, only voluntary,
not compulsory, influence should be brought to bear on the
former. _Sexual-Probleme_, Ap., 1909.)
If we take into our view the wider considerations of psychology,
morality, and law, we shall find ample justification for this
point of view. We have to remember that a girl, during all the
years of ordinary school life, is always more advanced, both
physically and psychically, than a boy of the same age, and we
have to recognize that this precocity covers her sexual
development; for even though it is true, on the average, that
active sexual desire is not usually aroused in women until a
somewhat later age, there is also truth in the observation of Mr.
Thomas Hardy (_New Review_, June, 1894): "It has never struck me
that the spider is invariably male and the fly invariably
female." Even, therefore, when sexual intercourse takes place
between a girl and a youth somewhat older than herself, she is
likely to be the more mature, the more self-possessed, and the
more responsible of the two, and often the one who has taken the
more active part in initiating the act. (This point has been
discussed in "The Sexual Impulse in Women" in vol. iii of these
_Studies_.) It must also be remembered that when a girl has once
reached the age of puberty, and put on all the manner and habits
as well as the physical development of a woman, it is no longer
possible for a man always to estimate her age. It is easy to see
that a girl has not yet reached the age of puberty; it is
impossible to tell whether a mature woman is under or over
eighteen; it is therefore, to say the least, unjust to make her
male partner's fate for life depend on the recognition of a
distinction which has no basis in nature. Such considerations
are, indeed, so obvious that there is no chance of carrying out
thoroughly in practice the doctrine that a man should be
imprisoned for life for having intercourse with a girl who is
over the age of sixteen. It is better, from the legal point of
view, to cast the net less widely and to be quite sure that it is
adapted to catch the real and conscious offender, who may be
punished without offending the common sense of the community.
(Cf. Bloch, _The Sexual Life of Our Time_, Ch. XXIV; he considers
that the "age of consent" should begin with the completion of the
sixteenth year.)
It may be necessary to add that the establishment of the "age of
consent" on this basis by no means implies that intercourse with
girls but little over sixteen should be encouraged, or even
socially and morally tolerated. Here, however, we are not in the
sphere of law. It is the natural tendency of the well-born and
well-nurtured girl under civilized conditions to hold herself in
reserve, and the pressure whereby that tendency is maintained and
furthered must be supplied by the whole of her environment,
primarily by the intelligent reflection of the girl herself when
she has reached the age of adolescence. To foster in a young
woman who has long passed the epoch of puberty the notion that
she has no responsibility in the guardianship of her own body and
soul is out of harmony with modern feeling, as well as
unfavorable to the training of women for the world. The States
which have been induced to adopt the high limit of the age of
consent have, indeed, thereby made an abject confession of their
inability to maintain a decent moral level by more legitimate
means; they may profitably serve as a warning rather than as an
example.
The knowledge of women cannot, however, replace, the ignorance of men,
but, on the contrary, merely serves to reveal it. For in the art of love
the man must necessarily take the initiative. It is he who must first
unseal the mystery of the intimacies and audacities which the woman's
heart may hold. The risk of meeting with even the shadow of contempt or
disgust is too serious to allow a woman, even a wife, to reveal the
secrets of love to a man who has not shown himself to be an
initiate.[387] Numberless are the jovial and contented husbands who have
never suspected, and will never know, that their wives carry about with
them, sometimes with silent resentment, the ache of mysterious _tabus_.
The feeling that there are delicious privacies and privileges which she
has never been asked to take, or forced to accept, often erotically
divorces a wife from a husband who never realizes what he has missed.[388]
The case of such husbands is all the harder because, for the most part,
all that they have done is the result of the morality that has been
preached to them. They have been taught from boyhood to be strenuous and
manly and clean-minded, to seek by all means to put out of their minds the
thought of women or the longing for sensuous indulgence. They have been
told on all sides that only in marriage is it right or even safe to
approach women. They have acquired the notion that sexual indulgence and
all that appertains to it is something low and degrading, at the worst a
mere natural necessity, at the best a duty to be accomplished in a direct,
honorable and straight-forward manner. No one seems to have told them that
love is an art, and that to gain real possession of a woman's soul and
body is a task that requires the whole of a man's best skill and insight.
It may well be that when a man learns his lesson too late he is inclined
to turn ferociously on the society that by its conspiracy of
pseudo-morality has done its best to ruin his life, and that of his wife.
In some of these cases husband or wife or both are finally attracted to a
third person, and a divorce enables them to start afresh with better
experience under happier auspices. But as things are at present that is a
sad and serious process, for many impossible. They are happier, as Milton
pointed out, whose trials of love before marriage "have been so many
divorces to teach them experience."
The general ignorance concerning the art of love may be gauged by the fact
that perhaps the question in this matter most frequently asked is the
crude question how often sexual intercourse should take place. That is a
question, indeed, which has occupied the founders of religion, the
law-givers, and the philosophers of mankind, from the earliest times.[389]
Zoroaster said it should be once in every nine days. The laws of Manes
allowed intercourse during fourteen days of the month, but a famous
ancient Hindu physician, Susruta, prescribed it six times a month, except
during the heat of summer when it should be once a month, while other
Hindu authorities say three or four times a month. Solon's requirement of
the citizen that intercourse should take place three times a month fairly
agrees with Zoroaster's. Mohammed, in the Koran, decrees intercourse once
a week. The Jewish Talmud is more discriminating, and distinguishes
between different classes of people; on the vigorous and healthy young
man, not compelled to work hard, once a day is imposed, on the ordinary
working man twice a week, on learned men once a week. Luther considered
twice a week the proper frequency of intercourse.
It will be observed that, as we might expect, these estimates tend to
allow a greater interval in the earlier ages when erotic stimulation was
probably less and erotic erethism probably rare, and to involve an
increased frequency as we approach modern civilization. It will also be
observed that variation occurs within fairly narrow limits. This is
probably due to the fact that these law-givers were in all cases men.
Women law-givers would certainly have shown a much greater tendency to
variation, since the variations of the sexual impulse are greater in
women.[390] Thus Zenobia required the approach of her husband once a
month, provided that impregnation had not taken place the previous month,
while another queen went very far to the other extreme, for we are told
that the Queen of Aragon, after mature deliberation, ordained six times a
day as the proper rule in a legitimate marriage.[391]
It may be remarked, in passing, that the estimates of the proper
frequency of sexual intercourse may always be taken to assume
that there is a cessation during the menstrual period. This is
especially the case as regards early periods of culture when
intercourse at this time is usually regarded as either dangerous
or sinful, or both. (This point has been discussed in the
"Phenomena of Periodicity" in volume i of these _Studies_.) Under
civilized conditions the inhibition is due to æsthetic reasons,
the wife, even if she desires intercourse, feeling a repugnance
to be approached at a time when she regards herself as
"disgusting," and the husband easily sharing this attitude. It
may, however, be pointed out that the æsthetic objection is very
largely the result of the superstitious horror of water which is
still widely felt at this time, and would, to some extent,
disappear if a more scrupulous cleanliness were observed. It
remains a good general rule to abstain from sexual intercourse
during the menstrual period, but in some cases there may be
adequate reason for breaking it. This is so when desire is
specially strong at this time, or when intercourse is physically
difficult at other times but easier during the relaxation of the
parts caused by menstruation. It must be remembered also that the
time when the menstrual flow is beginning to cease is probably,
more than any other period of the month, the biologically proper
time for sexual intercourse, since not only is intercourse
easiest then, and also most gratifying to the female, but it
affords the most favorable opportunity for securing
fertilization.
Schurig long since brought together evidence (_Parthenologia_,
pp. 302 et seq.) showing that coitus is most easy during
menstruation. Some of the Catholic theologians (like Sanchez, and
later, Liguori), going against the popular opinion, have
distinctly permitted intercourse during menstruation, though many
earlier theologians regarded it as a mortal sin. From the
medical side, Kossmann (Senator and Kaminer, _Health and Disease
in Relation to Marriage_, vol. i, p. 249) advocates coitus not
only at the end of menstruation, but even during the latter part
of the period, as being the time when women most usually need it,
the marked disagreeableness of temper often shown by women at
this time, he says, being connected with the suppression,
demanded by custom, of a natural desire. "It is almost always
during menstruation that the first clouds appear on the
matrimonial horizon."
In modern times the physiologists and physicians who have expressed any
opinion on this subject have usually come very near to Luther's dictum.
Haller said that intercourse should not be much more frequent than twice a
week.[392] Acton said once a week, and so also Hammond, even for healthy
men between the ages of twenty-five and forty.[393] Fürbringer only
slightly exceeds this estimate by advocating from fifty to one hundred
single acts in the year.[394] Forel advises two or three times a week for
a man in the prime of manhood, but he adds that for some healthy and
vigorous men once a month appears to be excess.[395] Mantegazza, in his
_Hygiene of Love_, also states that, for a man between twenty and thirty,
two or three times a week represents the proper amount of intercourse, and
between the ages of thirty and forty-five, twice a week. Guyot recommends
every three days.[396]
It seems, however, quite unnecessary to lay down any general rules
regarding the frequency of coitus. Individual desire and individual
aptitude, even within the limits of health, vary enormously. Moreover, if
we recognize that the restraint of desire is sometimes desirable, and
often necessary for prolonged periods, it is as well to refrain from any
appearance of asserting the necessity of sexual intercourse at frequent
and regular intervals. The question is chiefly of importance in order to
guard against excess, or even against the attempt to live habitually close
to the threshold of excess. Many authorities are, therefore, careful to
point out that it is inadvisable to be too definite. Thus Erb, while
remarking that, for some, Luther's dictum represents the extreme maximum,
adds that others can go far beyond that amount with impunity, and he
considers that such variations are congenital.[397] Ribbing, again, while
expressing general agreement with Luther's rule, protests against any
attempt to lay down laws for everyone, and is inclined to say that as
often as one likes is a safe rule, so long as there are no bad
after-effects.[398]
It seems to be generally agreed that bad effects from excess in
coitus, when they do occur, are rare in women (see, e.g.,
Hammond, _Sexual Impotence_, p. 127). Occasionally, however, evil
effects occur in women. (The case, possibly to be mentioned in
this connection, has been recorded of a man whose three wives all
became insane after marriage, _Journal of Mental Science_, Jan.,
1879, p. 611.) In cases of sexual excess great physical
exhaustion, with suspicion and delusions, is often observed.
Hutchinson has recorded three cases of temporary blindness, all
in men, the result of sexual excess after marriage (_Archives of
Surgery_, Jan., 1893). The old medical authors attributed many
evil results to excess in coitus. Thus Schurig (_Spermatologia_,
1720, pp. 260 et seq.) brings together cases of insanity,
apoplexy, syncope, epilepsy, loss of memory, blindness, baldness,
unilateral perspiration, gout, and death attributed to this
cause; of death many cases are given, some in women, but one may
easily perceive that _post_ was often mistaken for _propter_.
There is, however, another consideration which can scarcely escape the
reader of the present work. Nearly all the estimates of the desirable
frequence of coitus are framed to suit the supposed physiological needs of
the husband,[399] and they appear usually to be framed in the same spirit
of exclusive attention to those needs as though the physiological needs of
the evacuation of the bowels or the bladder were in question. But sexual
needs are the needs of two persons, of the husband and of the wife. It is
not enough to ascertain the needs of the husband; it is also necessary to
ascertain the needs of the wife. The resultant must be a harmonious
adjustment of these two groups of needs. That consideration alone, in
conjunction with the wide variations of individual needs, suffices to
render any definite rules of very trifling value.
It is important to remember the wide limits of variation in
sexual capacity, as well as the fact that such variations in
either direction may be healthy and normal, though undoubtedly
when they become extreme variations may have a pathological
significance. In one case, for instance, a man has intercourse
once a month and finds this sufficient; he has no nocturnal
emissions nor any strong desires in the interval; yet he leads an
idle and luxurious life and is not restrained by any moral or
religious scruples; if he much exceeds the frequency which suits
him he suffers from ill-health, though otherwise quite healthy
except for a weak digestion. At the other extreme, a happily
married couple, between forty-five and fifty, much attached to
each other, had engaged in sexual intercourse every night for
twenty years, except during the menstrual period and advanced
pregnancy, which had only occurred once; they are hearty,
full-blooded, intellectual people, fond of good living, and they
attribute their affection and constancy to this frequent
indulgence in coitus; the only child, a girl, is not strong,
though fairly healthy.
The cases are numerous in which, on special occasions, it is
possible for people who are passionately attached to each other
to repeat the act of coitus, or at all events the orgasm, an
inordinate number of times within a few hours. This usually
occurs at the beginning of an intimacy or after a long
separation. Thus in one case a newly-married woman experienced
the orgasm fourteen times in one night, her husband in the same
period experiencing it seven times. In another case a woman who
had lived a chaste life, when sexual relationships finally began,
once experienced orgasm fourteen or fifteen times to her
partner's three times. In a case which, I have been assured may
be accepted as authentic, a young wife of highly erotic, very
erethic, slightly abnormal temperament, after a month's absence
from her husband, was excited twenty-six times within an hour and
a quarter; her husband, a much older man, having two orgasms
during this period; the wife admitted that she felt a "complete
wreck" after this, but it is evident that if this case may be
regarded as authentic the orgasms were of extremely slight
intensity. A young woman, newly married to a physically robust
man, once had intercourse with him eight times in two hours,
orgasm occurring each time in both parties. Guttceit (_Dreissig
Jahre Praxis_, vol. ii. p. 311), in Russia, knew many cases in
which young men of twenty-two to twenty-eight had intercourse
more than ten times in one night, though after the fourth time
there is seldom any semen. He had known some men who had
masturbated in early boyhood, and began to consort with women at
fifteen, yet remained sexually vigorous in old age, while he knew
others who began intercourse late and were losing force at forty.
Mantegazza, who knew a man who had intercourse fourteen times in
one day, remarks that the stories of the old Italian novelists
show that twelve times was regarded as a rare exception.
Burchard, Alexander VI's secretary, states that the Florentine
Ambassador's son, in Rome in 1489, "knew a girl seven times in
one hour" (J. Burchard, _Diarium_, ed. Thuasne, vol. i, p. 329).
Olivier, Charlemagne's knight, boasted, according to legend, that
he could show his virile power one hundred times in one night, if
allowed to sleep with the Emperor of Constantinople's daughter;
he was allowed to try, it is said, and succeeded thirty times
(Schultz, _Das Höfische Leben_, vol. i, p. 581).
It will be seen that whenever the sexual act is repeated
frequently within a short time it is very rarely indeed that the
husband can keep pace with the wife. It is true that the woman's
sexual energy is aroused more slowly and with more difficulty
than the man's, but as it becomes aroused its momentum increases.
The man, whose energy is easily aroused, is easily exhausted; the
woman has often scarcely attained her energy until after the
first orgasm is over. It is sometimes a surprise to a young
husband, happily married, to find that the act of sexual
intercourse which completely satisfies him has only served to
arouse his wife's ardor. Very many women feel that the repetition
of the act several times in succession is needed to, as they may
express it, "clear the system," and, far from producing
sleepiness and fatigue, it renders them bright and lively.
The young and vigorous woman, who has lived a chaste life,
sometimes feels when she commences sexual relationships as though
she really required several husbands, and needed intercourse at
least once a day, though later when she becomes adjusted to
married life she reaches the conclusion that her desires are not
abnormally excessive. The husband has to adjust himself to his
wife's needs, through his sexual force when he possesses it, and,
if not, through his skill and consideration. The rare men who
possess a genital potency which they can exert to the
gratification of women without injury to themselves have been, by
Professor Benedikt, termed "sexual athletes," and he remarks that
such men easily dominate women. He rightly regards Casanova as
the type of the sexual athlete (_Archives d'Anthropologie
Criminelle_, Jan., 1896). Näcke reports the case of a man whom he
regards as a sexual athlete, who throughout his life had
intercourse once or twice daily with his wife, or if she was
unwilling, with another woman, until he became insane at the age
of seventy-five (_Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, Aug.,
1908, p. 507). This should probably, however, be regarded rather
as a case of morbid hyperæsthesia than of sexual athleticism.
At this stage we reach the fundamental elements of the art of love. We
have seen that many moral practices and moral theories which have been
widely current in Christendom have developed traditions, still by no means
extinct among us, which were profoundly antagonistic to the art of love.
The idea grew up of "marital duties," of "conjugal rights."[400] The
husband had the right and the duty to perform sexual intercourse with his
wife, whatever her wishes in the matter might be, while the wife had the
duty and the right (the duty in her case being usually put first) to
submit to such intercourse, which she was frequently taught to regard as
something low and merely physical, an unpleasant and almost degrading
necessity which she would do well to put out of her thoughts as speedily
as possible. It is not surprising that such an attitude towards marriage
has been highly favorable to conjugal unhappiness, more especially that of
the wife,[401] and it has tended to promote adultery and divorce. We might
have been more surprised had it been otherwise.
The art of love is based on the fundamental natural fact of courtship; and
courtship is the effort of the male to make himself acceptable to the
female.[402] "The art of love," said Vatsyayana, one of the greatest of
authorities, "is the art of pleasing women." "A man must never permit
himself a pleasure with his wife," said Balzac in his _Physiologie du
Mariage_, "which he has not the skill first to make her desire." The whole
art of love is there. Women, naturally and instinctively, seek to make
themselves desirable to men, even to men whom they are supremely
indifferent to, and the woman who is in love with a man, by an equally
natural instinct, seeks to shape herself to the measure which individually
pleases him. This tendency is not really modified by the fundamental fact
that in these matters it is only the arts that Nature makes which are
truly effective. It is finally by what he is that a man arouses a woman's
deepest emotions of sympathy or of antipathy, and he is often pleasing her
more by displaying his fitness to play a great part in the world outside
than by any acquired accomplishments in the arts of courtship. When,
however, the serious and intimate play of physical love begins, the
woman's part is, even biologically, on the surface the more passive
part.[403] She is, on the physical side, inevitably the instrument in
love; it must be his hand and his bow which evoke the music.
In speaking of the art of love, however, it is impossible to disentangle
completely the spiritual from the physical. The very attempt to do so is,
indeed, a fatal mistake. The man who can only perceive the physical side
of the sexual relationship is, as Hinton was accustomed to say, on a level
with the man who, in listening to a sonata of Beethoven on the violin, is
only conscious of the physical fact that a horse's tail is being scraped
against a sheep's entrails.
The image of the musical instrument constantly recurs to those
who write of the art of love. Balzac's comparison of the
unskilful husband to the orang-utan attempting to play the violin
has already been quoted. Dr. Jules Guyot, in his serious and
admirable little book, _Bréviaire de l'Amour Expérimental_, falls
on to the same comparison: "There are an immense number of
ignorant, selfish, and brutal men who give themselves no trouble
to study the instrument which God has confided to them, and do
not so much as suspect that it is necessary to study it in order
to draw out its slightest chords.... Every direct contact, even
with the clitoris, every attempt at coitus [when the feminine
organism is not aroused], exercises a painful sensation, an
instinctive repulsion, a feeling of disgust and aversion. Any
man, any husband, who is ignorant of this fact, is ridiculous and
contemptible. Any man, any husband, who, knowing it, dares to
disregard it, has committed an outrage.... In the final
combination of man and woman, the positive element, the husband,
has the initiative and the responsibility for the conjugal life.
He is the minstrel who will produce harmony or cacophony by his
hand and his bow. The wife, from this point of view, is really
the many-stringed instrument who will give out harmonious or
discordant sounds, according as she is well or ill handled"
(Guyot, _Bréviaire_, pp. 99, 115, 138).
That such love corresponds to the woman's need there cannot be
any doubt. All developed women desire to be loved, says Ellen
Key, not "en mâle" but "en artiste" (_Liebe und Ehe_, p. 92).
"Only a man of whom she feels that he has also the artist's joy
in her, and who shows this joy through his timid and delicate
touch on her soul as on her body, can keep the woman of to-day.
She will only belong to a man who continues to long for her even
when he holds her locked in his arms. And when such a woman
breaks out: 'You want me, but you cannot caress me, you cannot
tell what I want,' then that man is judged." Love is indeed, as
Remy de Gourmont remarks, a delicate art, for which, as for
painting or music, only some are apt.
It must not be supposed that the demand on the lover and husband to
approach a woman in the same spirit, with the same consideration and
skilful touch, as a musician takes up his instrument is merely a demand
made by modern women who are probably neurotic or hysterical. No reader of
these _Studies_ who has followed the discussions of courtship and of
sexual selection in previous volumes can fail to realize that--although we
have sought to befool ourselves by giving an illegitimate connotation to
the word "brutal"--consideration and respect for the female is all but
universal in the sexual relationships of the animals below man; it is only
at the furthest remove from the "brutes," among civilized men, that sexual
"brutality" is at all common, and even there it is chiefly the result of
ignorance. If we go as low as the insects, who have been disciplined by
no family life, and are generally counted as careless and wanton, we may
sometimes find this attitude towards the female fully developed, and the
extreme consideration of the male for the female whom yet he holds firmly
beneath him, the tender preliminaries, the extremely gradual approach to
the supreme sexual act, may well furnish an admirable lesson.
This greater difficulty and delay on the part of women in responding to
the erotic excitation of courtship is really very fundamental and--as has
so often been necessary to point out in previous volumes of these
_Studies_--it covers the whole of woman's erotic life, from the earliest
age when coyness and modesty develop. A woman's love develops much more
slowly than a man's for a much longer period. There is real psychological
significance in the fact that a man's desire for a woman tends to arise
spontaneously, while a woman's desire for a man tends only to be aroused
gradually, in the measure of her complexly developing relationship to him.
Hence her sexual emotion is often less abstract, more intimately
associated with the individual lover in whom it is centred. "The way to my
senses is through my heart," wrote Mary Wollstonecraft to her lover Imlay,
"but, forgive me! I think there is sometimes a shorter cut to yours." She
spoke for the best, if not for the largest part, of her sex. A man often
reaches the full limit of his physical capacity for love at a single step,
and it would appear that his psychic limits are often not more difficult
to reach. This is the solid fact underlying the more hazardous statement,
so often made, that woman is monogamic and man polygamic.
On the more physical side, Guttceit states that a month after
marriage not more than two women out of ten have experienced the
full pleasure of sexual intercourse, and it may not be for six
months, a year, or even till after the birth of several children,
that a woman experiences the full enjoyment of the physical
relationship, and even then only with a man she completely loves,
so that the conditions of sexual gratification are much more
complex in women than in men. Similarly, on the psychic side,
Ellen Key remarks (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 111): "It is
certainly true that a woman desires sexual gratification from a
man. But while in her this desire not seldom only appears after
she has begun to love a man enough to give her life for him, a
man often desires to possess a woman physically before he loves
her enough to give even his little finger for her. The fact that
love in a woman mostly goes from the soul to the senses and often
fails to reach them, and that in a man it mostly goes from the
senses to the soul and frequently never reaches that goal--this
is of all the existing differences between men and women that
which causes most torture to both." It will, of course, be
apparent to the reader of the fourth volume of these _Studies_ on
"Sexual Selection in Man" that the method of stating the
difference which has commended itself to Mary Wollstonecraft,
Ellen Key, and others, is not strictly correct, and the chastest
woman, after, for example, taking too hot a bath, may find that
her heart is not the only path through which her senses may be
affected. The senses are the only channels to the external world
which we possess, and love must come through these channels or
not at all. The difference, however, seems to be a real one, if
we translate it to mean that, as we have seen reason to believe
in previous volumes of these _Studies_, there are in women (1)
preferential sensory paths of sexual stimuli, such as,
apparently, a predominence of tactile and auditory paths as
compared with men; (2) a more massive, complex, and delicately
poised sexual mechanism; and, as a result of this, (3) eventually
a greater amount of nervous and cerebral sexual irradiation.
It must be remembered, at the same time, that while this
distinction represents a real tendency in sexual differentiation,
with an organic and not merely traditional basis, it has about it
nothing whatever that is absolute. There are a vast number of
women whose sexual facility, again by natural tendency and not
merely by acquired habits, is as marked as that of any man, if
not more so. In the sexual field, as we have seen in a previous
volume (_Analysis of the Sexual Impulse_), the range of
variability is greater in women than in men.
The fact that love is an art, a method of drawing music from an
instrument, and not the mere commission of an act by mutual consent, makes
any verbal agreement to love of little moment. If love were a matter of
contract, of simple intellectual consent, of question and answer, it would
never have come into the world at all. Love appeared as art from the
first, and the subsequent developments of the summary methods of reason
and speech cannot abolish that fundamental fact. This is scarcely realized
by those ill-advised lovers who consider that the first step in
courtship--and perhaps even the whole of courtship--is for a man to ask a
woman to be his wife. That is so far from being the case that it
constantly happens that the premature exhibition of so large a demand at
once and for ever damns all the wooer's chances. It is lamentable, no
doubt, that so grave and fateful a matter as that of marriage should so
often be decided without calm deliberation and reasonable forethought. But
sexual relationships can never, and should never, be merely a matter of
cold calculation. When a woman is suddenly confronted by the demand that
she should yield herself up as a wife to a man who has not yet succeeded
in gaining her affections she will not fail to find--provided she is
lifted above the cold-hearted motives of self-interest--that there are
many sound reasons why she should not do so. And having thus squarely
faced the question in cool blood and decided it, she will henceforth,
probably, meet that wooer with a tunic of steel enclosing her breast.
"Love must be _revealed_ by acts and not _betrayed_ by words. I
regard as abnormal the extraordinary method of a hasty avowal
beforehand; for that represents not the direct but the reflex
path of transmission. However sweet and normal the avowal may be
when once reciprocity has been realized, as a method of conquest
I consider it dangerous and likely to produce the reverse of the
result desired." I take these wise words from a thoughtful "Essai
sur l'Amour" (_Archives de Psychologie_, 1904) by a
non-psychological Swiss writer who is recording his own
experiences, and who insists much on the predominance of the
spiritual and mental element in love.
It is worthy of note that this recognition that direct speech is
out of place in courtship must not be regarded as a refinement of
civilization. Among primitive peoples everywhere it is perfectly
well recognized that the offer of love, and its acceptance or its
refusal, must be made by actions symbolically, and not by the
crude method of question and answer. Among the Indians of
Paraguay, who allow much sexual freedom to their women, but never
buy or sell love, Mantegazza states (_Rio de la Plata e
Tenerife_, 1867, p. 225) that a girl of the people will come to
your door or window and timidly, with a confused air, ask you, in
the Guarani tongue, for a drink of water. But she will smile if
you innocently offer her water. Among the Tarahumari Indians of
Mexico, with whom the initiative in courting belongs to the
women, the girl takes the first step through her parents, then
she throws small pebbles at the young man; if he throws them back
the matter is concluded (Carl Lumholtz, _Scribner's Magazine_,
Sept., 1894, p. 299). In many parts of the world it is the woman
who chooses her husband (see, e.g., M.A. Potter, _Sohrab and
Rustem_, pp. 169 et seq.), and she very frequently adopts a
symbolical method of proposal. Except when the commercial element
predominates in marriage, a similar method is frequently adopted
by men also in making proposals of marriage.
It is not only at the beginning of courtship that the act of love has
little room for formal declarations, for the demands and the avowals that
can be clearly defined in speech. The same rule holds even in the most
intimate relationships of old lovers, throughout the married life. The
permanent element in modesty, which survives every sexual initiation to
become intertwined with all the exquisite impudicities of love, combines
with a true erotic instinct to rebel against formal demands, against
verbal affirmations or denials. Love's requests cannot be made in words,
nor truthfully answered in words: a fine divination is still needed as
long as love lasts.
The fact that the needs of love cannot be expressed but must be
divined has long been recognized by those who have written of the
art of love, alike by writers within and without the European
Christian traditions. Thus Zacchia, in his great medico-legal
treatise, points out that a husband must be attentive to the
signs of sexual desire in his wife. "Women," he says, "when
sexual desire arises within them are accustomed to ask their
husbands questions on matters of love; they flatter and caress
them; they allow some part of their body to be uncovered as if by
accident; their breasts appear to swell; they show unusual
alacrity; they blush; their eyes are bright; and if they
experience unusual ardor they stammer, talk beside the mark, and
are scarcely mistress of themselves. At the same time their
private parts become hot and swell. All these signs should
convince a husband, however inattentive he may be, that his wife
craves for satisfaction" (_Zacchiæ Quæstionum Medico-legalium
Opus_, lib. vii, tit. iii, quæst. I; vol. ii, p. 624 in ed. of
1688).
The old Hindu erotic writers attributed great importance alike to
the man's attentiveness to the woman's erotic needs, and to his
skill and consideration in all the preliminaries of the sexual
act. He must do all that he can to procure her pleasure, says
Vatsyayana. When she is on her bed and perhaps absorbed in
conversation, he gently unfastens the knot of her lower garment.
If she protests he closes her mouth with kisses. Some authors,
Vatsyayana remarks, hold that the lover should begin by sucking
the nipples of her breasts. When erection occurs he touches her
with his hands, softly caressing the various parts of her body.
He should always press those parts of her body towards which she
turns her eyes. If she is shy, and it is the first time, he will
place his hands between her thighs which she will instinctively
press together. If she is young he will put his hands on her
breasts, and she will no doubt cover them with her own. If she is
mature he will do all that may seem fitting and agreeable to both
parties. Then he will take her hair and her chin between his
fingers and kiss them. If she is very young she will blush and
close her eyes. By the way in which she receives his caresses he
will divine what pleases her most in union. The signs of her
enjoyment are that her body becomes limp, her eyes close, she
loses all timidity, and takes part in the movements which bring
her most closely to him. If, on the other hand, she feels no
pleasure, she strikes the bed with her hands, will not allow the
man to continue, is sullen, even bites or kicks, and continues
the movements of coitus when the man has finished. In such cases,
Vatsyayana adds, it is his duty to rub the vulva with his hand
before union until it is moist, and he should perform the same
movements afterwards if his own orgasm has occurred first.
With regard to Indian erotic art generally, and more especially
Vatsyayana, who appears to have lived some sixteen hundred years
ago, information will be found in Valentino, "L'Hygiène conjugale
chez les Hindous," _Archives Générales de Médecine_, Ap. 25,
1905; Iwan Bloch, "Indische Medizin," Puschmann's _Handbuch der
Geschichte der Medizin_, vol. i; Heimann and Stephan, "Beiträge
zur Ehehygiene nach der Lehren des Kamasutram," _Zeitschaft für
Sexualwissenschaft_, Sept., 1908; also a review of Richard
Schmidt's German translation of the _Kamashastra_ of Vatsyayana
in _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1902, Heft 2. There has long
existed an English translation of this work. In the lengthy
preface to the French translation Lamairesse points out the
superiority of Indian erotic art to that of the Latin poets by
its loftier spirit, and greater purity and idealism. It is
throughout marked by respect for women, and its spirit is
expressed in the well-known proverb: "Thou shalt not strike a
woman even with a flower." See also Margaret Noble's _Web of
Indian Life_, especially Ch. III, "On the Hindu Woman as Wife,"
and Ch. IV, "Love Strong as Death."
The advice given to husbands by Guyot (_Bréviaire de l'Amour
Expérimental_, p. 422) closely conforms to that given, under very
different social conditions, by Zacchia and Vatsyayana. "In a
state of sexual need and desire the woman's lips are firm and
vibrant, the breasts are swollen, and the nipples erect. The
intelligent husband cannot be deceived by these signs. If they do
not exist, it is his part to provoke them by his kisses and
caresses, and if, in spite of his tender and delicate
excitations, the lips show no heat and the breasts no swelling,
and especially if the nipples are disagreeably irritated by
slight suction, he must arrest his transports and abstain from
all contact with the organs of generation, for he would certainly
find them in a state of exhaustion and disposed to repulsion. If,
on the contrary, the accessory organs are animated, or become
animated beneath his caresses, he must extend them to the
generative organs, and especially to the clitoris, which beneath
his touch will become full of appetite and ardor."
The importance of the preliminary titillation of the sexual
organs has been emphasized by a long succession alike of erotic
writers and physicians, from Ovid (_Ars Amatoria_ end of Bk. II)
onwards. Eulenburg (_Die Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 79) considers
that titillation is sometimes necessary, and Adler, likewise
insisting on the preliminaries of psychic and physical courtship
(_Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes_, p. 188),
observes that the man who is gifted with insight and skill in
these matters possesses a charm which will draw sparks of
sensibility from the coldest feminine heart. The advice of the
physician is at one in this matter with the maxims of the erotic
artist and with the needs of the loving woman. In making love
there must be no haste, wrote Ovid:--
"Crede mihi, non est Veneris properanda voluptas,
Sed sensim tarda prolicienda mora."
"Husbands, like spoiled children," a woman has written, "too
often miss the pleasure which might otherwise be theirs, by
clamoring for it at the wrong time. The man who thinks this
prolonged courtship previous to the act of sex union wearisome,
has never given it a trial. It is the approach to the marital
embrace, as well as the embrace itself, which constitutes the
charm of the relation between the sexes."
It not seldom happens, remarks Adler (op. cit., p. 186), that the
insensibility of the wife must be treated--in the husband. And
Guyot, bringing forward the same point, writes (op. cit., p.
130): "If by a delay of tender study the husband has understood
his young bride, if he is able to realize for her the ineffable
happiness and dreams of youth, he will be beloved forever; he
will be her master and sovereign lord. If he has failed to
understand her he will fatigue and exhaust himself in vain
efforts, and finally class her among the indifferent and cold
women. She will be his wife by duty, the mother of his children.
He will take his pleasure elsewhere, for man is ever in pursuit
of the woman who experiences the genesic spasm. Thus the vague
and unintelligent search for a half who can unite in that
delirious finale is the chief cause of all conjugal dissolutions.
In such a case a man resembles a bad musician who changes his
violin in the hope that a new instrument will bring the melody he
is unable to play."
The fact that there is thus an art in love, and that sexual intercourse is
not a mere physical act to be executed by force of muscles, may help to
explain why it is that in so many parts of the world defloration is not
immediately effected on marriage.[404] No doubt religious or magic reasons
may also intervene here, but, as so often happens, they harmonize with the
biological process. This is the case even among uncivilized peoples who
marry early. The need for delay and considerate skill is far greater when,
as among ourselves, a woman's marriage is delayed long past the
establishment of puberty to a period when it is more difficult to break
down the psychic and perhaps even physical barriers of personality.
It has to be added that the art of love in the act of courtship is not
confined to the preliminaries to the single act of coitus. In a sense the
life of love is a continuous courtship with a constant progression. The
establishment of physical intercourse is but the beginning of it. This is
especially true of women. "The consummation of love," says Sénancour,[405]
"which is often the end of love with man is only the beginning of love
with woman, a test of trust, a gage of future pleasure, a sort of
engagement for an intimacy to come." "A woman's soul and body," says
another writer,[406] "are not given at one stroke at a given moment; but
only slowly, little by little, through many stages, are both delivered to
the beloved. Instead of abandoning the young woman to the bridegroom on
the wedding night, as an entrapped mouse is flung to the cat to be
devoured, it would be better to let the young bridal couple live side by
side, like two friends and comrades, until they gradually learn how to
develop and use their sexual consciousness." The conventional wedding is
out of place as a preliminary to the consummation of marriage, if only on
the ground that it is impossible to say at what stage in the endless
process of courtship it ought to take place.
A woman, unlike a man, is prepared by Nature, to play a skilful part in
the art of love. The man's part in courtship, which is that of the male
throughout the zoölogical series, may be difficult and hazardous, but it
is in a straight line, fairly simple and direct. The woman's part, having
to follow at the same moment two quite different impulses, is necessarily
always in a zigzag or a curve. That is to say that at every erotic moment
her action is the resultant of the combined force of her desire (conscious
or unconscious) and her modesty. She must sail through a tortuous channel
with Scylla on the one side and Charybdis on the other, and to avoid
either danger too anxiously may mean risking shipwreck on the other side.
She must be impenetrable to all the world, but it must be an
impenetrability not too obscure for the divination of the right man. Her
speech must be honest, but yet on no account tell everything; her actions
must be the outcome of her impulses, and on that very account be capable
of two interpretations. It is only in the last resort of complete intimacy
that she can become the perfect woman,
"Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought,
Nor Love her body from her soul."
For many a woman the conditions for that final erotic avatar--"that
splendid shamelessness which," as Rafford Pyke says, "is the finest thing
in perfect love"--never present themselves at all. She is compelled to be
to the end of her erotic life, what she must always be at the beginning, a
complex and duplex personality, naturally artful. Therewith she is better
prepared than man to play her part in the art of love.