[309] Mammary masturbation sometimes occurs; see, e.g., Rohleder, Die Masturbation (pp. 32-33); it is, however, rare.

[310] Hirschsprung pointed out this, indeed, many years ago, on the ground of his own experience. And see Rohleder, op. cit., pp. 44-47.

[311] In many cases, of course, the physical precocity is associated with precocity in sexual habits. An instructive case is reported (Alienist and Neurologist, October, 1895) of a girl of 7, a beautiful child, of healthy family, and very intelligent, who, from the age of three, was perpetually masturbating, when not watched. The clitoris and mons veneris were those of a fully-grown woman, and the child was as well informed upon most subjects as an average woman. She was cured by care and hygienic attention, and when seen last was in excellent condition. A medical friend tells me of a little girl of two, whose external genital organs are greatly developed, and who is always rubbing herself.

[312] R.T. Morris, of New York, has also pointed out the influence of traditions in this respect. "Among boys," he remarks, "there are traditions to the effect that self-abuse is harmful. Among girls, however, there are no such saving traditions." Dr. Kiernan writes in a private letter: "It has been by experience, that from ignorance or otherwise, there are young women who do not look upon sexual manipulation with the same fear that men do." Guttceit, similarly, remarks that men have been warned of masturbation, and fear its evil results, while girls, even if warned, attach little importance to the warning; he adds that in healthy women, masturbation, even in excess, has little bad results. The attitude of many women in this matter may be illustrated by the following passage from a letter written by a medical friend in India: "The other day one of my English women patients gave me the following reason for having taught the 17-year-old daughter of a retired Colonel to masturbate: 'Poor girl, she was troubled with dreams of men, and in case she should be tempted with one, and become pregnant, I taught her to bring the feeling on herself—as it is safer, and, after all, nearly as nice as with a man.'"

[313] H. Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, volume ii, "Sexual Inversion," Chapter IV.

[314] See, also, the Appendix to the third volume of these Studies, in which I have brought forward sexual histories of normal persons.

[315] E.H. Smith, also, states that from 25 to 35 is the age when most women come under the physician's eye with manifest and pronounced habits of masturbation.

[316] It may, however, be instructive to observe that at the end of the volume we find an advertisement of "Dr. Robinson's Treatise on the Virtues and Efficacy of a Crust of Bread, Eat Early in the Morning Fasting."

[317] Pouillet alone enumerates and apparently accepts considerably over one hundred different morbid conditions as signs and results of masturbation.

[318] "Augenkrankheiten bei Masturbanten," Knapp-Schweigger's Archiv fuer Augenheitkunde, Bd. II, 1882, p. 198.

[319] Salmo Cohn, Uterus und Auge, 1890, pp. 63-66.

[320] Fonctions du Cerveau, 1825, vol. iii, p. 337.

[321] W. Ellis, Treatise on Insanity, 1838, pp. 335, 340.

[322] Clara Barrus, "Insanity in Young Women," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, June, 1896.

[323] See, for instance, H. Emminghaus, "Die Psychosen des Kindesalters," Gerlandt's Handbuch der Kinder-Krankheiten, Nachtrag II, pp. 61-63.

[324] Christian, article "Onanisme," Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales.

[325] Naecke, Verbrechen und Wahnsinn beim Weibe, 1894, p. 57.

[326] J.L.A. Koch, Die Psychopathischen Minderwertigkeiten, 1892, p. 273 et seq.

[327] J.G. Kiernan, American Journal of Insanity, July, 1877.

[328] Maudsley dealt, in his vigorous, picturesque manner, with the more extreme morbid mental conditions sometimes found associated with masturbation, in "Illustrations of a Variety of Insanity," Journal of Mental Science, July, 1868.

[329] See, e.g., Loewenfeld, Sexualleben und Nervenleiden, 2d. ed., Ch. VIII.

[330] Marro, La Puberta, Turin, 1898, p. 174.

[331] E.C. Spitzka, "Cases of Masturbation," Journal of Mental Science, July, 1888.

[332] Charles West, Lancet, November 17, 1866.

[333] Gowers, Epilepsy, 1881, p. 31. Loewenfeld believes that epileptic attacks are certainly caused by masturbation. Fere thought that both epilepsy and hysteria may be caused by masturbation.

[334] Ziemssen's Handbuch, Bd. XI.

[335] Adolescence, vol. i, p. 441.

[336] See a discussion of these points by Rohleder, Die Masturbation, pp. 168-175.

[337] The surgeons, it may be remarked, have especially stated the harmlessness of masturbation in too absolute a manner. Thus, John Hunter (Treatise on the Venereal Disease, 1786, p. 200), after pointing out that "the books on this subject have done more harm than good," adds, "I think I may affirm that this act does less harm to the constitution in general than the natural." And Sir James Paget, in his lecture on "Sexual Hypochondriasis," said: "Masturbation does neither more nor less harm than sexual intercourse practiced with the same frequency, in the same conditions of general health and age and circumstances."

[338] It is interesting to note that an analogous result seems to hold with animals. Among highly-bred horses excessive masturbation is liable to occur with injurious results. It is scarcely necessary to point out that highly-bred horses are apt to be abnormal.

[339] With regard to the physical signs, the same conclusion is reached by Legludic (in opposition to Martineau) on the basis of a large experience. He has repeatedly found, in young girls who acknowledged frequent masturbation, that the organs were perfectly healthy and normal, and his convictions are the more noteworthy, since he speaks as a pupil of Tardieu, who attached very grave significance to the local signs of sexual perversity and excess. (Legludic, Notes et Observations de Medecine Legale, 1896, p. 95.) Matthews Duncan (Goulstonian Lectures on Sterility in Women, 1884, p. 97) was often struck by the smallness, and even imperfect development, of the external genitals of women who masturbate. Clara Barrus considers that there is no necessary connection between hypertrophy of the external female genital organs and masturbation, though in six cases of prolonged masturbation she found such a condition in three (American Journal of Insanity, April, 1895, p. 479). Bachterew denies that masturbation produces enlargement of the penis, and Hammond considers there is no evidence to show that it enlarges the clitoris, while Guttceit states that it does not enlarge the nymphae; this, however, is doubtful. It would not suffice in many cases to show that large sexual organs are correlated with masturbation; it would still be necessary to show whether the size of the organs stood to masturbation in the relation of effect or of cause.

[340] Thus, Bechterew ("La Phobie du Regard," Archives de Neurologie, July, 1905) considers that masturbation plays a large part in producing the morbid fear of the eyes of others.

[341] It is especially an undesirable tendency of masturbation, that it deadens the need for affection, and merely eludes, instead of satisfying, the sexual impulse. "Masturbation," as Godfrey well says (The Science of Sex, p. 178), "though a manifestation of sexual activity, is not a sexual act in the higher, or even in the real fundamental sense. For sex implies duality, a characteristic to which masturbation can plainly lay no claim. The physical, moral, and mental reciprocity which gives stability and beauty to a normal sexual intimacy, are as foreign to the masturbator as to the celibate. In a sense, therefore, masturbation is as complete a negative of the sexual life as chastity itself. It is, therefore, an evasion of, not an answer to, the sexual problem; and it will ever remain so, no matter how surely we may be convinced of its physical harmlessness."

[342] "I learnt that dangerous supplement," Rousseau tells us (Part I, Bk. III), "which deceives Nature. This vice, which bashfulness and timidity find so convenient, has, moreover, a great attraction for lively imaginations, for it enables them to do what they will, so to speak, with the whole fair sex, and to enjoy at pleasure the beauty who attracts them, without having obtained her consent."

[343] "Ich hatte sie wirklich verloren, und die Tollheit, mit der ich meinen Fehler an mir selbst raechte, indem ich auf mancherlei unsinnige Weise in meine physische Natur sturmte, um der sittlichen etwas zu Leide zu thun, hat sehr viel zu den koerperlichen Uebeln beigetragen, unter denen ich einige der besten Jahre meines Lebens verlor; ja ich waere vielleicht an diesem Verlust vollig zu Grunde gegangen, haette sich hier nicht das poetische Talent mit seinen Heilkraften besonders huelfreich erwiesen." This is scarcely conclusive, and it may be added that there were many reasons why Goethe should have suffered physically at this time, quite apart from masturbation. See, e.g., Bielschowsky, Life of Goethe, vol. i, p. 88.

[344] Les Obsessions, vol. ii, p. 136.

[345] A somewhat similar classification has already been made by Max Dessoir, who points out that we must distinguish between onanists aus Noth, and onanists aus Leidenschaft, the latter group alone being of really serious importance. The classification of Dallemagne is also somewhat similar; he distinguishes onanie par impulsion, occurring in mental degeneration and in persons of inferior intelligence, from onanie par evocation ou obsession.

[346] W. Xavier Sudduth, "A Study in the Psycho-physics of Masturbation," Chicago Medical Recorder, March, 1898. Haig, who reaches a similar conclusion, has sought to find its precise mechanism in the blood-pressure. "As the sexual act produces lower and falling blood-pressure," he remarks, "it will of necessity relieve conditions which are due to high and rising blood-pressure, such, for instance, as mental depression and bad temper; and, unless my observation deceives me, we have here a connection between conditions of high blood-pressure with mental and bodily depression and acts of masturbation, for this act will relieve these conditions and tend to be practiced for this purpose." (Uric Acid, 6th edition, p. 154.)

[347] Northcote discusses the classic attitude towards masturbation, Christianity and Sex Problems, p. 233.

[348] El Ktab, traduction de Paul de Regla, Paris, 1893.

[349] Remy de Gourmont, Physique de l'Amour, p. 133.

[350] Tillier, L'Instinct Sexuel, Paris, 1889, p. 270.

[351] G. Hirth, Wege zur Heimat, p. 648.

[352] Fere, in the course of his valuable work, L'Instinct Sexuel, stated that my conclusion is that masturbation is normal, and that "l'indulgence s'impose." I had, however, already guarded myself against this misinterpretation.



APPENDIX A.

THE INFLUENCE OF MENSTRUATION ON THE POSITION OF WOMEN.

A question of historical psychology which, so far as I know, has never been fully investigated is the influence of menstruation in constituting the emotional atmosphere through which men habitually view women.[353] I do not purpose to deal fully with this question, because it is one which may be more properly dealt with at length by the student of culture and by the historian, rather than from the standpoint of empirical psychology. It is, moreover, a question full of complexities in regard to which it is impossible to speak with certainty. But we here strike on a factor of such importance, such neglected importance, for the proper understanding of the sexual relations of men and women, that it cannot be wholly ignored.

Among the negroes of Surinam a woman must live in solitude during the time of her period; it is dangerous for any man or woman to approach her, and when she sees a person coming near she cries out anxiously: "Mi kay! Mi kay!"—I am unclean! I am unclean! Throughout the world we find traces of the custom of which this is a typical example, but we must not too hastily assume that this custom is evidence of the inferior position occupied by semi-civilized women. It is necessary to take a broad view, not only of the beliefs of semi-civilized man regarding menstruation, but of his general beliefs regarding the supernatural forces of the world.

There is no fragment of folk-lore so familiar to the European world as that which connects woman with the serpent. It is, indeed, one of the foundation stones of Christian theology.[354] Yet there is no fragment of folk-lore which remains more obscure. How has it happened that in all parts of the world the snake or his congeners, the lizard and the crocodile, have been credited with some design, sinister or erotic, on women?

Of the wide prevalence of the belief there can be no doubt. Among the Port Lincoln tribe of South Australia a lizard is said to have divided man from woman.[355] Among the Chiriguanos of Bolivia, on the appearance of menstruation, old women ran about with sticks to hunt the snake that had wounded the girl. Frazer, who quotes this example from the "Lettres edifiantes et curieuses," also refers to a modern Greek folk-tale, according to which a princess at puberty must not let the sun shine upon her, or she would be turned into a lizard.[356] The lizard was a sexual symbol among the Mexicans. In some parts of Brazil at the onset of puberty a girl must not go into the woods for fear of the amorous attacks of snakes, and so it is also among the Macusi Indians of British Guiana, according to Schomburgk. Among the Basutos of South Africa the young girls must dance around the clay image of a snake. In Polynesian mythology the lizard is a very sacred animal, and legends represent women as often giving birth to lizards.[357] At a widely remote spot, in Bengal, if you dream of a snake a child will be born to you, reports Sarat Chandra Mitra.[358] In the Berlin Museum fuer Volkerkunde there is a carved wooden figure from New Guinea of a woman into whose vulva a crocodile is inserting its snout, while the same museum contains another figure of a snake-like crocodile crawling out of a woman's vulva, and a third figure shows a small round snake with a small head, and closely resembling a penis, at the mouth of the vagina. All these figures are reproduced by Ploss and Bartels. Even in modern Europe the same ideas prevail. In Portugal, according to Reys, it is believed that during menstruation women are liable to be bitten by lizards, and to guard against this risk they wear drawers during the period. In Germany, again, it was believed, up to the eighteenth century at least, that the hair of a menstruating woman, if buried, would turn into a snake. It may be added that in various parts of the world virgin priestesses are dedicated to a snake-god and are married to the god.[359] At Rome, it is interesting to note, the serpent was the symbol of fecundation, and as such often figures at Pompeii as the genius patrisfamilias, the generative power of the family.[360] In Rabbinical tradition, also, the serpent is the symbol of sexual desire.

There can be no doubt that—as Ploss and Bartels, from whom some of these examples have been taken, point out—in widely different parts of the world menstruation is believed to have been originally caused by a snake, and that this conception is frequently associated with an erotic and mystic idea.[361] How the connection arose Ploss and Bartels are unable to say. It can only be suggested that its shape and appearance, as well as its venomous nature, may have contributed to the mystery everywhere associated with the snake—a mystery itself fortified by the association with women—to build up this world-wide belief regarding the origin of menstruation.

This primitive theory of the origin of menstruation probably brings before us in its earliest shape the special and intimate bond which has ever been held to connect women, by virtue of the menstrual process, with the natural or supernatural powers of the world. Everywhere menstruating women are supposed to be possessed by spirits and charged with mysterious forces. It is at this point that a serious misconception, due to ignorance of primitive religious ideas, has constantly intruded. It is stated that the menstruating woman is "unclean" and possessed by an evil spirit. As a matter of fact, however, the savage rarely discriminates between bad and good spirits. Every spirit may have either a beneficial or malignant influence. An interesting instance of this is given in Colenso's Maori Lexicon as illustrated by the meaning of the Maori word atua.

The importance of recognizing the special sense in which the word "unclean" is used in this connection was clearly pointed out by Robertson Smith in the case of the Semites. "The Hebrew word tame (unclean)," he remarked, "is not the ordinary word for things physically foul; it is a ritual term, and corresponds exactly to the idea of taboo. The ideas 'unclean' and 'holy' seem to us to stand in polar opposition to one another, but it was not so with the Semites. Among the later Jews the Holy Books 'defiled the hands' of the reader as contact with an impure thing did; among Lucian's Syrians the dove was so holy that he who touched it was unclean for a day; and the taboo attaching to the swine was explained by some, and beyond question correctly explained, in the same way. Among the heathen Semites,[362] therefore, unclean animals, which it was pollution to eat, were simply holy animals." Robertson Smith here made no reference to menstruation, but he exactly described the primitive attitude toward menstruation. Wellhausen, however, dealing with the early Arabians, expressly mentions that in pre-Islamic days, "clean" and "unclean" were used solely with reference to women in and out of the menstrual state. At a later date Frazer developed this aspect of the conception of taboo, and showed how it occurs among savage races generally. He pointed out that the conceptions of holiness and pollution not having yet been differentiated, women at childbirth and during menstruation are on the same level as divine kings, chiefs, and priests, and must observe the same rules of ceremonial purity. To seclude such persons from the rest of the world, so that the dreaded spiritual danger shall not spread, is the object of the taboo, which Frazer compares to "an electrical insulator to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting, harm by contact with the outer world." After describing the phenomena (especially the prohibition to touch the ground or see the sun) found among various races, Frazer concludes: "The object of secluding women at menstruation is to neutralize the dangerous influences which are supposed to emanate from them at such times. The general effect of these rules is to keep the girl suspended, so to say, between heaven and earth. Whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to the roof, as in South America, or elevated above the ground in a dark and narrow cage, as in New Zealand, she may be considered to be out of the way of doing mischief, since, being shut off both from the earth and from the sun, she can poison neither of these great sources of life by her deadly contagion. The precautions thus taken to isolate or insulate the girl are dictated by regard for her own safety as well as for the safety of others.... In short, the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force which, if not kept within bounds, may prove the destruction both of the girl herself and of all with whom she comes in contact. To repress this force within the limits necessary for the safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in question. The same explanation applies to the observance of the same rules by divine kings and priests. The uncleanliness, as it is called, of girls at puberty and the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive mind, differ from each other. They are only different manifestations of the same supernatural energy, which, like energy in general, is in itself neither good nor bad, but becomes beneficent or malignant according to its application."[363]

More recently this view of the matter has been further extended by the distinguished French sociologist, Durkheim. Investigating the origins of the prohibition of incest, and arguing that it proceeds from the custom of exogamy (or marriage outside the clan), and that this rests on certain ideas about blood, which, again, are traceable to totemism,—a theory which we need not here discuss,—Durkheim is brought face to face with the group of conceptions that now concern us. He insists on the extreme ambiguity found in primitive culture concerning the notion of the divine, and the close connection between aversion and veneration, and points out that it is not only at puberty and each recurrence of the menstrual epoch that women have aroused these emotions, but also at childbirth. "A sentiment of religious horror," he continues, "which can reach such a degree of intensity, which can be called forth by so many circumstances, and reappears regularly every month to last for a week at least, cannot fail to extend its influence beyond the periods to which it was originally confined, and to affect the whole course of life. A being who must be secluded or avoided for weeks, months, or years preserves something of the characteristics to which the isolation was due, even outside those special periods. And, in fact, in these communities, the separation of the sexes is not merely intermittent; it has become chronic. The two elements of the population live separately." Durkheim proceeds to argue that the origin of the occult powers attributed to the feminine organism is to be found in primitive ideas concerning blood. Not only menstrual blood but any kind of blood is the object of such feelings among savage and barbarous peoples. All sorts of precautions must be observed with regard to blood; in it resides a divine principle, or as Romans, Jews, and Arabs believed, life itself. The prohibition to drink wine, the blood of the grape, found among some peoples, is traced to its resemblance to blood, and to its sacrificial employment (as among the ancient Arabians and still in the Christian sacrament) as a substitute for drinking blood. Throughout, blood is generally taboo, and it taboos everything that comes in contact with it. Now woman is chronically "the theatre of bloody manifestations," and therefore she tends to become chronically taboo for the other members of the community. "A more or less conscious anxiety, a certain religious fear, cannot fail to enter into all the relations of her companions with her, and that is why all such relations are reduced to a minimum. Relations of a sexual character are specially excluded. In the first place, such relations are so intimate that they are incompatible with the sort of repulsion which the sexes must experience for each other; the barrier between them does not permit of such a close union. In the second place, the organs of the body here specially concerned are precisely the source of the dreaded manifestations. Thus it is natural that the feelings of aversion inspired by women attain their greatest intensity at this point. Thus it is, also, that of all parts of the feminine organization it is this region which is most severely shut out from commerce." So that, while the primitive emotion is mainly one of veneration, and is allied to that experienced for kings and priests, there is an element of fear in such veneration, and what men fear is to some extent odious to them.[364]

These conceptions necessarily mingled at a very early period with men's ideas of sexual intercourse with women and especially with menstruating women. Contact with women, as Crawley shows by abundant illustration, is dangerous. In any case, indeed, the same ideas being transferred to women also, coitus produces weakness, and it prevents the acquisition of supernatural powers. Thus, among the western tribes of Canada, Boas states: "Only a youth who has never touched a woman, or a virgin, both being called te 'e 'its, can become shamans. After having had sexual intercourse men as well as women, become t 'k-e 'el, i.e., weak, incapable of gaining supernatural powers. The faculty cannot be regained by subsequent fasting and abstinence."[365] The mysterious effects of sexual intercourse in general are intensified in the case of intercourse with a menstruating woman. Thus the ancient Indian legislator declares that "the wisdom, the energy, the strength, the sight, and the vitality of a man who approaches a woman covered with menstrual excretions utterly perish."[366] It will be seen that these ideas are impartially spread over the most widely separated parts of the globe. They equally affected the Christian Church, and the Penitentials ordained forty or fifty days penance for sexual intercourse during menstruation.

Yet the twofold influence of the menstruating woman remains clear when we review the whole group of influences which in this state she is supposed to exert. She by no means acts only by paralyzing social activities and destroying the powers of life, by causing flowers to fade, fruit to fall from the trees, grains to lose their germinative power, and grafts to die. She is not accurately summed up in the old lines:—

"Oh! menstruating woman, thou'rt a fiend From whom all nature should be closely screened."

Her powers are also beneficial. A woman at this time, as AElian expressed it, is in regular communication with the starry bodies. Even at other times a woman when led naked around the orchard protected it from caterpillars, said Pliny, and this belief is acted upon (according to Bastanzi) even in the Italy of to-day.[367] A garment stained with a virgin's menstrual blood, it is said in Bavaria, is a certain safeguard against cuts and stabs. It will also extinguish fire. It was valuable as a love-philter; as a medicine its uses have been endless.[368] A sect of Valentinians even attributed sacramental virtues to menstrual blood, and partook of it as the blood of Christ. The Church soon, however, acquired a horror of menstruating women; they were frequently not allowed to take the sacrament or to enter sacred places, and it was sometimes thought best to prohibit the presence of women altogether.[369] The Anglo-Saxon Penitentials declared that menstruating women must not enter a church. It appears to have been Gregory II who overturned this doctrine.

In our own time the slow disintegration of primitive animistic conceptions, aided certainly by the degraded conception of sexual phenomena taught by mediaeval monks—for whom woman was "templum aedificatum super cloacam"—has led to a disbelief in the more salutary influences of the menstruating woman. A fairly widespread faith in her pernicious influence alone survives. It may be traced even in practical and commercial—one might add, medical—quarters. In the great sugar-refineries in the North of France the regulations strictly forbid a woman to enter the factory while the sugar is boiling or cooling, the reason given being that, if a woman were to enter during her period, the sugar would blacken. For the same reason—to turn to the East—no woman is employed in the opium manufactory at Saigon, it being said that the opium would turn and become bitter, while Annamite women say that it is very difficult for them to prepare opium-pipes during the catamenial period.[370] In India, again, when a native in charge of a limekiln which had gone wrong, declared that one of the women workers must be menstruating, all the women—Hindus, Mahometans, aboriginal Gonds, etc.,—showed by their energetic denials that they understood this superstition.[371]

In 1878 a member of the British Medical Association wrote to the British Medical Journal, asking whether it was true that if a woman cured hams while menstruating the hams would be spoiled. He had known this to happen twice. Another medical man wrote that if so, what would happen to the patients of menstruating lady doctors? A third wrote (in the Journal for April 27, 1878): "I thought the fact was so generally known to every housewife and cook that meat would spoil if salted at the menstrual period, that I am surprised to see so many letters on the subject in the Journal. If I am not mistaken, the question was mooted many years ago in the periodicals. It is undoubtedly the fact that meat will be tainted if cured by women at the catamenial period. Whatever the rationale may be, I can speak positively as to the fact."

It is probably the influence of these primitive ideas which has caused surgeons and gynaecologists to dread operations during the catamenial period. Such, at all events, is the opinion of a distinguished authority, Dr. William Goodell, who wrote in 1891[372]: "I have learned to unlearn the teaching that women must not be subjected to a surgical operation during the monthly flux. Our forefathers, from time immemorial, have thought and taught that the presence of a menstruating woman would pollute solemn religious rites, would sour milk, spoil the fermentation in wine-vats, and much other mischief in a general way. Influenced by hoary tradition, modern physicians very generally postpone all operative treatment until the flow has ceased. But why this delay, if time is precious, and it enters as an important factor in the case? I have found menstruation to be the very best time to curette away fungous vegetations of the endometrium, for, being swollen then by the afflux of blood, they are larger than at any other time, and can the more readily be removed. There is, indeed, no surer way of checking or of stopping a metrorrhagia than by curetting the womb during the very flow. While I do not select this period for the removal of ovarian cysts, or for other abdominal work, such as the extirpation of the ovaries, or a kidney, or breaking up intestinal adhesions, etc., yet I have not hesitated to perform these operations at such a time, and have never had reason to regret the course. The only operations that I should dislike to perform during menstruation would be those involving the womb itself."

It must be added to this that we still have to take into consideration not merely the surviving influence of ancient primitive beliefs, but the possible existence of actual nervous conditions during the menstrual period, producing what may be described as an abnormal nervous tension. In this way, we are doubtless concerned with a tissue of phenomena, inextricably woven of folk-lore, autosuggestion, false observation, and real mental and nervous abnormality. Laurent (loc. cit.) has brought forward several cases which may illustrate this point. Thus, he speaks of two young girls of about 16 and 17, slightly neuropathic, but without definite hysterical symptoms, who, during the menstrual period, feel themselves in a sort of electrical state, "with tingling and prickling sensations and feelings of attraction or repulsion at the contact of various objects." These girls believe their garments stick to their skin during the periods; it was only with difficulty that they could remove their slippers, though fitting easily; stockings had to be drawn off violently by another person, and they had given up changing their chemises during the period because the linen became so glued to the skin. An orchestral performer on the double-bass informed Laurent that whenever he left a tuned double-bass in his lodgings during his wife's period a string snapped; consequently he always removed his instrument at this time to a friend's house. He added that the same thing happened two years earlier with a mistress, a cafe-concert singer, who had, indeed, warned him beforehand. A harpist also informed Laurent that she had been obliged to give up her profession because during her periods several strings of her harp, always the same strings, broke, especially when she was playing. A friend of Laurent's, an official in Cochin China, also told him that the strings of his violin often snapped during the menstrual periods of his Annamite mistress, who informed him that Annamite women are familiar with the phenomenon, and are careful not to play on their instruments at this time. Two young ladies, both good violinists, also affirmed that ever since their first menstruation they had noted a tendency for the strings to snap at this period; one, a genuine artist, who often performed at charity concerts, systematically refused to play at these times, and was often embarrassed to find a pretext; the other, who admitted that she was nervous and irritable at such times, had given up playing on account of the trouble of changing the strings so frequently. Laurent also refers to the frequency with which women break things during the menstrual periods, and considers that this is not simply due to the awkwardness caused by nervous exhaustion or hysterical tremors, but that there is spontaneous breakage. Most usually it happens that a glass breaks when it is being dried with a cloth; needles also break with unusual facility at this time; clocks are stopped by merely placing the hand upon them.

I do not here attempt to estimate critically the validity of these alleged manifestations (some of which may certainly be explained by the unconscious muscular action which forms the basis of the phenomena of table-turning and thought-reading); such a task may best be undertaken through the minute study of isolated cases, and in this place I am merely concerned with the general influence of the menstrual state in affecting the social position of women, without reference to the analysis of the elements that go to make up that influence.

There is only one further point to which attention may be called. I allude to the way in which the more favorable side of the primitive conception of the menstruating woman—as priestess, sibyl, prophetess, an almost miraculous agent for good, an angel, the peculiar home of the divine element—was slowly and continuously carried on side by side with the less favorable view, through the beginnings of European civilization until our own times. The actual physical phenomena of menstruation, with the ideas of taboo associated with that state, sank into the background as culture evolved; but, on the other hand, the ideas of the angelic position and spiritual mission of women, based on the primitive conception of the mystery associated with menstruation, still in some degree persisted.

It is evident, however, that, while, in one form or another, the more favorable aspect of the primitive view of women's magic function has never quite died out, the gradual decay and degradation of the primitive view has, on the whole, involved a lower estimate of women's nature and position. Woman has always been the witch; she was so even in ancient Babylonia; but she has ceased to be the priestess. The early Teutons saw "sanctum aliquid et providum" in women who, for the mediaeval German preacher, were only "bestiae bipedales"; and Schopenhauer and even Nietzsche have been more inclined to side with the preacher than with the half-naked philosophers of Tacitus's day. But both views alike are but the extremes of the same primitive conception; and the gradual evolution from one extreme of the magical doctrine to the other was inevitable.

In an advanced civilization, as we see, these ideas having their ultimate basis on the old story of the serpent, and on a special and mysterious connection between the menstruating woman and the occult forces of magic, tend to die out. The separation of the sexes they involve becomes unnecessary. Living in greater community with men, women are seen to possess something, it may well be, but less than before, of the angel-devil of early theories. Menstruation is no longer a monstrific state requiring spiritual taboo, but a normal physiological process, not without its psychic influences on the woman herself and on those who live with her.

FOOTNOTES:

[353] Several recent works, however, notably Frazer's Golden Bough and Crawley's Mystic Rose, throw light directly or indirectly on this question.

[354] Robertson Smith points out that since snakes are the last noxious animals which man is able to exterminate, they are the last to be associated with demons. They were ultimately the only animals directly and constantly associated with the Arabian jinn, or demon, and the serpent of Eden was a demon, and not a temporary disguise of Satan (Religion of Semites, pp. 129 and 442). Perhaps it was, in part, because the snake was thus the last embodiment of demonic power that women were associated with it, women being always connected with the most ancient religious beliefs.

[355] In the northern territory of the same colony menstruation is said to be due to a bandicoot scratching the vagina and causing blood to flow (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, p. 177, November, 1894). At Glenelg, and near Portland, in Victoria, the head of a snake was inserted into a virgin's vagina, when not considered large enough for intercourse (Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. ii, p. 319).

[356] Frazer, Golden Bough, vol. ii, p. 231. Crawley (The Mystic Rose, p. 192) also brings together various cases of primitive peoples who believe the bite of a snake to be the cause of menstruation.

[357] Meyners d'Estrez, "Etude ethnographique sur le lezard chez les peuples malais et polynesiens," L'Anthropologie, 1892; see also, as regards the lizard in Samoan folk-lore, Globus, vol. lxxiv, No. 16.

[358] Journal Anthropological Society of Bombay, 1890, p. 589.

[359] Boudin (Etude Anthropologique: Culte du Serpent, Paris, 1864, pp. 66-70) brings forward examples of this aspect of snake-worship.

[360] Attilio de Marchi, Il Culto privato di Roma, p. 74. The association of the power of generation with a god in the form of a serpent is, indeed, common; see, e.g. Sir W.M. Ramsay, Cities of Phrygia, vol. i, p. 94.

[361] It is noteworthy that one of the names for the penis used by the Swahili women of German East Africa, in a kind of private language of their own, is "the snake" (Zache, Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, p. 73, 1899). It may be added that Maeder ("Interpretation de Quelques Reves," Archives de Psychologie, April, 1907) brings forward various items of folk-lore showing the phallic significance of the serpent, as well as evidence indicating that, in the dreams of women of to-day, the snake sometimes has a sexual significance.

[362] W.R. Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, 1885, p. 307. The point is elaborated in the same author's Religion of Semites, second edition, Appendix on "Holiness, Uncleanness, and Taboo," pp. 446-54. See also Wellhausen, Reste Arabischen Heidentums, second edition, pp. 167-77. Even to the early Arabians, Wellhausen remarks (p. 168), "clean" meant "profane and allowed," while "unclean" meant "sacred and forbidden." It was the same, as Jastrow remarks (Religion of Babylonia, p. 662), among the Babylonian Semites.

[363] J.C. Frazer, The Golden Bough, Chapter IV.

[364] E. Durkheim, "La Prohibition de l'Inceste et ses Origines," L'Annee Sociologique, Premiere Annee, 1898, esp. pp. 44, 46-47, 48, 50-57. Crawley (Mystic Rose, p. 212) opposes Durkheim's view as to the significance of blood in relation to the attitude towards women.

[365] British Association Report on North Western Tribes of Canada, 1890, p. 581.

[366] Laws of Manu, iv, 41.

[367] Pliny, who, in Book VII, Chapter XIII, and Book XXVIII, Chapter XXIII, of his Natural History, gives long lists of the various good and evil influences attributed to menstruation, writes in the latter place: "Hailstorms, they say, whirlwinds, and lightnings, even, will be scared away by a woman uncovering her body while her monthly courses are upon her. The same, too, with all other kinds of tempestuous weather; and out at sea, a storm may be stilled by a woman uncovering her body merely, even though not menstruating at the time. At any other time, also, if a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin will fall from off the ears of corn."

[368] See Bourke, Scatologic Rites of all Nations, 1891, pp. 217-219, 250 and 254; Ploss and Max Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i; H.L. Strack, Der Blutaberglaube in der Menschheit, fourth edition, 1892, pp. 14-18. The last mentioned refers to the efficacy frequently attributed to menstrual blood in the Middle Ages in curing leprosy, and gives instances, occurring even in Germany to-day, of girls who have administered drops of menstrual blood in coffee to their sweethearts, to make sure of retaining their affections.

[369] See, e.g., Dufour, Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. iii, p. 115.

[370] Dr. L. Laurent gives these instances, "De Quelques Phenomenes Mecaniques produits au moment de la Menstruation," Annales des Sciences Psychiques, September and October, 1897.

[371] Journal Anthropological Society of Bombay, 1890, p. 403. Even the glance of a menstruating woman is widely believed to have serious results. See Tuchmann, "La Fascination," Melasine, 1888, pp. 347 et seq.

[372] As quoted in the Provincial Medical Journal, April, 1891.



APPENDIX B.

SEXUAL PERIODICITY IN MEN.

BY F.H. PERRY-COSTE, B. Sc. (LOND.).

In a recent brochure on the "Rhythm of the Pulse"[373] I showed inter alia that the readings of the pulse, in both man and woman, if arranged in lunar monthly periods, and averaged over several years, displayed a clear, and sometimes very strongly marked and symmetrical, rhythm.[374] After pointing out that, in at any rate some cases, the male and female pulse-curves, both monthly and annual, seemed to be converse to one another, I added: "It is difficult to ignore the suggestion that in this tracing of the monthly rhythm of the pulse we have a history of the monthly function in women; and that, if so, the tracing of the male pulse may eventually afford us some help in discovering a corresponding monthly period in men: the existence of which has been suggested by Mr. Havelock Ellis and Professor Stanley Hall, among other writers. Certainly the mere fact that we can trace a clear monthly rhythm in man's pulse seems to point strongly to the existence of a monthly physiological period in him also."

Obviously, however, it is only indirectly and by inference that we can argue from a monthly rhythm of the pulse in men to a male sexual periodicity; but I am now able to adduce more direct evidence that will fairly demonstrate the existence of a sexual periodicity in men.

We will start from the fact that celibacy is profoundly unnatural, and is, therefore, a physical—as well as an emotional and intellectual—abnormality. This being so, it is entirety in accord with all that we know of physiology that, when relief to the sexual secretory system by Nature's means is denied, and when, in consequence, a certain degree of tension or pressure has been attained, the system should relieve itself by a spontaneous discharge—such discharge being, of course, in the strict sense of the term, pathological, since it would never occur in any animal that followed the strict law of its physical being without any regard to other and higher laws of concern for its fellows.

Notoriously, that which we should have anticipated a priori actually occurs; for any unmarried man, who lives in strict chastity, periodically experiences, while sleeping, a loss of seminal fluid—such phenomena being popularly referred to as wet dreams.[375]

During some eight or ten years I have carefully recorded the occurrence of such discharges as I have experienced myself, and I have now accumulated sufficient data to justify an attempt to formulate some provisional conclusions.[376]

In order to render these observations as serviceable as may be to students of periodicity, I here repeat (at the request of Mr. Havelock Ellis) the statement which was subjoined, for the same reasons, to my "Rhythm of the Pulse." These observations upon myself were made between the ages of 20 and 33. I am about 5 feet, 9 inches tall, broad-shouldered, and weigh about 10 stone 3 lbs. net—this weight being, I believe, about 7 lbs. below the normal for my height. Also I have green-brown eyes, very dark-brown hair, and a complexion that leads strangers frequently to mistake me for a foreigner—this complexion being, perhaps, attributable to some Huguenot blood, although on the maternal side I am, so far as all information goes, pure English. I can stand a good deal of heat, enjoy relaxing climates, am at once upset by "bracing" sea-air, hate the cold, and sweat profusely after exercise. To this it will suffice to add that my temperament is of a decidedly nervous and emotional type.

Before proceeding to remark upon the various rhythms that I have discovered, I will tabulate the data on which my conclusions are founded. The numbers of discharges recorded in the years in question are as follows:—

In 1886, 30. (Records commenced in April.) In 1887, 40. In 1888, 37. In 1889, 18. (Pretty certainly not fully recorded.) In 1890, 0 (No records kept this year.[377]) In 1891, 19. (Records recommenced in June.) In 1892, 35. In 1893, 40. In 1894, 38. In 1895, 36. In 1896, 36. In 1897, 35. Average, 37. (Omitting 1886, 1889, and 1891.)

Thus I have complete records for eight years, and incomplete records for three more; and the remarkable concord between the respective annual numbers of observations in these eight years not only affords us intrinsic evidence of the accuracy of my records, but, also, at once proves that there is an undeniable regularity in the occurrence of these sexual discharges, and, therefore, gives us reason for expecting to find this regularity rhythmical. Moreover, since it seemed reasonable to expect that there might be more than one rhythm, I have examined my data with a view to discovering (1) an annual, (2) a lunar-monthly, and (3) a weekly rhythm, and I now proceed to show that all three such rhythms exist.

THE ANNUAL RHYTHM.

It is obvious that, in searching for an annual rhythm, we must ignore the records of the three incomplete years; but those of the remaining eight are graphically depicted upon Chart 8. The curves speak so plainly for themselves that any comment were almost superfluous, and the concord between the various curves, although, of course, not perfect, is far greater than the scantiness of the data would have justified us in expecting. The curves all agree in pointing to the existence of three well-defined maxima,—viz., in March, June, and September,—these being, therefore, the months in which the sexual instinct is most active; and the later curves show that there is also often a fourth maximum in January. In the earlier years the March and June maxima are more strikingly marked than the September one; but the uppermost curve shows that on the average of all eight years the September maximum is the highest, the June and January maxima occupying the second place, and the March maximum being the least strongly marked of all.

Now, remembering that, in calculating the curves of the annual rhythm of the pulse, I had found it necessary to average two months' records together, in order to bring out the full significance of the rhythm, I thought it well to try the effect upon these curves also of similarly averaging two months together. At first my results were fairly satisfactory; but, as my data increased year by year, I found that these curves were contradicting one another, and therefore concluded that I had selected unnatural periods for my averaging. My first attempted remedy was to arrange the months in the pairs December-January, February-March, etc., instead of in January-February, March-April, etc.; but with these pairs I fared no better than with the former. I then arranged the months in the triplets, January-February-March, etc.; and the results are graphically recorded on Chart 7. Here, again, comment would be quite futile, but I need only point out that, on the whole, the sexual activity rises steadily during the first nine months in the year to its maximum in September, and then sinks rapidly and abruptly during the next three to its minimum in December.

The study of these curves suggests two interesting questions, to neither of which, however, do the data afford us an answer.

In the first place, are the alterations, in my case, of the maximum of the discharges from March and June in the earlier years to September in the later, and the interpolation of a new secondary maximum in January, correlated with the increase in age; or is the discrepancy due simply to a temporary irregularity that would have been equally averaged out had I recorded the discharges of 1881-89 instead of those from 1887 to 1897?

The second question is one of very great importance—socially, ethically, and physically. How often, in this climate, should a man have sexual connection with his wife in order to maintain himself in perfect physiological equilibrium? My results enable us to state definitely the minimum limits, and to reply that 37 embraces annually would be too few; but, unfortunately, they give us no clue to the maximum limit. It is obvious that the necessary frequency should be greater than 37 times annually,—possibly very considerably in excess thereof,—seeing that the spontaneous discharges, with which we are dealing, are due to over-pressure, and occur only when the system, being denied natural relief, can no longer retain its secretions; and, therefore, it seems very reasonable to suggest that the frequency of natural relief should be some multiple of 37. I do not perceive, however, that the data in hand afford us any clue to this multiple, or enable us to suggest either 2, 3, 4, or 5 as the required multiple of 37. It is true that other observations upon myself have afforded me what I believe to be a fairly satisfactory and reliable answer so far as concerns myself; but these observations are of such a nature that they cannot be discussed here, and I have no inclination to offer as a counsel to others an opinion which I am unable to justify by the citation of facts and statistics. Moreover, I am quite unable to opine whether, given 37 as the annual frequency of spontaneous discharges in a number of men, the multiple required for the frequency of natural relief should be the same in every case. For aught I know to the contrary, the physiological idiosyncrasies of men may be so varied that, given two men with an annual frequency of 37 spontaneous discharges, the desired multiple may be in one case X and in the other 2X.[378] Our data, however, do clearly denote that the frequency in the six or eight summer months should bear to the frequency of the six or four winter months the proportion of three or four to two.[379] It should never be forgotten, however, that, under all conditions, both man and wife should exercise prudence, both selfward and otherward, and that each should utterly refuse to gratify self by accepting a sacrifice, however willingly offered, that may be gravely prejudicial to the health of the other; for only experience can show whether, in any union, the receptivity of the woman be greater or less than, or equal to, the physical desire of the man. To those, of course, who regard marriage from the old-fashioned and grossly immoral standpoint of Melancthon and other theologians, and who consider a wife as the divinely ordained vehicle for the chartered intemperance of her husband, it will seem grotesque in the highest degree that a physiological inquirer should attempt to advise them how often to seek the embraces of their wives; but those who regard woman from the standpoint of a higher ethics, who abhor the notion that she should be only the vehicle for her husband's passions, and who demand that she shall be mistress of her own body, will not be ungrateful for any guidance that physiology can afford them. It will be seen presently, moreover, that the study of the weekly rhythm does afford us some less inexact clue to the desired solution.

One curious fact may be mentioned before we quit this interesting question. It is stated that "Solon required [of the husband] three payments per month. By the Misna a daily debt was imposed upon an idle vigorous young husband; twice a week on a citizen; once in thirty days on a camel-driver; once in six months on a seaman."[380] Now it is certainly striking that Solon's "three payments per month" exactly correspond with my records of 37 discharges annually. Had Solon similarly recorded a series of observations upon himself?

THE LUNAR-MONTHLY RHYTHM.

We now come to that division of the inquiry which is of the greatest physiological interest, although of little social import. Is there a monthly period in man as well as in woman? My records indicate clearly that there is.

In searching for this monthly rhythm I have utilized not only the data of the eight completely-recorded years, but also those of the three years of 1886, 1889, and 1891, for, although it would obviously have been inaccurate to utilize these incomplete records when calculating the yearly rhythm, there seems no objection to making use of them in the present section of the inquiry. It is hardly necessary to remark that the terms "first day of the month," "second day," "third day," etc., are to be understood as denoting "new-moon day," "day after new moon," "third lunar day," and so on; but it should be explained that, since these discharges occur at night, I have adopted the astronomical, instead of the civil, day; so that a new moon occurring between noon yesterday and noon to-day is reckoned as occurring yesterday, and yesterday is regarded as the first lunar day: thus, a discharge occurring in the night between December 31st and January 1st is tabulated as occurring on December 31st, and, in the present discussion, is assigned to the lunar day comprised between noon of December 31st and noon of January 1st.

Since it is obvious that the number of discharges in any one year—averaging, as they do, only 1.25 per day—are far too few to yield a curve of any value, I have combined my data in two series. The dotted curve on Chart 9 is obtained by combining the results of the years 1886-92: two of these years are incompletely recorded, and there are no records for 1890; the total number of observations was 179. The broken curve is obtained by combining those of the years 1893-97, the total number of observations being 185. Even so, the data are far too scanty to yield a really characteristic curve; but the continuous curve, which sums up the results of the eleven years, is more reliable, and obviously more satisfactory.

If the two former curves be compared, it will be seen that, on the whole, they display a general concordance, such differences as exist being attributable chiefly to two facts: (1) that the second curve is more even throughout, neither maximum nor minimum being so strongly marked as in the first; and (2) that the main maximum occurs in the middle of the month instead of on the second lunar day, and the absence of the marked initial maximum alters the character of the first week or so of this curve. It is, however, scarcely fair to lay any great stress on the characters of curves obtained from such scanty data, and we will, therefore, pass to the continuous curve, the study of which will prove more valuable.[381]

Now, even a cursory examination of this continuous curve will yield the following results:—

1. The discharges occur most frequently on the second lunar day.

2. The days of the next most frequent discharges are the 22d; the 13th; the 7th, 20th, and 26th; the 11th and 16th; so that, if we regard only the first six of these, we find that the discharges occur most frequently on the 2d, 7th, 13th, 20th, 22d, and 26th lunar days—i.e., the discharges occur most frequently on days separated, on the average, by four-day intervals; but actually the period between the 20th and 22d days is that characterized by the most frequent discharges.

3. The days of minimum of discharge are the 1st, 5th, 15th, 18th, and 21st.

4. The curve is characterized by a continual see-sawing; so that every notable maximum is immediately followed by a notable minimum. Thus, the curve is of an entirely different character from that representing the monthly rhythm of the pulse,[382] and this is only what one might have expected; for, whereas the mean pulsations vary only very slightly from day to day,—thus giving rise to a gradually rising or sinking curve,—a discharge from the sexual system relieves the tension by exhausting the stored-up secretion, and is necessarily followed by some days of rest and inactivity. In the very nature of the case, therefore, a curve of this kind could not possibly be otherwise than most irregular if the discharges tended to occur most frequently upon definite days of the month; and thus the very irregularity of the curve affords us proof that there is a regular male periodicity, such that on certain days of the month there is greater probability of a spontaneous discharge than on any other days.

5. Gratifying, however, though this irregularity of the curve may be, yet it entails a corresponding disadvantage, for we are precluded thereby from readily perceiving the characteristics of the monthly rhythm as a whole. I thought that perhaps this aspect of the rhythm might be rendered plainer if I calculated the data into two-day averages; and the result, as shown in Chart 10, is extremely satisfactory. Here we can at once perceive the wonderful and almost geometric symmetry of the monthly rhythm; indeed, if the third maximum were one unit higher, if the first minimum were one unit lower, and if the lines joining the second minimum and third maximum, and the fourth maximum and fourth minimum, were straight instead of being slightly broken, then the curve would, in its chief features, be geometrically symmetrical; and this symmetry appears to me to afford a convincing proof of the representative accuracy of the curve. We see that the month is divided into five periods; that the maxima occur on the following pairs of days: the 19th-20th, 13th-14th, 25th-26th, 1st-2d, 7th-8th; and that the minima occur at the beginning, end, and exact middle of the month. There have been many idle superstitions as to the influence of the moon upon the earth and its inhabitants, and some beliefs that—once deemed equally idle—have now been re-instated in the regard of science; but it would certainly seem to be a very fascinating and very curious fact if the influence of the moon upon men should be such as to regulate the spontaneous discharges of their sexual system. Certainly the lovers of all ages would then have "builded better than they knew," when they reared altars of devotional verse to that chaste goddess Artemis.

THE WEEKLY RHYTHM.

We now come to the third branch of our inquiry, and have to ask whether there be any weekly rhythm of the sexual activity. A priori it might be answered that to expect any such weekly rhythm were absurd, seeing that our week—unlike the lunar month of the year—is a purely artificial and conventional period; while, on the other hand, it might be retorted that the existence of an induced weekly periodicity is quite conceivable, such periodicity being induced by the habitual difference between our occupation, or mode of life, on one or two days of the week and that on the remaining days. In such an inquiry, however, a priori argument is futile, as the question can be answered only by an induction from observations, and the curves on Chart 11 (A and B) prove conclusively that there is a notable weekly rhythm. The existence of this weekly rhythm being granted, it would naturally be assumed that either the maximum or the minimum would regularly occur on Saturday or Sunday; but an examination of the curves discloses the unexpected result that the day of maximum discharge varies from year to year. Thus it is[383]

Sunday in 1888, 1892, 1896. Tuesday in 1894. Thursday in 1886, 1897. Friday in 1887. Saturday in 1893 and 1895.

Since, in Chart 11, the curves are drawn from Sunday to Sunday, it is obvious that the real symmetry of the curve is brought out in those years only which are characterized by a Sunday maximum; and, accordingly, in Chart 12 I have depicted the curves in a more suitable form.

Chart 12 A is obtained by combining the data of 1888, 1892, and 1896: the years of a Sunday maximum. Curve 12 B represents the results of 1894, the year of a Tuesday maximum—multiplied throughout by three in order to render the curve strictly comparable with the former. Curve 12 C represents 1886 and 1897—the years of a Thursday maximum—similarly multiplied by 1.5. In Curve 12 D we have the results of 1887—the year of a Friday maximum—again multiplied by three; and in Curve 12 E those of 1893 and 1895—the years of a Saturday maximum—multiplied by 1.5. Finally, Curve 12 F represents the combined results of all nine years plus (the latter half of) 1891; and this curve shows that, on the whole period, there is a very strongly marked Sunday maximum.

I hardly think that these curves call for much comment. In their general character they display a notable concord among themselves; and it is significant that the most regular of the five curves are A and E, representing the combinations of three years and of two years, respectively, while the least regular is B, which is based upon the records of one year only. In every case we find that the maximum which opens the week is rapidly succeeded by a minimum, which is itself succeeded by a secondary maximum,—usually very secondary, although in 1894 it nearly equals the primary maximum,—followed again by a second minimum—usually nearly identical with the first minimum,—after which there is a rapid rise to the original maximum. The study of these curves fortunately amplifies the conclusion drawn from our study of the annual rhythm, and suggests that, in at least part of the year, the physiological condition of man requires sexual union at least twice a week.

As to Curve 12F, its remarkable symmetry speaks for itself. The existence of two secondary maxima, however, has not the same significance as had that of our secondary maximum in the preceding curves; for one of these secondary maxima is due to the influence of the 1894 curve with its primary Tuesday maximum, and the other to the similar influence of Curve C with its primary Thursday maximum. Similarly, the veiled third secondary maximum is due to the influence of Curve E. Probably, any student of curves will concede that, on a still larger average, the two secondary maxima of Curve F would be replaced by a single one on Wednesday or Thursday.

One more question remains for consideration in connection with this weekly rhythm. Is it possible to trace any connection between the weekly and yearly rhythms of such a character that the weekly day of maximum discharge should vary from month to month in the year; in other words, does the greater frequency of a Sunday discharge characterize one part of the year, that of a Tuesday another, and so on? In order to answer this question I have re-calculated all my data, with results that are graphically represented in Chart 13. These curves prove that the Sunday maxima discharges occur in March and September, and the minima in June; that the Monday maxima discharges occur in September, Friday in July, and so on. Thus, there is a regular rhythm, according to which the days of maximum discharge vary from one month of the year to another; and the existence of this final rhythm appears to me very remarkable. I would especially direct attention to the almost geometric symmetry of the Sunday curve, and to the only less complete symmetry of the Thursday and Friday curves. Certainly in these rhythms we have an ample field for farther study and speculation.

I have now concluded my study of this fascinating inquiry; a study that is necessarily incomplete, since it is based upon records furnished by one individual only. The fact, however, that, even with so few observations, and notwithstanding the consequently exaggerated disturbing influence of minor irregularities, such remarkable and unexpected symmetry is evidenced by these curves, only increases one's desire to have the opportunity of handling a series of observations sufficiently numerous to render the generalizations induced from them absolutely conclusive. I would again appeal[384] to heads of colleges to assist this inquiry by enlisting in its aid a band of students. If only one hundred students, living under similar conditions, could be induced to keep such records with scrupulous regularity for only twelve months, the results induced from such a series of observations would be more than ten times as valuable as those which have only been reached after ten years' observations on my part; and, if other centuries of students in foreign and colonial colleges—e.g., in Italy, India, Australia, and America—could be similarly enlisted in this work, we should quickly obtain a series of results exhibiting the sexual needs and sexual peculiarities of the male human animal in various climates. Obviously, however, the records of any such students would be worse than useless unless their care and accuracy, on the one hand, and their habitual chastity, on the other, could be implicitly guaranteed.

FOOTNOTES:

[373] First published in the University Magazine and Free Review of February, 1898, and since reprinted as a pamphlet. A preliminary communication appeared in Nature, May 14, 1891.

[374] [Later study (1906) has convinced me that my attempt to find a lunar-monthly period in the female pulse was vitiated by a hopeless error: for any monthly rhythm in a woman must be sought by arranging her records according to her own menstrual month; and this menstrual month may vary in different women, from considerably less than a lunar month to thirty days or more.]

[375] I may add, however, that in my own case these discharges are—so far as I can trust my waking consciousness—frequently, if not usually, dreamless; and that strictly sexual dreams are extremely rare, notwithstanding the possession of a strongly emotional temperament.

[376] If I can trust my memory, I first experienced this discharge when a few months under fifteen years of age, and, if so, within a few weeks of the time when I was, in an instant, suddenly struck with the thought that possibly the religion in which I had been educated might be false. It is curiously interesting that the advent of puberty should have been heralded by this intellectual crisis.

[377] This unfortunate breach in the records was due to the fact that, failing to discover any regularity in, or law of, the occurrences of the discharges, I became discouraged and abandoned my records. In June, 1891, a re-examination of my pulse-records having led to my discovery of a lunar-monthly rhythm of the pulse, my interest in other physiological periodicities was reawakened, and I recommenced my records of these discharges.

[378] As a matter of fact, I take it that we may safely assert that no man who is content to be guided by his own instinctive cravings, and who neither suppresses these, on the one hand, nor endeavors to force himself, on the other hand, will be in any danger of erring by either excess or the contrary.

[379] [It is obvious that the opportunity of continuing such an inquiry as that described in this Appendix, ceases with marriage; but I may add (1906) that certain notes that I have kept with scrupulous exactness during eight years of married life, lend almost no support to the suggestion made in the text—i.e., that sexual desire is greater at one season of the year than at another. The nature of these notes I cannot discuss; but, they clearly indicate that, although there is a slight degree more of sexual desire in the second and third quarters of the year, than in the first and fourth, yet, this difference is so slight as to be almost negligible. Even if the months be rearranged in the triplets—November-December-January, etc.,—so as to bring the maximum months of May, June, and July together, the difference between the highest quarter and the lowest amounts to an increase of only ten per cent, upon the latter—after allowing, of course, for the abnormal shortness of February; and, neglecting February, the increase in the maximum months (June and July) over the minimum (November) is equal to an increase of under 14 per cent, upon the latter. These differences are so vastly less than those shown on Chart 7 that they possess almost no significance: but, lest too much stress be laid upon the apparently equalizing influence of married life, it must be added that the records discussed in the text were obtained during residence in London, whereas, since my marriage, I have lived in South Cornwall, where the climate is both milder and more equable.]

[380] Selden's Uxor Hebraica as quoted in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. v, p. 52, of Bonn's edition.

[381] I may add that the curve yielded by 1896-97 is remarkably parallel with that yielded by the preceding nine years, but I have not thought it worth while to chart these two additional curves.

[382] See "Rhythm of the Pulse," Chart 4.

[383] As will be observed, I have omitted the results of the incompletely recorded years of 1889 and 1891. The apparent explanation of this curious oscillation will be given directly.

[384] See "Rhythm of the Pulse," p. 21.



APPENDIX C.

THE AUTO-EROTIC FACTOR IN RELIGION.

The intimate association between the emotions of love and religion is well known to all those who are habitually brought into close contact with the phenomena of the religious life. Love and religion are the two most volcanic emotions to which the human organism is liable, and it is not surprising that, when there is a disturbance in one of these spheres, the vibrations should readily extend to the other. Nor is it surprising that the two emotions should have a dynamic relation to each other, and that the auto-erotic impulse, being the more primitive and fundamental of the two impulses, should be able to pass its unexpended energy over to the religious emotion, there to find the expansion hitherto denied it, the love of the human becoming the love of the divine.

"I was not good enough for man, And so am given to God."

Even when there is absolute physical suppression on the sexual side, it seems probable that thereby a greater intensity of spiritual fervor is caused. Many eminent thinkers seem to have been without sexual desire.

It is a noteworthy and significant fact that the age of love is also the age of conversion. Starbuck, for instance, in his very elaborate study of the psychology of conversion shows that the majority of conversions take place during the period of adolescence; that is, from the age of puberty to about 24 or 25.[385]

It would be easy to bring forward a long series of observations, from the most various points of view, to show the wide recognition of this close affinity between the sexual and the religious emotions. It is probable, as Hahn points out, that the connection between sexual suppression and religious rites, which we may trace at the very beginning of culture, was due to an instinctive impulse to heighten rather than abolish the sexual element. Early religious rites were largely sexual and orgiastic because they were largely an appeal to the generative forces of Nature to exhibit a beneficial productiveness. Among happily married people, as Hahn remarks, the sexual emotions rapidly give place to the cares and anxieties involved in supporting children; but when the exercise of the sexual function is prevented by celibacy, or even by castration, the most complete form of celibacy, the sexual emotions may pass into the psychical sphere to take on a more pronounced shape.[386] The early Christians adopted the traditional Eastern association between religion and celibacy, and, as the writings of the Fathers amply show, they expended on sexual matters a concentrated fervor of thought rarely known to the Greek and Roman writers of the best period.[387] As Christian theology developed, the minute inquisition into sexual things sometimes became almost an obsession. So far as I am aware, however (I cannot profess to have made any special investigation), it was not until the late Middle Ages that there is any clear recognition of the fact that, between the religious emotions and the sexual emotions, there is not only a superficial antagonism, but an underlying relationship. At this time so great a theologian and philosopher as Aquinas said that it is especially on the days when a man is seeking to make himself pleasing to God that the Devil troubles him by polluting him with seminal emissions. With somewhat more psychological insight, the wise old Knight of the Tower, Landry, in the fourteenth century, tells his daughters that "no young woman, in love, can ever serve her God with that unfeignedness which she did aforetime. For I have heard it argued by many who, in their young days, had been in love that, when they were in the church, the condition and the pleasing melancholy in which they found themselves would infallibly set them brooding over all their tender love-sick longings and all their amorous passages, when they should have been attending to the service which was going on at the time. And such is the property of this mystery of love that it is ever at the moment when the priest is holding our Saviour upon the altar that the most enticing emotions come." After narrating the history of two queens beyond the seas who indulged in amours even on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, at midnight in their oratories, when the lights were put out, he concludes: "Every woman in love is more liable to fall in church or at her devotion than at any other time."

The connection between religious emotion and sexual emotion was very clearly set forth by Swift about the end of the seventeenth century, in a passage which it may be worth while to quote from his "Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit." After mentioning that he was informed by a very eminent physician that when the Quakers first appeared he was seldom without female Quaker patients affected with nymphomania, Swift continues: "Persons of a visionary devotion, either men or women, are, in their complexion, of all others the most amorous. For zeal is frequently kindled from the same spark with other fires, and from inflaming brotherly love will proceed to raise that of a gallant. If we inspect into the usual process of modern courtship, we shall find it to consist in a devout turn of the eyes, called ogling; an artificial form of canting and whining, by rote, every interval, for want of other matter, made up with a shrug, or a hum; a sigh or a groan; the style compact of insignificant words, incoherences, and repetitions. These I take to be the most accomplished rules of address to a mistress; and where are these performed with more dexterity than by the saints? Nay, to bring this argument yet closer, I have been informed by certain sanguine brethren of the first class, that in the height and orgasmus of their spiritual exercise, it has been frequent with them[388]; ... immediately after which, they found the spirit to relax and flag of a sudden with the nerves, and they were forced to hasten to a conclusion. This may be farther strengthened by observing with wonder how unaccountably all females are attracted by visionary or enthusiastic preachers, though never so contemptible in their outward mien; which is usually supposed to be done upon considerations purely spiritual, without any carnal regards at all. But I have reason to think, the sex hath certain characteristics, by which they form a truer judgment of human abilities and performings than we ourselves can possibly do of each other. Let that be as it will, thus much is certain, that however spiritual intrigues begin, they generally conclude like all others; they may branch upwards toward heaven, but the root is in the earth. Too intense a contemplation is not the business of flesh and blood; it must, by the necessary course of things, in a little time let go its hold, and fall into matter. Lovers for the sake of celestial converse, are but another sort of Platonics, who pretend to see stars and heaven in ladies' eyes, and to look or think no lower; but the same pit is provided for both."

To come down to recent times, in the last century the head-master of Clifton College, when discussing the sexual vices of boyhood, remarked that the boys whose temperament exposes them to these faults are usually far from destitute of religious feelings; that there is, and always has been, an undoubted co-existence of religion and animalism; that emotional appeals and revivals are far from rooting out carnal sin; and that in some places, as is well known, they seem actually to stimulate, even at the present day, to increased licentiousness.[389]

It is not difficult to see how, even in technique, the method of the revivalist is a quasi-sexual method, and resembles the attempt of the male to overcome the sexual shyness of the female. "In each case," as W. Thomas remarks, "the will has to be set aside, and strong suggestive means are used; and in both cases the appeal is not of the conflict type, but of an intimate, sympathetic and pleading kind. In the effort to make a moral adjustment it consequently turns out that a technique is used which was derived originally from sexual life, and the use, so to speak, of the sexual machinery for a moral adjustment involves, in some cases, the carrying over into the general process of some sexual manifestations."[390]

The relationship of the sexual and the religious emotions—like so many other of the essential characters of human nature—is seen in its nakedest shape by the alienist. Esquirol referred to this relationship, and, many years ago, J.B. Friedreich, a German alienist of wide outlook and considerable insight, emphasized the connection between the sexual and the religious emotions, and brought forward illustrative cases.[391] Schroeder van der Kolk also remarked: "I venture to express my conviction that we should rarely err if, in a case of religious melancholy, we assumed the sexual apparatus to be implicated."[392] Regis, in France, lays it down that "there exists a close connection between mystic ideas and erotic ideas, and most often these two orders of conception are associated in insanity."[393] Berthier considered that erotic forms of insanity are those most frequently found in convents. Bevan-Lewis points out how frequently religious exaltation occurs at puberty in women, and religious depression at the climacteric, the period of sexual decline.[394] "Religion is very closely allied to love," remarks Savage, "and the love of woman and the worship of God are constantly sources of trouble in unstable youth; it is very interesting to note the frequency with which these two deep feelings are associated."[395] "Closely connected with salacity, particularly in women," remarks Conolly Norman, when discussing mania (Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine), "is religious excitement.... Ecstasy, as we see in cases of acute mental disease, is probably always connected with sexual excitement, if not with sexual depravity. The same association is constantly seen in less extreme cases, and one of the commonest features in the conversation of an acutely maniacal woman is the intermingling of erotic and religious ideas." "Patients who believe," remarks Clara Barrus, "that they are the Virgin Mary, the bride of Christ, the Church, 'God's wife,' and 'Raphael's consort,' are sure, sooner or later, to disclose symptoms which show that they are some way or other sexually depraved."[396] Forel, who devotes a chapter of his book Die Sexuelle Frage, to the subject, argues that the strongest feelings of religious emotion are often unconsciously rooted in erotic emotion or represent a transformation of such emotion; and, in an interesting discussion (Ch. VI) of this question in his Sexualleben unserer Zeit, Bloch states that "in a certain sense we may describe the history of religions as the history of a special manifestation of the human sexual instinct." Ball, Brouardel, Morselli, Vallon and Marie,[397] C.H. Hughes,[398] to mention but a few names among many, have emphasized the same point.[399] Krafft-Ebing deals briefly with the connection between holiness and the sexual emotion, and the special liability of the saints to sexual temptations; he thus states his own conclusions: "Religious and sexual emotional states at the height of their development exhibit a harmony in quantity and quality of excitement, and can thus in certain circumstances act vicariously. Both," he adds, "can be converted into cruelty under pathological conditions."[400]

After quoting these opinions it is, perhaps, not unnecessary to point out that, while sexual emotion constitutes the main reservoir of energy on which religion can draw, it is far from constituting either the whole content of religion or its root. Murisier, in an able study of the psychology of religious ecstasy, justly protests against too crude an explanation of its nature, though at the same time he admits that "the passion of the religious ecstatic lacks nothing of what goes to make up sexual love, not even jealousy."[401]

Serieux, in his little work, Recherches Cliniques sur les Anomalies de l'Instinct Sexuel, valuable on account of its instructive cases, records in detail a case which so admirably illustrates this phase of auto-erotism on the borderland between ordinary erotic day-dreaming and religious mysticism, the phenomena for a time reaching an insane degree of intensity, that I summarize it. "Therese M., aged 24, shows physical stigmata of degeneration. The heredity is also bad; the father is a man of reckless and irregular conduct; the mother was at one time in a lunatic asylum. The patient was brought up in an orphanage, and was a troublesome, volatile child; she treated household occupations with contempt, but was fond of study. Even at an early age her lively imagination attracted attention, and the pleasure which she took in building castles in the air. From the age of seven to ten she masturbated. At her first communion she felt that Jesus would for ever be the one master of her heart. At thirteen, after the death of her mother, she seemed to see her, and to hear her say that she was watching over her child. Shortly afterward she was overwhelmed by a new grief, the death of a teacher for whom she cherished great affection on account of her pure character. On the following day she seemed to see and hear this teacher, and would not leave the house where the body lay. Tendencies to melancholy appeared. Saddened by the funeral ceremonies, exhorted by nuns, fed on mystic revery, she passed from the orphanage to a convent. She devoted herself solely to the worship of Jesus; to be like Jesus, to be near Jesus, became her constant pre-occupations. The Virgin's name was rarely seen in her writings, God's name never. 'I wanted', she said, 'to love Jesus more than any of the nuns I saw, and I even thought that he had a partiality for me.' She was also haunted by the idea of preserving her purity. She avoided frivolous conversation, and left the room when marriage was discussed, such a union being incompatible with a pure life; 'it was my fixed idea for two years to make my soul ever more pure in order to be agreeable to Him; the Beloved is well pleased among the lilies.'