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Title: Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4

Author: Havelock Ellis

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF SEX, VOLUME 4 ***

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6), by
Havelock Ellis

STUDIES

IN THE

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX

VOLUME IV

SEXUAL SELECTION IN MAN

I. TOUCH. II. SMELL. III. HEARING. IV. VISION.

BY

HAVELOCK ELLIS

1927

PREFACE.

As in many other of these Studies, and perhaps more than in most, the task attempted in the
present volume is mainly of a tentative and preliminary character. There is here little scope yet
for the presentation of definite scientific results. However it may be in the physical universe,
in the cosmos of science our knowledge must be nebulous before it constellates into definitely
measurable shapes, and nothing is gained by attempting to anticipate the evolutionary process.
Thus it is that here, for the most part, we have to content ourselves at present with the task of
mapping out the field in broad and general outlines, bringing together the facts and
considerations which indicate the direction in which more extended and precise results will in
the future be probably found.
In his famous Descent of Man, wherein he first set forth the doctrine of sexual selection,
Darwin injured an essentially sound principle by introducing into it a psychological confusion
whereby the physiological sensory stimuli through which sexual selection operates were
regarded as equivalent to æsthetic preferences. This confusion misled many, and it is only
within recent years (as has been set forth in the "Analysis of the Sexual Impulse" in the
previous volume of these Studies) that the investigations and criticisms of numerous workers
have placed the doctrine of sexual selection on a firm basis by eliminating its hazardous
æsthetic element. Love springs up as a response to a number of stimuli to tumescence, the
object that most adequately arouses tumescence being that which evokes love; the question of
æsthetic beauty, although it develops on this basis, is not itself fundamental and need not even
be consciously present at all. When we look at these phenomena in their broadest biological
aspects, love is only to a limited extent a response to beauty; to a greater extent beauty is
simply a name for the complexus of stimuli which most adequately arouses love. If we
analyze these stimuli to tumescence as they proceed from a person of the opposite sex we find
that they are all appeals which must come through the channels of four senses: touch, smell,
hearing, and, above all, vision. When a man or a woman experiences sexual love for one
particular person from among the multitude by which he or she is surrounded, this is due to
the influences of a group of stimuli coming through the channels of one or more of these
senses. There has been a sexual selection conditioned by sensory stimuli. This is true even of
the finer and more spiritual influences that proceed from one person to another, although, in
order to grasp the phenomena adequately, it is best to insist on the more fundamental and less
complex forms which they assume. In this sense sexual selection is no longer a hypothesis
concerning the truth of which it is possible to dispute; it is a self-evident fact. The difficulty is
not as to its existence, but as to the methods by which it may be most precisely measured. It is
fundamentally a psychological process, and should be approached from the psychological
side. This is the reason for dealing with it here. Obscure as the psychological aspects of sexual
selection still remain, they are full of fascination, for they reveal to us the more intimate sides
of human evolution, of the process whereby man is molded into the shapes we know.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.

Carbis Water,
Lelant, Cornwall, England.

CONTENTS.
PREFACE.

CONTENTS.

SEXUAL SELECTION IN MAN.

The External Sensory Stimuli Affecting Selection in Man. The Four Senses Involved.

TOUCH.

I.

The Primitive Character of the Skin. Its Qualities. Touch the Earliest Source of Sensory
Pleasure. The Characteristics of Touch. As the Alpha and Omega of Affection. The Sexual
Organs a Special Adaptation of Touch. Sexual Attraction as Originated by Touch. Sexual
Hyperæsthesia to Touch. The Sexual Associations of Acne.

II.

Ticklishness. Its Origin and Significance. The Psychology of Tickling. Laughter. Laughter as a
Kind of Detumescence. The Sexual Relationships of Itching. The Pleasure of Tickling. Its
Decrease with Age and Sexual Activity.

III.

The Secondary Sexual Skin Centres. Orificial Contacts. Cunnilingus and Fellatio. The Kiss.
The Nipples. The Sympathy of the Breasts with the Primary Sexual Centres. This Connection
Operative both through the Nerves and through the Blood. The Influence of Lactation on the
Sexual Centres. Suckling and Sexual Emotion. The Significance of the Association between
Suckling and Sexual Emotion. The Association as a Cause of Sexual Perversity.

IV.

The Bath. Antagonism of Primitive Christianity to the Cult of the Skin. Its Cult of Personal
Filth. The Reasons which Justified this Attitude. The World-wide Tendency to Association
between Extreme Cleanliness and Sexual Licentiousness. The Immorality Associated with
Public Baths in Europe down to Modern Times.

V.

Summary. Fundamental Importance of Touch. The Skin the Mother of All the Other Senses.

SMELL.

I.

The Primitiveness of Smell. The Anatomical Seat of the Olfactory Centres. Predominance of
Smell among the Lower Mammals. Its Diminished Importance in Man. The Attention Paid to
Odors by Savages.

II.

Rise of the Study of Olfaction. Cloquet. Zwaardemaker. The Theory of Smell. The
Classification of Odors. The Special Characteristics of Olfactory Sensation in Man. Smell as
the Sense of Imagination. Odors as Nervous Stimulants. Vasomotor and Muscular Effects.
Odorous Substances as Drugs.

III.

The Specific Body Odors of Various Peoples. The Negro, etc. The European. The Ability to
Distinguish Individuals by Smell. The Odor of Sanctity. The Odor of Death. The Odors of
Different Parts of the Body. The Appearance of Specific Odors at Puberty. The Odors of
Sexual Excitement. The Odors of Menstruation. Body Odors as a Secondary Sexual Character.
The Custom of Salutation by Smell. The Kiss. Sexual Selection by Smell. The Alleged
Association between Size of Nose and Sexual Vigor. The Probably Intimate Relationship
between the Olfactory and Genital Spheres. Reflex Influences from the Nose. Reflex
Influences from the Genital Sphere. Olfactory Hallucinations in Insanity as Related to Sexual
States. The Olfactive Type. The Sense of Smell in Neurasthenic and Allied States. In Certain
Poets and Novelists. Olfactory Fetichism. The Part Played by Olfaction in Normal Sexual
Attraction. In the East, etc. In Modern Europe. The Odor of the Armpit and its Variations. As a
Sexual and General Stimulant. Body Odors in Civilization Tend to Cause Sexual Antipathy
unless some Degree of Tumescence is Already Present. The Question whether Men or Women
are more Liable to Feel Olfactory Influences. Women Usually more Attentive to Odors. The
Special Interest in Odors Felt by Sexual Inverts.

IV.

The Influence of Perfumes. Their Aboriginal Relationship to Sexual Body Odors. This True
even of the Fragrance of Flowers. The Synthetic Manufacture of Perfumes. The Sexual Effects
of Perfumes. Perfumes perhaps Originally Used to Heighten the Body Odors. The Special
Significance of the Musk Odor. Its Wide Natural Diffusion in Plants and Animals and Man.
Musk a Powerful Stimulant. Its Widespread Use as a Perfume. Peau d'Espagne. The Smell of
Leather and its Occasional Sexual Effects. The Sexual Influence of the Odors of Flowers. The
Identity of many Plant Odors with Certain Normal and Abnormal Body Odors. The Smell of
Semen in this Connection.

V.

The Evil Effects of Excessive Olfactory Stimulation. The Symptoms of Vanillism. The
Occasional Dangerous Results of the Odors of Flowers. Effects of Flowers on the Voice.

VI.

The Place of Smell in Human Sexual Selections. It has given Place to the Predominance of
Vision largely because in Civilized Man it Fails to Act at a Distance. It still Plays a Part by
Contributing to the Sympathies or the Antipathies of Intimate Contact.

HEARING.

I.

The Physiological Basis of Rhythm. Rhythm as a Physiological Stimulus. The Intimate
Relation of Rhythm to Movement. The Physiological Influence of Music on Muscular Action,
Circulation, Respiration, etc. The Place of Music in Sexual Selection among the Lower
Animals. Its Comparatively Small Place in Courtship among Mammals. The Larynx and Voice
in Man. The Significance of the Pubertal Changes. Ancient Beliefs Concerning the Influence
of Music in Morals, Education and Medicine. Its Therapeutic Uses. Significance of the
Romantic Interest in Music at Puberty. Men Comparatively Insusceptible to the Specifically
Sexual Influence of Music. Rarity of Sexual Perversions on the Basis of the Sense of Hearing.
The Part of Music in Primitive Human Courtship. Women Notably Susceptible to the
Specifically Sexual Influence of Music and the Voice.

II.

Summary. Why the Influence of Music in Human Sexual Selection is Comparatively Small.

VISION

I.

Primacy of Vision in Man. Beauty as a Sexual Allurement. The Objective Element in Beauty.
Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Various Parts of the World. Savage Women sometimes Beautiful
from European Point of View. Savages often Admire European Beauty. The Appeal of Beauty
to some Extent Common even to Animals and Man.

II.

Beauty to Some Extent Consists Primitively in an Exaggeration of the Sexual Characters. The
Sexual Organs. Mutilations, Adornments, and Garments. Sexual Allurement the Original
Object of Such Devices. The Religious Element. Unæsthetic Character of the Sexual Organs.
Importance of the Secondary Sexual Characters. The Pelvis and Hips. Steatopygia. Obesity.
Gait. The Pregnant Woman as a Mediæval Type of Beauty. The Ideals of the Renaissance. The

Breasts. The Corset. Its Object. Its History. Hair. The Beard. The Element of National or
Racial Type in Beauty. The Relative Beauty of Blondes and Brunettes. The General European
Admiration for Blondes. The Individual Factors in the Constitution of the Idea of Beauty. The
Love of the Exotic.

III.

Beauty Not the Sole Element in the Sexual Appeal of Vision. Movement. The Mirror.
Narcissism. Pygmalionism. Mixoscopy. The Indifference of Women to Male Beauty. The
Significance of Woman's Admiration of Strength. The Spectacle of Strength is a Tactile
Quality made Visible.

IV.

The Alleged Charm of Disparity in Sexual Attraction. The Admiration for High Stature. The
Admiration for Dark Pigmentation. The Charm of Parity. Conjugal Mating. The Statistical
Results of Observation as Regards General Appearance, Stature, and Pigmentation of Married
Couples. Preferential Mating and Assortative Mating. The Nature of the Advantage Attained
by the Fair in Sexual Selection. The Abhorrence of Incest and the Theories of its Cause. The
Explanation in Reality Simple. The Abhorrence of Incest in Relation to Sexual Selection. The
Limits to the Charm of Parity in Conjugal Mating. The Charm of Disparity in Secondary
Sexual Characters.

V.

Summary of the Conclusions at Present Attainable in Regard to the Nature of Beauty and its
Relation to Sexual Selection.

APPENDIX A.

The Origins of the Kiss.

APPENDIX B.

Histories of Sexual Development.

INDEX OF AUTHORS.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

SEXUAL SELECTION IN MAN.
The External Sensory Stimuli Affecting Selection in Man—The Four Senses Involved.

Tumescence—the process by which the organism is brought into the physical and psychic
state necessary to insure conjugation and detumescence—to some extent comes about through
the spontaneous action of internal forces. To that extent it is analogous to the physical and
psychic changes which accompany the gradual filling of the bladder and precede its
evacuation. But even among animals who are by no means high in the zoölogical scale the
process is more complicated than this. External stimuli act at every stage, arousing or
heightening the process of tumescence, and in normal human beings it may be said that the
process is never completed without the aid of such stimuli, for even in the auto-erotic sphere
external stimuli are still active, either actually or in imagination.
The chief stimuli which influence tumescence and thus direct sexual choice come chiefly—
indeed, exclusively—through the four senses of touch, smell, hearing, and sight. All the
phenomena of sexual selection, so far as they are based externally, act through these four
senses.[1] The reality of the influence thus exerted may be demonstrated statistically even in
civilized man, and it has been shown that, as regards, for instance, eye-color, conjugal partners
differ sensibly from the unmarried persons by whom they are surrounded. When, therefore, we
are exploring the nature of the influence which stimuli, acting through the sensory channels,
exert on the strength and direction of the sexual impulse, we are intimately concerned with the
process by which the actual form and color, not alone of living things generally, but of our
own species, have been shaped and are still being shaped. At the same time, it is probable, we
are exploring the mystery which underlies all the subtle appreciations, all the emotional
undertones, which are woven in the web of the whole world as it appeals to us through those
sensory passages by which alone it can reach us. We are here approaching, therefore, a
fundamental subject of unsurpassable importance, a subject which has not yet been accurately
explored save at a few isolated points and one which it is therefore impossible to deal with
fully and adequately. Yet it cannot be passed over, for it enters into the whole psychology of
the sexual instinct.
Of the four senses—touch, smell, hearing, and sight—with which we are here concerned,
touch is the most primitive, and it may be said to be the most important, though it is usually
the last to make its appeal felt. Smell, which occupies the chief place among many animals, is
of comparatively less importance, though of considerable interest, in man; it is only less
intimate and final than touch. Sight occupies an intermediate position, and on this account, and
also on account of the very great part played by vision in life generally as well as in art, it is
the most important of all the senses from the human sexual point of view. Hearing, from the
same point of view, is the most remote of all the senses in its appeal to the sexual impulse, and
on that account it is, when it intervenes, among the first to make its influence felt.

[1]
Taste must, I believe, be excluded, for if we abstract the parts of touch and smell,
even in those abnormal sexual acts in which it may seem to be affected, taste could
scarcely have any influence. Most of our "tasting," as Waller puts it, is done by the
nose, which, in man, is in specially close relationship, posteriorly, with the mouth.
There are at most four taste sensations—sweet, bitter, salt, and sour—if even all of
these are simple tastes. What commonly pass for taste sensations, as shown by some
experiments of G. T. W. Patrick (Psychological Review, 1898, p. 160), are the
composite results of the mingling of sensations of smell, touch, temperature, sight,
and taste.

TOUCH.
I.

The Primitive Character of the Skin—Its Qualities—Touch the Earliest Source of Sensory
Pleasure—The Characteristics of Touch—As the Alpha and Omega of Affection—The Sexual
Organs a Special Adaptation of Touch—Sexual Attraction as Originated by Touch—Sexual
Hyperæsthesia to Touch—The Sexual Associations of Acne.

We are accustomed to regard the skin as mainly owing its existence to the need for the
protection of the delicate vessels, nerves, viscera, and muscles underneath. Undoubtedly it
performs, and by its tough and elastic texture is well fitted to perform, this extremely
important service. But the skin is not merely a method of protection against the external
world; it is also a method of bringing us into sensitive contact with the external world. It is
thus, as the organ of touch, the seat of the most widely diffused sense we possess, and,
moreover, the sense which is the most ancient and fundamental of all—the mother of the other
senses.
It is scarcely necessary to insist that the primitive nature of the sensory function of the skin
with the derivative nature of the other senses, is a well ascertained and demonstrable fact. The
lower we descend in the animal scale, the more varied we find the functions of the skin to be,
and if in the higher animals much of the complexity has disappeared, that is only because the
specialization of the various skin regions into distinct organs has rendered this complexity
unnecessary. Even yet, however, in man himself the skin still retains, in a more or less latent
condition, much of its varied and primary power, and the analysis of pathological and even
normal phenomena serves to bring these old powers into clear light.
Woods Hutchinson (Studies in Human and Comparative Pathology, 1901, Chapters VII and
VIII) has admirably set forth the immense importance of the skin, as in the first place "a tissue
which is silk to the touch, the most exquisitely beautiful surface in the universe to the eye, and
yet a wall of adamant against hostile attack. Impervious alike, by virtue of its wonderful
responsive vitality, to moisture and drought, cold and heat, electrical changes, hostile bacteria,
the most virulent of poisons and the deadliest of gases, it is one of the real Wonders of the
World. More beautiful than velvet, softer and more pliable than silk, more impervious than
rubber, and more durable under exposure than steel, well-nigh as resistant to electric currents
as glass, it is one of the toughest and most dangerproof substances in the three kingdoms of
nature" (although, as this author adds, we "hardly dare permit it to see the sunlight or breathe
the open air"). But it is more than this. It is, as Woods Hutchinson expresses it, the creator of
the entire body; its embryonic infoldings form the alimentary canal, the brain, the spinal cord,
while every sense is but a specialization of its general organic activity. It is furthermore a kind
of "skin-heart," promoting the circulation by its own energy; it is the great heat-regulating

organ of the body; it is an excretory organ only second to the kidneys, which descend from it,
and finally it still remains the seat of touch.
It may be added that the extreme beauty of the skin as a surface is very clearly brought out by
the inadequacy of the comparisons commonly used in order to express its beauty. Snow,
marble, alabaster, ivory, milk, cream, silk, velvet, and all the other conventional similes
furnish surfaces which from any point of view are incomparably inferior to the skin itself. (Cf.
Stratz, Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers, Chapter XII.)
With reference to the extraordinary vitality of the skin, emphasized by Woods Hutchinson, it
may be added that, when experimenting on the skin with the electric current, Waller found that
healthy skin showed signs of life ten days or more after excision. It has been found also that
fragments of skin which have been preserved in sterile fluid for even as long as nine months
may still be successfully transplanted on to the body. (British Medical Journal, July 19, 1902.)
Everything indicates, remark Stanley Hall and Donaldson ("Motor Sensations in the Skin,"
Mind, 1885), that the skin is "not only the primeval and most reliable source of our knowledge
of the external world or the archæological field of psychology," but a field in which work may
shed light on some of the most fundamental problems of psychic action. Groos (Spiele der
Menschen, pp. 8-16) also deals with the primitive character of touch sensations.
Touch sensations are without doubt the first of all the sensory impressions to prove
pleasurable. We should, indeed, expect this from the fact that the skin reflexes have already
appeared before birth, while a pleasurable sensitiveness of the lips is doubtless a factor in the
child's response to the contact of the maternal nipple. Very early memories of sensory pleasure
seem to be frequently, perhaps most frequently, tactile in character, though this fact is often
disguised in recollection, owing to tactile impression being vague and diffused; there is thus in
Elizabeth Potwin's "Study of Early Memories" (Psychological Review, November, 1901) no
separate group of tactile memories, and the more elaborate investigation by Colegrove
("Individual Memories," American Journal of Psychology, January, 1899) yields no decisive
results under this head. See, however, Stanley Hall's valuable study, "Some Aspects of the
Early Sense of Self," American Journal of Psychology, April, 1898. Külpe has a discussion of
the psychology of cutaneous sensations (Outlines of Psychology [English translation], pp. 87
et seq.)
Harriet Martineau, at the beginning of her Autobiography, referring to the vivid character of
tactile sensations in early childhood, remarks, concerning an early memory of touching a
velvet button, that "the rapture of the sensation was really monstrous." And a lady tells me that
one of her earliest memories at the age of 3 is of the exquisite sensation of the casual contact
of a cool stone with the vulva in the act of urinating. Such sensations, of course, cannot be
termed specifically sexual, though they help to furnish the tactile basis on which the
specifically sexual sensations develop.
The elementary sensitiveness of the skin is shown by the fact that moderate excitation suffices
to raise the temperature, while Heidenhain and others have shown that in animals cutaneous
stimuli modify the sensibility of the brain cortex, slight stimulus increasing excitability and
strong stimulus diminishing it. Féré has shown that the slight stimulus to the skin furnished by
placing a piece of metal on the arm or elsewhere suffices to increase the output of work with

the ergograph. (Féré, Comptes Rendus Société de Biologie, July 12, 1902; id., Pathologic des
Emotions, pp. 40 et seq.)
Féré found that the application of a mustard plaster to the skin, or an icebag, or a hot-water
bottle, or even a light touch with a painter's brush, all exerted a powerful effect in increasing
muscular work with the ergograph. "The tonic effect of cutaneous excitation," he remarks,
"throws light on the psychology of the caress. It is always the most sensitive parts of the body
which seek to give or to receive caresses. Many animals rub or lick each other. The mucous
surfaces share in this irritability of the skin. The kiss is not only an expression of feeling; it is a
means of provoking it. Cataglottism is by no means confined to pigeons. The tonic value of
cutaneous stimulation is indeed a commonly accepted idea. Wrestlers rub their hands or limbs,
and the hand-shake also is not without its physiological basis.
"Cutaneous excitations may cause painful sensations to cease. Many massage practices which
favor work act chiefly as sensorial stimulants; on this account many nervous persons cannot
abandon them, and the Greeks and Romans found in massage not only health, but pleasure.
Lauder Brunton regards many common manœuvres, like scratching the head and pulling the
mustache, as methods of dilating the bloodvessels of the brain by stimulating the facial nerve.
The motor reactions of cutaneous excitations favor this hypothesis." (Féré, Travail et Plaisir,
Chapter XV, "Influence des Excitations du Toucher sur le Travail.")
The main characteristics of the primitive sense of touch are its wide diffusion over the whole
body and the massive vagueness and imprecision of the messages it sends to the brain. This is
the reason, why it is, of all the senses, the least intellectual and the least æsthetic; it is also the
reason why it is, of all the senses, the most-profoundly emotional. "Touch," wrote Bain in his
Emotions and Will, "is both the alpha and the omega of affection," and he insisted on the
special significance in this connection of "tenderness"—a characteristic emotional quality of
affection which is directly founded on sensations of touch. If tenderness is the alpha of
affection, even between the sexes, its omega is to be found in the sexual embrace, which may
be said to be a method of obtaining, through a specialized organization of the skin, the most
exquisite and intense sensations of touch.
"We believe nothing is so exciting to the instinct or mere passions as the presence of the hand
or those tactile caresses which mark affection," states the anonymous author of an article on
"Woman in her Psychological Relations," in the Journal of Psychological Medicine, 1851.
"They are the most general stimuli in lower animals. The first recourse in difficulty or danger,
and the primary solace in anguish, for woman is the bosom of her husband or her lover. She
seeks solace and protection and repose on that part of the body where she herself places the
objects of her own affection. Woman appears to have the same instinctive impulse in this
respect all over the world."
It is because the sexual orgasm is founded on a special adaptation and intensification of touch
sensations that the sense of touch generally is to be regarded as occupying the very first place
in reference to the sexual emotions. Féré, Mantegazza, Penta, and most other writers on this
question are here agreed. Touch sensations constitute a vast gamut for the expression of
affection, with at one end the note of minimum personal affection in the brief and limited
touch involved by the conventional hand-shake and the conventional kiss, and at the other end
the final and intimate contact in which passion finds the supreme satisfaction of its most

profound desire. The intermediate region has its great significance for us because it offers a
field in which affection has its full scope, but in which every road may possibly lead to the
goal of sexual love. It is the intimacy of touch contacts, their inevitable approach to the
threshold of sexual emotion, which leads to a jealous and instinctive parsimony in the contact
of skin and skin and to the tendency with the increased sensitiveness of the nervous system
involved by civilization to restrain even the conventional touch manifestation of ordinary
affection and esteem. In China fathers leave off kissing their daughters while they are still
young children. In England the kiss as an ordinary greeting between men and women—a
custom inherited from classic and early Christian antiquity—still persisted to the beginning of
the eighteenth century. In France the same custom existed in the seventeenth century, but in
the middle of that century was beginning to be regarded as dangerous,[2] while at the present
time the conventional kiss on the cheek is strictly differentiated from the kiss on the mouth,
which is reserved for lovers. Touch contacts between person and person, other than those
limited and defined by custom, tend to become either unpleasant—as an undesired intrusion
into an intimate sphere—or else, when occurring between man and woman at some peculiar
moment, they may make a powerful reverberation in the emotional and more specifically
sexual sphere. One man falls in love with his future wife because he has to carry her upstairs
with a sprained ankle. Another dates his love-story from a romp in which his cheek
accidentally came in contact with that of his future wife. A woman will sometimes
instinctively strive to attract the attention of the man who appeals to her by a peculiar and
prolonged pressure of the hand—the only touch contact permitted to her. Dante, as Penta has
remarked, refers to "sight or touch" as the two channels through which a woman's love is
revived (Purgatorio, VIII, 76). Even the hand-shake of a sympathetic man is enough in some
chaste and sensitive women to produce sexual excitement or sometimes even the orgasm. The
cases in which love arises from the influence of stimuli coming through the sense of touch are
no doubt frequent, and they would be still more frequent if it were not that the very proximity
of this sense to the sexual sphere causes it to be guarded with a care which in the case of the
other senses it is impossible to exercise. This intimacy of touch and the reaction against its
sexual approximations leads to what James has called "the antisexual instinct, the instinct of
personal isolation, the actual repulsiveness to us of the idea of intimate contact with most of
the persons we meet, especially those of our own sex." He refers in this connection to the
unpleasantness of the sensation felt on occupying a seat still warm from the body of another
person.[3] The Catholic Church has always recognized the risks of vuluptuous emotion
involved in tactile contacts, and the facility with which even the most innocent contacts may
take on a libidinous character.[4]
The following observations were written by a lady (aged 30) who has never had sexual
relationships: "I am only conscious of a very sweet and pleasurable emotion when coming in
contact with honorable men, and consider that a comparison can be made between the
idealism of such emotions and those of music, of beauties of Nature, and of productions of art.
While studying and writing articles upon a new subject I came in contact with a specialist,
who rendered me considerable aid, and, one day, while jointly correcting a piece of work, he
touched my hand. This produced a sweet and pure sensation of thrill through the whole
system. I said nothing; in fact, was too thrilled for speech; and never to this day have shown
any responsive action, but for months at certain periods, generally twice a month, I have
experienced the most pleasurable emotions. I have seen this friend twice since, and have a

curious feeling that I stand on one side of a hedge, while he is on the other, and, as neither
makes an approach, pleasure of the highest kind is experienced, but not allowed to go beyond
reasonable and health-giving bounds. In some moments I feel overcome by a sense of mastery
by this man, and yet, feeling that any approach would be undignified, some pleasure is
experienced in restraining and keeping within proper bounds this passional emotion. All these
thrills of pleasurable emotion possess a psychic value, and, so long as the nervous system is
kept in perfect health, they do not seem to have the power to injure, but rather one is able to
utilize the passionate emotions as weapons for pleasure and work."
Various parts of the skin surface appear to have special sexual sensitiveness, peculiarly
marked in many individuals, especially women; so that, as Féré remarks (L'Instinct Sexuel,
second edition, 1902, p. 130), contact stimulation of the lips, lobe of ear, nape of neck, little
finger, knee, etc., may suffice even to produce the orgasm. Some sexually hyperæsthetic
women, as has already been noted, experience this when shaking hands with a man who is
attractive to them. In some neurotic persons this sensibility, as Féré shows, may exist in so
morbid a degree that even the contact of the sensitive spot with unattractive persons or
inanimate objects may produce the orgasm. In this connection reference may be made to the
well-known fact that in some hysterical subjects there are so-called "erogenous zones" simple
pressure on which suffices to evoke the complete orgasm. There is, perhaps, some
significance, from our present point of view, in the fact that, as emphasized by Savill
("Hysterical Skin Symptoms," Lancet, January 30, 1904), the skin is one of the very best
places to study hysteria.
The intimate connection between the skin and the sexual sphere is also shown in pathological
conditions of the skin, especially in acne as well as simple pimples on the face. The sexual
development of puberty involves a development of hair in various regions of the body which
previously were hairless. As, however, the sebaceous glands on the face and elsewhere are the
vestiges of former hairs and survive from a period when the whole body was hairy, they also
tend to experience in an abortive manner this same impulse. Thus, we may say that, with the
development of the sexual organs at puberty, there is correlated excitement of the whole pilo-
sebaceous apparatus. In the regions where this apparatus is vestigial, and notably in the face,
this abortive attempt of the hair-follicles and their sebaceous appendages to produce hairs
tends only to disorganization, and simple comedones or pustular acne pimples are liable to
occur. As a rule, acne appears about puberty and dies out slowly during adolescence. While
fairly common in young women, it is usually much less severe, but tends to be exacerbated at
the menstrual periods; it is also apt to appear at the change of life. (Stephen Mackenzie, "The
Etiology and Treatment of Acne Vulgaris," British Medical Journal, September 29, 1894.
Laycock [Nervous Diseases of Women, 1840, p. 23] pointed out that acne occurs chiefly in
those parts of the surface covered by sexual hair. A lucid account of the origin of acne will be
found in Woods Hutchinson's Studies in Human and Comparative Pathology, pp. 179-184. G.
J. Engelmann ["The Hystero-neuroses," Gynæcological Transactions, 1887, pp. 124 et seq.]
discusses various pathological disorders of the skin as reflex disturbances originating in the
sexual sphere.)
The influence of menstruation in exacerbating acne has been called in question, but it seems to
be well established. Thus, Bulkley ("Relation between Certain Diseases of the Skin and the
Menstrual Function," Transactions of the Medical Society of New York, 1901, p. 328) found

that, in 510 cases of acne in women, 145, or nearly one-third, were worse about the monthly
period. Sometimes it only appeared during menstruation. The exacerbation occurred much
more frequently just before than just after the period. There was usually some disturbance of
menstruation. Various other disorders of the skin show a similar relationship to menstruation.
It has been asserted that masturbation is a frequent or constant cause of acne at puberty. (See,
e.g., discussion in British Medical Journal, July, 1882.) This cannot be accepted. Acne very
frequently occurs without masturbation, and masturbation is very frequently practiced without
producing acne. At the same time we may well believe that at the period of puberty, when the
pilo-sebaceous system is already in sensitive touch with the sexual system, the shock of
frequently repeated masturbation may (in the same way as disordered menstruation) have its
repercussion on the skin. Thus, a lady has informed me that at about the age of 18 she found
that frequently repeated masturbation was followed by the appearance of comedones.

[2]
A. Franklin, Les Soins de Toilette, p. 81.

[3]
W. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii. p. 347.

[4]
Numerous passages from the theologians bearing on this point are brought together
in Mœchialogia, pp. 221-220.

II.

Ticklishness—Its Origin and Significance—The Psychology of Tickling—Laughter—
Laughter as a Kind of Detumescence—The Sexual Relationships of Itching—The Pleasure of
Tickling—Its Decrease with Age and Sexual Activity.

Touch, as has already been remarked, is the least intellectual of the senses. There is, however,
one form of touch sensation—that is to say, ticklishness—which is of so special and peculiar a
nature that it has sometimes been put aside in a class apart from all other touch sensations.
Scaliger proposed to class titillation as a sixth, or separate, sense. Alrutz, of Upsala, regards
tickling as a milder degree of itching, and considers that the two together constitute a
sensation of distinct quality with distinct end-organs, for the mediation of that quality.[5]
However we may regard this extreme view, tickling is certainly a specialized modification of
touch and it is at the same time the most intellectual mode of touch sensation and that with the
closest connection with the sexual sphere. To regard tickling as an intellectual manifestation
may cause surprise, more especially when it is remembered that ticklishness is a form of
sensation which reaches full development very early in life, and it has to be admitted that, as
compared even with the messages that may be sent through smell and taste, the intellectual

element in ticklishness remains small. But its presence here has been independently
recognized by various investigators. Groos points out the psychic factor in tickling as
evidenced by the impossibility of self-tickling.[6] Louis Robinson considers that ticklishness
"appears to be one of the simplest developments of mechanical and automatic nervous
processes in the direction of the complex functioning of the higher centres which comes
within the scope of psychology,"[7] Stanley Hall and Allin remark that "these minimal touch
excitations represent the very oldest stratum of psychic life in the soul."[8] Hirman Stanley, in
a somewhat similar manner, pushes the intellectual element in ticklishness very far back and
associates it with "tentacular experience." "By temporary self-extension," he remarks, "even
low amœboid organisms have slight, but suggestive, touch experiences that stimulate very
general and violent reactions, and in higher organisms extended touch-organs, as tentacles,
antennæ, hair, etc., become permanent and very delicately sensitive organs, where minimal
contacts have very distinct and powerful reactions." Thus ticklishness would be the survival of
long passed ancestral tentacular experience, which, originally a stimulation producing intense
agitation and alarm, has now become merely a play activity and a source of keen pleasure.[9]
We need not, however, go so far back in the zoölogical series to explain the origin and
significance of tickling in the human species. Sir J. Y. Simpson suggested, in an elaborate
study of the position of the child in the womb, that the extreme excitomotory sensibility of the
skin in various regions, such as the sole of the foot, the knee, the sides, which already exists
before birth, has for its object the excitation and preservation of the muscular movements
necessary to keep the fœtus in the most favorable position in the womb.[10] It is, in fact,
certainly the case that the stimulation of all the ticklish regions in the body tends to produce
exactly that curled up position of extreme muscular flexion and general ovoid shape which is
the normal position of the fœtus in the womb. We may well believe that in this early
developed reflex activity we have the basis of that somewhat more complex ticklishness which
appears somewhat later.
The mental element in tickling is indicated by the fact that even a child, in whom ticklishness
is highly developed, cannot tickle himself; so that tickling is not a simple reflex. This fact was
long ago pointed out by Erasmus Darwin, and he accounted for it by supposing that voluntary
exertion diminishes the energy of sensation.[11] This explanation is, however, inadmissible,
for, although we cannot easily tickle ourselves by the contact of the skin with our own fingers,
we can do so with the aid of a foreign body, like a feather. We may perhaps suppose that, as
ticklishness has probably developed under the influence of natural selection as a method of
protection against attack and a warning of the approach of foreign bodies, its end would be
defeated if it involved a simple reaction to the contact of the organism with itself. This need of
protection it is which involves the necessity of a minimal excitation producing a maximal
effect, though the mechanism whereby this takes place has caused considerable discussion. We
may, it is probable, best account for it by invoking the summation-irradiation theory of pain-
pleasure, the summation of the stimuli in their course through the nerves, aided by capillary
congestion, leading to irradiation due to anastomoses between the tactile corpuscles, not to
speak of the much wider irradiation which is possible by means of central nervous
connections.

Prof. C. L. Herrick adopts this explanation of the phenomena of tickling, and rests it, in part,
on Dogiel's study of the tactile corpuscles ("Psychological Corollaries of Modern Neurological
Discoveries," Journal of Comparative Neurology, March, 1898). The following remarks of
Prof. A. Allin may also be quoted in further explanation of the same theory: "So far as
ticklishness is concerned, a very important factor in the production of this feeling is
undoubtedly that of the summation of stimuli. In a research of Stirling's, carried on under
Ludwig's direction, it was shown that reflex contractions only occur from repeated shocks to
the nerve-centres—that is, through summation of successive stimuli. That this result is also
due in some degree to an alternating increase in the sensibility of the various areas in question
from altered supply of blood is reasonably certain. As a consequence of this summation-
process there would result in many cases and in cases of excessive nervous discharge the
opposite of pleasure, namely: pain. A number of instances have been recorded of death
resulting from tickling, and there is no reason to doubt the truth of the statement that Simon de
Montfort, during the persecution of the Albigenses, put some of them to death by tickling the
soles of their feet with a feather. An additional causal factor in the production of tickling may
lie in the nature and structure of the nervous process involved in perception in general.
According to certain histological researches of recent years we know that between the sense-
organs and the central nervous system there exist closely connected chains of conductors or
neurons, along which an impression received by a single sensory cell on the periphery is
propagated avalanchelike through an increasing number of neurons until the brain is reached.
If on the periphery a single cell is excited the avalanchelike process continues until finally
hundreds or thousands of nerve-cells in the cortex are aroused to considerable activity. Golgi,
Ramón y Cajal, Koelliker, Held, Retzius, and others have demonstrated the histological basis
of this law for vision, hearing, and smell, and we may safely assume from the phenomena of
tickling that the sense of touch is not lacking in a similar arrangement. May not a suggestion
be offered, with some plausibility, that even in ideal or representative tickling, where tickling
results, say, from someone pointing a finger at the ticklish places, this avalanchelike process
may be incited from central centres, thus producing, although in a modified degree, the
pleasant phenomena in question? As to the deepest causal factor, I should say that tickling is
the result of vasomotor shock." (A. Allin, "On Laughter," Psychological Review, May, 1903.)
The intellectual element in tickling conies out in its connection with laughter and the sense of
the comic, of which it may be said to constitute the physical basis. While we are not here
concerned with laughter and the comic sense,—a subject which has lately attracted
considerable attention,—it may be instructive to point out that there is more than an analogy
between laughter and the phenomena of sexual tumescence and detumescence. The process
whereby prolonged tickling, with its nervous summation and irradiation and accompanying
hyperæmia, finds sudden relief in an explosion of laughter is a real example of tumescence—
as it has been defined in the study in another volume entitled "An Analysis of the Sexual
Impulse"—resulting finally in the orgasm of detumescence. The reality of the connection
between the sexual embrace and tickling is indicated by the fact that in some languages, as in
that of the Fuegians,[12] the same word is applied to both. That ordinary tickling is not sexual
is due to the circumstances of the case and the regions to which the tickling is applied. If,
however, the tickling is applied within the sexual sphere, then there is a tendency for orgasm
to take place instead of laughter. The connection which, through the phenomena of tickling,
laughter thus bears to the sexual sphere is well indicated, as Groos has pointed out, by the fact

that in sexually-minded people sexual allusions tend to produce laughter, this being the
method by which they are diverted from the risks of more specifically sexual detumescence.
[13]

Reference has been made to the view of Alrutz, according to which tickling is a milder degree
of itching. It is more convenient and probably more correct to regard itching or pruritus, as it
is termed in its pathological forms, as a distinct sensation, for it does not arise under precisely
the same conditions as tickling nor is it relieved in the same way. There is interest, however, in
pointing out in this connection that, like tickling, itching has a real parallelism to the
specialized sexual sensations. Bronson, who has very ably interpreted the sensations of itching
(New York Neurological Society, October 7, 1890; Medical News, February 14, 1903, and
summarized in the British Medical Journal, March 7, 1903; and elsewhere), regards it as a
perversion of the sense of touch, a dysæsthesia due to obstructed nerve-excitation with
imperfect conduction of the generated force into correlated nervous energy. The scratching
which relieves itching directs the nervous energy into freer channels, sometimes substituting
for the pruritus either painful or voluptuous sensations. Such voluptuous sensations may be
regarded as a generalized aphrodisiac sense comparable to the specialized sexual orgasm.
Bronson refers to the significant fact that itching occurs so frequently in the sexual region, and
states that sexual neurasthenia is sometimes the only discoverable cause of genital and anal
pruritus. (Cf. discussion on pruritus, British Medical Journal, November 30, 1895.) Gilman,
again (American Journal of Psychology, vi, p. 22), considers that scratching, as well as
sneezing, is comparable to coitus.
The sexual embrace has an intimate connection with the phenomena of ticklishness which
could not fail to be recognized. This connection is, indeed, the basis of Spinoza's famous
definition of love,—"Amor est titillatio quædam concomitante idea causæ externæ,"—a
statement which seems to be reflected in Chamfort's definition of love as "l'échange de deux
fantaisies, et le contact de deux epidermes." The sexual act, says Gowers, is, in fact, a skin
reflex.[14] "The sexual parts," Hall and Allin state, "have a ticklishness as unique as their
function and as keen as their importance." Herrick finds the supreme illustration of the
summation and irradiation theory of tickling in the phenomena of erotic excitement, and
points out that in harmony with this the skin of the sexual region is, as Dogiel has shown, that
portion of the body in which the tactile corpuscles are most thoroughly and elaborately
provided with anastomosing fibres. It has been pointed out[15] that, when ordinary tactile
sensibility is partially abolished,—especially in hemianæsthesia in the insane,—some sexual
disturbance is specially apt to be found in association.
In young children, in girls even when they are no longer children, and occasionally in men,
tickling may be a source of acute pleasure, which in very early life is not sexual, but later
tends to become so under circumstances predisposing to the production of erotic emotion, and
especially when the nervous system is keyed up to a high tone favorable for the production of
the maximum effect of tickling.
"When young," writes a lady aged 28, "I was extremely fond of being tickled, and I am to
some extent still. Between the ages of 10 and 12 it gave me exquisite pleasure, which I now
regard as sexual in character. I used to bribe my younger sister to tickle my feet until she was
tired."

Stanley Hall and Allin in their investigation of the phenomena of tickling, largely carried out
among young women teachers, found that in 60 clearly marked cases ticklishness was more
marked at one time than another, "as when they have been 'carrying on,' or are in a happy
mood, are nervous or unwell, after a good meal, when being washed, when in perfect health,
when with people they like, etc." (Hall and Allin, "Tickling and Laughter," American Journal
of Psychology, October, 1897.) It will be observed that most of the conditions mentioned are
such as would be favorable to excitations of an emotionally sexual character.
The palms of the hands may be very ticklish during sexual excitement, especially in women,
and Moll (Konträre Sexualempfindung, p. 180) remarks that in some men titillation of the skin
of the back, of the feet, and even of the forehead evokes erotic feelings.
It may be added that, as might be expected, titillation of the skin often has the same
significance in animals as in man. "In some animals," remarks Louis Robinson (art.
"Ticklishness," Dictionary of Psychological Medicine), "local titillation of the skin, though in
parts remote from the reproductive organs, plainly acts indirectly upon them as a stimulus.
Thus, Harvey records that, by stroking the back of a favorite parrot (which he had possessed
for years and supposed to be a male), he not only gave the bird gratification,—which was the
sole intention of the illustrious physiologist,—but also caused it to reveal its sex by laying an
egg."
The sexual significance of tickling is very clearly indicated by the fact that the general
ticklishness of the body, which is so marked in children and in young girls, greatly diminishes,
as a rule, after sexual relationships have been established. Dr. Gina Lombroso, who
investigated the cutaneous reflexes, found that both the abdominal and plantar reflexes, which
are well marked in childhood and in young people between the ages of 15 and 18, were much
diminished in older persons, and to a greater extent in women than in men, to a greater extent
in the abdominal region than on the soles of the feet;[16] her results do not directly show the
influence of sexual relationship, but they have an indirect bearing which is worth noting.
The difference in ticklishness between the unmarried woman and the married woman
corresponds to their difference in degree of modesty. Both modesty and ticklishness may be
said to be characters which are no longer needed. From this point of view the general
ticklishness of the skin is a kind of body modesty. It is so even apart from any sexual
significance of tickling, and Louis Robinson has pointed out that in young apes, puppies, and
other like animals the most ticklish regions correspond to the most vulnerable spots in a fight,
and that consequently in the mock fights of early life skill in defending these spots is attained.
In Iceland, according to Margarethe Filhés (as quoted by Max Bartels, Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie, 1900, ht. 2-3, p. 57), it may be known whether a youth is pure or a maid is intact
by their susceptibility to tickling. It is considered a bad sign if that is lost.
I am indebted to a medical correspondent for the following communication: "Married women
have told me that they find that after marriage they are not ticklish under the arms or on the
breasts, though before marriage any tickling or touching in these regions, especially by a man,
would make them jump or get hysterical or 'queer,' as they call it. Before coitus the sexual
energy seems to be dissipated along all the nerve-channels and especially along the secondary
sexual routes,—the breasts, nape of neck, eyebrows, lips, cheeks, armpits, and hair thereon,

etc.,—but after marriage the surplus energy is diverted from these secondary channels, and
response to tickling is diminished. I have often noted in insane cases, especially mania in
adolescent girls, that they are excessively ticklish. Again, in ordinary routine practice I have
observed that, though married women show no ticklishness during auscultation and percussion
of the chest, this is by no means always so in young girls. Perhaps ticklishness in virgins is
Nature's self-protection against rape and sexual advances, and the young girl instinctively
wishing to hide the armpits, breasts, and other ticklish regions, tucks herself up to prevent
these parts being touched. The married woman, being in love with a man, does not shut up
these parts, as she reciprocates the advances that he makes; she no longer requires ticklishness
as a protection against sexual aggression."

[5]
Alrutz's views are summarized in Psychological Review, Sept., 1901.

[6]
Die Spiele der Menschen, 1899, p. 206.

[7]
L. Robinson, art. "Ticklishness," Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine.

[8]
Stanley Hall and Allin, "Tickling and Laughter," American Journal of Psychology,
October, 1897.

[9]
H. M. Stanley, "Remarks on Tickling and Laughter," American Journal of
Psychology, vol. ix, January, 1898.

[10]
Simpson, "On the Attitude of the Fœtus in Utero," Obstetric Memoirs, 1856, vol. ii.

[11]
Erasmus Darwin, Zoönomia, Sect. XVII, 4.

[12]
Hyades and Deniker, Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn, vol. vii. p. 296.

[13]
Such an interpretation is supported by the arguments of W. McDougall ("The Theory
of Laughter," Nature, February 5, 1903), who contends, without any reference to the

sexual field, that one of the objects of laughter is automatically to "disperse our
attention."

[14]
Even the structure of the vaginal mucous membrane, it may be noted, is analogous
to that of the skin. D. Berry Hart, "Note on the Development of the Clitoris, Vagina,
and Hymen," Transactions of the Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, vol. xxi, 1896.

[15]
W. H. B. Stoddart, "Anæsthesia in the Insane," Journal of Mental Science, October,
1899.

[16]
Gina Lombroso, "Sur les Réflexes Cutanés," International Congress of Criminal
Anthropology, Amsterdam, Comptes Rendus, p. 295.

III.

The Secondary Sexual Skin Centres—Orificial Contacts—Cunnilingus and Fellatio—The
Kiss—The Nipples—The Sympathy of the Breasts with the Primary Sexual Centres—This
Connection Operative both through the Nerves and through the Blood—The Influence of
Lactation on the Sexual Centres—Suckling and Sexual Emotion—The Significance of the
Association between Suckling and Sexual Emotion—This Association as a Cause of Sexual
Perversity.

We have seen that the skin generally has a high degree of sensibility, which frequently tends to
be in more or less definite association with the sexual centres. We have seen also that the
central and specific sexual sensation, the sexual embrace itself, is, in large measure, a
specialized kind of skin reflex. Between the generalized skin sensations and the great primary
sexual centre of sensation there are certain secondary sexual centres which, on account of their
importance, may here be briefly considered.
These secondary centres have in common the fact that they always involve the entrances and
the exits of the body—the regions, that is, where skin merges into mucous membrane, and
where, in the course of evolution, tactile sensibility has become highly refined. It may, indeed,
be said generally of these frontier regions of the body that their contact with the same or a
similar frontier region in another person of opposite sex, under conditions otherwise favorable
to tumescence, will tend to produce a minimum and even sometimes a maximum degree of
sexual excitation. Contact of these regions with each other or with the sexual region itself so
closely simulates the central sexual reflex that channels are set up for the same nervous energy
and secondary sexual centres are constituted.

It is important to remember that the phenomena we are here concerned with are essentially
normal. Many of them are commonly spoken of as perversions. In so far, however, as they are
aids to tumescence they must be regarded as coming within the range of normal variation.
They may be considered unæsthetic, but that is another matter. It has, moreover, to be
remembered that æsthetic values are changed under the influence of sexual emotion; from the
lover's point of view many things are beautiful which are unbeautiful from the point of view of
him who is not a lover, and the greater the degree to which the lover is swayed by his passion
the greater the extent to which his normal æsthetic standard is liable to be modified. A broad
consideration of the phenomena among civilized and uncivilized peoples amply suffices to
show the fallacy of the tendency, so common among unscientific writers on these subjects, to
introduce normal æsthetic standards into the sexual sphere. From the normal standpoint of
ordinary daily life, indeed, the whole process of sex is unæsthetic, except the earlier stages of
tumescence.[17]
So long as they constitute a part of the phase of tumescence, the utilization of the sexual
excitations obtainable through these channels must be considered within the normal range of
variation, as we may observe, indeed, among many animals. When, however, such contacts of
the orifices of the body, other than those of the male and female sexual organs proper, are used
to procure not merely tumescence, but detumescence, they become, in the strict and technical
sense, perversions. They are perversions in exactly the same sense as are the methods of
intercourse which involve the use of checks to prevent fecundation. The æsthetic question,
however, remains the same as if we were dealing with tumescence. It is necessary that this
should be pointed out clearly, even at the risk of misapprehension, as confusions are here very
common.
The essentially sexual character of the sensitivity of the orificial contacts is shown by the fact
that it may sometimes be accidentally developed even in early childhood. This is well
illustrated in a case recorded by Féré. A little girl of 4, of nervous temperament and liable to
fits of anger in which she would roll on the ground and tear her clothes, once ran out into the
garden in such a fit of temper and threw herself on the lawn in a half-naked condition. As she
lay there two dogs with whom she was accustomed to play came up and began to lick the
uncovered parts of the body. It so happened that as one dog licked her mouth the other licked
her sexual parts. She experienced a shock of intense sensation which she could never forget
and never describe, accompanied by a delicious tension of the sexual organs. She rose and ran
away with a feeling of shame, though she could not comprehend what had happened. The
impression thus made was so profound that it persisted throughout life and served as the point
of departure of sexual perversions, while the contact of a dog's tongue with her mouth alone
afterward sufficed to evoke sexual pleasure. (Féré, Archives de Neurologie, 1903, No. 90.)
I do not purpose to discuss here either cunnilingus (the apposition of the mouth to the female
pudendum) or fellatio (the apposition of the mouth to the male organ), the agent in the former
case being, in normal heterosexual relationships, a man, in the latter a woman; they are not
purely tactile phenomena, but involve various other physical and psychic elements.
Cunnilingus was a very familiar manifestation in classic times, as shown by frequent and
mostly very contemptuous references in Aristophanes, Juvenal, and many other Greek and
Roman writers; the Greeks regarded it as a Phœnician practice, just as it is now commonly
considered French; it tends to be especially prevalent at all periods of high civilization.

Fellatio has also been equally well known, in both ancient and modern times, especially as
practiced by inverted men. It may be accepted that both cunnilingus and fellatio, as practiced
by either sex, are liable to occur among healthy or morbid persons, in heterosexual or
homosexual relationships. They have little psychological significance, except to the extent that
when practiced to the exclusion of normal sexual relationships they become perversions, and
as such tend to be associated with various degenerative conditions, although such associations
are not invariable.
The essentially normal character of cunnilingus and fellatio, when occurring as incidents in
the process of tumescence, is shown by the fact that they are practiced by many animals. This
is the case, for instance, among dogs. Moll points out that not infrequently the bitch, while
under the dog, but before intromission, will change her position to lick the dog's penis—
apparently from an instinctive impulse to heighten her own and his excitement—and then
return to the normal position, while cunnilingus is of constant occurrence among animals, and
on account of its frequency among dogs was called by the Greeks σκὑλαξ (Rosenbaum,
Geschichte der Lustseuche im Altertume, fifth edition, pp. 260-278; also notes in Moll,
Untersuchungen über pie Libido Sexualis, Bd. I, pp. 134, 369; and Bloch, Beiträge zur
Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil II, pp. 216 et seq.)
The occurrence of cunnilingus as a sexual episode of tumescence among lower human races is
well illustrated by a practice of the natives of the Caroline Islands (as recorded by Kubary in
his ethnographic study of this people and quoted by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i). It is
here customary for a man to place a piece of fish between the labia, while he stimulates the
latter by his tongue and teeth until under stress of sexual excitement the woman urinates; this
is regarded as an indication that the proper moment for intercourse has arrived. Such a practice
rests on physiologically sound facts whatever may be thought of it from an æsthetic
standpoint.
The contrast between the normal æsthetic standpoint in this matter and the lover's is well
illustrated by the following quotations: Dr. A. B. Holder, in the course of his description of the
American Indian boté, remarks, concerning fellatio: "Of all the many varieties of sexual
perversion, this, it seems to me, is the most debased that could be conceived of." On the other
hand, in a communication from a writer and scholar of high intellectual distinction occurs the
statement: "I affirm that, of all sexual acts, fellatio is most an affair of imagination and
sympathy." It must be pointed out that there is no contradiction in these two statements, and
that each is justified, according as we take the point of view of the ordinary onlooker or of the
impassioned lover eager to give a final proof of his or her devotion. It must be added that from
a scientific point of view we are not entitled to take either side.
Of the whole of this group of phenomena, the most typical and the most widespread example
is certainly the kiss. We have in the lips a highly sensitive frontier region between skin and
mucous membrane, in many respects analogous to the vulvo-vaginal orifice, and reinforcible,
moreover, by the active movements of the still more highly sensitive tongue. Close and
prolonged contact of these regions, therefore, under conditions favorable to tumescence sets
up a powerful current of nervous stimulation. After those contacts in which the sexual regions
themselves take a direct part, there is certainly no such channel for directing nervous force
into the sexual sphere as the kiss. This is nowhere so well recognized as in France, where a

young girl's lips are religiously kept for her lover, to such an extent, indeed, that young girls
sometimes come to believe that the whole physical side of love is comprehended in a kiss on
the mouth; so highly intelligent a woman as Madam Adam has described the agony she felt as
a girl when kissed on the lips by a man, owing to the conviction that she had thereby lost her
virtue. Although the lips occupy this highly important position as a secondary sexual focus in
the sphere of touch, the kiss is—unlike cunnilingus and fellatio—confined to man and, indeed,
to a large extent, to civilized man. It is the outcome of a compound evolution which had its
beginning outside the sphere of touch, and it would therefore be out of place to deal with the
interesting question of its development in this place. It will be discussed elsewhere.[18]
There is yet another orificial frontier region which is a highly important tactile sexual focus:
the nipple. The breasts raise, indeed, several interesting questions in their intimate connection
with the sexual sphere and it may be worth while to consider them at this point.
The breasts have from the present point of view this special significance among the sexual
centres that they primarily exist, not for the contact of the lover, but the contact of the child.
This is doubtless, indeed, the fundamental fact on which all the touch contacts we are here
concerned with have grown up. The sexual sensitivity of the lover's lips to orificial contacts
has been developed from the sensitivity of the infant's lips to contact with his mother's nipple.
It is on the ground of that evolution that we are bound to consider here the precise position of
the breasts as a sexual centre.
As the great secreting organs of milk, the function of the breasts must begin immediately the
child is cut off from the nutrition derived from direct contact with his mother's blood. It is
therefore essential that the connection between the sexual organs proper, more especially the
womb, and the breasts should be exceedingly intimate, so that the breasts may be in a
condition to respond adequately to the demand of the child's sucking lips at the earliest
moment after birth. As a matter of fact, this connection is very intimate, so intimate that it
takes place in two totally distinct ways—by the nervous system and by the blood.
The breasts of young girls sometimes become tender at puberty in sympathy with the
evolution of the sexual organs, although the swelling of the breasts at this period is not
normally a glandular process. At the recurring periods of menstruation, again, sensations in the
breasts are not uncommon.
It is not, however, until impregnation occurs that really decisive changes take place in the
breasts. "As soon as the ovum is impregnated, that is to say within a few days," as W. D. A.
Griffith states it ("The Diagnosis of Pregnancy," British Medical Journal, April 11, 1903), "the
changes begin to occur in the breast, changes which are just as well worked out as are the
changes in the uterus and the vagina, which, from the commencement of pregnancy, prepare
for the labor which ought to follow nine months afterward. These are changes in the direction
of marked activity of function. An organ which was previously quite passive, without activity
of circulation and the effects of active circulation, begins to grow and continues to grow in
activity and size as pregnancy progresses."
The association between breasts and womb is so obvious that it has not escaped many savage
peoples, who are often, indeed, excellent observers. Among one primitive people at least the
activity of the breast at impregnation seems to be clearly recognized. The Sinangolo of British

New Guinea, says Seligmann (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, July-December, 1902,
p. 298) believe that conception takes place in the breasts; on this account they hold that coitus
should never take place before the child is weaned or he might imbibe semen with the milk.
It is natural to assume that this connection between the activity of the womb and the glandular
activity of the breasts is a nervous connection, by means of the spinal cord, and such a
connection certainly exists and plays a very important part in the stimulating action of the
breasts on the sexual organs. But that there is a more direct channel of communication even
than the nervous system is shown by the fact that the secretion of milk will take place at
parturition, even when the nervous connection has been destroyed. Mironoff found that, when
the mammary gland is completely separated from the central nervous system, secretion,
though slightly diminished, still continued. In two goats he cut the nerves shortly before
parturition and after birth the breasts still swelled and functioned normally (Archives des
Sciences Biologiques, St. Petersburg, 1895, summarized in L'Année Biologique; 1895, p. 329).
Ribbert, again, cut out the mammary gland of a young rabbit and transplanted it into the ear;
five months after the rabbit bore young and the gland secreted milk freely. The case has been
reported of a woman whose spinal cord was destroyed by an accident at the level of the fifth
and sixth dorsal vertebræ, yet lactation was perfectly normal (British Medical Journal, August
5, 1899, p. 374). We are driven to suppose that there is some chemical change in the blood,
some internal secretion from the uterus or the ovaries, which acts as a direct stimulant to the
breasts. (See a comprehensive discussion of the phenomena of the connection between the
breasts and sexual organs, though the conclusions are not unassailable, by Temesvary, Journal
of Obstetrics and Gynæcology of the British Empire, June, 1903). That this hypothetical
secretion starts from the womb rather than the ovaries seems to be indicated by the fact that
removal of both ovaries during pregnancy will not suffice to prevent lactation. In favor of the
ovaries, see Beatson, Lancet, July, 1896; in favor of the uterus, Armand Routh, "On the
Interaction between the Ovaries and the Mammary Glands," British Medical Journal,
September 30, 1899.
While, however, the communications from the sexual organs to the breast are of a complex
and at present ill understood character, the communication from the breasts to the sexual
organs is without doubt mainly and chiefly nervous. When the child is put to the breast after
birth the suction of the nipple causes a reflex contraction of the womb, and it is held by many,
though not all, authorities that in a woman who does not suckle her child there is some risk
that the womb will not return to its normal involuted size. It has also been asserted that to put
a child to the breast during the early months of pregnancy causes so great a degree of uterine
contraction that abortion may result.
Freund found in Germany that stimulation of the nipples by an electrical cupping apparatus
brought about contraction of the pregnant uterus. At an earlier period it was recommended to
irritate the nipple in order to excite the uterus to parturient action. Simpson, while pointing out
that this was scarcely adequate to produce the effect desired, thought that placing a child to the
breast after labor had begun might increase uterine action. (J. Y. Simpson, Obstetric Memoirs,
vol. i, p. 836; also Féré, L'Instinct Sexuel, second edition, p. 132).
The influence of lactation over the womb in preventing the return of menstruation during its
continuance is well known. According to Remfry's investigation of 900 cases in England, in

57 per cent. of cases there is no menstruation during lactation. (L. Remfry, in paper read
before Obstetrical Society of London, summarized in the British Medical Journal, January 11,
1896, p. 86). Bendix, in Germany, found among 140 cases that in about 40 per cent. there was
no menstruation during lactation (paper read before Düsseldorf meeting of the Society of
German Naturalists and Physicians, 1899). When the child is not suckled menstruation tends
to reappear about six months after parturition.
It is possible that the divergent opinions of authorities concerning the necessarily favorable
influence of lactation in promoting the return of the womb to its normal size may be due to a
confusion of two distinct influences: the reflex action of the nipple on the womb and the
effects of prolonged glandular secretion of the breasts in debilitated persons. The act of
suckling undoubtedly tends to promote uterine contraction, and in healthy women during
lactation the womb may even (according to Vineberg) be temporarily reduced to a smaller size
than before impregnation, thus producing what is known as "lactation atrophy." In debilitated
women, however, the strain of milk-production may lead to general lack of muscular tone, and
involution of the womb thus be hindered rather than aided by lactation.
On the objective side, then, the nipple is to be regarded as an erectile organ, richly supplied
with nerves and vessels, which, under the stimulation of the infant's lips—or any similar
compression, and even under the influence of emotion or cold,—becomes firm and projects,
mainly as a result of muscular contraction; for, unlike the penis and the clitoris, the nipple
contains no true erectile tissue and little capacity for vascular engorgement.[19] We must then
suppose that an impetus tends to be transmitted through the spinal cord to the sexual organs,
setting up a greater or less degree of nervous and muscular excitement with uterine
contraction. These being the objective manifestations, what manifestations are to be noted on
the subjective side?
It is a remarkable proof of the general indifference with which in Europe even the fairly
constant and prominent characteristics of the psychology of women have been treated until
recent times that, so far as I am aware,—though I have made no special research to this end,—
no one before the end of the eighteenth century had recorded the fact that the act of suckling
tends to produce in women voluptuous sexual emotions. Cabanis in 1802, in the memoir on
"Influence des Sexes" in his Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme, wrote that several
suckling women had told him that the child in sucking the breast made them experience a
vivid sensation of pleasure, shared in some degree by the sexual organs. There can be no doubt
that in healthy suckling women this phenomenon is exceedingly common, though in the
absence of any methodical and precise investigation it cannot be affirmed that it is experienced
by every woman in some degree, and it is highly probable that this is not the case. One lady,
perfectly normal, states that she has had stronger sexual feelings in suckling her children than
she has ever experienced with her husband, but that so far as possible she has tried to repress
them, as she regards them as brutish under these circumstances. Many other women state
generally that suckling is the most delicious physical feeling they have ever experienced. In
most cases, however, it does not appear to lead to a desire for intercourse, and some of those
who make this statement have no desire for coitus during lactation, though they may have
strong sexual needs at other times. It is probable that this corresponds to the normal condition,
and that the voluptuous sensations aroused by suckling are adequately gratified by the child. It
may be added that there are probably many women who could say, with a lady quoted by Féré,

[20] that the only real pleasures of sex they have ever known are those derived from their

suckling infants.
It is not difficult to see why this normal association of sexual emotion with suckling should
have come about. It is essential for the preservation of the lives of young mammals that the
mothers should have an adequate motive in pleasurable sensation for enduring the trouble of
suckling. The most obvious method for obtaining the necessary degree of pleasurable
sensation lay in utilizing the reservoir of sexual emotion, with which channels of
communication might already be said to be open through the action of the sexual organs on the
breasts during pregnancy. The voluptuous element in suckling may thus be called a merciful
provision of Nature for securing the maintenance of the child.
Cabanis seems to have realized the significance of this connection as the basis of the sympathy
between mother and child, and more recently Lombroso and Ferrero have remarked (La
Donna Delinquente, p. 438) on the fact that maternal love has a sexual basis in the element of
venereal pleasure, though usually inconsiderable, experienced during suckling. Houzeau has
referred to the fact that in the majority of animals the relation between mother and offspring is
only close during the period of lactation, and this is certainly connected with the fact that it is
only during lactation that the female animal can derive physical gratification from her
offspring. When living on a farm I have ascertained that cows sometimes, though not
frequently, exhibit slight signs of sexual excitement, with secretion of mucus, while being
milked; so that, as the dairymaid herself observed, it is as if they were being "bulled." The
sow, like some other mammals, often eats her own young after birth, mistaking them, it is
thought, for the placenta, which is normally eaten by most mammals; it is said that the sow
never eats her young when they have once taken the teat.
It occasionally happens that this normal tendency for suckling to produce voluptuous sexual
emotions is present in an extreme degree, and may lead to sexual perversions. It does not
appear that the sexual sensations aroused by suckling usually culminate in the orgasm; this
however, was noted in a case recorded by Féré, of a slightly neurotic woman in whom intense
sexual excitement occurred during suckling, especially if prolonged; so far as possible, she
shortened the periods of suckling in order to prevent, not always successfully, the occurrence
of the orgasm (Féré, Archives de Neurologie No. 30, 1903). Icard refers to the case of a
woman who sought to become pregnant solely for the sake of the voluptuous sensations she
derived from suckling, and Yellowlees (Art. "Masturbation," Dictionary of Psychological
Medicine) speaks of the overwhelming character of "the storms of sexual feeling sometimes
observed during lactation."
It may be remarked that the frequency of the association between lactation and the sexual
sensations is indicated by the fact that, as Savage remarks, lactational insanity is often
accompanied by fancies regarding the reproductive organs.
When we have realized the special sensitivity of the orificial regions and the peculiarly close
relationships between the breasts and the sexual organs we may easily understand the
considerable part which they normally play in the art of love. As one of the chief secondary
sexual characters in women, and one of her chief beauties, a woman's breasts offer themselves
to the lover's lips with a less intimate attraction than her mouth only because the mouth is
better able to respond. On her side, such contact is often instinctively desired. Just as the

sexual disturbance of pregnancy is accompanied by a sympathetic disturbance in the breasts,
so the sexual excitement produced by the lover's proximity reacts on the breasts; the nipple
becomes turgid and erect in sympathy with the clitoris; the woman craves to place her lover in
the place of the child, and experiences a sensation in which these two supreme objects of her
desire are deliciously mingled.
The powerful effect which stimulation of the nipple produces on the sexual sphere has led to
the breasts playing a prominent part in the erotic art of those lands in which this art has been
most carefully cultivated. Thus in India, according to Vatsyayana, many authors are of the
opinion that in approaching a woman a lover should begin by sucking the nipples of her
breasts, and in the songs of the Bayaderes of Southern India sucking the nipple is mentioned
as one of the natural preliminaries of coitus.
In some cases, and more especially in neurotic persons, the sexual pleasure derived from
manipulation of the nipple passes normal limits and, being preferred even to coitus, becomes a
perversion. In girls' schools, it is said, especially in France, sucking and titillation of the
breasts are not uncommon; in men, also, titillation of the nipples occasionally produces sexual
sensations (Féré, L'Instinct Sexuel, second edition, p. 132). Hildebrandt recorded the case of a
young woman whose nipples had been sucked by her lover; by constantly drawing her breasts
she became able to suck them herself and thus attained extreme sexual pleasure. A. J. Bloch,
of New Orleans, has noted the case of a woman who complained of swelling of the breasts;
the gentlest manipulation produced an orgasm, and it was found that the swelling had been
intentionally produced for the sake of this manipulation. Moraglia in Italy knew a very
beautiful woman who was perfectly cold in normal sexual relationships, but madly excited
when her husband pressed or sucked her breasts. Lombroso (Archivio di Psichiatria, 1885,
fasc. IV) has described the somewhat similar case of a woman who had no sexual sensitivity
in the clitoris, vagina, or labia, and no pleasure in coitus except in very strange positions, but
possessed intense sexual feelings in the right nipple as well as in the upper third of the thigh.
It is remarkable that not only is suckling apt to be accompanied by sexual pleasure in the
mother, but that, in some cases, the infant also appears to have a somewhat similar experience.
This is, at all events, indicated in a remarkable case recorded by Féré (L'Instinct Sexuel,
second edition, p. 257). A female infant child of slightly neurotic heredity was weaned at the
age of 14 months, but so great was her affection for her mother's breasts, though she had
already become accustomed to other food, that this was only accomplished with great
difficulty and by allowing her still to caress the naked breasts several times a day. This went
on for many months, when the mother, becoming again pregnant, insisted on putting an end to
it. So jealous was the child, however, that it was necessary to conceal from her the fact that her
younger sister was suckled at her mother's breasts, and once at the age of 3, when she saw her
father aiding her mother to undress, she became violently jealous of him. This jealousy, as
well as the passion for her mother's breasts, persisted to the age of puberty, though she learned
to conceal it. At the age of 13, when menstruation began, she noticed in dancing with her
favorite girl friends that when her breasts came in contact with theirs she experienced a very
agreeable sensation, with erection of the nipples; but it was not till the age of 16 that she
observed that the sexual region took part in this excitement and became moist. From this
period she had erotic dreams about young girls. She never experienced any attraction for
young men, but eventually married; though having much esteem and affection for her

husband, she never felt any but the slightest sexual enjoyment in his arms, and then only by
evoking feminine images. This case, in which the sensations of an infant at the breast formed
the point of departure of a sexual perversion which lasted through life, is, so far as I am aware,
unique.

[17]
Jonas Cohn (Allgemeine Æsthetik, 1901, p. 11) lays it down that psychology has
nothing to do with good or bad taste. "The distinction between good and bad taste
has no meaning for psychology. On this account, the fundamental conceptions of
æsthetics cannot arise from psychology." It may be a question whether this view can
be accepted quite absolutely.

[18]
See Appendix A: "The Origins of the Kiss."

[19]
See J. B. Hellier, "On the Nipple Reflex," British Medical Journal, November 7,
1896.

[20]
Féré, L'Instinct Sexuel, second edition, p. 147.

IV.

The Bath—Antagonism of Primitive Christianity to the Cult of the Skin—Its Cult of Personal
Filth—The Reasons which Justified this Attitude—The World-wide Tendency to Association
between Extreme Cleanliness and Sexual Licentiousness—The Immorality Associated with
Public Baths in Europe down to Modern Times.

The hygiene of the skin, as well as its special cult, consists in bathing. The bath, as is well
known, attained under the Romans a degree of development which, in Europe at all events, it
has never reached before or since, and the modern visitor to Rome carries away with him no
more impressive memory than that of the Baths of Caracalla. Since the coming of Christianity
the cult of the skin, and even its hygiene, have never again attained the same general and
unquestioned exaltation. The Church killed the bath. St. Jerome tells us with approval that
when the holy Paula noted that any of her nuns were too careful in this matter she would
gravely reprove them, saying that "the purity of the body and its garments means the impurity
of the soul."[21] Or, as the modern monk of Mount Athos still declares: "A man should live in
dirt as in a coat of mail, so that his soul may sojourn more securely within."

Our knowledge of the bathing arrangements of Roman days is chiefly derived from Pompeii.
Three public baths (two for both men and women, who were also probably allowed to use the
third occasionally) have so far been excavated in this small town, as well as at least three
private bathing establishments (at least one of them for women), while about a dozen houses
contain complete baths for private use. Even in a little farm house at Boscoreale (two miles
out of Pompeii) there was an elaborate series of bathing rooms. It may be added that Pompeii
was well supplied with water. All houses but the poorest had flowing jets, and some houses
had as many as ten jets. (See Man's Pompeii, Chapters XXVI-XXVIII.)
The Church succeeded to the domination of imperial Rome, and adopted many of the methods
of its predecessor. But there could be no greater contrast than is presented by the attitude of
Paganism and of Christianity toward the bath.
As regards the tendencies of the public baths in imperial Rome, some of the evidence is
brought together in the section on this subject in Rosenbaum's Geschichte der Lustseuche im
Alterthume. As regards the attitude of the earliest Christian ascetics in this matter I may refer
the reader to an interesting passage in Lecky's History of European Morals (vol. ii, pp. 107-
112), in which are brought together a number of highly instructive examples of the manner in
which many of the most eminent of the early saints deliberately cultivated personal filth.
In the middle ages, when the extreme excesses of the early ascetics had died out, and
monasticiam became regulated, monks generally took two baths a year when in health; in
illness they could be taken as often as necessary. The rules of Cluny only allowed three towels
to the community: one for the novices, one for the professed, and one for the lay brothers. At
the end of the seventeenth century Madame de Mazarin, having retired to a convent of
Visitandines, one day desired to wash her feet, but the whole establishment was set in an
uproar at such an idea, and she received a direct refusal. In 1760 the Dominican Richard wrote
that in itself the bath is permissible, but it must be taken solely for necessity, not for pleasure.
The Church taught, and this lesson is still inculcated in convent schools, that it is wrong to
expose the body even to one's own gaze, and it is not surprising that many holy persons
boasted that they had never even washed their hands. (Most of these facts have been taken
from A. Franklin, Les Soins de Toilette, one of the Vie Privée d'Autrefois series, in which
further details may be found.)
In sixteenth-century Italy, a land of supreme elegance and fashion, superior even to France, the
conditions were the same, and how little water found favor even with aristocratic ladies we
may gather from the contemporary books on the toilet, which abound with recipes against itch
and similar diseases. It should be added that Burckhardt (Die Cultur der Renaissance in
Italien, eighth edition, volume ii, p. 92) considers that in spite of skin diseases the Italians of
the Renaissance were the first nation in Europe for cleanliness.
It is unnecessary to consider the state of things in other European countries. The aristocratic
conditions of former days are the plebeian conditions of to-day. So far as England is
concerned, such documents as Chadwick's Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring
Population of Great Britain (1842) sufficiently illustrate the ideas and the practices as regards
personal cleanliness which prevailed among the masses during the nineteenth century and
which to a large extent still prevail.

A considerable amount of opprobrium has been cast upon the Catholic Church for its direct
and indirect influence in promoting bodily uncleanliness. Nietzsche sarcastically refers to the
facts, and Mr. Frederick Harrison asserts that "the tone of the middle ages in the matter of dirt
was a form of mental disease." It would be easy to quote many other authors to the same
effect.
It is necessary to point out, however, that the writers who have committed themselves to such
utterances have not only done an injustice to Christianity, but have shown a lack of historical
insight. Christianity was essentially and fundamentally a rebellion against the classic world,
against its vices, and against their concomitant virtues, against both its practices and its ideals.
It sprang up in a different part of the Mediterranean basin, from a different level of culture; it
found its supporters in a new and lower social stratum. The cult of charity, simplicity, and
faith, while not primarily ascetic, became inevitably allied with asceticism, because from its
point of view: sexuality was the very stronghold of the classic world. In the second century the
genius of Clement of Alexandria and of the great Christian thinkers who followed him seized
on all those elements in classic life and philosophy which could be amalgamated with
Christianity without, as they trusted, destroying its essence, but in the matter of sexuality there
could be no compromise, and the condemnation of sexuality involved the condemnation of the
bath. It required very little insight and sagacity for the Christians to see—though we are now
apt to slur over the fact—that the cult of the bath was in very truth the cult of the flesh.[22]
However profound their ignorance of anatomy, physiology, and psychology might be, they had
before them ample evidence to show that the skin is an outlying sexual zone and that every
application which promoted the purity, brilliance, and healthfulness of the skin constituted a
direct appeal, feeble or strong as the case might be, to those passions against which they were
warring. The moral was evident: better let the temporary garment of your flesh be soaked with
dirt than risk staining the radiant purity of your immortal soul. If Christianity had not drawn
that moral with clear insight and relentless logic Christianity would never have been a great
force in the world.
If any doubt is felt as to the really essential character of the connection between cleanliness
and the sexual impulse it may be dispelled by the consideration that the association is by no
means confined to Christian Europe. If we go outside Europe and even Christendom
altogether, to the other side of the world, we find it still well marked. The wantonness of the
luxurious people of Tahiti when first discovered by European voyagers is notorious. The Areoi
of Tahiti, a society largely constituted on a basis of debauchery, is a unique institution so far as
primitive peoples are concerned. Cook, after giving one of the earliest descriptions of this
society and its objects at Tahiti (Hawkesworth, An Account of Voyages, etc., 1775, vol. ii, p.
55), immediately goes on to describe the extreme and scrupulous cleanliness of the people of
Tahiti in every respect; they not only bathed their bodies and clothes every day, but in all
respects they carried cleanliness to a higher point than even "the politest assembly in Europe."
Another traveler bears similar testimony: "The inhabitants of the Society Isles are, among all
the nations of the South Seas, the most cleanly; and the better sort of them carry cleanliness to
a very great length"; they bathe morning and evening in the sea, he remarks, and afterward in
fresh water to remove the particles of salt, wash their hands before and after meals, etc. (J. R.
Forster, "Observations made during a Voyage round the World," 1798, p. 398.) And William
Ellis, in his detailed description of the people of Tahiti (Polynesian Researches, 1832, vol. i,
especially Chapters VI and IX), while emphasizing their extreme cleanliness, every person of

every class bathing at least once or twice a day, dwells on what he considers their unspeakable
moral debasement; "notwithstanding the apparent mildness of their disposition and the
cheerful vivacity of their conversation, no portion of the human race was ever perhaps sunk
lower in brutal licentiousness and moral degradation."
After leaving Tahiti Cook went on to New Zealand. Here he found that the people were more
virtuous than at Tahiti, and also, he found, less clean.
It is, however, a mistake to suppose that physical uncleanliness ruled supreme through
mediæval and later times. It is true that the eighteenth century, which saw the birth of so much
that marks our modern world, witnessed a revival of the old ideal of bodily purity. But the
struggle between two opposing ideals had been carried on for a thousand years or more before
this. The Church, indeed, was in this matter founded on an impregnable rock. But there never
has been a time when influences outside the Church have not found a shelter somewhere.
Those traditions of the classic world which Christianity threw aside as useless or worse quietly
reappeared. In no respect was this more notably the case than in regard to the love of pure
water and the cult of the bath. Islam adopted the complete Roman bath, and made it an
institution of daily life, a necessity for all classes. Granada is the spot in Europe where to-day
we find the most exquisite remains of Mohammedan culture, and, though the fury of Christian
conquest dragged the harrow over the soil of Granada, even yet streams and fountains spring
up there and gush abundantly and one seldom loses the sound of the plash of water. The flower
of Christian chivalry and Christian intelligence went to Palestine to wrest the Holy Sepulchre
from the hands of pagan Mohammedans. They found there many excellent things which they
had not gone out to seek, and the Crusaders produced a kind of premature and abortive
Renaissance, the shadow of lost classic things reflected on Christian Europe from the mirror of
Islam.
Yet it is worth while to point out, as bearing on the associations of the bath here emphasized,
that even in Islam we may trace the existence of a religious attitude unfavorable to the bath.
Before the time of Mohammed there were no public baths in Arabia, and it was and is believed
that baths are specially haunted by the djinn—the evil spirits. Mohammed himself was at first
so prejudiced against public baths that he forbade both men and women to enter them.
Afterward, however, he permitted men to use them provided they wore a cloth round the loins,
and women also when they could not conveniently bathe at home. Among the Prophet's
sayings is found the assertion: "Whatever woman enters a bath the devil is with her," and "All
the earth is given to me as a place of prayer, and as pure, except the burial ground and the
bath." (See, e.g., E. W. Lane, Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, 1883, pp. 179-183.)
Although, therefore, the bath, or hammam, on grounds of ritual ablution, hygiene, and
enjoyment speedily became universally popular in Islam among all classes and both sexes,
Mohammed himself may be said to have opposed it.
Among the discoveries which the Crusaders made and brought home with them one of the
most notable was that of the bath, which in its more elaborate forms seems to have been
absolutely forgotten in Europe, though Roman baths might everywhere have been found
underground. All authorities seem to be agreed in finding here the origin of the revival of the
public bath. It is to Rome first, and later to Islam, the lineal inheritor of classic culture, that we
owe the cult of water and of physical purity. Even to-day the Turkish bath, which is the most

popular of elaborate methods of bathing, recalls by its characteristics and its name the fact that
it is a Mohammedan survival of Roman life.
From the twelfth century onward baths have repeatedly been introduced from the East, and
reintroduced afresh in slightly modified forms, and have flourished with varying degrees of
success. In the thirteenth century they were very common, especially in Paris, and though they
were often used, more especially in Germany, by both sexes in common, every effort was
made to keep them orderly and respectable. These efforts were, however, always unsuccessful
in the end. A bath always tended in the end to become a brothel, and hence either became
unfashionable or was suppressed by the authorities. It is sufficient to refer to the reputation in
England of "hot-houses" and "bagnios." It was not until toward the end of the eighteenth
century that it began to be recognized that the claims of physical cleanliness were sufficiently
imperative to make it necessary that the fairly avoidable risks to morality in bathing should be
avoided and the unavoidable risks bravely incurred. At the present day, now that we are
accustomed to weave ingeniously together in the texture of our lives the conflicting traditions
of classic and Christian days, we have almost persuaded ourselves that the pagan virtue of
cleanliness comes next after godliness, and we bathe, forgetful of the great moral struggle
which once went on around the bath. But we refrain from building ourselves palaces to bathe
in, and for the most part we bathe with exceeding moderation.[23] It is probable that we may
best harmonize our conflicting traditions by rejecting not only the Christian glorification of
dirt, but also, save for definitely therapeutic purposes, the excessive heat, friction, and
stimulation involved by the classic forms of bathing. Our reasonable ideal should render it
easy and natural for every man, woman, and child to have a simple bath, tepid in winter, cold
in summer, all the year round.
For the history of the bath in mediæval times and later Europe, see A. Franklin, Les Soins de
Toilette, in the Vie Privée d'Autrefois series; Rudeck, Geschichte der öffentlichen Sittlichkeit in
Deutschland; T. Wright, The Homes of Other Days; E. Dühren, Das Geschlechtsleben in
England, bd. 1.
Outside the Church, there was a greater amount of cleanliness than we are sometimes apt to
suppose. It may, indeed, be said that the uncleanliness of holy men and women would have
attracted no attention if it had corresponded to the condition generally prevailing. Before
public baths were established bathing in private was certainly practiced; thus Ordericus
Vitalis, in narrating the murder of Mabel, the Countess de Montgomery, in Normandy in 1082,
casually mentions that she was lying on the bed after her bath (Ecclesiastical History, Book V,
Chapter XIII). In warm weather, it would appear, mediæval ladies bathed in streams, as we
may still see countrywomen do in Russia, Bohemia, and occasionally nearer home. The
statement of the historian Michelet, therefore, that Percival, Iseult, and the other ethereal
personages of mediæval times "certainly never washed" (La Sorcière, p. 110) requires some
qualification.
In 1292 there were twenty-six bathing establishments in Paris, and an attendant would go
through the streets in the morning announcing that they were ready. One could have a vapor
bath only or a hot bath to succeed it, as in the East. No woman of bad reputation, leper, or
vagabond was at this time allowed to frequent the baths, which were closed on Sundays and
feast-days. By the fourteenth century, however, the baths began to have a reputation for

immorality, as well as luxury, and, according to Dufour, the baths of Paris "rivaled those of
imperial Rome: love, prostitution, and debauchery attracted the majority to the bathing
establishments, where everything was covered by a decent veil." He adds that, notwithstanding
the scandal thus caused and the invectives of preachers, all went to the baths, young and old,
rich and poor, and he makes the statement, which seems to echo the constant assertion of the
early Fathers, that "a woman who frequented the baths returned home physically pure only at
the expense of her moral purity."
In Germany there was even greater freedom of manners in bathing, though, it would seem,
less real licentiousness. Even the smallest towns had their baths, which were frequented by all
classes. As soon as the horn blew to announce that the baths were ready all hastened along the
street, the poorer folk almost completely undressing themselves before leaving their homes.
Bathing was nearly always in common without any garment being worn, women attendants
commonly rubbed and massaged both sexes, and the dressing room was frequently used by
men and women in common; this led to obvious evils. The Germans, as Weinhold points out
(Die Deutschen Frauen im Mittelalter, 1882, bd. ii, pp. 112 et seq.), have been fond of bathing
in the open air in streams from the days of Tacitus and Cæsar until comparatively modern
times, when the police have interfered. It was the same in Switzerland. Poggio, early in the
sixteenth century, found it the custom for men and women to bathe together at Baden, and said
that he seemed to be assisting at the floralia of ancient Rome, or in Plato's Republic.
Sénancour, who quotes the passage (De l'Amour, 1834, vol. i, p. 313), remarks that at the
beginning of the nineteenth century there was still great liberty at the Baden baths.
Of the thirteenth century in England Thomas Wright (Homes of Other Days, 1871, p. 271)
remarks: "The practice of warm bathing prevailed very generally in all classes of society, and
is frequently alluded to in the mediæval romances and stories. For this purpose a large
bathing-tub was used. People sometimes bathed immediately after rising in the morning, and
we find the bath used after dinner and before going to bed. A bath was also often prepared for
a visitor on his arrival from a journey; and, what seems still more singular, in the numerous
stories of amorous intrigues the two lovers usually began their interviews by bathing together."
In England the association between bathing and immorality was established with special
rapidity and thoroughness. Baths were here officially recognized as brothels, and this as early
as the twelfth century, under Henry II. These organized bath-brothels were confined to
Southwark, outside the walls of the city, a quarter which was also given up to various sports
and amusements. At a later period, "hot-houses," bagnios, and hummums (the eastern
hammam) were spread all over London and remained closely identified with prostitution, these
names, indeed, constantly tending to become synonymous with brothels. (T. Wright, Homes of
Other Days, 1871, pp. 494-496, gives an account of them.)
In France the baths, being anathematized by both Catholics and Huguenots, began to lose
vogue and disappear. "Morality gained," remarks Franklin, "but cleanliness lost." Even the
charming and elegant Margaret of Navarre found it quite natural for a lady to mention
incidentally to her lover that she had not washed her hands for a week. Then began an extreme
tendency to use cosmetics, essences, perfumes, and a fierce war with vermin, up to the
seventeenth century, when some progress was made, and persons who desired to be very
elegant and refined were recommended to wash their faces "nearly every day." Even in 1782,

however, while a linen cloth was advised for the purpose of cleaning the face and hands, the
use of water was still somewhat discountenanced. The use of hot and cold baths was now,
however, beginning to be established in Paris and elsewhere, and the bathing establishments at
the great European health resorts were also beginning to be put on the orderly footing which is
now customary. When Casanova, in the middle of the eighteenth century, went to the public
baths at Berne he was evidently somewhat surprised when he found that he was invited to
choose his own attendant from a number of young women, and when he realized that these
attendants were, in all respects, at the disposition of the bathers. It is evident that
establishments of this kind were then already dying out, although it may be added that the
customs described by Casanova appear to have persisted in Budapest and St. Petersburg
almost or quite up to the present. The great European public baths have long been above
suspicion in this respect (though homosexual practices are not quite excluded), while it is well
recognized that many kinds of hot baths now in use produce a powerfully stimulating action
upon the sexual system, and patients taking such baths for medical purposes are frequently
warned against giving way to these influences.
The struggle which in former ages went on around bathing establishments has now been in
part transferred to massage establishments. Massage is an equally powerful stimulant to the
skin and the sexual sphere,—acting mainly by friction instead of mainly by heat,—and it has
not yet attained that position of general recognition and popularity which, in the case of
bathing establishments, renders it bad policy to court disrepute.
Like bathing, massage is a hygienic and therapeutic method of influencing the skin and
subjacent tissues which, together with its advantages, has certain concomitant disadvantages in
its liability to affect the sexual sphere. This influence is apt to be experienced by individuals of
both sexes, though it is perhaps specially marked in women. Jouin (quoted in Paris Journal de
Médecine, April 23, 1893) found that of 20 women treated by massage, of whom he made
inquiries, 14 declared that they experienced voluptuous sensations; 8 of these belonged to
respectable families; the other 6 were women of the demimonde and gave precise details;
Jouin refers in this connection to the aliptes of Rome. It is unnecessary to add that the
gynæcological massage introduced in recent years by the Swedish teacher of gymnastics,
Thure-Brandt, as involving prolonged rubbing and kneading of the pelvic regions, "pression
glissante du vagin" etc. (Massage Gynécologique, by G. de Frumerie, 1897), whatever its
therapeutic value, cannot fail in a large proportion of cases to stimulate the sexual emotions.
(Eulenburg remarks that for sexual anæsthesia in women the Thure-Brandt system of massage
may "naturally" be recommended, Sexuale Neuropathie, p. 78.) I have been informed that in
London and elsewhere massage establishments are sometimes visited by women who seek
sexual gratification by massage of the genital regions by the masseuse.

[21]
"Dicens munditiam corporis atque vestitus animæ esse immunditiam"—St. Jerome,
Ad Eustochium Virginem.

[22]

With regard to the physiological mechanism by which bathing produces its tonic and
stimulating effects Woods Hutchinson has an interesting discussion (Chapter VII) in
his Studies in Human and Comparative Pathology.

[23]
Thus among the young women admitted to the Chicago Normal School to be trained
as teachers, Miss Lura Sanborn, the director of physical training, states (Doctor's
Magazine, December, 1900) that a bath once a fortnight is found to be not unusual.

V.

Summary—Fundamental Importance of Touch—The Skin the Mother of All the Other Senses.

The sense of touch is so universally diffused over the whole skin, and in so many various
degrees and modifications, and it is, moreover, so truly the Alpha and the Omega of affection,
that a broken and fragmentary treatment of the subject has been inevitable.
The skin is the archæological field of human and prehuman experience, the foundation on
which all forms of sensory perception have grown up, and as sexual sensibility is among the
most ancient of all forms of sensibility, the sexual instinct is necessarily, in the main, a
comparatively slightly modified form of general touch sensibility. This primitive character of
the great region of tactile sensation, its vagueness and diffusion, the comparatively
unintellectual as well as unæsthetic nature of the mental conceptions which arise on the tactile
basis make it difficult to deal precisely with the psychology of touch. The very same qualities,
however, serve greatly to heighten the emotional intensity of skin sensations. So that, of all the
great sensory fields, the field of touch is at once the least intellectual and the most massively
emotional. These qualities, as well as its intimate and primitive association with the apparatus
of tumescence and detumescence, make touch the readiest and most powerful channel by
which the sexual sphere may be reached.
In disentangling the phenomena of tactile sensibility ticklishness has been selected for special
consideration as a kind of sensation, founded on reflexes developing even before birth, which
is very closely related to sexual phenomena. It is, as it were, a play of tumescence, on which
laughter supervenes as a play of detumescence. It leads on to the more serious phenomena of
tumescence, and it tends to die out after adolescence, at the period during which sexual
relationships normally begin. Such a view of ticklishness, as a kind of modesty of the skin,
existing merely to be destroyed, need only be regarded as one of its aspects. Ticklishness
certainly arose from a non-sexual starting-point, and may well have protective uses in the
young animal.
The readiness with which tactile sensibility takes on a sexual character and forms reflex
channels of communication with the sexual sphere proper is illustrated by the existence of
certain secondary sexual foci only inferior in sexual excitability to the genital region. We have
seen that the chief of these normal foci are situated in the orificial regions where skin and

mucous membrane meet, and that the contact of any two orificial regions between two persons
of different sex brought together under favorable conditions is apt, when prolonged, to
produce a very intense degree of sexual erethism. This is a normal phenomenon in so far as it
is a part of tumescence, and not a method of obtaining detumescence. The kiss is a typical
example of these contacts, while the nipple is of special interest in this connection, because we
are thereby enabled to bring the psychology of lactation into intimate relationship with the
psychology of sexual love.
The extreme sensitiveness of the skin, the readiness with which its stimulation reverberates
into the sexual sphere, clearly brought out by the present study, enable us to understand better
a very ancient contest—the moral struggle around the bath. There has always been a tendency
for the extreme cultivation of physical purity to lead on to the excessive stimulation of the
sexual sphere; so that the Christian ascetics were entirely justified, on their premises, in
fighting against the bath and in directly or indirectly fostering a cult of physical uncleanliness.
While, however, in the past there has clearly been a general tendency for the cult of physical
purity to be associated with moral licentiousness, and there are sufficient grounds for such an
association, it is important to remember that it is not an inevitable and fatal association; a
scrupulously clean person is by no means necessarily impelled to licentiousness; a physically
unclean person is by no means necessarily morally pure. When we have eliminated certain
forms of the bath which must be regarded as luxuries rather than hygienic necessities, though
they occasionally possess therapeutic virtues, we have eliminated the most violent appeals of
the bath to the sexual impulse. So imperative are the demands of physical purity now
becoming, in general opinion, that such small risks to moral purity as may still remain are
constantly and wisely disregarded, and the immoral traditions of the bath now, for the most
part, belong to the past.

SMELL.
I.

The Primitiveness of Smell—The Anatomical Seat of the Olfactory Centres
—Predominance of Smell among the Lower Mammals—Its Diminished
Importance in Man—The Attention Paid to Odors by Savages.

The first more highly organized sense to arise on the diffused tactile
sensitivity of the skin is, in most cases, without doubt that of smell. At first,
indeed, olfactory sensibility is not clearly differentiated from general tactile
sensibility; the pit of thickened and ciliated epithelium or the highly mobile
antennæ which in many lower animals are sensitive to odorous stimuli are
also extremely sensitive to tactile stimuli; this is, for instance, the case with
the snail, in whom at the same time olfactive sensibility seems to be spread
over the whole body.[24] The sense of smell is gradually specialized, and
when taste also begins to develop a kind of chemical sense is constituted.
The organ of smell, however, speedily begins to rise in importance as we
ascend the zoölogical scale. In the lower vertebrates, when they began to
adopt a life on dry land, the sense of smell seems to have been that part of
their sensory equipment which proved most useful under the new
conditions, and it developed with astonishing rapidity. Edinger finds that in
the brain of reptiles the "area olfactoria" is of enormous extent, covering,
indeed, the greater part of the cortex, though it may be quite true, as Herrick
remarks, that, while smell is preponderant, it is perhaps not correct to
attribute an exclusively olfactory tone to the cerebral activities of the
Sauropsida or even the Ichthyopsida. Among most mammals, however, in
any case, smell is certainly the most highly developed of the senses; it gives
the first information of remote objects that concern them; it gives the most
precise information concerning the near objects that concern them; it is the
sense in terms of which most of their mental operations must be conducted
and their emotional impulses reach consciousness. Among the apes it has

greatly lost importance and in man it has become almost rudimentary,
giving place to the supremacy of vision.
Prof. G. Elliot Smith, a leading authority on the brain, has well summarized
the facts concerning the predominance of the olfactory region in the
mammal brain, and his conclusions may be quoted. It should be premised
that Elliot Smith divides the brain into rhinencephalon and neopallium.
Rhinencephalon designates the regions which are pre-eminently olfactory in
function: the olfactory bulb, its peduncle, the tuberculum olfactorium and
locus perforatus, the pyriform lobe, the paraterminal body, and the whole
hippocampal formation. The neopallium is the dorsal cap of the brain, with
frontal, parietal, and occipital areas, comprehending all that part of the brain
which is the seat of the higher associative activities, reaching its fullest
development in man.
"In the early mammals the olfactory areas form by far the greater part of the
cerebral hemisphere, which is not surprising when it is recalled that the
forebrain is, in the primitive brain, essentially an appendage, so to speak, of
the smell apparatus. When the cerebral hemisphere comes to occupy such a
dominant position in the brain it is perhaps not unnatural to find that the
sense of smell is the most influential and the chief source of information to
the animal; or, perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that the olfactory
sense, which conveys general information to the animal such as no other
sense can bring concerning its prey (whether near or far, hidden or
exposed), is much the most serviceable of all the avenues of information to
the lowly mammal leading a terrestrial life, and therefore becomes
predominant; and its particular domain—the forebrain—becomes the ruling
portion of the nervous system.
"This early predominance of the sense of smell persists in most mammals
(unless an aquatic mode of life interferes and deposes it: compare the
Cetacea, Sirenia, and Pinnipedia, for example) even though a large
neopallium develops to receive visual, auditory, tactile, and other
impressions pouring into the forebrain. In the Anthropoidea alone of
nonaquatic mammals the olfactory regions undergo an absolute (and not
only relative, as in the Carnivora and Ungulata) dwindling, which is
equally shared by the human brain, in common with those of the other
Simiidæ, the Cercopithecidæ, and the Cebidæ. But all the parts of the

rhinencephalon, which are so distinct in macrosmatic mammals, can also be
recognized in the human brain. The small ellipsoidal olfactory bulb is
moored, so to speak, on the cribriform plate of the ethmoid bone by the
olfactory nerves; so that, as the place of attachment of the olfactory
peduncle to the expanding cerebral hemisphere becomes removed (as a
result of the forward extension of the hemisphere) progressively farther and
farther backward, the peduncle becomes greatly stretched and elongated.
And, as this stretching involves the gray matter without lessening the
number of nerve-fibres in the olfactory tract, the peduncle becomes
practically what it is usually called—i.e., the olfactory 'tract.' The
tuberculum olfactorium becomes greatly reduced and at the same time
flattened; so that it is not easy to draw a line of demarcation between it and
the anterior perforated space. The anterior rhinal fissure, which is present in
the early human fœtus, vanishes (almost, if not altogether) in the adult. Part
of the posterior rhinal fissure is always present in the 'incisura temporalis,'
and sometimes, especially in some of the non-European races, the whole of
the posterior rhinal fissure is retained in that typical form which we find in
the anthropoid apes." (G. Elliot Smith, in Descriptive and Illustrated
Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy Contained
in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, second edition,
vol. ii.) A full statement of Elliot Smith's investigations, with diagrams, is
given by Bullen, Journal of Mental Science, July, 1899. It may be added
that the whole subject of the olfactory centres has been thoroughly studied
by Elliot Smith, as well as by Edinger, Mayer, and C. L. Herrick. In the
Journal of Comparative Neurology, edited by the last named, numerous
discussions and summaries bearing on the subject will be found from 1896
onward. Regarding the primitive sense-organs of smell in the various
invertebrate groups some information will be found in A. B. Griffiths's
Physiology of the Invertebrata, Chapter XI.
The predominance of the olfactory area in the nervous system of the
vertebrates generally has inevitably involved intimate psychic associations
between olfactory stimuli and the sexual impulse. For most mammals not
only are all sexual associations mainly olfactory, but the impressions
received by this sense suffice to dominate all others. An animal not only
receives adequate sexual excitement from olfactory stimuli, but those
stimuli often suffice to counterbalance all the evidence of the other senses.

We may observe this very well in the case of the dog. Thus, a young dog,
well known to me, who had never had connection with a bitch, but was
always in the society of its father, once met the latter directly after the elder
dog had been with a bitch. He immediately endeavored to behave toward
the elder dog, in spite of angry repulses, exactly as a dog behaves toward a
bitch in heat. The messages received by the sense of smell were sufficiently
urgent not only to set the sexual mechanism in action, but to overcome the
experiences of a lifetime. There is an interesting chapter on the sense of
smell in the mental life of the dog in Giessler's Psychologie des Geruches,
1894, Chapter XI, Passy (in the appendix to his memoir on olfaction,
L'Année Psychologique, 1895) gives the result of some interesting
experiments as to the effects of perfume on dogs; civet and castoreum were
found to have the most powerfully exciting effect.
The influences of smell are equally omnipotent in the sexual life of many
insects. Thus, Féré has found that in cockchafers sexual coupling failed to
take place when the antennæ, which are the organs of smell, were removed;
he also found that males, after they had coupled with females, proved
sexually attractive to other males (Comptes Rendus de la Société de
Biologie, May 21, 1898). Féré similarly found that, in a species of Bombyx,
males after contact with females sometimes proved attractive to other
males, although no abnormal relationships followed. (Soc. de Biol, July 30,
1898.)
With the advent of the higher apes, and especially of man, all this has been
changed. The sense of smell, indeed, still persists universally and it is still
also exceedingly delicate, though often neglected.[25] It is, moreover, a
useful auxiliary in the exploration of the external world, for, in contrast to
the very few sensations furnished to us by touch and by taste, we are
acquainted with a vast number of smells, though the information they give
us is frequently vague. An experienced perfumer, says Piesse, will have two
hundred odors in his laboratory and can distinguish them all. To a sensitive
nose nearly everything smells. Passy goes so far as to state that he has
"never met with any object that is really inodorous when one pays attention
to it, not even excepting glass," and, though we can scarcely accept this
statement absolutely,—especially in view of the careful experiments of
Ayrton, which show that, contrary to a common belief, metals when
perfectly clean and free from traces of contact with the skin or with salt

solutions have no smell,—odor is still extremely widely diffused. This is
especially the case in hot countries, and the experiments of the Cambridge
Anthropological Expedition on the sense of smell of the Papuans were
considerably impeded by the fact that at Torres Straits everything, even
water, seemed to have a smell. Savages are often accused more or less justly
of indifference to bad odors. They are very often, however, keenly alive to
the significance of smells and their varieties, though it does not appear that
the sense of smell is notably more developed in savage than in civilized
peoples. Odors also continue to play a part in the emotional life of man,
more especially in hot countries. Nevertheless both in practical life and in
emotional life, in science and in art, smell is, at the best, under normal
conditions, merely an auxiliary. If the sense of smell were abolished
altogether the life of mankind would continue as before, with little or no
sensible modification, though the pleasures of life, and especially of eating
and drinking, would be to some extent diminished.
In New Ireland, Duffield remarks (Journal of the Anthropological Institute,
1886, p. 118), the natives have a very keen sense of smell; unusual odors
are repulsive to them, and "carbolic acid drove them wild."
The New Caledonians, according to Foley (Bulletin de la Société
d'Anthropologie, November 6, 1879), only like the smells of meat and fish
which are becoming "high," like popoya, which smells of fowl manure, and
kava, of rotten eggs. Fruits and vegetables which are beginning to go bad
seem the best to them, while the fresh and natural odors which we prefer
seem merely to say to them: "We are not yet eatable." (A taste for
putrefying food, common among savages, by no means necessarily involves
a distaste for agreeable scents, and even among Europeans there is a
widespread taste for offensively smelling and putrid foods, especially
cheese and game.)
The natives of Torres Straits were carefully examined by Dr. C. S. Myers
with regard to their olfactory acuteness and olfactory preferences. It was
found that acuteness was, if anything, slightly greater than among
Europeans. This appeared to be largely due to the careful attention they pay
to odors. The resemblances which they detected among different odorous
substances were frequently found to rest on real chemical affinities. The
odors they were observed to dislike most frequently were asafœtida,

valerianic acid, and civet, the last being regarded as most repulsive of all on
account of its resemblance to fæcal odor, which these people regard with
intense disgust. Their favorite odors were musk, thyme, and especially
violet. (Report of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres
Straits, vol. ii, Part II, 1903.)
In Australia Lumholtz (Among Cannibals, p. 115) found that the blacks had
a keener sense of smell than he possessed.
In New Zealand the Maoris, as W. Colenso shows, possessed, formerly at
all events, a very keen sense of smell or else were very attentive to smell,
and their taste as regarded agreeable and disagreeable odors corresponded
very closely to European taste, although it must be added that some of their
common articles of food possessed a very offensive odor. They are not only
sensitive to European perfumes, but possessed various perfumes of their
own, derived from plants and possessing a pleasant, powerful, and lasting
odor; the choicest and rarest was the gum of the taramea (Aciphylla
Colensoi), which was gathered by virgins after the use of prayers and
charms. Sir Joseph Banks noted that Maori chiefs wore little bundles of
perfumes around their necks, and Cook made the same observation
concerning the young women. References to the four chief Maori perfumes
are contained in a stanza which is still often hummed to express
satisfaction, and sung by a mother to her child:—

"My little neck-satchel of sweet-scented moss,
My little neck-satchel of fragrant fern,
My little neck-satchel of odoriferous gum,
My sweet-smelling neck-locket of sharp-pointed
taramea."

In the summer season the sleeping houses of Maori chiefs were often
strewed with a large, sweet-scented, flowering grass of powerful odor. (W.
Colenso, Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, vol. xxiv, reprinted in
Nature, November 10, 1892.)
Javanese women rub themselves with a mixture of chalk and strong essence
which, when rubbed off, leaves a distinct perfume on the body. (Stratz, Die
Frauenkleidung, p. 84.)

The Samoans, Friedländer states (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1899, p. 52),
are very fond of fragrant and aromatic odors. He gives a list of some twenty
odorous plants which they use, more especially as garlands for the head and
neck, including ylang-ylang and gardenia; he remarks that of one of these
plants (cordyline) he could not himself detect the odor.
The Nicobarese, Man remarks (Journal of the Anthropological Institute,
1889, p. 377), like the natives of New Zealand, particularly dislike the smell
of carbolic acid. Both young men and women are very partial to scents; the
former say they find their use a certain passport to the favor of their wives,
and they bring home from the jungle the scented leaves of a certain creeper
to their sweethearts and wives.
Swahili women devote much attention to perfuming themselves. When a
woman wishes to make herself desirable she anoints herself all over with
fragrant ointments, sprinkles herself with rose-water, puts perfume into her
clothes, strews jasmine flowers on her bed as well as binding them round
her neck and waist, and smokes ûdi, the perfumed wood of the aloe; "every
man is glad when his wife smells of ûdi" (Velten, Sitten und Gebraüche der
Suaheli, pp. 212-214).

[24]
Emile Yung, "Le Sens Olfactif de l'Escargot (Helix Pomata),"
Archives de Psychologie, November, 1903.

[25]
The sensitiveness of smell in man generally exceeds that of
chemical reaction or even of spectral analysis; see Passy, L'Année
Psychologique, second year, 1895, p. 380.

II.

Rise of the Study of Olfaction—Cloquet—Zwaardemaker—The Theory of
Smell—The Classification of Odors—The Special Characteristics of
Olfactory Sensation in Man—Smell as the Sense of Imagination—Odors as

Nervous Stimulants—Vasomotor and Muscular Effects—Odorous
Substances as Drugs.

During the eighteenth century a great impetus was given to the
physiological and psychological study of the senses by the philosophical
doctrines of Locke and the English school generally which then prevailed in
Europe. These thinkers had emphasized the immense importance of the
information derived through the senses in building up the intellect, so that
the study of all the sensory channels assumed a significance which it had
never possessed before. The olfactory sense fully shared in the impetus thus
given to sensory investigation. At the beginning of the nineteenth century a
distinguished French physician, Hippolyte Cloquet, a disciple of Cabanis,
devoted himself more especially to this subject. After publishing in 1815 a
preliminary work, he issued in 1821 his Osphrésiologie, ou Traité des
odeurs, du sens et des organes de l'Olfaction, a complete monograph on the
anatomy, physiology, psychology, and pathology of the olfactory organ and
its functions, and a work that may still be consulted with profit, if indeed it
can even yet be said to be at every point superseded. After Cloquet's time
the study of the sense of smell seems to have fallen into some degree of
discredit. For more than half a century no important progress was made in
this field. Serious investigators seemed to have become shy of the primitive
senses generally, and the subject of smell was mainly left to those interested
in "curious" subjects. Many interesting observations were, however,
incidentally made; thus Laycock, who was a pioneer in so many by-paths of
psychology and anthropology, showed a special interest in the olfactory
sense, and frequently touched on it in his Nervous Diseases of Women and
elsewhere. The writer who more than any other has in recent years restored
the study of the sense of smell from a by-path to its proper position as a
highway for investigation is without doubt Professor Zwaardemaker, of
Utrecht. The invention of his first olfactometer in 1888 and the appearance
in 1895 of his great work Die Physiologie des Geruchs have served to give
the physiology of the sense of smell an assured status and to open the way
anew for much fruitful investigation, while a number of inquirers in many
countries have had their attention directed to the elucidation of this sense.
Notwithstanding, however, the amount of work which has been done in this
field during recent years, it cannot be said that the body of assured

conclusions so far reached is large. The most fundamental principles of
olfactory physiology and psychology are still somewhat vague and
uncertain. Although sensations of smell are numerous and varied, in this
respect approaching the sensations of vision and hearing, smell still remains
close to touch in the vagueness of its messages (while the most sensitive of
the senses, remarks Passy, it is the least precise), the difficulty of classifying
them, the impossibility of so controlling them as to found upon them any
art. It seems better, therefore, not to attempt to force the present study of a
special aspect of olfaction into any general scheme which may possibly not
be really valid.
The earliest and most general tendency in regard to the theory of smell was
to regard it as a kind of chemical sense directly stimulated by minute
particles of solid substance. A vibratory theory of smell, however, making it
somewhat analogous to hearing, easily presents itself. When I first began
the study of physiology in 1881, a speculation of this kind presented itself
to my mind. Long before Philipp von Walther, a professor at Landshut, had
put forward a dynamic theory of olfaction (Physiologie des Menschen,
1807-8, vol. ii, p. 278). "It is a purely dynamic operation of the odorous
substance in the olfactory organ," he stated. Odor is conveyed by the air, he
believed, in the same way as heat. It must be added that his reasons for this
theory will not always bear examination. More recently a similar theory has
been seriously put forward in various quarters. Sir William Ramsay
tentatively suggested such a theory (Nature, vol. xxv, p. 187) in analogy
with light and sound. Haycraft (Proceedings of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh, 1883-87, and Brain, 1887-88), largely starting from
Mendelieff's law of periodicity, similarly sought to bring smell into line
with the higher senses, arguing that molecules with the same vibration have
the same smell. Rutherford (Nature, August 11, 1892, p. 343), attaching
importance to the evidence brought forward by von Brunn showing that the
olfactory cells terminate in very delicate short hairs, also stated his belief
that the different qualities of smell result from differences in the frequency
and form of the vibrations initiated by the action of the chemical molecules
on these olfactory cells, though he admitted that such a conception involved
a very subtle conception of molecular vibration. Vaschide and Van Melle
(Paris Academy of Sciences, December 26, 1899) have, again, argued that
smell is produced by rays of short wave-lengths, analogous to light-rays,

Röntgen rays, etc. Chemical action is however, a very important factor in
the production of odors; this has been well shown by Ayrton (Nature,
September 8, 1898). We seem to be forced in the direction of a chemico-
vibratory theory, as pointed out by Southerden (Nature, March 26, 1903),
the olfactory cells being directly stimulated, not by the ordinary vibrations
of the molecules, but by the agitations accompanying chemical changes.
The vibratory hypothesis of the action of odors has had some influence on
the recent physiologists who have chiefly occupied themselves with
olfaction. "It is probable," Zwaardemaker writes (L'Année Psychologique,
1898), "that aroma is a physico-chemical attribute of the molecules"; he
points out that there is an intimate analogy between color and odor, and
remarks that this analogy leads us to suppose in an aroma ether vibrations
of which the period is determined by the structure of the molecule.
Since the physiology of olfaction is yet so obscure it is not surprising that
we have no thoroughly scientific classification of smells, notwithstanding
various ambitious attempts to reach a classification. The classification
adopted by Zwaardemaker is founded on the ancient scheme of Linnæus,
and may here be reproduced:—

I. Ethereal odors (chiefly esters; Rimmel's fruity series).
II. Aromatic odors (terpenes, camphors, and the spicy, herbaceous,
rosaceous, and almond series; the chemical types are well determined:
cineol, eugenol, anethol, geraniol, benzaldehyde).
III. The balsamic odors (chiefly aldehydes, Rimmel's jasmin, violet,
and balsamic series, with the chemical types: terpineol, ionone,
vanillin).
IV. The ambrosiacal odors (ambergris and musk).
V. The alliaceous odors, with the cacodylic group (asafœtida, ichthyol,
etc.).
VI. Empyreumatic odors.
VII. Valerianaceous odors (Linnæus's Odores hircini, the capryl group,
largely composed of sexual odors).
VIII. Narcotic odors (Linnæus's Odores tetri).
IX. Stenches.

A valuable and interesting memoir, "Revue Générale sur les Sensations
Olfactives," by J. Passy, the chief French authority on this subject, will be
found in the second volume of L'Année Psychologique, 1895. In the fifth
issue of the same year-book (for 1898) Zwaardemaker presents a full
summary of his work and views, "Les Sensations Olfactives, leurs
Combinaisons et leurs Compensations." A convenient, but less
authoritative, summary of the facts of normal and pathological olfaction
will be found in a little volume of the "Actualités Médicales" series by Dr.
Collet, L'Odorat et ses Troubles, 1904. In a little book entitled Wegweiser
zu einer Psychologie des Geruches (1894) Giessler has sought to outline a
psychology of smell, but his sketch can only be regarded as tentative and
provisional.
At the outset, nevertheless, it seems desirable that we should at least have
some conception of the special characteristics which mark the great and
varied mass of sensations reaching the brain through the channel of the
olfactory organ. The main special character of olfactory images seems to be
conditioned by the fact that they are intermediate in character between those
of touch or taste and those of sight or sound, that they have much of the
vagueness of the first and something of the richness and variety of the
second. Æsthetically, also, they occupy an intermediate position between
the higher and the lower senses.[26] They are, at the same time, less
practically useful than either the lower or the higher senses. They furnish us
with a great mass of what we may call by-sensations, which are of little
practical use, but inevitably become intimately mixed with the experiences
of life by association and thus acquire an emotional significance which is
often very considerable. Their emotional force, it may well be, is connected
with the fact that their anatomical seat is the most ancient part of the brain.
They lie in a remote almost disused storehouse of our minds and show the
fascination or the repulsiveness of all vague and remote things. It is for this
reason that they are—to an extent that is remarkable when we consider that
they are much more precise than touch sensations—subject to the influence
of emotional associations. The very same odor may be at one moment
highly pleasant, at the next moment highly unpleasant, in accordance with
the emotional attitude resulting from its associations. Visual images have no
such extreme flexibility; they are too definite to be so easily influenced. Our
feelings about the beauty of a flower cannot oscillate so easily or so far as

may our feelings about the agreeableness of its odor. Our olfactory
experiences thus institute a more or less continuous series of by-sensations
accompanying us through life, of no great practical significance, but of
considerable emotional significance from their variety, their intimacy, their
associational facility, their remote ancestral reverberations through our
brains.
It is the existence of these characteristics—at once so vague and so specific,
so useless and so intimate—which led various writers to describe the sense
of smell as, above all others, the sense of imagination. No sense has so
strong a power of suggestion, the power of calling up ancient memories
with a wider and deeper emotional reverberation, while at the same time no
sense furnishes impressions which so easily change emotional color and
tone, in harmony with the recipient's general attitude. Odors are thus
specially apt both to control the emotional life and to become its slaves.
With the use of incense religions have utilized the imaginative and
symbolical virtues of fragrance. All the legends of the saints have insisted
on the odor of sanctity that exhales from the bodies of holy persons,
especially at the moment of death. Under the conditions of civilization these
primitive emotional associations of odor tend to be dispersed, but, on the
other hand, the imaginative side of the olfactory sense becomes
accentuated, and personal idiosyncrasies of all kinds tend to manifest
themselves in the sphere of smell.
Rousseau (in Emile, Bk. II) regarded smell as the sense of the imagination.
So, also, at an earlier period, it was termed (according to Cloquet) by
Cardano. Cloquet frequently insisted on the qualities of odors which cause
them to appeal to the imagination; on their irregular and inconstant
character; on their power of intoxicating the mind on some occasions; on
the curious individual and racial preferences in the matter of odors. He
remarked on the fact that the Persians employed asafœtida as a seasoning,
while valerian was accounted a perfume in antiquity. (Cloquet,
Osphrésiologie, pp. 28, 45, 71, 112.) It may be added, as a curious example
familiar to most people of the dependence of the emotional tone of a smell
on its associations, that, while the exhalations of other people's bodies are
ordinarily disagreeable to us, such is not the case with our own; this is
expressed in the crude and vigorous dictum of the Elizabethan poet,
Marston, "Every man's dung smell sweet i' his own nose." There are

doubtless many implications, moral as well as psychological, in that
statement.
The modern authorities on olfaction, Passy and Zwaardemaker, both alike
insist on the same characteristics of the sense of smell: its extreme acuity
and yet its vagueness. "We live in a world of odor," Zwaardemaker remarks
(L'Année Psychologique, 1898, p. 203), "as we live in a world of light and
of sound. But smell yields us no distinct ideas grouped in regular order, still
less that are fixed in the memory as a grammatical discipline. Olfactory
sensations awake vague and half-understood perceptions, which are
accompanied by very strong emotion. The emotion dominates us, but the
sensation which was the cause of it remains unperceived." Even in the same
individual there are wide variations in the sensitiveness to odors at different
times, more especially as regards faint odors; Passy (L'Année
Psychologique, 1895, p. 387) brings forward some observations on this
point.
Maudsley noted the peculiarly suggestive power of odors; "there are certain
smells," he remarked, "which never fail to bring back to me instantly and
visibly scenes of my boyhood"; many of us could probably say the same.
Another writer (E. Dillon, "A Neglected Sense," Nineteenth Century, April,
1894) remarks that "no sense has a stronger power of suggestion."
Ribot has made an interesting investigation as to the prevalence and nature
of the emotional memory of odors (Psychology of the Emotions, Chapter
XI). By "emotional memory" is meant the spontaneous or voluntary
revivability of the image, olfactory or other. (For the general question, see
an article by F. Pillon, "La Mémoire Affective, son Importance Théorique et
Pratique," Revue Philosophique, February, 1901; also Paulhan, "Sur la
Mémoire Affective," Revue Philosophique, December, 1902 and January,
1903.) Ribot found that 40 per cent. of persons are unable to revive any
such images of taste or smell; 48 per cent, could revive some; 12 per cent,
declared themselves capable of reviving all, or nearly all, at pleasure. In
some persons there is no necessary accompanying revival of visual or
tactile representations, but in the majority the revived odor ultimately
excites a corresponding visual image. The odors most frequently recalled
were pinks, musk, violets, heliotrope, carbolic acid, the smell of the
country, of grass, etc. Piéron (Revue Philosophique, December, 1902) has

described the special power possessed by vague odors, in his own case, of
evoking ancient impressions.
Dr. J. N. Mackenzie (American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January,
1886) considers that civilization exerts an influence in heightening or
encouraging the influence of olfaction as it affects our emotions and
judgment, and that, in the same way, as we ascend the social scale the more
readily our minds are influenced and perhaps perverted by impressions
received through the sense of smell.
Odors are powerful stimulants to the whole nervous system, causing, like
other stimulants, an increase of energy which, if excessive or prolonged,
leads to nervous exhaustion. Thus, it is well recognized in medicine that the
aromatics containing volatile oils (such as anise, cinnamon, cardamoms,
cloves, coriander, and peppermint) are antispasmodics and anæsthetics, and
that they stimulate digestion, circulation, and the nervous system, in large
doses producing depression. The carefully arranged plethysmographic
experiments of Shields, at the Johns Hopkins University, have shown that
olfactory sensations, by their action on the vasomotor system, cause an
increase of blood in the brain and sometimes in addition stimulation of the
heart; musk, wintergreen, wood violet, and especially heliotrope were found
to act strongly in these ways.[27]
Féré's experiments with the dynamometer and the ergograph have greatly
contributed to illustrate the stimulating effects of odors. Thus, he found that
smelling musk suffices to double muscular effort. With a number of
odorous substances he has found that muscular work is temporarily
heightened; when taste stimulation was added the increase of energy,
notably when using lemon was "colossal." A kind of "sensorial
intoxication" could be produced by the inhalation of odors and the whole
system stimulated to greater activity; the visual acuity was increased, and
electric and general excitability heightened.[28] Such effects may be
obtained in perfectly healthy persons, though both Shields and Féré have
found that in highly nervous persons the effects are liable to be much
greater. It is doubtless on this account that it is among civilized peoples that
attention is chiefly directed to perfumes, and that under the conditions of
modern life the interest in olfaction and its study has been revived.

It is the genuinely stimulant qualities of odorous substances which led to
the widespread use of the more potent among them by ancient physicians,
and has led a few modern physicians to employ them still. Thus, vanilla,
according to Eloy, deserves to be much more frequently used
therapeutically than it is, on account of its excitomotor properties; he states
that its qualities as an excitant of sexual desire have long been recognized
and that Fonssagrives used to prescribe it for sexual frigidity.[29]

[26]
The opinions of psychologists concerning the æsthetic
significance of smell, not on the whole very favorable, are
brought together and discussed by J. V. Volkelt, "Der Æsthetische
Wert der niederen Sinne," Zeitschrift für Psychologie und
Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 1902, ht. 3.

[27]
T. E. Shields, "The Effect of Odors, etc., upon the Blood-flow,"
Journal of Experimental Medicine, vol. i, November, 1896. In
France, O. Henry and Tardif have made somewhat similar
experiments on respiration and circulation. See the latter's Les
Odeurs et les Parfums, Chapter III.

[28]
Féré, Sensation et Mouvement, Chapter VI; ib., Comptes Rendus
de la Société de Biologie, November 3, December 15 and 22,
1900.

[29]
Eloy, art. "Vanille," Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences
Médicales.

III.

The Specific Body Odors of Various Peoples—The Negro, etc.—The
European—The Ability to Distinguish Individuals by Smell—The Odor of
Sanctity—The Odor of Death—The Odors of Different Parts of the Body—
The Appearance of Specific Odors at Puberty—The Odors of Sexual
Excitement—The Odors of Menstruation—Body Odors as a Secondary
Sexual Character—The Custom of Salutation by Smell—The Kiss—Sexual
Selection by Smell—The Alleged Association between Size of Nose and
Sexual Vigor—The Probably Intimate Relationship between the Olfactory
and Genital Spheres—Reflex Influences from the Nose—Reflex Influences
from the Genital Sphere—Olfactory Hallucinations in Insanity as Related to
Sexual States—The Olfactive Type—The Sense of Smell in Neurasthenic
and Allied States—In Certain Poets and Novelists—Olfactory Fetichism—
The Part Played by Olfaction in Normal Sexual Attraction—In the East, etc.
—In Modern Europe—The Odor of the Armpit and its Variations—As a
Sexual and General Stimulant—Body Odors in Civilization Tend to Cause
Sexual Antipathy unless some Degree of Tumescence is Already Present—
The Question whether Men or Women are more Liable to Feel Olfactory
Influences—Women Usually more Attentive to Odors—The Special
Interest in Odors Felt by Sexual Inverts.

In approaching the specifically sexual aspect of odor in the human species
we may start from the fundamental fact—a fact we seek so far as possible
to disguise in our ordinary social relations—that all men and women are
odorous. This is marked among all races. The powerful odor of many,
though not all, negroes is well known; it is by no means due to uncleanly
habits, and Joest remarks that it is even increased by cleanliness, which
opens the pores of the skin; according to Sir H. Johnston, it is most marked
in the armpits and is stronger in men than in women. Pruner Bey describes
it as "ammoniacal and rancid; it is like the odor of the he-goat." The odor
varies not only individually, but according to the tribe; Castellani states that
the negress of the Congo has merely a slight "goût de noisette" which is
agreeable rather than otherwise. Monbuttu women, according to Parke,
have a strong Gorgonzola perfume, and Emin told Parke that he could
distinguish the members of different tribes by their characteristic odor. In
the same way the Nicobarese, according to Man, can distinguish a member
of each of the six tribes of the archipelago by smell. The odor of Australian

blacks is less strong than that of negroes and has been described as of a
phosphoric character. The South American Indians, d'Orbigny stated, have
an odor stronger than that of Europeans, though not as strong as most
negroes; it is marked, Latcham states, even among those who, like the
Araucanos, bathe constantly. The Chinese have a musky odor. The odor of
many peoples is described as being of garlic.[30]
A South Sea Islander, we are told by Charles de Varigny, on coming to
Sydney and seeing the ladies walking about the streets and apparently doing
nothing, expressed much astonishment, adding, with a gesture of contempt,
"and they have no smell!" It is by no means true, however, that Europeans
are odorless. They are, indeed, considerably more odorous than are many
other races,—for instance, the Japanese,—and there is doubtless some
association between the greater hairiness of Europeans and their marked
odor, since the sebaceous glands are part of the hair apparatus. A Japanese
anthropologist, Adachi, has published an interesting study on the odor of
Europeans,[31] which he describes as a strong and pungent smell,—
sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter,—of varying strength in different
individuals, absent in children and the aged, and having its chief focus in
the armpits, which, however carefully they are washed, immediately
become odorous again. Adachi has found that the sweat-glands are larger in
Europeans than in the Japanese, among whom a strong personal odor is so
uncommon that "armpit stink" is a disqualification for the army. It is
certainly true that the white races smell less strongly than most of the dark
races, odor seeming to be correlated to some extent with intensity of
pigmentation, as well as with hairiness; but even the most scrupulously
clean Europeans all smell. This fact may not always be obvious to human
nostrils, apart from intimate contact, but it is well known to dogs, to whom
their masters are recognizable by smell. When Hue traveled in Tibet in
Chinese disguise he was not detected by the natives, but the dogs
recognized him as a foreigner by his smell and barked at him. Many
Chinese can tell by smell when a European has been in a room.[32] There
are, however, some Europeans who can recognize and distinguish their
friends by smell. The case has been recorded of a man who with bandaged
eyes could recognize his acquaintances, at the distance of several paces, the
moment they entered the room. In another case a deaf and blind mute
woman in Massachusetts knew all her acquaintances by smell, and could

sort linen after it came from the wash by the odor alone. Governesses have
been known to be able when blindfolded to recognize the ownership of their
pupil's garments by smell; such a case is known to me. Such odor is usually
described as being agreeable, but not one person in fifty, it is stated, is able
to distinguish it with sufficient precision to use it as a method of
recognition. Among some races, however this aptitude would appear to be
better developed. Dr. C. S. Myers at Sarawak noted that his Malay boy
sorted the clean linen according to the skin-odor of the wearer.[33] Chinese
servants are said to do the same, as well as Australians and natives of
Luzon.[34]
Although the distinctively individual odor of most persons is not
sufficiently marked to be generally perceptible, there are cases in which it is
more distinct to all nostrils. The most famous case of this kind is that of
Alexander the Great, who, according to Plutarch, exhaled so sweet an odor
that his tunics were soaked with aromatic perfume (Convivalium
Disputationum, lib. I, quest. 6). Malherbe, Cujas, and Haller are said to
have diffused a musky odor. The agreeable odor of Walt Whitman has been
remarked by Kennedy and others. The perfume exhaled by many holy men
and women, so often noted by ancient writers (discussed by Görres in the
second volume of his Christliche Mystik) and which has entered into current
phraseology as a merely metaphorical "odor of sanctity," was doubtless due,
as Hammond first pointed out, to abnormal nervous conditions, for it is well
known that such conditions affect the odor, and in insanity, for instance, the
presence is noted of bodily odors which have sometimes even been
considered of diagnostic importance. J. B. Friedreich, Allgemeine
Diagnostik der Psychischen Krankheiten, second edition, 1832, pp. 9-10,
quotes passages from various authors on this point, which he accepts;
various writers of more recent date have made similar observations.
The odor of sanctity was specially noted at death, and was doubtless
confused with the odor mortis, which frequently precedes death and by
some is regarded as an almost certain indication of its approach. In the
British Medical Journal, for May and June, 1898, will be found letters from
several correspondents substantiating this point. One of these
correspondents (Dr. Tuckey, of Tywardwreath, Cornwall) mentions that he
has in Cornwall often seen ravens flying over houses in which persons lay
dying, evidently attracted by a characteristic odor.

It must be borne in mind, however, that, while every person has, to a
sensitive nose, a distinguishing odor, we must regard that odor either as but
one of the various sensations given off by the body, or else as a combination
of two or more of these emanations. The body in reality gives off a number
of different odors. The most important of these are: (1) the general skin
odor, a faint, but agreeable, fragrance often to be detected on the skin even
immediately after washing; (2) the smell of the hair and scalp; (3) the odor
of the breath; (4) the odor of the armpit; (5) the odor of the feet; (6) the
perineal odor; (7) in men the odor of the preputial smegma; (8) in women
the odor of the mons veneris, that of vulvar smegma, that of vaginal mucus,
and the menstrual odor. All these are odors which may usually be detected,
though sometimes only in a very faint degree, in healthy and well-washed
persons under normal conditions. It is unnecessary here to take into account
the special odors of various secretions and excretions.[35]
It is a significant fact, both as regards the ancestral sexual connections of
the body odors and their actual sexual associations to-day, that, as
Hippocrates long ago noted, it is not until puberty that they assume their
adult characteristics. The infant, the adult, the aged person, each has his
own kind of smell, and, as Monin remarks, it might be possible, within
certain limits, to discover the age of a person by his odor. Jorg in 1832
pointed out that in girls the appearance of a specific smell of the excreta
indicates the establishment of puberty, and Kaan, in his Psychopathia
Sexualis, remarked that at puberty "the sweat gives out a more acrid odor
resembling musk." In both sexes puberty, adolescence, early manhood and
womanhood are marked by a gradual development of the adult odor of skin
and excreta, in general harmony with the secondary sexual development of
hair and pigment. Venturi, indeed, has, not without reason, described the
odor of the body as a secondary sexual character.[36] It may be added that,
as is the case with the pigment in various parts of the body in women, some
of these odors tend to become exaggerated in sympathy with sexual and
other emotional states.
The odor of the infant is said to be of butyric acid; that of old people to
resemble dry leaves. Continent young men have been said by many ancient
writers to smell more strongly than the unchaste, and some writers have
described as "seminal odor"—an odor resembling that of animals in heat,

faintly recalling that of the he-goat, according to Venturi—the exhalations
of the skin at such times.
During sexual excitement, as women can testify, a man very frequently, if
not normally, gives out an odor which, as usually described, proceeds from
the skin, the breath, or both. Grimaldi states that it is as of rancid butter;
others say it resembles chloroform. It is said to be sometimes perceptible
for a distance of several feet and to last for several hours after coitus.
(Various quotations are given by Gould and Pyle, Anomalies and
Curiosities of Medicine, section on "Human Odors," pp. 397-403.) St.
Philip Neri is said to have been able to recognize a chaste man by smell.
During menstruation girls and young women frequently give off an odor
which is quite distinct from that of the menstrual fluid, and is specially
marked in the breath, which may smell of chloroform or violets. Pouchet
(confirmed by Raciborski, Traité de la Menstruation, 1868, p. 74) stated
that about a day before the onset of menstruation a characteristic smell is
exuded. Menstruating girls are also said sometimes to give off a smell of
leather. Aubert, of Lyons (as quoted by Galopin), describes the odor of the
skin of a woman during menstruation as an agreeable aromatic or acidulous
perfume of chloroform character. By some this is described as emanating
especially from the armpits. Sandras (quoted by Raciborski) knew a lady
who could always tell by a sensation of faintness and malaise—apparently
due to a sensation of smell—when she was in contact with a menstruating
woman. I am acquainted with a man, having strong olfactory sympathies
and antipathies, who detects the presence of menstruation by smell. It is
said that Hortense Baré, who accompanied her lover, the botanist
Commerson, to the Pacific disguised as a man, was recognized by the
natives as a woman by means of smell.
Women, like men, frequently give out an odor during coitus or strong
sexual excitement. This odor may be entirely different from that normally
emanating from the woman, of an acid or hircine character, and sufficiently
strong to remain in a room for a considerable period. Many of the ancient
medical writers (as quoted by Schurigius, Parthenologia, p. 286) described
the goaty smell produced by venery, especially in women; they regarded it
as specially marked in harlots and in the newly married, and sometimes
even considered it a certain sign of defloration. The case has been recorded

of a woman who emitted a rose odor for two days after coitus (McBride,
quoted by Kiernan in an interesting summary, "Odor in Pathology,"
Doctor's Magazine, December, 1900). There was, it is said (Journal des
Savans 1684, p. 39, quoting from the Journal d'Angleterre) a monk in
Prague who could recognize by smell the chastity of the women who
approached him. (This monk, it is added, when he died, was composing a
new science of odors.)
Gustav Klein (as quoted by Adler, Die Mangelhafte
Geschlechtsempfindungen des Weibes, p. 25) argues that the special
function of the glands at the vulvar orifice—the glandulæ vestibulares
majores—is to give out an odorous secretion to act as an attraction to the
male, this relic of sexual periodicity no longer, however, playing an
important part in the human species. The vulvar secretion, however, it may
be added, still has a more aromatic odor than the vaginal secretion, with its
simple mucous odor, very clearly perceived during parturition.
It may be added that we still know extremely little concerning the sexual
odors of women among primitive peoples. Ploss and Bartels are only able to
bring forward (Das Weib, 1901, bd. 1, p. 218) a statement concerning the
women of New Caledonia, who, according to Moncelon, when young and
ardent, give out during coitus a powerful odor which no ablution will
remove. In abnormal states of sexual excitement such odor may be
persistent, and, according to an ancient observation, a nymphomaniac,
whose periods of sexual excitement lasted all through the spring-time, at
these periods always emitted a goatlike odor. It has been said (G. Tourdes,
art. "Aphrodisie," Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales)
that the erotic temperament is characterized by a special odor.
If the body odors tend to develop at puberty, to be maintained during sexual
life, especially in sympathy with conditions of sexual disturbance, and to
become diminished in old age, being thus a kind of secondary sexual
character, we should expect them to be less marked in those cases in which
the primary sexual characters are less marked. It is possible that this is
actually the case. Hagen, in his Sexuelle Osphrésiologie, quotes from
Roubaud's Traité de l'Impuissance the statement that the body odor of the
castrated differs from that of normal individuals. Burdach had previously

stated that the odor of the eunuch is less marked than that of the normal
man.
It is thus possible that defective sexual development tends to be associated
with corresponding olfactory defect. Heschl[37] has reported a case in which
absence of both olfactory nerves coincided with defective development of
the sexual organs. Féré remarks that the impotent show a repugnance for
sexual odors. Dr. Kiernan informs me that in women after oöphorectomy he
has noted a tendency to diminished (and occasionally increased) sense of
smell. These questions, however, await more careful and extended
observation.
A very significant transition from the phenomena of personal odor to those
of sexual attraction by personal odor is to be found in the fact that among
the peoples inhabiting a large part of the world's surface the ordinary
salutation between friends is by mutual smelling of the person. In some
form or another the method of salutation by applying the nose to the nose,
face, or hand of a friend in greeting is found throughout a large part of the
Pacific, among the Papuans, the Eskimo, the hill tribes of India, in Africa,
and elsewhere.[38] Thus, among a certain hill tribe in India, according to
Lewin, they smell a friend's cheek: "in their language, they do not say, 'Give
me a kiss,' but they say 'Smell me.'" And on the Gambia, according to F.
Moore, "When the men salute the women, they, instead of shaking their
hands, put it up to their noses, and smell twice to the back of it." Here we
have very clearly a recognition of the emotional value of personal odor
widely prevailing throughout the world. The salutation on an olfactory basis
may, indeed, be said to be more general than the salutation on a tactile basis
on which European handshaking rests, each form involving one of the two
most intimate and emotional senses. The kiss may be said to be a
development proceeding both from the olfactory and the tactile bases, with
perhaps some other elements as well, and is too complex to be regarded as a
phenomenon of either purely tactile or purely olfactory origin.[39]
As the sole factor in sexual selection olfaction must be rare. It is said that
Asiatic princes have sometimes caused a number of the ladies to race in the
seraglio garden until they were heated; their garments have then been
brought to the prince, who has selected one of them solely by the odor.[40]
There was here a sexual selection mainly by odor. Any exclusive efficacy of

the olfactory sense is rare, not so much because the impressions of this
sense are inoperative, but because agreeable personal odors are not
sufficiently powerful, and the olfactory organ is too obtuse, to enable smell
to take precedence of sight. Nevertheless, in many people, it is probable that
certain odors, especially those that are correlated with a healthy and
sexually desirable person, tend to be agreeable; they are fortified by their
association with the loved person, sometimes to an irresistible degree; and
their potency is doubtless increased by the fact, to which reference has
already been made, that many odors, including some bodily odors, are
nervous stimulants.
It is possible that the sexual associations of odors have been still further
fortified by a tendency to correlation between a high development of the
olfactory organ and a high development of the sexual apparatus. An
association between a large nose and a large male organ is a very ancient
observation and has been verified occasionally in recent times. There is
normally at puberty a great increase in the septum of the nose, and it is
quite conceivable, in view of the sympathy, which, as we shall see, certainly
exists between the olfactory and sexual region, that the two regions may
develop together under a common influence.
The Romans firmly believed in the connection between a large nose and a
large penis. "Noscitur e naso quanta sit hasta viro," stated Ovid. This belief
continued to prevail, especially in Italy, through the middle ages; the
physiognomists made much of it, and licentious women (like Joanna of
Naples) were, it appears, accustomed to bear it in mind, although
disappointment is recorded often to have followed. (See e.g., the quotations
and references given by J. N. Mackenzie, "Physiological and Pathological
Relations between the Nose and the Sexual Apparatus in Man." Johns
Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, No. 82, January, 1898; also Hagen, Sexuelle
Osphrésiologie, pp. 15-19.) A similar belief as to the association between
the sexual impulse in women and a long nose was evidently common in
England in the sixteenth century, for in Massinger's Emperor of the East
(Act II, Scene I) we read,

"Her nose, which by its length assures me
Of storms at midnight if I fail to pay her
The tribute she expects."

At the present day, a proverb of the Venetian people still embodies the
belief in the connection between a large nose and a large sexual member.
The probability that such an association tends in many cases to prevail is
indicated not only by the beliefs of antiquity, when more careful attention
was paid to these matters, but by the testimony of various modern
observers, although it does not appear that any series of exact observations
have yet been made.
It may be noted that Marro, in his careful anthropological study of criminals
(I Caratteri dei Delinquenti), found no class of criminals with so large a
proportion alike of anomalies of the nose and anomalies of the genital
organs as sexual offenders.
However this may be, it is less doubtful that there is a very intimate relation
both in men and women between the olfactory mucous membrane of the
nose and the whole genital apparatus, that they frequently show a
sympathetic action, that influences acting on the genital sphere will affect
the nose, and occasionally, it is probable, influences acting on the nose
reflexly affect the genital sphere. To discuss these relationships would here
be out of place, since specialists are not altogether in agreement concerning
the matter. A few are inclined to regard the association as extremely
intimate, so that each region is sensitive even to slight stimuli applied to the
other region, while, on the other hand, many authorities ignore altogether
the question of the relationship. It would appear, however, that there really
is, in a considerable number of people at all events, a reflex connection of
this kind. It has especially been noted that in many cases congestion of the
nose precedes menstruation.
Bleeding of the nose is specially apt to occur at puberty and during
adolescence, while in women it may take the place of menstruation and is
sometimes more apt to occur at the menstrual periods; disorders of the nose
have also been found to be aggravated at these periods. It has even been
possible to control bleeding of the nose, both in men and women, by
applying ice to the sexual regions. In both men and women, again, cases
have been recorded in which sexual excitement, whether of coitus or
masturbation, has been followed by bleeding of the nose. In numerous cases
it is followed by slight congestive conditions of the nasal passages and

especially by sneezing. Various authors have referred to this phenomenon; I
am acquainted with a lady in whom it is fairly constant.[41] Féré records the
case of a lady, a nervous subject, who began to experience intense
spontaneous sexual excitement shortly after marriage, accompanied by
much secretion from the nose.[42] J. N. Mackenzie is acquainted with a
number of such cases, and he considers that the popular expression "bride's
cold" indicates that this effect of strong sexual excitement is widely
recognized.
The late Professor Hack, of Freiburg, in 1884, called general medical
attention to the intimate connection between the nose and states of nervous
hyperexcitability in various parts of the body, although such a connection
had been recognized for many centuries in medical literature. While Hack
and his disciples thus gave prominence to this association, they undoubtedly
greatly exaggerated its importance and significance. (Sir Felix Semon,
British Medical Journal, November 9, 1901.) Even many workers who have
more recently further added to our knowledge have also, as sometimes
happens with enthusiasts, unduly strained their own data. Starting from the
fact that in women during menstruation examination of the nose reveals a
degree of congestion not found during the rest of the month, Fliess (Die
Beziehungen zwischen Nase und Weiblichen Geschlechtsorganen, 1897),
with the help of a number of elaborate and prolonged observations, has
reached conclusions which, while they seem to be hazardous at some
points, have certainly contributed to build up our knowledge of this obscure
subject. Schiff (Wiener klinische Wochenschrift, 1900, p. 58, summarized in
British Medical Journal, February 16, 1901), starting from a skeptical
standpoint, has confirmed some of Fliess's results, and in a large number of
cases controlled painful menstruation by painting with cocaine the so-called
"genital spots" in the nose, all possibility of suggestion being avoided. Ries,
of Chicago, has been similarly successful with the method of Fliess
(American Gynæcology, vol. iii, No. 4, 1903). Benedikt (Wiener
medicinische Wochenschrift, No. 8, 1901, summarized in Journal of
Medical Science, October, 1901), while pointing out that the nose is not the
only organ in sympathetic relation with the sexual sphere, suggests that the
mechanism of the relationship is involved in the larger problem of the
harmony in growth and in nutrition of the different parts of the organism. In

this way, probably, we may attach considerable significance to the existence
of a kind of erectile tissue in the nose.
An interesting example of a reflex influence from the nose affecting the
genital sphere has been brought forward by Dr. E. S. Talbot, of Chicago: "A
56-year-old man was operated on (September 1, 1903) for the removal of
the left cartilage of the septum of the nose owing to a previous traumatic
fracture at the sixteenth year. No pain was experienced until two years ago,
when a continual soreness occurred at the apical end of the fracture during
the winter months. The operation was decided upon fearing more serious
complications. The parts were cocainized. No pain was experienced in the
operation except at one point at the lower posterior portion near the floor of
the nose. A profound shock to the general system followed. The reflex
influence of the pain upon the genital organs caused semen to flow
continually for three weeks. Treatment of general motor irritability with
camphor monobromate and conium, on consultation with Dr. Kiernan,
checked the flow. The discharge produced spinal neurasthenia. The legs and
feet felt heavy. Erythromelalgia caused uneasiness. The patient walked with
difficulty. The tired feeling in the feet and limbs was quite noticeable four
months after the operation, although the pain had, to a great extent
diminished." (Chicago Academy of Medicine, January, 1904, and private
letter.)
J. N. Mackenzie has brought together a great many original observations,
together with interesting quotations from old medical literature, in his two
papers: "The Pathological Nasal Reflex" (New York Medical Journal,
August 20, 1887) and "The Physiological and Pathological Relations
between the Nose and the Sexual Apparatus of Man" (Johns Hopkins
Hospital Bulletin, January 1, 1898). A number of cases have also been
brought together from the literature by G. Endriss in his Inaugural
Dissertation, Die bisherigen Beobachtungen von Physiologischen und
Pathologischen Beziehungen der oberen Luftwege zu den Sexualorganen,
Teil. II, Würzburg, 1892.
The intimate association between the sexual centers and the olfactory tract
is well illustrated by the fact that this primitive and ancient association
tends to come to the surface in insanity. It is recognized by many alienists

that insanity of a sexual character is specially liable to be associated with
hallucinations of smell.
Many eminent alienists in various countries are very decidedly of the
opinion that there is a special tendency to the association of olfactory
hallucinations with sexual manifestations, and, although one or two
authorities have expressed doubt on the matter, the available evidence
clearly indicates such an association. Hallucinations of smell are
comparatively rare as compared to hallucinations of sight and hearing; they
are commoner in women than in men and they not infrequently occur at
periods of sexual disturbance, at adolescence, in puerperal fever, at the
change of life, in women with ovarian troubles, and in old people troubled
with sexual desires or remorse for such desires. They have often been noted
as specially frequent in cases of excessive masturbation.
Krafft-Ebing, who found olfactory hallucinations common in various sexual
states, considers that they are directly dependent on sexual excitement
(Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, bd. 34, ht. 4, 1877). Conolly
Norman believes in a distinct and frequent association between olfactory
hallucinations and sexual disturbance (Journal of Mental Science, July,
1899, p. 532). Savage is also impressed by the close association between
sexual disturbance or changes in the reproductive organs and hallucinations
of smell as well as of touch. He has found that persistent hallucinations of
smell disappeared when a diseased ovary was removed, although the patient
remained insane. He considers that such hallucinations of smell are allied to
reversions. (G. H. Savage, "Smell, Hallucinations of," Tuke's Dictionary of
Psychological Medicine; cf. the same author's manual of Insanity and Allied
Neuroses.) Matusch, while not finding olfactory hallucinations common at
the climacteric, states that when they are present they are connected with
uterine trouble and sexual craving. He finds them more common in young
women. (Matusch, "Der Einfluss des Climacterium auf Entstchung und
Form der Geistesstörung," Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, vol. xlvi,
ht. 4). Féré has related a significant case of a young man in whom
hallucinations of smell accompanied the sexual orgasm; he subsequently
developed epilepsy, to which the hallucination then constituted the aura
(Comptes Rendus de la Société de Biologie, December, 1896). The
prevalence of a sexual element in olfactory hallucinations has been
investigated by Bullen, who examined into 95 cases of hallucinations of

smell among the patients in several asylums. (In a few cases there were
reasons for believing that peripheral conditions existed which would render
these hallucinations more strictly illusions.) Of these, 64 were women.
Sixteen of the women were climacteric cases, and 3 of them had sexual
hallucinations or delusions. Fourteen other women (chiefly cases of chronic
delusional insanity) had sexual delusions. Altogether, 31 men and women
had sexual delusions. This is a large proportion. Bullen is not, however,
inclined to admit any direct connection between the reproductive system
and the sense of smell. He finds that other hallucinations are very frequently
associated with the olfactory hallucinations, and considers that the co-
existence of olfactory and sexual troubles simply indicates a very deep and
widespread nervous disturbance. (F. St. John Bullen, "Olfactory
Hallucinations in the Insane," Journal of Mental Science, July, 1899.) In
order to elucidate the matter fully we require further precise inquiries on the
lines Bullen has laid down.
It may be of interest to note, in this connection, that smell and taste
hallucinations appear to be specially frequent in forms of religious insanity.
Thus, Dr. Zurcher, in her inaugural dissertation on Joan of Arc (Jeanne
d'Arc, Leipzig, 1895, p. 72), estimates that on the average in such insanity
nearly 50 per cent, of the hallucinations affect smell and taste; she refers
also to the olfactory hallucinations of great religious leaders, Francis of
Assisi, Katherina Emmerich, Lazzaretti, and the Anabaptists.
It may well be, as Zwaardemaker has suggested in his Physiologie des
Geruchs, that the nasal congestion at menstruation and similar phenomena
are connected with that association of smell and sexuality which is
observable throughout the whole animal world, and that the congestion
brings about a temporary increase of olfactory sensitiveness during the
stage of sexual excitation.[43] Careful investigation of olfactory acuteness
would reveal the existence of such menstrual heightening of its acuity.
In a few exceptional, but still quite healthy people, smell would appear to
possess an emotional predominance which it cannot be said to possess in
the average person. These exceptional people are of what Binet in his study
of sexual fetichism calls olfactive type; such persons form a group which,
though of smaller size and less importance, is fairly comparable to the well-
known groups of visual type, of auditory type, and of psychomotor type.

Such people would be more attentive to odors, more moved by olfactory
sympathies and antipathies, than are ordinary people. For these, it may well
be, the supremacy accorded to olfactory influences in Jäger's Entdeckung
der Seele, though extravagantly incorrect for ordinary persons, may appear
quite reasonable.
It is certain also that a great many neurasthenic people, and particularly
those who are sexually neurasthenic, are peculiarly susceptible to olfactory
influences. A number of eminent poets and novelists—especially, it would
appear, in France—seem to be in this case. Baudelaire, of all great poets,
has most persistently and most elaborately emphasized the imaginative and
emotional significance of odor; the Fleurs du Mal and many of the Petits
Poèmes en Prose are, from this point of view, of great interest. There can be
no doubt that in Baudelaire's own imaginative and emotional life the sense
of smell played a highly important part; and that, in his own words, odor
was to him what music is to others. Throughout Zola's novels—and perhaps
more especially in La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret—there is an extreme
insistence on odors of every kind. Prof. Leopold Bernard wrote an elaborate
study of this aspect of Zola's work[44]; he believed that underlying Zola's
interest in odors there was an abnormally keen olfactory sensibility and
large development of the olfactory region of the brain. Such a supposition
is, however, unnecessary, and, as a matter of fact, a careful examination of
Zola's olfactory sensibility, conducted by M. Passy, showed that it was
somewhat below normal.[45] At the same time it was shown that Zola was
really a person of olfactory psychic type, with a special attention to odors
and a special memory for them; as is frequently the case with perfumers
with less than normal olfactory acuity he possessed a more than normal
power of discriminating odors; it is possible that in early life his olfactory
acuity may also have been above normal. In the same way Nietzsche, in his
writings, shows a marked sensibility, and especially antipathy, as regards
odors, which has by some been regarded as an index to a real physical
sensibility of abnormal keenness; according to Möbius, however, there was
no reason for supposing this to be the case.[46] Huysmans, who throughout
his books reveals a very intense preoccupation with the exact shades of
many kinds of sensory impressions, and an apparently abnormally keen
sensibility to them, has shown a great interest in odors, more especially in
an oft-quoted passage in A Rebours. The blind Milton of "Paradise Lost" (as

the late Mr. Grant Allen once remarked to me), dwells much on scents; in
this case it is doubtless to the blindness and not to any special organic
predisposition that we must attribute this direction of sensory attention.[47]
Among our older English poets, also, Herrick displays a special interest in
odors with a definite realization of their sexual attractiveness.[48] Shelley,
who was alive to so many of the unusual æsthetic aspects of things, often
shows an enthusiastic delight in odors, more especially those of flowers. It
may, indeed, be said that most poets—though to a less degree than those I
have mentioned—devote a special attention to odors, and, since it has been
possible to describe smell as the sense of imagination, this need not surprise
us. That Shakespeare, for instance, ranked this sense very high indeed is
shown by various passages in his works and notably by Sonnet LIV: "O,
how much more doth beauty beauteous seem?"—in which he implicitly
places the attraction of odor on at least as high a level as that of vision.[49]
A neurasthenic sensitiveness to odors, specially sexual odors, is frequently
accompanied by lack of sexual vigor. In this way we may account for the
numerous cases in which old men in whom sexual desire survives the loss
of virile powers—probably somewhat abnormal persons at the outset—find
satisfaction in sexual odors. Here, also, we have the basis for olfactory
fetichism. In such fetichism the odor of the woman alone, whoever she may
be and however unattractive she may be, suffices to furnish complete sexual
satisfaction. In many, although not all, of those cases in which articles of
women's clothing become the object of fetichistic attraction, there is
certainly an olfactory element due to the personal odor attaching to the
garments.[50]
Olfactory influences play a certain part in various sexually abnormal
tendencies and practices which do not proceed from an exclusively
olfactory fascination. Thus, cunnilingus and fellatio derive part of their
attraction, more especially in some individuals, from a predilection for the
odors of the sexual parts. (See, e.g., Moll, Untersuchungen über die Libido
Sexualis, bd. 1, p. 134.) In many cases smell plays no part in the attraction;
"I enjoy cunnilingus, if I like the girl very much," a correspondent writes,
"in spite of the smell." We may associate this impulse with the prevalence
of these practices among sexual inverts, in whom olfactory attractions are
often specially marked. Those individuals, also, who are sexually affected

by the urinary and alvine excretions ("renifleurs," "stereoraires," etc.) are
largely, though not necessarily altogether, moved by olfactory impressions.
The attraction was, however, exclusively olfactory in the case of the young
woman recorded by Moraglia (Archivio di Psichiatria, 1892, p. 267), who
was irresistibly excited by the odor of the fermented urine of men, and
possibly also in the case narrated to Moraglia by Prof. L. Bianchi (ib. p.
568), in which a wife required flatus from her husband.
The sexual pleasure derived from partial strangulation (discussed in the
study of "Love and Pain" in a previous volume) may be associated with
heightened olfactory sexual excitation. Dr. Kiernan, who points this out to
me, has investigated a few neuropathic patients who like to have their necks
squeezed, as they express it, and finds that in the majority the olfactory
sensibility is thus intensified.
Even in ordinary normal persons, however, there can be no doubt that
personal odor tends to play a not inconsiderable part in sexual attractions
and sexual repulsions. As a sexual excitant, indeed, it comes far behind the
stimuli received through the sense of sight. The comparative bluntness of
the sense of smell in man makes it difficult for olfactory influence to be felt,
as a rule, until the preliminaries of courtship are already over; so that it is
impossible for smell ever to possess the same significance in sexual
attraction in man that it possesses in the lower animals. With that
reservation there can be no doubt that odor has a certain favorable or
unfavorable influence in sexual relationships in all human races from the
lowest to the highest. The Polynesian spoke with contempt of those women
of European race who "have no smell," and in view of the pronounced
personal odor of so many savage peoples as well as of the careful attention
which they so often pay to odors, we may certainly assume, even in the
absence of much definite evidence, that smell counts for much in their
sexual relationships. This is confirmed by such practices as that found
among some primitive peoples—as, it is stated, in the Philippines—of
lovers exchanging their garments to have the smell of the loved one about
them. In the barbaric stages of society this element becomes self-conscious
and is clearly avowed; personal odors are constantly described with
complacency, sometimes as mingled with the lavish use of artificial
perfumes, in much of the erotic literature produced in the highest stages of
barbarism, especially by Eastern peoples living in hot climates; it is only

necessary to refer to the Song of Songs, the Arabian Nights, and the Indian
treatises on love. Even in some parts of Europe the same influence is
recognized in the crudest animal form, and Krauss states that among the
Southern Slavs it is sometimes customary to leave the sexual parts
unwashed because a strong odor of these parts is regarded as a sexual
stimulant. Under the usual conditions of life in Europe personal odor has
sunk into the background; this has been so equally under the conditions of
classic, mediæval, and modern life. Personal odor has been generally
regarded as unæsthetic; it has, for the most part, only been mentioned to be
reprobated, and even those poets and others who during recent centuries
have shown a sensitive delight and interest in odors—Herrick, Shelley,
Baudelaire, Zola, and Huysmans—have seldom ventured to insist that a
purely natural and personal odor can be agreeable. The fact that it may be
so, and that for most people such odors cannot be a matter of indifference in
the most intimate of all relationships, is usually only to be learned casually
and incidentally. There can be no doubt, however, that, as Kiernan points
out, the extent to which olfaction influences the sexual sphere in civilized
man has been much underestimated. We need not, therefore, be surprised at
the greater interest which has recently been taken in this subject. As usually
happens, indeed, there has been in some writers a tendency to run to the
opposite extreme, and we cannot, with Gustav Jäger, regard the sexual
instinct as mainly or altogether an olfactory matter.
Of the Padmini, the perfect woman, the "lotus woman," Hindu writers say
that "her sweat has the odor of musk," while the vulgar woman, they say,
smells of fish (Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana). Ploss and Bartels (Das Weib,
1901, p. 218) bring forward a passage from the Tamil Kokkôgam, minutely
describing various kinds of sexual odor in women, which they regard as
resting on sound observation.
Four things in a woman, says the Arab, should be perfumed: the mouth, the
armpits, the pudenda, and the nose. The Persian poets, in describing the
body, delighted to use metaphors involving odor. Not only the hair and the
down on the face, but the chin, the mouth, the beauty spots, the neck, all
suggested odorous images. The epithets applied to the hair frequently refer
to musk, ambergris, and civet. (Anis El-Ochchâq translated by Huart,
Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, fasc. 25, 1875.)

The Hebrew Song of Songs furnishes a typical example of a very beautiful
Eastern love-poem in which the importance of the appeal to the sense of
smell is throughout emphasized. There are in this short poem as many as
twenty-four fairly definite references to odors,—personal odors, perfumes,
and flowers,—while numerous other references to flowers, etc., seem to
point to olfactory associations. Both the lover and his sweetheart express
pleasure in each other's personal odor.

"My beloved is unto me," she sings, "as a bag of
myrrh
That lieth between my breasts;
My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna
flowers
In the vineyard of En-gedi."

And again: "His cheeks are as a bed of spices [or balsam], as banks of sweet
herbs." While of her he says: "The smell of thy breath [or nose] is like
apples."
Greek and Roman antiquity, which has so largely influenced the traditions
of modern Europe, was lavish in the use of perfumes, but showed no
sympathy with personal odors. For the Roman satirists, like Martial, a
personal odor is nearly always an unpleasant odor, though, there are a few
allusions in classic literature recognizing bodily smell as a sexual attraction.
Ovid, in his Ars Amandi (Book III), says it is scarcely necessary to remind a
lady that she must not keep a goat in her armpits: "ne trux caper iret in
alas." "Mulier tum bene olet ubi nihil olet" is an ancient dictum, and in the
sixteenth century Montaigne still repeated the same saying with complete
approval.
A different current of feeling began to appear with the new emotional
movement during the eighteenth century. Rousseau called attention to the
importance of the olfactory sense, and in his educational work, Emile (Bk.
II), he referred to the odor of a woman's "cabinet de toilette" as not so
feeble a snare as is commonly supposed. In the same century Casanova
wrote still more emphatically concerning the same point; in the preface to
his Mémoires he states: "I have always found sweet the odor of the women I
have loved"; and elsewhere: "There is something in the air of the bedroom

of the woman one loves, something so intimate, so balsamic, such
voluptuous emanations, that if a lover had to choose between Heaven and
this place of delight his hesitation would not last for a moment" (Mémoires,
vol. iii). In the previous century, in England, Sir Kenelm Digby, in his
interesting and remarkable Private Memoirs, when describing a visit to
Lady Venetia Stanley, afterward his wife, touches on personal odor as an
element of attraction; he had found her asleep in bed and on her breasts "did
glisten a few drops of sweatlike diamond sparks, and had a more fragrant
odor than the violets or primroses whose season was newly passed."
In 1821 Cadet-Devaux published, in the Revue Encyclopédique, a study
entitled "De l'atmosphère de la Femme et de sa Puissance," which attracted
a great deal of attention in Germany as well as in France; he considered that
the exhalations of the feminine body are of the first importance in sexual
attraction.
Prof. A. Galopin in 1886 wrote a semiscientific book, Le Parfum de la
Femme, in which the sexual significance of personal odor is developed to
its fullest. He writes with enthusiasm concerning the sweet and health-
giving character of the natural perfume of a beloved woman, and the
mischief done both to health and love by the use of artificial perfumes. "The
purest marriage that can be contracted between a man and a woman," he
asserts (p. 157) "is that engendered by olfaction and sanctioned by a
common assimilation in the brain of the animated molecules due to the
secretion and evaporation of two bodies in contact and sympathy."
In a book written during the first half of the nineteenth century which
contains various subtle observations on love we read, with reference to the
sweet odor which poets have found in the breath of women: "In reality
many women have an intoxicatingly agreeable breath which plays no small
part in the love-compelling atmosphere which they spread around them"
(Eros oder Wörterbuch über die Physiologie, 1849, Bd. 1, p. 45).
Most of the writers on the psychology of love at this period, however, seem
to have passed over the olfactory element in sexual attraction, regarding it
probably as too unæsthetic. It receives no emphasis either in Sénancour's
De l'Amour or Stendhal's De l'Amour or Michelet's L'Amour.

The poets within recent times have frequently referred to odors, personal
and other, but the novelists have more rarely done so. Zola and Huysmans,
the two novelists who have most elaborately and insistently developed the
olfactory side of life, have dwelt more on odors that are repulsive than on
those that are agreeable. It is therefore of interest to note that in a few
remarkable novels of recent times the attractiveness of personal odor has
been emphasized. This is notably so in Tolstoy's War and Peace, in which
Count Peter suddenly resolves to marry Princess Helena after inhaling her
odor at a ball. In d'Annunzio's Trionfo della Morte the seductive and
consoling odor of the beloved woman's skin is described in several
passages; thus, when Giorgio kissed Ippolita's arms and shoulders, we are
told, "he perceived the sharp and yet delicate perfume of her, the perfume of
the skin that in the hour of joy became intoxicating as that of the tuberose,
and a terrible lash to desire."
When we are dealing with the sexual significance of personal odors in man
there is at the outset an important difference to be noticed in comparison
with the lower mammals. Not only is the significance of odor altogether
very much less, but the focus of olfactory attractiveness has been displaced.
The centre of olfactory attractiveness is not, as usually among animals, in
the sexual region, but is transferred to the upper part of the body. In this
respect the sexual olfactory allurement in man resembles what we find in
the sphere of vision, for neither the sexual organs of man nor of woman are
usually beautiful in the eyes of the opposite sex, and their exhibition is not
among us regarded as a necessary stage in courtship. The odor of the body,
like its beauty, in so far as it can be regarded as a possible sexual
allurement, has in the course of development been transferred to the upper
parts. The careful concealment of the sexual region has doubtless favored
this transfer. It has thus happened that when personal odor acts as a sexual
allurement it is the armpit, in any case normally the chief focus of odor in
the body, which mainly comes into play, together with the skin and the hair.
Aubert, of Lyons, noted that during menstruation the odor of the armpits
may become more powerful, and describes it as being at this time an
aromatic odor of acidulous or chloroform character. Galopin remarks that,
while some women's armpits smell of sheep in rut, others, when exposed to
the air, have a fragrance of ambergris or violet. Dark persons (according to
Gould and Pyle) are said sometimes to exhale a prussic acid odor, and

blondes more frequently musk; Galopin associates the ambergris odor more
especially with blondes.
While some European poets have faintly indicated the woman's armpit as a
centre of sexual attraction, it is among Eastern poets that we may find the
idea more directly and naturally expressed. Thus, in a Chinese drama ("The
Transmigration of Yo-Chow," Mercure de France, No. 8, 1901) we find a
learned young doctor addressing the following poem to his betrothed:—

"When I have climbed to the bushy summit of
Mount Chao,
I have still not reached to the level of your
odorous armpit.
I must needs mount to the sky
Before the breeze brings to me
The perfume of that embalsamed nest!"

This poet seems, however, to have been carried to a pitch of enthusiasm
unusual even in China, for his future mother-in-law, after expressing her
admiration for the poem, remarks: "But who would have thought one could
find so many beautiful things under my daughter's armpit!"
The odor of the armpit is the most powerful in the body, sufficiently
powerful to act as a muscular stimulant even in the absence of any direct
sexual association. This is indicated by an observation made by Féré, who
noticed, when living opposite a laundry, that an old woman who worked
near the window would, toward the close of the day, introduce her right
hand under the sleeve of the other to the armpit and then hold it to her nose;
this she would do about every five minutes. It was evident that the odor
acted as a stimulant to her failing energies. Féré has been informed by
others who have had occasion to frequent workrooms that this proceeding is
by no means uncommon among persons of both sexes. (Féré, L'Instinct
Sexuel, second edition, p. 135.) I have myself noticed the same gesture very
deliberately made in the street by a young English woman of the working
class, under circumstances which suggested that it acted as an immediate
stimulant in fatigue.

Huysmans—who in his novels has insisted on odors, both those of a
personal kind and perfumes, with great precision—has devoted one of the
sketches, "Le Gousset," in his Croquis Parisiens (1880) to the varying
odors of women's armpits. "I have followed this fragrance in the country,"
he remarks, "behind a group of women gleaners under the bright sun. It was
excessive and terrible; it stung your nostrils like an unstoppered bottle of
alkali; it seized you, irritating your mucous membrane with a rough odor
which had in it something of the relish of wild duck cooked with olives and
the sharp odor of the shallot. On the whole, it was not a vile or repugnant
emanation; it united, as an anticipated thing, with the formidable odors of
the landscape; it was the pure note, completing with the human animals' cry
of heat the odorous melody of beasts and woods." He goes on to speak of
the perfume of feminine arms in the ball-room. "There the aroma is of
ammoniated valerian, of chlorinated urine, brutally accentuated sometimes,
even with a slight scent of prussic acid about it, a faint whiff of overripe
peaches." These "spice-boxes," however, Huysmans continues, are more
seductive when their perfume is filtered through the garments. "The appeal
of the balsam of their arms is then less insolent, less cynical, than at the ball
where they are more naked, but it more easily uncages the animal in man.
Various as the color of the hair, the odor of the armpit is infinitely divisible;
its gamut covers the whole keyboard of odors, reaching the obstinate scents
of syringa and elder, and sometimes recalling the sweet perfume of the
rubbed fingers that have held a cigarette. Audacious and sometimes
fatiguing in the brunette and the black woman, sharp and fierce in the red
woman, the armpit is heady as some sugared wines in the blondes." It will
be noted that this very exact description corresponds at various points with
the remarks of more scientific observers.
Sometimes the odor of the armpit may even become a kind of fetich which
is craved for its own sake and in itself suffices to give pleasure. Féré has
recorded such a case, in a friend of his own, a man of 60, with whom at one
time he used to hunt, of robust health and belonging to a healthy family. On
these hunting expeditions he used to tease the girls and women he met
(sometimes even rather old women) in a surprising manner, when he came
upon them walking in the fields with their short-sleeved chemises exposed.
When he had succeeded in introducing his hand into the woman's armpit he
went away satisfied, and frequently held the hand to his nose with evident

pleasure. After long hesitation Féré asked for an explanation, which was
frankly given. As a child he had liked the odor, without knowing why. As a
young man women with strong odors had stimulated him to extraordinary
sexual exploits, and now they were the only women who had any influence
on him. He professed to be able to recognize continence by the odor, as well
as the most favorable moment for approaching a woman. Throughout life a
cold in the head had always been accompanied by persistent general
excitement. (Féré, L'Instinct Sexuel, 1902, p. 134.)
We not only have to recognize that in the course of evolution the specific
odors of the sexual region have sunk into the background as a source of
sexual allurements, we have further to recognize the significant fact that
even those personal odors which are chiefly liable under normal
circumstances to come occasionally within the conscious sexual sphere, and
indeed purely personal odors of all kinds, fail to exert any attraction, but
rather tend to cause antipathy, unless some degree of tumescence has
already been attained. That is to say, our olfactory experiences of the human
body approximate rather to our tactile experiences of it than to our visual
experiences. Sight is our most intellectual sense, and we trust ourselves to it
with comparative boldness without any undue dread that its messages will
hurt us by their personal intimacy; we even court its experiences, for it is
the chief organ of our curiosity, as smell is of a dog's. But smell with us has
ceased to be a leading channel of intellectual curiosity. Personal odors do
not, as vision does, give us information that is very largely intellectual; they
make an appeal that is mainly of an intimate, emotional, imaginative
character. They thus tend, when we are in our normal condition, to arouse
what James calls the antisexual instinct.
"I cannot understand how people do not see how the senses are connected,"
said Jenny Lind to J. A. Symonds (Horatio Brown, J. A. Symonds, vol. i, p.
207). "What I have suffered from my sense of smell! My youth was misery
from my acuteness of sensibility."
Mantegazza discusses the strength of olfactory antipathies (Fisiologia dell'
Odio, p. 101), and mentions that once when ill in Paraguay he was nursed
by an Indian girl of 16, who was fresh as a peach and extremely clean, but
whose odor—"a mixture of wild beast's lair and decayed onions"—caused
nausea and almost made him faint.

Moll (Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis, bd. i, p. 135) records the
case of a neuropathic man who was constantly rendered impotent by his
antipathy to personal body odors. It had very frequently happened to him to
be attracted by the face and appearance of a girl, but at the last moment
potency was inhibited by the perception of personal odor.
In the case of a man of distinguished ability known to me, belonging to a
somewhat neuropathic family, there is extreme sensitiveness to the smell of
a woman, which is frequently the most obvious thing to him about her. He
has seldom known a woman whose natural perfume entirely suits him, and
his olfactory impressions have frequently been the immediate cause of a
rupture of relationships.
It was formerly discussed whether strong personal odor constituted
adequate ground for divorce. Hagen, who brings forward references on this
point (Sexuelle Osphrésiologie, pp. 75-83), considers that the body odors
are normally and naturally repulsive because they are closely associated
with the capryl group of odors, which are those of many of the excretions.
Olfactory antipathies are, however, often strictly subordinated to the
individual's general emotional attitude toward the object from which they
emanate. This is illustrated in the case, known to me, of a man who on a hot
day entering a steamboat with a woman to whom he was attached seated
himself between her and a man, a stranger. He soon became conscious of an
axillary odor which he concluded to come from the man and which he felt
as disagreeable. But a little later he realized that it proceeded from his own
companion, and with this discovery the odor at once lost its disagreeable
character.
In this respect a personal odor resembles a personal touch. Two intimate
touches of the hand, though of precisely similar physical quality, may in
their emotional effects be separated by an immeasurable interval, in
dependence on our attitude toward the person from whom they proceed.
Personal odor, in order to make its allurement felt, and not to arouse
antipathy, must, in normal persons, have been preceded by conditions which
have inhibited the play of the antisexual instinct. A certain degree of
tumescence must already have been attained. It is even possible, when we
bear in mind the intimate sympathy between the sexual sphere and the nose,

that the olfactory organ needs to have its sensibility modified in a form
receptive to sexual messages, though such an assumption is by no means
necessary. It is when such a faint preliminary degree of tumescence has
been attained, however it may have been attained,—for the methods of
tumescence, as we know, are innumerable,—that a sympathetic personal
odor is enabled to make its appeal. If we analyze the cases in which
olfactory perceptions have proved potent in love, we shall nearly always
find that they have been experienced under circumstances favorable for the
occurrence of tumescence. When this is not the case we may reasonably
suspect the presence of some degree of perversion.
In the oft-quoted case of the Austrian peasant who found that he was aided
in seducing young women by dancing with them and then wiping their
faces with a handkerchief he had kept in his armpit, we may doubtless
regard the preliminary excitement of the dance as an essential factor in the
influence produced.
In the same way, I am acquainted with the ease of a lady not usually
sensitive to simple body odors (though affected by perfumes and flowers)
who on one occasion, when already in a state of sexual erethism, was highly
excited when perceiving the odor of her lover's axilla.
The same influence of preliminary excitement may be seen in another
instance known to me, that of a gentlemen who when traveling abroad fell
in with three charming young ladies during a long railway journey. He was
conscious of a pleasurable excitement caused by the prolonged intimacy of
the journey, but this only became definitely sexual when the youngest of the
ladies, stretching before him to look out of the window and holding on to
the rack above, accidentally brought her axilla into close proximity with his
face, whereupon erection was caused, although he himself regards personal
odors, at all events when emanating from strangers, as indifferent or
repulsive.
A medical correspondent, referring to the fact that with many men (indeed
women also) sexual excitement occurs after dancing for a considerable
time, remarks that he considers the odor of the woman's sweat is here a
considerable factor.

The characteristics of olfaction which our investigation has so far revealed
have not, on the whole, been favorable to the influence of personal odors as
a sexual attraction in civilized men. It is a primitive sense which had its
flowering time before men arose; it is a comparatively unæsthetic sense; it
is a somewhat obtuse sense which among Europeans is usually incapable of
perceiving the odor of the "human flower"—to use Goethe's phrase—except
on very close contact, and on this account, and on account of the fact that it
is a predominantly emotional sense, personal odors in ordinary social
intercourse are less likely to arouse the sexual instinct than the antisexual
instinct. If a certain degree of tumescence is required before a personal odor
can exert an attractive influence, a powerful personal odor, strong enough to
be perceived before any degree of tumescence is attained, will tend to cause
repulsion, and in so doing tend, consciously or unconsciously, to excite
prejudice against personal odor altogether. This is actually the case in
civilization, and most people, it would appear, view with more or less
antipathy the personal odors of those persons to whom they are not sexually
attracted, while their attitude is neutral in this respect toward the individuals
to whom they are sexually attracted.[51] The following statement by a
correspondent seems to me to express the experience of the majority of men
in this respect: "I do not notice that different people have different smells.
Certain women I have known have been in the habit of using particular
scents, but no associations could be aroused if I were to smell the same
scent now, for I should not identify it. As a boy I was very fond of scent,
and I associate this with my marked sexual proclivities. I like a woman to
use a little scent. It rouses my sexual feelings, but not to any large extent. I
dislike the smell of a woman's vagina." While the last statement seems to
express the feeling of many if not most men, it may be proper to add that
there seems no natural reason why the vulvar odor of a clean and healthy
woman should be other than agreeable to a normal man who is her lover.
In literature it is the natural odor of women rather than men which receives
attention. We should expect this to be the case since literature is chiefly
produced by men. The question as to whether men or women are really
more apt to be sexually influenced in this way cannot thus be decided.
Among animals, it seems probable, both sexes are alike influenced by
odors, for, while it is usually the male whose sexual regions are furnished
with special scent glands, when such occur, the peculiar odor of the female

during the sexual season is certainly not less efficacious as an allurement to
the male. If we compare the general susceptibility of men and women to
agreeable odors, apart from the question of sexual allurement, there can be
little doubt that it is most marked among women. As Groos points out, even
among children little girls are more interested in scents than boys, and the
investigations of various workers, especially Garbini, have shown that there
is actually a greater power of discriminating odors among girls than among
boys. Marro has gone further, and in an extended series of observations on
girls before and after the establishment of puberty—which is of
considerable interest from the point of view of the sexual significance of
olfaction—he has shown reason to believe that girls acquire an increased
susceptibility to odors when sexual life begins, although they show no such
increased powers as regards the other senses.[52] On the whole, it would
appear that, while women are not apt to be seriously affected, in the absence
of any preliminary excitation, by crude body odors, they are by no means
insusceptible to the sexual influence of olfactory impressions. It is probable,
indeed, that they are more affected, and more frequently affected, in this
way, than are men.
Edouard de Goncourt, in his novel Chérie—the intimate history of a young
girl, founded, he states, on much personal observation—describes (Chapter
LXXXV) the delight with which sensuous, but chaste young girls often take
in strong perfumes. "Perfume and love," he remarks, "impart delights which
are closely allied." In an earlier chapter (XLIV) he writes of his heroine at
the age of 15: "The intimately happy emotion which the young girl
experienced in reading Paul et Virginie and other honestly amorous books
she sought to make more complete and intense and penetrating by soaking
the book with scent, and the love-story reached her senses and imagination
through pages moist with liquid perfume."
Carbini (Archivio per l'Antropologia, 1896, fasc. 3) in a very thorough
investigation of a large number of children, found that the earliest osmo-
gustative sensations occurred in the fourth week in girls, the fifth week in
boys; the first real and definite olfactory sensations appeared in the fifteenth
month in girls, in the sixteenth in boys; while experiments on several
hundred children between the ages of 3 and 6 years showed the girls
slightly, but distinctly, superior to the boys. It may, of course, be argued that
these results merely show a somewhat greater precocity of girls. I have

summarized the main investigations into this question in Man and Woman,
revised and enlarged edition, 1904, pp. 134-138. On the whole, they seem
to indicate greater olfactory acuteness on the part of women, but the
evidence is by no means altogether concordant in this sense. Popular and
general scientific opinion is also by no means always in harmony. Thus,
Tardif, in his book on odors in relation to the sexual instinct, throughout
assumes, as a matter of course, that the sense of smell is most keen in men;
while, on the other hand, I note that in a pamphlet by Mr. Martin Perls, a
manufacturing perfumer, it is stated with equal confidence that "it is a well-
known fact that ladies have, even without a practice of long standing, a
keener sense of smell than men," and on this account he employs a staff of
young ladies for testing perfumes by smell in the laboratory by the glazed
paper test.
It is sometimes said that the use of strong perfumes by women indicates a
dulled olfactory organ. On the other hand, it is said that the use of tobacco
deadens the sensitiveness of the masculine nose. Both these statements
seem to be without foundation. The use of a large amount of perfume is
rather a question of taste than a question of sensory acuteness (not to
mention that those who live in an atmosphere of perfume are, of course,
only faintly conscious of it), and the chemist perfumer in his laboratory
surrounded by strong odors can distinguish them all with great delicacy. As
regards tobacco, in Spain the cigarreras are women and girls who live
perpetually in an atmosphere of tobacco, and Señora Pardo Bazan, who
knows them well, remarks in her novel, La Tribuna, which deals with life in
a tobacco factory, that "the acuity of the sense of smell of the cigarreras is
notable, and it would seem that instead of blunting the nasal membrane the
tobacco makes the olfactory nerves keener."
"It was the same as if I was in a sweet apple garden, from the sweetness that
came to me when the light wind passed over them and stirred their clothes,"
a woman is represented as saying concerning a troop of handsome men in
the Irish sagas (Cuchulain of Muirthemne, p. 161). The pleasure and
excitement experienced by a woman in the odor of her lover is usually felt
concerning a vague and mixed odor which may be characteristic, but is not
definitely traceable to any specific bodily sexual odor. The general odor of
the man she loves, one woman states, is highly, sometimes even
overwhelmingly, attractive to her; but the specific odor of the male sexual

organs which she describes as fishy has no attraction. A man writes that in
his relations with women he has never been able to detect that they were
influenced by the axillary or other specific odors. A woman writes: "To me
any personal odor, as that of perspiration, is very disagreeable, and the
healthy naked human body is very free from any odor. Fresh perspiration
has no disagreeable smell; it is only by retention in the clothing that it
becomes objectionable. The faint smell of smoke which lingers round men
who smoke much is rather exciting to me, but only when it is very faint. If
at all strong it becomes disagreeable. As most of the men who have
attracted me have been great smokers, there is doubtless a direct association
of ideas. It has only once occurred to me that an indifferent unpleasant
smell became attractive in connection with some particular person. In this
case it was the scent of stale tobacco, such as comes from the end of a cold
cigar or cigarette. It was, and is now, very disagreeable to me, but, for the
time and in connection with a particular person, it seemed to me more
delightful and exciting than the most delicious perfume. I think, however,
only a very strong attraction could overcome a dislike of this sort, and I
doubt if I could experience such a twist-round if it had been a personal odor.
Stale tobacco, though nasty, conveys no mentally disagreeable idea. I mean
it does not suggest dirt or unhealthiness."
It is probably significant of the somewhat considerable part which, in one
way or another, odors and perfumes play in the emotional life of women,
that, of the 4 women whose sexual histories are recorded in Appendix B of
vol. iii of these Studies, all are liable to experience sexual effects from
olfactory stimuli, 3 of them from personal odors (though this fact is not in
every case brought out in the histories as recorded), while of the 8 men not
one has considered his olfactory experiences in this respect as worthy of
mention.
The very marked sexual fascination which odor, associated with the men
they love, exerts on women has easily passed unperceived, since women
have not felt called upon to proclaim it. In sexual inversion, however, when
the woman takes a more active and outspoken part than in normal love, it
may very clearly be traced. Here, indeed, it is often exaggerated, in
consequence of the common tendency for neurotic and neurasthenic persons
to be more than normally susceptible to the influence of odors. In the
majority of inverted women, it may safely be said, the odor of the beloved

person plays a very considerable part. Thus, one inverted woman asks the
woman she loves to send her some of her hair that she may intoxicate
herself in solitude with its perfume (Archivio di Psicopatie Sessuali, vol. i,
fasc. 3, p. 36). Again, a young girl with some homosexual tendencies, was
apt to experience sexual emotions when in ordinary contact with
schoolfellows whose body odor was marked (Féré, L'Instinct Sexuel, p.
260). Such examples are fairly typical.
That the body odor of men may in a large number of cases be highly
agreeable and sexually attractive is shown by the testimony of male sexual
inverts. There is abundant evidence to this effect. Raffalovich (L'Uranisme
et l'Unisexualité, p. 126) insists on the importance of body odors as a sexual
attraction to the male invert, and is inclined to think that the increased odor
of the man's own body during sexual excitement may have an auto-
aphrodisiacal effect which is reflected on the body of the loved person. The
odor of peasants, of men who work in the open air, is specially apt to be
found attractive. Moll mentions the case of an inverted man who found the
"forest, mosslike odor" of a schoolfellow irresistibly attractive.
The following passage from a letter written by an Italian marquis has been
sent to me: "Bonifazio stripped one evening, to give me pleasure. He has
the full, rounded flesh and amber coloring which painters of the Giorgione
school gave to their S. Sebastians. When he began to dress, I took up an old
fascia, or girdle of netted silk, which was lying under his breeches, and
which still preserved the warmth of his body. I buried my face in it, and was
half inebriated by its exquisite aroma of young manhood and fresh hay. He
told me he had worn it for two years. No wonder it was redolent of him. I
asked him to let me keep it as a souvenir. He smiled and said: 'You like it
because it has lain so long upon my panoia.' 'Yes, just so,' I replied;
'whenever I kiss it, thus and thus, it will bring you back to me.' Sometimes I
tie it round my naked waist before I go to bed. The smell of it is enough to
cause a powerful erection, and the contact of its fringes with my testicles
and phallus has once or twice produced an involuntary emission."
I may here reproduce a communication which has reached me concerning
the attractiveness of the odor of peasants: "One predominant attraction of
these men is that they are pure and clean; their bodies in a state of healthy
normal function. Then they possess, if they are temperate, what the Greek

poet Straton called the φυδικὴ χρωτὸς (a quality which, according to this
authority, is never found in women). This 'natural fair perfume of the flesh'
is a peculiar attribute of young men who live in the open air and deal with
natural objects. Even their perspiration has an odor very different from that
of girls in ball-rooms: more refined, ethereal, pervasive, delicate, and
difficult to seize. When they have handled hay—in the time of hay-harvest,
or in winter, when they bring hay down from mountain huts—the youthful
peasants carry about with them the smell of 'a field the Lord hath blessed.'
Their bodies and their clothes exhale an indefinable fragrance of purity and
sex combined. Every gland of the robust frame seems to have accumulated
scent from herbs and grasses, which slowly exudes from the cool, fresh skin
of the lad. You do not perceive it in a room. You must take the young man's
hands and bury your face in them, or be covered with him under the same
blanket in one bed, to feel this aroma. No sensual impression on the nerves
of smell is more poignantly impregnated with spiritual poetry—the poetry
of adolescence, and early hours upon the hills, and labor cheerfully
accomplished, and the harvest of God's gifts to man brought home by
human industry. It is worth mentioning that Aristophanes, in his description
of the perfect Athenian Ephebus, dwells upon his being redolent of natural
perfumes."
In a passage in the second part of Faust Goethe (who appears to have felt
considerable interest in the psychology of smell) makes three women speak
concerning the ambrosiacal odor of young men.
In this connection, also, I note a passage in a poem ("Appleton House") by
our own English poet Marvell, which it is of interest to quote:—

"And now the careless victors play,
Dancing the triumphs of the hay,
When every mower's wholesome heat
Smells like an Alexander's sweat.
Their females fragrant as the mead
Which they in fairy circles tread,
When at their dance's end they kiss,
Their new-mown hay not sweeter is."

[30]
R. Andree, "Völkergeruch," in Ethnographische Parallelen, Neue
Folge, 1889, pp. 213-222, brings together many passages
describing the odors of various peoples. Hagen, Sexuelle
Osphrésiologie, pp. 166 et seq., has a chapter on the subject;
Joest, supplement to International Archiv für Ethnographie, 1893,
p. 53, has an interesting passage on the smells of various races, as
also Waitz, Introduction to Anthropology, p. 103. Cf. Sir H. H.
Johnston, British Central Africa, p. 395; T. H. Parke, Experiences
in Equatorial Africa, p. 409; E. H. Man, Journal of the
Anthropological Institute, 1889, p. 391; Brough Smyth,
Aborigines of Victoria, vol. i, p. 7; d'Orbigny, L'Homme
Américain, vol. i, p. 87, etc.

[31]
B. Adachi "Geruch der Europaer," Globus, 1903, No. 1.

[32]
Hagen quotes testimonies on this point, Sexuelle Osphrésiologie,
p. 173. The negro, Castellani states, considers that Europeans
have a smell of death.

[33]
Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition, vol. ii, p.
181.

[34]
Waitz, Introduction to Anthropology, p. 103.

[35]
Monin, Les Odeurs du Corps Humain, second edition, Paris,
1886, discusses briefly but comprehensively the normal and more
especially the pathological odors of the body and of its secretions
and excretions.

[36]
Venturi, Degenerazione Psicho-sessuale, p. 417.

[37]
Quoted by Féré, L'Instinct Sexuel, 1902, p. 133.

[38]
H. Ling Roth, "On Salutations," Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, November, 1889.

[39]
See Appendix A: "The Origins of the Kiss."

[40]
See, e.g., passage quoted by I. Bloch, Beiträge zur Ætiologie der
Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil II, p. 205.

[41]
It must at the same time be remembered that the more or less
degree of exposure involved by sexual intercourse is itself a cause
of nasal congestion and sneezing.

[42]
Féré, Pathologie des Emotions, p. 81

[43]
J. N. Mackenzie similarly suggests (Johns Hopkins Hospital
Bulletin, No. 82, 1898) that "irritation and congestion of the nasal
mucous membrane precede, or are the excitants of, the olfactory
impression that forms the connecting link between the sense of
smell and erethism of the reproductive organs exhibited in the
lower animals."

[44]
Les Odeurs dans les Romans de Zola, Montpellier, 1889.

[45]
Toulouse, Emile Zola, pp. 163-165, 173-175.

[46]
P. J. Möbius, Das Pathologische bei Nietzsche.

[47]
Moll has a passage on the sense of smell in the blind, more
especially in sexual respects, Untersuchungen über die Libido
Sexualis, bd. 1, pp. 137 et seq.

[48]
See, for instance, his poem, "Love Perfumes all Parts," in which
he declares that "Hands and thighs and legs are all richly
aromatical." And compare the lyrics entitled "A Song to the
Maskers," "On Julia's Breath," "Upon Julia's Unlacing Herself,"
"Upon Julia's Sweat," and "To Mistress Anne Soame."

[49]
There are various indications that Goethe was attentive to the
attraction of personal odors; and that he experienced this
attraction himself is shown by the fact that, as he confessed, when
he once had to leave Weimar on an official journey for two days
he took a bodice of Frau von Stein's away in order to carry the
scent of her body with him.

[50]
Hagen has brought together from the literature of the subject a
number of typical cases of olfactory fetichism, Sexuelle
Osphrésiologie, 1901, pp. 82 et seq.

[51]
Moll's inquiries among normal persons have also shown that few
people are conscious of odor as a sexual attraction.
(Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis. Bd. I, p. 133.)

[52]
Marro, La, Pubertà, 1898, Chapter II. Tardif found in boys that
perfumes exerted little or no influence on circulation and
respiration before puberty, though his observations on this point
were too few to carry weight.

IV.

The Influence of Perfumes—Their Aboriginal Relationship to Sexual Body
Odors—This True even of the Fragrance of Flowers—The Synthetic
Manufacture of Perfumes—The Sexual Effects of Perfumes—Perfumes
perhaps Originally Used to Heighten the Body Odors—The Special
Significance of the Musk Odor—Its Wide Natural Diffusion in Plants and
Animals and Man—Musk a Powerful Stimulant—Its Widespread Use as a
Perfume—Peau d'Espagne—The Smell of Leather and its Occasional
Sexual Effects—The Sexual Influence of the Odors of Flowers—The
Identity of many Plant Odors with Certain Normal and Abnormal Body
Odors—The Smell of Semen in this Connection.

So far we have been mainly concerned with purely personal odors. It is,
however, no longer possible to confine the discussion of the sexual
significance of odor within the purely animal limit. The various
characteristics of personal odor which have been noted—alike those which
tend to make it repulsive and those which tend to make it attractive—have
led to the use of artificial perfumes, to heighten the natural odor when it is
regarded as attractive, to disguise it when it is regarded as repellent; while
at the same time, happily covering both of these impulses, has developed
the pure delight in perfume for its own agreeableness, the æsthetic side of

olfaction. In this way—although in a much less constant and less elaborate
manner—the body became adorned to the sense of smell just as by clothing
and ornament it is adorned to the sense of sight.
But—and this is a point of great significance from our present standpoint—
we do not really leave the sexual sphere by introducing artificial perfumes.
The perfumes which we extract from natural products, or, as is now
frequently the case, produce by chemical synthesis, are themselves either
actually animal sexual odors or allied in character or composition, to the
personal odors they are used to heighten or disguise. Musk is the product of
glands of the male Moschus moschiferus which correspond to preputial
sebaceous glands; castoreum is the product of similar sexual glands in the
beaver, and civet likewise from the civet; ambergris is an intestinal calculus
found in the rectum of the cachelot.[53] Not only, however, are nearly all the
perfumes of animal origin, in use by civilized man, odors which have a
specially sexual object among the animals from which they are derived, but
even the perfumes of flowers may be said to be of sexual character. They
are given out at the reproductive period in the lives of plants, and they
clearly have very largely as their object an appeal to the insects who secure
plant fertilization, such appeal having as its basis the fact that among insects
themselves olfactory sensibility has in many cases been developed in their
own mating.[54] There is, for example, a moth in which both sexes are
similarly and inconspicuously marked, but the males diffuse an agreeable
odor, said to be like pineapple, which attracts the females.[55] If, therefore,
the odors of flowers have developed because they proved useful to the plant
by attracting insects or other living creatures, it is obvious that the
advantage would lie with those plants which could put forth an animal
sexual odor of agreeable character, since such an odor would prove
fascinating to animal creatures. We here have a very simple explanation of
the fundamental identity of odors in the animal and vegetable worlds. It
thus comes about that from a psychological point of view we are not really
entering a new field when we begin to discuss the influence of perfumes
other than those of the animal body. We are merely concerned with
somewhat more complex or somewhat more refined sexual odors; they are
not specifically different from the human odors and they mingle with them
harmoniously. Popular language bears witness to the truth of this statement,
and the normal and abnormal human odors, as we have already seen, are

constantly compared to artificial, animal, and plant odors, to chloroform, to
musk, to violet, to mention only those similitudes which seem to occur most
frequently.

The methods now employed for obtaining the perfumes universally used in
civilized lands are three: (1) the extraction of odoriferous compounds from
the neutral products in which they occur; (2) the artificial preparation of
naturally occurring odoriferous compounds by synthetic processes; (3) the
manufacture of materials which yield odors resembling those of pleasant
smelling natural objects. (See, e.g., "Natural and Artificial Perfumes,"
Nature, December 27, 1900.) The essential principles of most of our
perfumes belong to the complex class of organic compounds known as
terpenes. During recent years a number of the essential elements of natural
perfumes have been studied, in many cases the methods of preparing them
artificially discovered, and they are largely replacing the use of natural
perfumes not only for soaps, etc., but for scent essences, though it appears
to be very difficult to imitate exactly the delicate fragrance achieved by
Nature. Artificial musk was discovered accidentally by Bauer when
studying the butyltoluenes contained in a resin extractive. Vanillin, the
odoriferous principle of the vanilla bean, is an aldehyde which was first
artificially prepared by Tiemann and Haarmann in 1874 by oxidizing
coniferin, a glucoside contained in the sap of various coniferæ, but it now
appears to be usually manufactured from eugenol, a phenol contained in oil
of cloves. Piperonal, an aldehyde closely allied to vanillin, is used in
perfumery under the name of heliotropin and is prepared from oil of
sassafras and oil of camphor. Cumarine, the material to which tonka bean,
sweet woodruff, and new-mown hay owe their characteristic odors, was
synthetically prepared by W. H. Parkin in 1868 by heating sodiosalicylic
aldehyde with acetic anhydride, though now more cheaply prepared from an
herb growing in Florida. Irone, which has the perfume of violets, was
isolated in 1893 from a ketone contained in orris-root; and ionone, another
ketone which has a very closely similar odor of fresh violets and was
isolated after some years' further work, is largely used in the preparation of
violet perfume. Irone and ionone are closely similar in composition to oil of
turpentine which when taken into the body is partly converted into perfume
and gives a strong odor of violets to the urine. "Little has yet been
accomplished toward ascertaining the relation between the odor and the
chemical constitution of substances in general. Hydrocarbons as a class
possess considerable similarity in odor, so also do the organic sulphides
and, to a much smaller extent, the ketones. The subject waits for some one

to correlate its various physiological, psychological and physical aspects in
the same way that Helmholtz did for sound. It seems, as yet, impossible to
assign any probable reason to the fact that many substances have a pleasant
odor. It may, however, be worth suggesting that certain compounds, such as
the volatile sulphides and the indoles, have very unpleasant odors because
they are normal constituents of mammalian excreta and of putrefied animal
products; the repulsive odors may be simply necessary results of
evolutionary processes." (Loc. cit., Nature, December 27, 1900.)
Many of the perfumes in use are really combinations of a great many
different odors in varying proportions, such as oil of rose, lavender oil,
ylang-ylang, etc. The most highly appreciated perfumes are often made up
of elements which in stronger proportion would be regarded as highly
unpleasant.
In the study and manufacture of perfumes Germany and France have taken
the lead in recent times. The industry is one of great importance. In France
alone the trade in perfumes amounts to £4,000,000.
It is doubtless largely owing to the essential and fundamental identity of
odors—to the chemical resemblances even of odors from the most widely
remote sources—that we find that perfumes in many cases have the same
sexual effects as are primitively possessed by the body odors. In northern
countries, where the use of perfumes is chiefly cultivated by women, it is by
women that this sexual influence is most liable to be felt. In the South and
in the East it appears to be at least equally often experienced by men. Thus,
in Italy Mantegazza remarks that "many men of strong sexual temperament
cannot visit with impunity a laboratory of essences and perfumes."[56] In the
East we find it stated in the Islamic book entitled The Perfumed Garden of
Sheik Nefzaoui that the use of perfumes by women, as well as by men,
excites to the generative act. It is largely in reliance on this fact that in many
parts of the world, especially among Eastern peoples and occasionally
among ourselves in Europe, women have been accustomed to perfume the
body and especially the vulva.[57]
It seems highly probable that, as has been especially emphasized by Hagen,
perfumes were primitively used by women, not as is sometimes the case in
civilization, with the idea of disguising any possible natural odor, but with

the object of heightening and fortifying the natural odor.[58] If the primitive
man was inclined to disparage a woman whose odor was slight or
imperceptible,—turning away from her with contempt, as the Polynesian
turned away from the ladies of Sydney: "They have no smell!"—women
would inevitably seek to supplement any natural defects in this respect, and
to accentuate their odorous qualities, in the same way as by corsets and
bustles, even in civilization, they have sought to accentuate the sexual
saliencies of their bodies. In this way we may, as Hagen suggests, explain
the fact that until recent times the odors preferred by women have not been
the most delicate or exquisite, but the strongest, the most animal, the most
sexual: musk, castoreum, civet, and ambergris.
In that interesting novel—dealing with the adventures of a Jewish maiden at
the Persian court of Xerxes—which under the title of Esther has found its
way into the Old Testament we are told that it was customary in the royal
harem at Shushan to submit the women to a very prolonged course of
perfuming before they were admitted to the king: "six months with oil of
myrrh and six months with sweet odors." (Esther, Chapter II, v. 12.)
In the Arabian Nights there are many allusions to the use of perfumes by
women with a more or less definitely stated aphrodisiacal intent. Thus we
read in the story of Kamaralzaman: "With fine incense I will perfume my
breasts, my belly, my whole body, so that my skin may melt more sweetly
in thy mouth, O apple of my eye!"
Even among savages the perfuming of the body is sometimes practiced with
the object of inducing love in the partner. Schellong states that the Papuans
of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land rub various fragrant plants into their bodies for
this purpose. (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1899, ht. i, p. 19.) The significance
of this practice is more fully revealed by Haddon when studying the
Papuans of Torres Straits among whom the initiative in courtship is taken
by the women. It was by scenting himself with a pungent odorous substance
that a young man indicated that he was ready to be sued by the girls. A man
would wear this scent at the back of his neck during a dance in order to
attract the attention of a particular girl; it was believed to act with magical
certainty, after the manner of a charm (Reports of the Cambridge
Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v, pp. 211, 222, and 328).

The perfume which is of all perfumes the most interesting from the present
point of view is certainly musk. With ambergris, musk is the chief member
of Linnæus's group of Odores ambrosiacæ, a group which in sexual
significances, as Zwaardemaker remarks, ranks besides the capryl group of
odors. It is a perfume of ancient origin; its name is Persian[59] (indicating
doubtless the channel whence it reached Europe) and ultimately derived
from the Sanskrit word for testicle in allusion to the fact that it was
contained in a pouch removed from the sexual parts of the male musk-deer.
Musk odors, however, often of considerable strength, are very widely
distributed in Nature, alike among animals and plants. This is indicated by
the frequency with which the word "musk" forms part of the names of
animals and plants which are by no means always nearly related. We have
the musk-ox, the musky mole, several species called musk-rat, the musk-
duct, the musk-beetle; while among plants which have received their names
from a real or supposed musky odor are, besides several that are called
musk-plant, the musk-rose, the musk-hyacinth, the musk-mallow, the musk-
orchid, the musk-melon, the musk-cherry, the musk-pear, the musk-plum,
muskat and muscatels, musk-seed, musk-tree, musk-wood, etc.[60] But a
musky odor is not merely widespread in Nature among plants and the lower
animals, it is peculiarly associated with man. Incidentally we have already
seen how it is regarded as characteristic of some races of man, especially
the Chinese. Moreover, the smell of the negress is said to be musky in
character, and among Europeans a musky odor is said to be characteristic of
blondes. Laycock, in his Nervous Diseases of Women, stated his opinion
that "the musk odor is certainly the sexual odor of man"; and Féré states
that the musk odor is that among natural perfumes most nearly approaching
the odor of the sexual secretions. We have seen that the Chinese poet vaunts
the musky odor of his mistress's armpits, while another Oriental saying
concerning the attractive woman is that "her navel is filled with musk."
Persian literature contains many references to musk as an attractive body
odor, and Firdusi speaks of a woman's hair as "a crown of musk," while the
Arabian poet Motannabi says of his mistress that "her hyacinthine hair
smells sweeter than Scythian musk." Galopin stated that he knew women
whose natural odor of musk (and less frequently of ambergris) was
sufficiently strong to impart to a bath in less than an hour a perfume due
entirely to the exhalations of the musky body; it must be added that Galopin
was an enthusiast in this matter.

The special significance of musk from our present point of view lies not
only in the fact that we here have a perfume, widely scattered throughout
nature and often in an agreeable form, which is at the same time a very
frequent personal odor in man. Musk is the odor which not only in the
animals to which it has given a name, but in many others, is a specifically
sexual odor, chiefly emitted during the sexual season. The sexual odors,
indeed, of most animals seem to be modifications of musk. The Sphinx
moth has a musky odor which is confined to the male and is doubtless
sexual. Some lizards have a musky odor which is heightened at the sexual
season; crocodiles during the pairing season emit from their submaxillary
glands a musky odor which pervades their haunts. In the same way
elephants emit a musky odor from their facial glands during the rutting
season. The odor of the musk-duck is chiefly confined to the breeding
season.[61] The musky odor of the negress is said to be heightened during
sexual excitement.
The predominance of musk as a sexual odor is associated with the fact that
its actual nervous influence, apart from the presence of sexual association,
is very considerable. Féré found it to be a powerful muscular stimulant. In
former times musk enjoyed a high reputation as a cardiac stimulant; it fell
into disuse, but in recent years its use in asthenic states has been revived,
and excellent results, it has been claimed, have followed its administration
in cases of collapse from Asiatic cholera. For sexual torpor in women it still
has (like vanilla and sandal) a certain degree of reputation, though it is not
often used, and some of the old Arabian physicians (especially Avicenna)
recommended it, with castoreum and myrrh, for amenorrhœa. Its powerful
action is indicated by the experience of Esquirol, who stated that he had
seen cases in which sensory stimulation by musk in women during lactation
had produced mania. It has always had the reputation, more especially in
the Mohammedan East, of being a sexual stimulant to men; "the noblest of
perfumes," it is called in El Ktab, "and that which most provokes to
venery."
It is doubtless a fact significant of the special sexual effects of musk that, as
Laycock remarked, in cases of special idiosyncrasy to odors, musk appears
to be that odor which is most liked or disliked. Thus, the old English
physician Whytt remarked that "several delicate women who could easily
bear the stronger smell of tobacco have been thrown into fits by musk,

ambergris, or a pale rose."[62] It may be remarked that in the Perfumed
Garden of Sheik Nefzaoui it is stated that it is by their sexual effects that
perfumes tend to throw women into a kind of swoon, and Lucretius remarks
that a woman who smells castoreum, another animal sexual perfume, at the
time of her menstrual period may swoon.[63]
Not only is musk the most cherished perfume of the Islamic world, and the
special favorite of the Prophet himself, who greatly delighted in perfumes
("I love your world," he is reported to have said in old age, "for its women
and its perfumes"),[64] it is the only perfume generally used by the women
of a land in which the refinements of life have been carried so far as Japan,
and they received it from the Chinese.[65]
Moreover, musk is still the most popular of European perfumes. It is the
perfumes containing musk, Piesse states in his well-known book on the Art
of Perfumery, which sell best. It is certainly true that in its simple form the
odor of musk is not nowadays highly considered in Europe. This fact is
connected with the ever-growing refinement in accordance with which the
specific odors of the sexual regions in human beings tend to lose their
primitive attractiveness and bodily odors generally become mingled with
artificial perfumes and so disguised. But, although musk in its simple form,
and under its ancient name, has lost its hold in Europe, it is an interesting
and significant fact that it is still the perfumes which contain musk that are
the most widely popular.
Peau d'Espagne may be mentioned as a highly complex and luxurious
perfume, often the favorite scent of sensuous persons, which really owes a
large part of its potency to the presence of the crude animal sexual odors of
musk and civet. It consists of wash-leather steeped in ottos of neroli, rose,
santal, lavender, verbena, bergamot, cloves, and cinnamon, subsequently
smeared with civet and musk. It is said by some, probably with a certain
degree of truth, that Peau d'Espagne is of all perfumes that which most
nearly approaches the odor of a woman's skin; whether it also suggests the
odor of leather is not so clear.
There is, however, no doubt that the smell of leather has a curiously
stimulating sexual influence on many men and women. It is an odor which
seems to occupy an intermediate place between the natural body odors and

the artificial perfumes for which it sometimes serves as a basis; possibly it
is to this fact that its occasional sexual influence is owing, for, as we have
already seen, there is a tendency for sexual allurement to attach to odors
which are not the specific personal body odors but yet are related to them.
Moll considers, no doubt rightly, that shoe fetichism, perhaps the most
frequent of sexual fetichistic perversions, is greatly favored, if, indeed, it
does not owe its origin to, the associated odor of the feet and of the shoes.
[66] He narrates a case of shoe fetichism in a man in which the perversion

began at the age of 6; when for the first time he wore new shoes, having
previously used only the left-off shoes of his elder brother; he felt and smelt
these new shoes with sensations of unmeasured pleasure; and a few years
later began to use shoes as a method of masturbation.[67] Näcke has also
recorded the case of a shoe fetichist who declared that the sexual attraction
of shoes (usually his wife's) lay largely in the odor of the leather.[68] Krafft-
Ebing, again, brings forward a case of shoe fetichism in which the
significant fact is mentioned that the subject bought a pair of leather cuffs to
smell while masturbating.[69] Restif de la Bretonne, who was somewhat of a
shoe fetichist, appears to have enjoyed smelling shoes. It is not probable
that the odor of leather explains the whole of shoe fetichism,—as we shall
see when, in another "Study," this question comes before us—and in many
cases it cannot be said to enter at all; it is, however, one of the factors. Such
a conclusion is further supported by the fact that by many the odor of new
shoes is sometimes desired as an adjuvant to coitus. It is in the experience
of prostitutes that such a device is not infrequent. Näcke mentions that a
colleague of his was informed by a prostitute that several of her clients
desired the odor of new shoes in the room, and that she was accustomed to
obtain the desired perfume by holding her shoes for a moment over the
flame of a spirit lamp.
The direct sexual influence of the odor of leather is, however, more
conclusively proved by those instances in which it exists apart from shoes
or other objects having any connection with the human body. I have
elsewhere in these "Studies"[71] recorded the case of a lady, entirely normal
in sexual and other respects, who is conscious of a considerable degree of
pleasurable sexual excitement in the presence of the smell of leather
objects, more especially of leather-bound ledgers and in shops where
leather objects are sold. She thinks this dates from the period when, as a

child of 9, she was sometimes left alone for a time on a high stool in an
office. A possible explanation in this case lies in the supposition that on one
of these early occasions sexual excitement was produced by the contact
with the stool (in a way that is not infrequent in young girls) and that the
accidentally associated odor of leather permanently affected the nervous
system, while the really significant contact left no permanent impression.
Even on such a supposition it might, however, still be maintained that a real
potency of the leather odor is illustrated by this case, and this is likewise
suggested by the fact that the same subject is also sexually affected by
various perfumes and odorous flowers not recalling leather.[70]
It has been suggested to me by a lady that the odor of leather suggests that
of the sexual organs. The same suggestion is made by Hagen,[72] and I find
it stated by Gould and Pyle that menstruating girls sometimes smell of
leather. The secret of its influence may thus be not altogether obscure; in the
fact that leather is animal skin, and that it may thus vaguely stir the
olfactory sensibilities which had been ancestrally affected by the sexual
stimulus of the skin odor lies the probable foundation of the mystery.
In the absence of all suggestion of personal or animal odors, in its most
exquisite forms in the fragrance of flowers, olfactory sensations are still
very frequently of a voluptuous character. Mantegazza has remarked that it
is a proof of the close connection between the sense of smell and the sexual
organs that the expression of pleasure produced by olfaction resembles the
expression of sexual pleasures.[73] Make the chastest woman smell the
flowers she likes best, he remarks, and she will close her eyes, breathe
deeply, and, if very sensitive, tremble all over, presenting an intimate
picture which otherwise she never shows, except perhaps to her lover. He
mentions a lady who said: "I sometimes feel such pleasure in smelling
flowers that I seem to be committing a sin."[74] It is really the case that in
many persons—usually, if not exclusively, women—the odor of flowers
produces not only a highly pleasurable, but a distinctly and specifically
sexual, effect. I have met with numerous cases in which this effect was well
marked. It is usually white flowers with heavy, penetrating odors which
exert this influence. Thus, one lady (who is similarly affected by various
perfumes, forget-me-nots, ylang-ylang, etc.) finds that a number of flowers
produce on her a definite sexual effect, with moistening of the pudenda.

This effect is especially produced by white flowers like the gardenia,
tuberose, etc. Another lady, who lives in India, has a similar experience
with flowers. She writes: A scent to cause me sexual excitement must be
somewhat heavy and penetrating. Nearly all white flowers so affect me and
many Indian flowers with heavy, almost pungent scents. (All the flower
scents are quite unconnected with me with any individual.) Tuberose, lilies
of the valley, and frangipani flowers have an almost intoxicating effect on
me. Violets, roses, mignonette, and many others, though very delicious,
give me no sexual feeling at all. For this reason the line, 'The lilies and
languors of virtue for the roses and raptures of vice' seems all wrong to me.
The lily seems to me a very sensual flower, while the rose and its scent
seem very good and countrified and virtuous. Shelley's description of the
lily of the valley, 'whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale,' falls in
much more with my ideas. "I can quite understand," she adds, "that leather,
especially of books, might have an exciting effect, as the smell has this
penetrating quality, but I do not think it produces any special feeling in
me." This more sensuous character of white flowers is fairly obvious to
many persons who do not experience from them any specifically sexual
effects. To some people lilies have an odor which they describe as sexual,
although these persons may be quite unaware that Hindu authors long since
described the vulvar secretion of the Padmini, or perfect woman, during
coitus, as "perfumed like the lily that has newly burst."[75] It is noteworthy
that it was more especially the white flowers—lily, tuberose, etc.—which
were long ago noted by Cloquet as liable to cause various unpleasant
nervous effects, cardiac oppression and syncope.[76]
When we are concerned with the fragrances of flowers it would seem that
we are far removed from the human sexual field, and that their sexual
effects are inexplicable. It is not so. The animal and vegetable odors, as,
indeed, we have already seen, are very closely connected. The recorded
cases are very numerous in which human persons have exhaled from their
skins—sometimes in a very pronounced degree—the odors of plants and
flowers, of violets, of roses, of pineapple, of vanilla. On the other hand,
there are various plant odors which distinctly recall, not merely the general
odor of the human body, but even the specifically sexual odors. A rare
garden weed, the stinking goosefoot, Chenopodium vulvaria, it is well
known, possesses a herring brine or putrid fish odor—due, it appears, to

propylamin, which is also found in the flowers of the common white thorn
or mayflower (Cratægus oxyacantha) and many others of the Rosaceæ—
which recalls the odor of the animal and human sexual regions.[77] The
reason is that both plant and animal odors belong chemically to the same
group of capryl odors (Linnæus's Odores hircini), so called from the goat,
the most important group of odors from the sexual point of view. Caproic
and capryl acid are contained not only in the odor of the goat and in human
sweat, and in animal products as many cheeses, but also in various plants,
such as Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum), and the Stinking St. John's
worts (Hypericum hircinum), as well as the Chenopodium. Zwaardemaker
considers it probable that the odor of the vagina belongs to the same group,
as well as the odor of semen (which Haller called odor aphrodisiacus),
which last odor is also found, as Cloquet pointed out, in the flowers of the
common berberry (Berberis vulgaris) and in the chestnut. A very
remarkable and significant example of the same odor seems to occur in the
case of the flowers of the henna plant, the white-flowered Lawsonia
(Lawsonia inermis), so widely used in some Mohammedan lands for dyeing
the nails and other parts of the body. "These flowers diffuse the sweetest
odor," wrote Sonnini in Egypt a century ago; "the women delight to wear
them, to adorn their houses with them, to carry them to the baths, to hold
them in their hands, and to perfume their bosoms with them. They cannot
patiently endure that Christian and Jewish women shall share the privilege
with them. It is very remarkable that the perfume of the henna flowers,
when closely inhaled, is almost entirely lost in a very decided spermatic
odor. If the flowers are crushed between the fingers this odor prevails, and
is, indeed, the only one perceptible. It is not surprising that so delicious a
flower has furnished Oriental poetry with many charming traits and
amorous similes." Such a simile Sonnini finds in the Song of Songs, i. 13-
14.[78]
The odor of semen has not been investigated, but, according to
Zwaardemaker, artificially produced odors (like cadaverin) resemble it. The
odor of the leguminous fenugreek, a botanical friend considers, closely
approaches the odor given off in some cases by the armpit in women. It is
noteworthy that fenugreek contains cumarine, which imparts its fragrance
to new-mown hay and to various flowers of somewhat similar odor. On
some persons these have a sexually exciting effect, and it is of considerable

interest to observe that they recall to many the odor of semen. "It seems
very natural," a lady writes, "that flowers, etc., should have an exciting
effect, as the original and by far the pleasantest way of love-making was in
the open among flowers and fields; but a more purely physical reason may,
I think, be found in the exact resemblance between the scent of semen and
that of the pollen of flowering grasses. The first time I became aware of this
resemblance it came on me with a rush that here was the explanation of the
very exciting effect of a field of flowering grasses and, perhaps through
them, of the scents of other flowers. If I am right, I suppose flower scents
should affect women more powerfully than men in a sexual way. I do not
think anyone would be likely to notice the odor of semen in this connection
unless they had been greatly struck by the exciting effects of the pollen of
grasses. I had often noticed it and puzzled over it." As pollen is the male
sexual element of flowers, its occasionally stimulating effect in this
direction is perhaps but an accidental result of a unity running through the
organic world, though it may be perhaps more simply explained as a special
form of that nasal irritation which is felt by so many persons in a hay-field.
Another correspondent, this time a man, tells me that he has noted the
resemblance of the odor of semen to that of crushed grasses. A scientific
friend who has done much work in the field of organic chemistry tells me
he associates the odor of semen with that produced by diastasic action on
mixing flour and water, which he regards as sexual in character. This again
brings us to the starchy products of the leguminous plants. It is evident that,
subtle and obscure as many questions in the physiology and psychology of
olfaction still remain, we cannot easily escape from their sexual
associations.

[53]
H. Beauregard, Matière Médicale Zoölogique: Histoire des
Drogues d'origine Animate, 1901.

[54]
Professor Plateau, of Ghent, has for many years carried on a
series of experiments which would even tend to show that insects
are scarcely attracted by the colors of flowers at all, but mainly
influenced by a sense which would appear to be smell. His

experiments have been recorded during recent years (from 1887)
in the Bulletins de l'Académie Royale de Belgique, and have from
time to time been summarized in Nature, e.g., February 5, 1903.

[55]
David Sharp, Cambridge Natural History: Insects, Part II, p. 398.

[56]
Mantegazza, Fisiologia dell' Amore, 1873, p. 176.

[57]
Mantegazza (L'Amour dans l'Humanité, p. 94) refers to various
peoples who practice this last custom. Egypt was a great centre of
the practice more than 3000 years ago.

[58]
Hagen, Sexuelle Osphrésiologie, 1901, p. 226. It has been
suggested to me by a medical correspondent that one of the
primitive objects of the hair, alike on head, mons veneris, and
axilla, was to collect sweat and heighten its odor to sexual ends.

[59]
The names of all our chief perfumes are Arabic or Persian: civet,
musk, ambergris, attar, camphor, etc.

[60]
Cloquet (Osphrésiologie, pp. 73-76) has an interesting passage on
the prevalence of the musk odor in animals, plants, and even
mineral substances.

[61]
Laycock brings together various instances of the sexual odors of
animals, insisting on their musky character (Nervous Diseases of

Women; section, "Odors"). See also a section in the Descent of
Man (Part II, Chapter XVIII), in which Darwin argues that "the
most odoriferous males are the most successful in winning the
females." Distant also has an interesting paper on this subject,
"Biological Suggestions," Zoölogist, May, 1902; he points out the
significant fact that musky odors are usually confined to the male,
and argues that animal odors generally are more often attractive
than protective.

[62]
R. Whytt, Works, 1768, p. 543.

[63]
Lucretius, VI, 790-5.

[64]
Mohammed, said Ayesha, was very fond of perfumes, especially
"men's scents," musk and ambergris. He used also to burn
camphor on odoriferous wood and enjoy the fragrant smell, while
he never refused perfumes when offered them as a present. The
things he cared for most, said Ayesha, were women, scents, and
foods. Muir, Life of Mahomet, vol. iii, p. 297.

[65]
H. ten Kate, International Centralblatt für Anthropologie, Ht. 6,
1902. This author, who made observations on Japanese with
Zwaardemaker's olfactometer, found that, contrary to an opinion
sometimes stated, they have a somewhat defective sense of smell.
He remarks that there are no really native Japanese perfumes.

[66]
Moll: Die Konträre Sexualempfindung, third edition, 1890, p.
306.

[67]

Moll: Libido Sexualis, bd. 1, p. 284.

[68]
P. Näcke, "Un Cas de Fetichisme de Souliers," Bulletin de la
Société de Médecine Mentale de Belgique, 1894.

[69]
Psychopathia Sexualis, English edition, p. 167.

[70]
Philip Salmuth (Observationes Medicæ, Centuria II, no. 63) in the
seventeenth century recorded a case in which a young girl of
noble birth (whose sister was fond of eating chalk, cinnamon, and
cloves) experienced extreme pleasure in smelling old books. It
would appear, however, that in this case the fascination lay not so
much in the odor of the leather as in the mouldy odor of worm-
eaten books; "fætore veterum liborum, a blattis et tineis
exesorum, situque prorsus corruptorum" are Salmuth's words.

[71]
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. iii, "Appendix B, History
VIII."

[72]
Sexuelle Osphrésiologie, p. 106.

[73]
Mantegazza, Fisiologia dell' Amore, p. 176.

[74]
In this connection I may quote the remark of the writer of a
thoughtful article in the Journal of Psychological Medicine, 1851:
"The use of scents, especially those allied to the musky, is one of

the luxuries of women, and in some constitutions cannot be
indulged without some danger to the morals, by the excitement to
the ovaria which results. And although less potent as aphrodisiacs
in their action on the sexual system of women than of men, we
have reason to think that they cannot be used to excess with
impunity by most."

[75]
Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, 1883, p. 5.

[76]
Cloquet, Osphrésiologie, p. 95.

[77]
In Normandy the Chenopodium, it is said, is called "conio," and
in Italy erba connina (con, cunnus), on account of its vulvar odor.
The attraction of dogs to this plant has been noted. In the same
way cats are irresistibly attracted to preparations of valerian
because their own urine contains valerianic acid.

[78]
Sonnini, Voyage dans la Haute et Basse Egypte, 1799, vol. i. p.
298.

V.

The Evil Effects of Excessive Olfactory Stimulation—The Symptoms of
Vanillism—The Occasional Dangerous Results of the Odors of Flowers—
Effects of Flowers on the Voice.

The reality of the olfactory influences with which we have been concerned,
however slight they may sometimes appear, is shown by the fact that odors,
both agreeable and disagreeable, are stimulants, obeying the laws which

hold good for stimulants generally. They whip up the nervous energies
momentarily, but in the end, if the excitation is excessive and prolonged,
they produce fatigue and exhaustion. This is clearly shown by Féré's
elaborate experiments on the influences of odors, as compared with other
sensory stimulants, on the amount of muscular work performed with the
ergograph.[79] Commenting on the remark of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, that
"man uses perfumes to impart energy to his passion," Féré remarks: "But
perfumes cannot keep up the fires which they light." Their prolonged use
involves fatigue, which is not different from that produced by excessive
work, and reproduces all the bodily and psychic accompaniments of
excessive work.[80] It is well known that workers in perfumes are apt to
suffer from the inhalation of the odors amid which they live. Dealers in
musk are said to be specially liable to precocious dementia. The symptoms
generally experienced by the men and women who work in vanilla factories
where the crude fruit is prepared for commerce have often been studied and
are well known. They are due to the inhalation of the scent, which has all
the properties of the aromatic aldehydes, and include skin eruptions,[81]
general excitement, sleeplessness, headache, excessive menstruation, and
irritable bladder. There is nearly always sexual excitement, which may be
very pronounced.[82]
We are here in the presence, it may be insisted, not of a nervous influence
only, but of a direct effect of odor on the vital processes. The experiments
of Tardif on the influence of perfumes on frogs and rabbits showed that a
poisonous effect was exerted;[83] while Féré, by incubating fowls' eggs in
the presence of musk, found repeatedly that many abnormalities occurred,
and that development was retarded even in the embryos that remained
normal; while he obtained somewhat similar results by using essences of
lavender, cloves, etc.[84] The influence of odors is thus deeper than is
indicated by their nervous effects; they act directly on nutrition. We are led,
as Passy remarks, to regard odors as very intimately related to the
physiological properties of organic substances, and the sense of smell as a
detached fragment of generally sensibility, reacting to the same stimuli as
general sensibility, but highly specialized in view of its protective function.
The reality and subtlety of the influence of odors is further shown, by the
cases in which very intense effects are produced even by the temporary

inhalation of flowers or perfumes or other odors. Such cases of idiosyncrasy
in which a person—frequently of somewhat neurotic temperament—
becomes acutely sensitive to some odor or odors have been recorded in
medical literature for many centuries. In these cases the obnoxious odor
produces congestion of the respiratory passages, sneezing, headache,
fainting, etc., but occasionally, it has been recorded, even death. (Dr. J. N.
Mackenzie, in his interesting and learned paper on "The Production of the
so-called 'Rose Cold,' etc.," American Journal of Medical Sciences, January,
1886, quotes many cases, and gives a number of references to ancient
medical authors; see also Layet, art. "Odeur," Dictionnaire Encyclopédique
des Sciences Médicales.)
An interesting phenomenon of the group—though it is almost too common
to be described as an idiosyncrasy—is the tendency of the odor of certain
flowers to affect the voice and sometimes even to produce complete loss of
voice. The mechanism of the process is not fully understood, but it would
appear that congestion and paresis of the larynx is produced and spasm of
the bronchial tube. Botallus in 1565 recorded cases in which the scent of
flowers brought on difficulty of breathing, and the danger of flowers from
this point of view is well recognized by professional singers. Joal has
studied this question in an elaborate paper (summarized in the British
Medical Journal, March 3, 1895), and Dr. Cabanès has brought together
(Figaro, January 20, 1894) the experiences of a number of well-known
singers, teachers of singing, and laryngologists. Thus, Madame Renée
Richard, of the Paris Opera, has frequently found that when her pupils have
arrived with a bunch of violets fastened to the bodice or even with a violet
and iris sachet beneath the corset, the voice has been marked by weakness
and, on using the laryngoscope, she has found the vocal cords congested.
Madame Calvé confirmed this opinion, and stated that she was specially
sensitive to tuberose and mimosa, and that on one occasion a bouquet of
white lilac has caused her, for a time, complete loss of voice. The flowers
mentioned are equally dangerous to a number of other singers; the most
injurious flower of all is found to be the violet. The rose is seldom
mentioned, and artificial perfumes are comparatively harmless, though
some singers consider it desirable to be cautious in using them.

[79]

Féré, Travail et Plaisir, Chapter XIII.

[80]
Travail et Plaisir, p. 175. It is doubtless true of the effects of
odors on the sexual sphere. Féré records the case of a
neurasthenic lady whose sexual coldness toward her husband only
disappeared after the abandonment of a perfume (in which
heliotrope was apparently the chief constituent) she had been
accustomed to use in excessive amounts.

[81]
It is perhaps significant that many colors are especially liable to
produce skin disorders, especially urticaria; a number of cases
have been recorded by Joal, Journal de Médecine, July 10, 1899.

[82]
Layet, art. "Vanillisme," Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des
Sciences Médicales; cf. Audeoud, Revue Médicale de la Suisse
Romande, October 20, 1899, summarized in the British Medical
Journal, 1899.

[83]
E. Tardif, Les Odeurs et Parfums, Chapter III.

[84]
Féré, Société de Biologie, March 28, 1896.

VI.

The Place of Smell in Human Sexual Selections—It has given Place to the
Predominance of Vision largely because in Civilized Man it Fails to Act at a
Distance—It still Plays a Part by Contributing to the Sympathies or the
Antipathies of Intimate Contact.

When we survey comprehensively the extensive field we have here rapidly
traversed, it seems not impossible to gain a fairly accurate view of the
special place which olfactory sensations play in human sexual selection.
The special peculiarity of this group of sensations in man, and that which
gives them an importance they would not otherwise possess, is due to the
fact that we here witness the decadence of a sense which in man's remote
ancestors was the very chiefest avenue of sexual allurement. In man, even
the most primitive man,—to some degree even in the apes,—it has declined
in importance to give place to the predominance of vision.[85] Yet, at that
lower threshold of acuity at which it persists in man it still bathes us in a
more or less constant atmosphere of odors, which perpetually move us to
sympathy or to antipathy, and which in their finer manifestations we do not
neglect, but even cultivate with the increase of our civilization.
It thus comes about that the grosser manifestations of sexual allurement by
smell belong, so far as man is concerned, to a remote animal past which we
have outgrown and which, on account of the diminished acuity of our
olfactory organs, we could not completely recall even if we desired to; the
sense of sight inevitably comes into play long before it is possible for close
contact to bring into action the sense of smell. But the latent possibilities of
sexual allurement by olfaction, which are inevitably embodied in the
nervous structure we have inherited from our animal ancestors, still remain
ready to be called into play. They emerge prominently from time to time in
exceptional and abnormal persons. They tend to play an unusually larger
part in the psychic lives of neurasthenic persons, with their sensitive and
comparatively unbalanced nervous systems, and this is doubtless the reason
why poets and men of letters have insisted on olfactory impressions so
frequently and to so notable a degree; for the same reason sexual inverts are
peculiarly susceptible to odors. For a different reason, warmer climates,
which heighten all odors and also favor the growth of powerfully odorous
plants, lead to a heightened susceptibility to the sexual and other attractions
of smell even among normal persons; thus we find a general tendency to
delight in odors throughout the East, notably in India, among the ancient
Hebrews, and in Mohammedan lands.

Among the ordinary civilized population in Europe the sexual influences of
smell play a smaller and yet not altogether negligible part. The diminished
prominence of odors only enables them to come into action, as sexual
influences, on close contact, when, in some persons at all events, personal
odors may have a distinct influence in heightening sympathy or arousing
antipathy. The range of variation among individuals is in this matter
considerable. In a few persons olfactory sympathy or antipathy is so
pronounced that it exerts a decisive influence in their sexual relationships;
such persons are of olfactory type. In other persons smell has no part in
constituting sexual relationships, but it comes into play in the intimate
association of love, and acts as an additional excitant; when reinforced by
association such olfactory impressions may at times prove irresistible.
Other persons, again, are neutral in this respect, and remain indifferent
either to the sympathetic or antipathetic working of personal odors, unless
they happen to be extremely marked. It is probable that the majority of
refined and educated people belong to the middle group of those persons
who are not of predominantly olfactory type, but are liable from time to
time to be influenced in this manner. Women are probably at least as often
affected in this manner as men, probably more often.
On the whole, it may be said that in the usual life of man odors play a not
inconsiderable part and raise problems which are not without interest, but
that their demonstrable part in actual sexual selection—whether in
preferential mating or in assortative mating—is comparatively small.

[85]
Moll has a passage on this subject, Untersuchungen über die
Libido Sexualis. Bd. I, pp. 376-381.

HEARING.
I.

The Physiological Basis of Rhythm—Rhythm as a Physiological Stimulus
—The Intimate Relation of Rhythm to Movement—The Physiological
Influence of Music on Muscular Action, Circulation, Respiration, etc.—The
Place of Music in Sexual Selection among the Lower Animals—Its
Comparatively Small Place in Courtship among Mammals—The Larynx
and Voice in Man—The Significance of the Pubertal Changes—Ancient
Beliefs Concerning the Influence of Music in Morals, Education, and
Medicine—Its Therapeutic Uses—Significance of the Romantic Interest in
Music at Puberty—Men Comparatively Insusceptible to the Specifically
Sexual Influence of Music—Rarity of Sexual Perversions on the Basis of
the Sense of Hearing—The Part of Music in Primitive Human Courtship—
Women Notably Susceptible to the Specifically Sexual Influence of Music
and the Voice.

The sense of rhythm—on which it may be said that the sensory exciting
effects of hearing, including music, finally rest—may probably be regarded
as a fundamental quality of neuro-muscular tissue. Not only are the chief
physiological functions of the body, like the circulation and the respiration,
definitely rhythmical, but our senses insist on imparting a rhythmic
grouping even to an absolutely uniform succession of sensations. It seems
probable, although this view is still liable to be disputed, that this rhythm is
the result of kinæsthetic sensations,—sensations arising from movement or
tension started reflexly in the muscles by the external stimuli,—impressing
themselves on the sensations that are thus grouped.[86] We may thus say,
with Wilks, that music appears to have had its origin in muscular action.[87]
Whatever its exact origin may be, rhythm is certainly very deeply
impressed on our organisms. The result is that, whatever lends itself to the
neuro-muscular rhythmical tendency of our organisms, whatever tends still

further to heighten and develop that rhythmical tendency, exerts upon us a
very decidedly stimulating and exciting influence.
All muscular action being stimulated by rhythm, in its simple form or in its
more developed form as music, rhythm is a stimulant to work. It has even
been argued by Bücher and by Wundt[88] that human song had its chief or
exclusive origin in rhythmical vocal accompaniments to systematized work.
This view cannot, however, be maintained; systematized work can scarcely
be said to exist, even to-day, among most very primitive races; it is much
more probable that rhythmical song arose at a period antecedent to the
origin of systematized work, in the primitive military, religious, and erotic
dances, such as exist in a highly developed degree among the Australians
and other savage races who have not evolved co-ordinated systematic labor.
There can, however, be no doubt that as soon as systematic work appears
the importance of vocal rhythm in stimulating its energy is at once
everywhere recognized. Bücher has brought together innumerable examples
of this association, and in the march music of soldiers and the heaving and
hoisting songs of sailors we have instances that have universally persisted
into civilization, although in civilization the rhythmical stimulation of work,
physiologically sound as is its basis, tends to die out. Even in the laboratory
the influence of simple rhythm in increasing the output of work may be
demonstrated; and Féré found with the ergograph that a rhythmical
grouping of the movements caused an increase of energy which often more
than compensated the loss of time caused by the rhythm.[89]
Rhythm is the most primitive element of music, and the most fundamental.
Wallaschek, in his book on Primitive Music, and most other writers on the
subject are agreed on this point. "Rhythm," remarks an American
anthropologist,[90] "naturally precedes the development of any fine
perception of differences in pitch, of time-quality, or of tonality. Almost, if
not all, Indian songs," he adds, "are as strictly developed out of modified
repetitions of a motive as are the movements of a Mozart or a Beethoven
symphony." "In all primitive music," asserts Alice C. Fletcher,[91] "rhythm
is strongly developed. The pulsations of the drum and the sharp crash of the
rattles are thrown against each other and against the voice, so that it would
seem that the pleasure derived by the performers lay not so much in the
tonality of the song as in the measured sounds arrayed in contesting rhythm,

and which by their clash start the nerves and spur the body to action, for the
voice which alone carries the tone is often subordinated and treated as an
additional instrument." Groos points out that a melody gives us the essential
impression of a voice that dances;[92] it is a translation of spatial movement
into sound, and, as we shall see, its physiological action on the organism is
a reflection of that which, as we have elsewhere found,[93] dancing itself
produces, and thus resembles that produced by the sight of movement.
Dancing, music, and poetry were primitively so closely allied as to be
almost identical; they were still inseparable among the early Greeks. The
refrains in our English ballads indicate the dancer's part in them. The
technical use of the word "foot" in metrical matters still persists to show
that a poem is fundamentally a dance.
Aristotle seems to have first suggested that rhythm and melodies are
motions, as actions are motions, and therefore signs of feeling. "All
melodies are motions," says Helmholtz. "Graceful rapidity, gravel
procession, quiet advance, wild leaping, all these different characters of
motion and a thousand others can be represented by successions of tones.
And as music expresses these motions it gives an expression also to those
mental conditions which naturally evoke similar motions, whether of the
body and the voice, or of the thinking and feeling principle itself."
(Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone, translated by A. J. Ellis, 1885, p.
250.)
From another point of view the motor stimulus of music has been
emphasized by Cyples: "Music connects with the only sense that can be
perfectly manipulated. Its emotional charm has struck men as a great
mystery. There appears to be no doubt whatever that it gets all the
marvelous effects it has beyond the mere pleasing of the ear, from its
random, but multitudinous summonses of the efferent activity, which at its
vague challenges stirs unceasingly in faintly tumultuous irrelevancy. In this
way, music arouses aimlessly, but splendidly, the sheer, as yet unfulfilled,
potentiality within us." (W. Copies, The Process of Human Experience, p.
743.)
The fundamental element of transformed motion in music has been well
brought out in a suggestive essay by Goblot ("La Musique Descriptive,"
Revue Philosophique, July, 1901): "Sung or played, melody figures to the

ear a successive design, a moving arabesque. We talk of ascending and
descending the gamut, of high notes or low notes; the; higher voice of
woman is called soprano, or above, the deeper voice of man is called bass.
Grave tones were so called by the Greeks because they seemed heavy and
to incline downward. Sounds seem to be subject to the action of gravity; so
that some rise and others fall. Baudelaire, speaking of the prelude to
Lohengrin, remarks: 'I felt myself delivered from the bonds of weight.' And
when Wagner sought to represent, in the highest regions of celestial space,
the apparition of the angels bearing the Holy Grail to earth, he uses very
high notes, and a kind of chorus played exclusively by the violins, divided
into eight parts, in the highest notes of their register. The descent to earth of
the celestial choir is rendered by lower and lower notes, the progressive
disappearance of which represents the reascension to the ethereal regions.
"Sounds seem to rise and fall; that is a fact. It is difficult to explain it. Some
have seen in it a habit derived from the usual notation by which the height
of the note corresponds to its height in the score. But the impression is too
deep and general to be explained by so superficial and recent a cause. It has
been suggested also that high notes are generally produced by small and
light bodies, low notes by heavy bodies. But that is not always true. It has
been said, again, that high notes in nature are usually produced by highly
placed objects, while low notes arise from caves and low placed regions.
But the thunder is heard in the sky, and the murmur of a spring or the song
of a cricket arise from the earth. In the human voice, again, it is said, the
low notes seem to resound in the chest, high notes in the head. All this is
unsatisfactory. We cannot explain by such coarse analogies an impression
which is very precise, and more sensible (this fact has its importance) for an
interval of half a tone than for an interval of an octave. It is probable that
the true explanation is to be found in the still little understood connection
between the elements of our nervous apparatus.
"Nearly all our emotions tend to produce movement. But education renders
us economical of our acts. Most of these movements are repressed,
especially in the adult and civilized man, as harmful, dangerous, or merely
useless. Some are not completed, others are reduced to a faint incitation
which externally is scarcely perceptible. Enough remain to constitute all
that is expressive in our gestures, physiognomy, and attitudes. Melodic
intervals possess in a high degree this property of provoking impulses of

movement, which, even when repressed, leave behind internal sensations
and motor images. It would be possible to study these facts experimentally
if we had at our disposition a human being who, while retaining his
sensations and their motor reactions, was by special circumstances rendered
entirely spontaneous like a sensitive automaton, whose movements were
neither intentionally produced nor intentionally repressed. In this way,
melodic intervals in a hypnotized subject might be very instructive."
A number of experiments of the kind desired by Goblot had already been
made by A. de Rochas in a book, copiously illustrated by very numerous
instantaneous photographs, entitled Les Sentiments, la Musique et la Geste,
1900. Chapter III. De Rochas experimented on a single subject, Lina,
formerly a model, who was placed in a condition of slight hypnosis, when
various simple fragments of music were performed: recitatives, popular
airs, and more especially national dances, often from remote parts of the
world. The subject's gestures were exceedingly marked and varied in
accordance with the character of the music. It was found that she often
imitated with considerable precision the actual gestures of dances she could
never have seen. The same music always evoked the same gestures, as was
shown by instantaneous photographs. This subject, stated to be a chaste and
well-behaved girl, exhibited no indications of definite sexual emotion under
the influence of any kind of music. Some account is given in the same
volume of other hypnotic experiments with music which were also negative
as regards specific sexual phenomena.
It must be noted that, as a physiological stimulus, a single musical note is
effective, even apart from rhythm, as is well shown by Féré's experiments
with the dynamometer and the ergograph.[94] It is, however, the influence of
music on muscular work which has been most frequently investigated, and
both on brief efforts with the dynamometer and prolonged work with the
ergograph it has been found to exert a stimulating influence. Thus, Scripture
found that, while his own maximum thumb and finger grip with the
dynamometer is 8 pounds, when the giant's motive from Wagner's
Rheingold is played it rises to 8¾ pounds.[95] With the ergograph Tarchanoff
found that lively music, in nervously sensitive persons, will temporarily
cause the disappearance of fatigue, though slow music in a minor key had
an opposite effect.[96] The varying influence on work with the ergograph of

different musical intervals and different keys has been carefully studied by
Féré with many interesting results. There was a very considerable degree of
constancy in the results. Discords were depressing; most, but not all, major
keys were stimulating; and most, but not all, minor keys depressing. In
states of fatigue, however, the minor keys were more stimulating than the
major, an interesting result in harmony with that stimulating influence of
various painful emotions in states of organic fatigue which we have
elsewhere encountered when investigating sadism.[97] "Our musical
culture," Féré remarks, "only renders more perceptible to us the
unconscious relationships which exist between musical art and our
organisms. Those whom we consider more endowed in this respect have a
deeper penetration of the phenomena accomplished within them; they feel
more profoundly the marvelous reactions between the organism and the
principles of musical art, they experience more strongly that art is within
them."[98] Both the higher and the lower muscular processes, the voluntary
and the involuntary, are stimulated by music. Darlington and Talbot, in
Titchener's laboratory at Cornell University, found that the estimation of
relative weights was aided by music.[99] Lombard found, when
investigating the normal variations in the knee-jerk, that involuntary reflex
processes are always reinforced by music; a military band playing a lively
march caused the knee-jerk to increase at the loud passages and to diminish
at the soft passages, while remaining always above the normal level.[100]
With this stimulating influence of rhythm and music on the neuro-muscular
system—which may or may not be direct—there is a concomitant influence
on the circulatory and breathing apparatus. During recent years a great
many experiments have been made on man and animals bearing on the
effects of music on the heart and respiration. Perhaps the earliest of these
were carried out by the Russian physiologist Dogiel in 1880.[101] His
methods were perhaps defective and his results, at all events as regards
man, uncertain, but in animals the force and rapidity of the heart were
markedly increased. Subsequent investigations have shown very clearly the
influence of music on the circulatory and respiratory systems in man as well
as in animals. That music has an apparently direct influence on the
circulation of the brain is shown by the observations of Patrizi on a youth
who had received a severe wound of the head which had removed a large

portion of the skull wall. The stimulus of melody produced an immediate
increase in the afflux of blood to the brain.[102]
In Germany the question was investigated at about the same time by Mentz.
[103]
Observing the pulse with a sphygmograph and Marey tambour he
found distinct evidence of an effect on the heart; when attention was given
to the music the pulse was quickened, in the absence of attention it was
slowed; Mentz also found that pleasurable sensations tended to slow the
pulse and disagreeable ones to quicken it.
Binet and Courtier made an elaborate series of experiments on the action of
music on the respiration (with the double pneumograph), the heart, and the
capillary circulation (with the plethysmograph of Hallion and Comte) on a
single subject, a man very sensitive to music and himself a cultured
musician. Simple musical sounds with no emotional content accelerated the
respiration without changing its regularity or amplitude. Musical fragments,
mostly sung, usually well known to the subject, and having an emotional
effect on him, produced respiratory irregularity either in amplitude or
rapidity of breathing, in two-thirds of the trials. Exciting music, such as
military marches, accelerated the breathing more than sad melodies, but the
intensity of the excitation had an effect at least as great as its quality, for
intense excitations always produced both quickened and deeper breathing.
The heart was quickened in harmony with the quickened breathing. Neither
breathing nor heart was ever slowed. As regards the capillary pulsation, an
influence was exerted chiefly, if not exclusively, by gay and exciting
melodies, which produced a shrinking. Throughout the experiments it was
found that the most profound physiological effects were exerted by those
pieces which the subject found to be most emotional in their influence on
him.[104]
Guibaud studied the question on a number of subjects, confirming and
extending the conclusions of Binet and Courtier. He found that the reactions
of different individuals varied, but that for the same individual reactions
were constant. Circulatory reaction was more often manifest than
respiratory reaction. The latter might be either a simultaneous modification
of depth and of rapidity or of either of these. The circulatory reaction was a
peripheral vasoconstriction with diminished fullness of pulse and slight
acceleration of cardiac rhythm; there was never any distinct slowing of

heart under the influence of music. Guibaud remarks that when people say
they feel a shudder at some passage of music, this sensation of cold finds its
explanation in the production of a peripheral vasoconstriction which may be
registered by the plethysmograph.[105]
Since music thus directly and powerfully affects the chief vital processes, it
is not surprising that it should indirectly influence various viscera and
functions. As Tarchanoff and others have demonstrated, it affects the skin,
increasing the perspiration; it may produce a tendency to tears; it sometimes
produces desire to urinate, or even actual urination, as in Scaliger's case of
the Gascon gentleman who was always thus affected on hearing the
bagpipes. In dogs it has been shown by Tarchanoff and Wartanoff that
auditory stimulation increases the consumption of oxygen 20 per cent., and
the elimination of carbonic acid 17 per cent.
In addition to the effects of musical sound already mentioned, it may be
added that, as Epstein, of Berne, has shown,[106] the other senses are
stimulated under the influence of sound, and notably there is an increase in
acuteness of vision which may be experimentally demonstrated. It is
probable that this effect of music in heightening the impressions received
by the other senses is of considerable significance from our present point of
view.
Why are musical tones in a certain order and rhythm pleasurable? asked
Darwin in The Descent of Man, and he concluded that the question was
insoluble. We see that, in reality, whatever the ultimate answer may be, the
immediate reason is quite simple. Pleasure is a condition of slight and
diffused stimulation, in which the heart and breathing are faintly excited,
the neuro-muscular system receives additional tone, the viscera gently
stirred, the skin activity increased; and certain combinations of musical
notes and intervals act as a physiological stimulus in producing these
effects.[107]
Among animals of all kinds, from insects upward, this physiological action
appears to exist, for among nearly all of them certain sounds are agreeable
and attractive, and other sounds indifferent and disagreeable. It appears that
insects of quite different genera show much appreciation of the song of the
Cicada.[108] Birds show intense interest in the singing of good performers

even of other species. Experiments among a variety of animals in the
Zoölogical Gardens with performances on various instruments showed that
with the exception of seals none were indifferent, and all felt a discord as
offensive. Many animals showed marked likes and dislikes; thus, a tiger,
who was obviously soothed by the violin, was infuriated by the piccolo; the
violin and the flute were preferred by most animals.[109]
Most persons have probably had occasion to observe the susceptibility of
dogs to music. It may here suffice to give one personal observation. A dog
(of mixed breed, partly collie), very well known to me, on hearing a
nocturne of Chopin, whined and howled, especially at the more pathetic
passages, once or twice catching and drawing out the actual note played; he
panted, walked about anxiously, and now and then placed his head on the
player's lap. When the player proceeded to a more cheerful piece by Grieg,
the dog at once became indifferent, sat down, yawned, and scratched
himself; but as soon as the player returned once more to the nocturne the
dog at once repeated his accompaniment.
There can be no doubt that among a very large number of animals of most
various classes, more especially among insects and birds, the attraction of
music is supported and developed on the basis of sexual attraction, the
musical notes emitted serving as a sexual lure to the other sex. The evidence
on this point was carefully investigated by Darwin on a very wide basis.[110]
It has been questioned, some writers preferring to adopt the view of Herbert
Spencer,[111] that the singing of birds is due to "overflow of energy," the
relation between courtship and singing being merely "a relation of
concomitance." This view is no longer tenable; whatever the precise origin
of the musical notes of animals may be,—and it is not necessary to suppose
that sexual attraction had a large part in their first rudimentary beginnings,
—there can now be little doubt that musical sounds, and, among birds,
singing, play a very large part indeed in bringing the male and the female
together.[112] Usually, it would appear, it is the performance of the male that
attracts the female; it is only among very simple and primitive musicians,
like some insects, that the female thus attracts the male.[113] The fact that it
is nearly always one sex only that is thus musically gifted should alone have
sufficed to throw suspicion on any but a sexual solution of this problem of
animal song.

It is, however, an exceedingly remarkable fact that, although among insects
and lower vertebrates the sexual influence of music is so large, and
although among mammals and predominantly in man the emotional and
æsthetic influence of music is so great, yet neither in man nor any of the
higher mammals has music been found to exert a predominant sexual
influence, or even in most cases any influence at all. Darwin, while calling
attention to the fact that the males of most species of mammals use their
vocal powers chiefly, and sometimes exclusively, during the breeding-
season, adds that "it is a surprising fact that we have not as yet any good
evidence that these organs are used by male mammals to charm the female."
[114] From a very different standpoint, Féré, in studying the pathology of the

human sexual instinct in the light of a very full knowledge of the available
evidence, states that he knows of no detailed observations showing the
existence of any morbid sexual perversions based on the sense of hearing,
either in reference to the human voice or to instrumental music.[115]
When, however, we consider that not only in the animals most nearly
related to man, but in man himself, the larynx and the voice undergo a
marked sexual differentiation at puberty, it is difficult not to believe that this
change has an influence on sexual selection and sexual psychology. At
puberty there is a slight hyperæmia of the larynx, accompanied by rapid
development alike of the larynx itself and of the vocal cords, which become
larger and thicker, while there is an associated change in the voice, which
deepens. All these changes are very slight in girls, but very pronounced in
boys, whose voices are said to "break" and then become lower by at least an
octave. The feminine larynx at puberty only increases in the proportion of 5
to 7, but the masculine larynx in the proportion of 5 to 10. The direct
dependence of this change on the general sexual development is shown not
merely by its occurrence at puberty, but by the fact that in eunuchs in whom
the testicles have been removed before puberty the voice retains its
childlike qualities.[116]
As a matter of fact, I believe that we may attach a considerable degree of
importance to the voice and to music generally as a method of sexual
appeal. On this point I agree with Moll, who remarks that "the sense of
hearing here plays a considerable part, and the stimulation received through
the ears is much larger than is usually believed."[117] I am not, however,

inclined to think that this influence is considerable in its action on men,
although Mantegazza remarks, doubtless with a certain truth, that "some
women's voices cannot be heard with impunity." It is true that the ancients
deprecated the sexual or at all events the effeminating influence of some
kinds of music, but they seem to have regarded it as sedative rather than
stimulating; the kind of music they approved of as martial and stimulating
was the kind most likely to have sexual effects in predisposed persons.
The Chinese and the Greeks have more especially insisted on the ethical
qualities of music and on its moralizing and demoralizing effects. Some
three thousand years ago, it is stated, a Chinese emperor, believing that only
they who understood music are capable of governing, distributed
administrative functions in accordance with this belief. He acted entirely in
accordance with Chinese morality, the texts of Confucianism (see
translations in the "Sacred Books of the East Series") show clearly that
music and ceremony (or social ritual in a wide sense) are regarded as the
two main guiding influences of life—music as the internal guide, ceremony
as the external guide, the former being looked upon as the more important.
Among the Greeks Menander said that to many people music is a powerful
stimulant to love. Plato, in the third book of the Republic, discusses what
kinds of music should be encouraged in his ideal state. He does not clearly
state that music is ever a sexual stimulant, but he appears to associate
plaintive music (mixed Lydian and Hypolydian) with drunkenness,
effeminacy, and idleness and considers that such music is "useless even to
women that are to be virtuously given, not to say to men." He only admits
two kinds of music: one violent and suited to war, the other tranquil and
suited to prayer or to persuasion. He sets out the ethical qualities of music
with a thoroughness which almost approaches the great Chinese
philosopher: "On these accounts we attach such importance to a musical
education, because rhythm and harmony sink most deeply into the recesses
of the soul, and take most powerful hold of it, bringing gracefulness in their
train, and making a man graceful if he be rightly nurtured, ... leading him to
commend beautiful objects, and gladly receive them into his soul, and feed
upon them, and grow to be noble and good." Plato is, however, by no means
so consistent and thorough as the Chinese moralist, for having thus asserted
that it is the influence of music which molds the soul into virtue, he
proceeds to destroy his position with the statement that "we shall never

become truly musical until we know the essential forms of temperance and
courage and liberality and munificence," thus moving in a circle. It must be
added that the Greek conception of music was very comprehensive and
included poetry.
Aristotle took a wider view of music than Plato and admitted a greater
variety of uses for it. He was less anxious to exclude those uses which were
not strictly ethical. He disapproved, indeed, of the Phrygian harmony as the
expression of Bacchic excitement. He accepts, however, the function of
music as a κάθαρσις of emotion, a notion which is said to have originated
with the Pythagoreans. (For a discussion of Aristotle's views on music, see
W. L. Newman, The Politics of Aristotle, vol. i, pp. 359-369.)
Athenæus, in his frequent allusions to music, attributes to it many
intellectual and emotional properties (e.g., Book XIV, Chapter XXV) and in
one place refers to "melodies inciting to lawless indulgence" (Book XIII,
Chapter LXXV).
We may gather from the Priapeia (XXVI) that cymbals and castanets were
the special accompaniment in antiquity of wanton songs and dances:
"cymbala, cum crotalis, pruriginis arma."
The ancient belief in the moralizing influence of music has survived into
modern times mainly in a somewhat more scientific form as a belief in its
therapeutic effects in disordered nervous and mental conditions. (This also
is an ancient belief as witnessed by the well-known example of David
playing to Saul to dispel his melancholia.) In 1729 an apothecary of
Oakham, Richard Broune, published a work entitled Medicina Musica, in
which he argued that music was beneficial in many maladies. In more
recent days there have been various experiments and cases brought forward
showing its efficacy in special conditions.
An American physician (W. F. Hutchinson) has shown that anæsthesia may
be produced with accurately made tuning forks at certain rates of vibration
(summarized in the British Medical Journal, June 4, 1898). Ferrand in a
paper read before the Paris Academy of Medicine in September, 1895, gives
reasons for classing some kinds of music as powerful antispasmodics with
beneficial therapeutic action. The case was subsequently reported of a child
in whom night-terrors were eased by calming music in a minor key. The

value of music in lunatic asylums is well recognized; see e.g., Näcke, Revue
de Psychiatrie, October, 1897. Vaschide and Vurpas (Comptes Rendus de la
Société de Biologie, December 13, 1902) have recorded the case of a girl of
20, suffering from mental confusion with excitation and central motor
disequilibrium, whose muscular equilibrium was restored and movements
rendered more co-ordinated and adaptive under the influence of music.
While there has been much extravagance in the ancient doctrine concerning
the effects of music, the real effects are still considerable. Not only is this
demonstrated by the experiments already referred to (p. 118), indicating the
efficacy of musical sounds as physiological stimulants, but also by
anatomical considerations. The roots of the auditory nerves, McKendrick
has pointed out, are probably more widely distributed and have more
extensive connections than those of any other nerve. The intricate
connections of these nerves are still only being unraveled. This points to an
explanation of how music penetrates to the very roots of our being,
influencing by associational paths reflex mechanisms both cerebral and
somatic, so that there is scarcely a function of the body that may not be
affected by the rhythmical pulsations, melodic progressions, and harmonic
combinations of musical tones. (Nature, June 15, 1899, p. 164.)
Just as we are not entitled from the ancient belief in the influence of music
on morals or the modern beliefs in its therapeutic influence—even though
this has sometimes gone to the length of advocating its use in
impotence[118]—to argue that music has a marked influence in exciting the
specifically sexual instincts, neither are we entitled to find any similar
argument in the fact that music is frequently associated with the love-
feelings of youth. Men are often able to associate many of their earliest
ideas of love in boyhood with women singing or playing; but in these cases
it will always be found that the fascination was romantic and sentimental,
and not specifically erotic.[119] In adult life the music which often seems to
us to be most definitely sexual in its appeal (such as much of Wagner's
Tristan) really produces this effect in part from the association with the
story, and in part from the intellectual realization of the composer's effort to
translate passion into æsthetic terms; the actual effect of the music is not
sexual, and it can well be believed that the results of experiments as regards
the sexual influence of the Tristan music on men under the influence of
hypnotism have been, as reported, negative. Helmholtz goes so far as to

state that the expression of sexual longing in music is identical with that of
religious longing. It is quite true, again, that a soft and gentle voice seems to
every normal man as to Lear "an excellent thing in woman," and that a
harsh or shrill voice may seem to deaden or even destroy altogether the
attraction of a beautiful face. But the voice is not usually in itself an
adequate or powerful method of evoking sexual emotion in a man. Even in
its supreme vocal manifestations the sexual fascination exerted by a great
singer, though certainly considerable, cannot be compared with that
commonly exerted by the actress. Cases have, indeed, been recorded—
chiefly occurring, it is probable, in men of somewhat morbid nervous
disposition—in which sexual attraction was exerted chiefly through the ear,
or in which there was a special sexual sensibility to particular inflections or
accents.[120] Féré mentions the case of a young man in hospital with acute
arthritis who complained of painful erections whenever he heard through
the door the very agreeable voice of the young woman (invisible to him)
who superintended the linen.[121] But these phenomena do not appear to be
common, or, at all events, very pronounced. So far as my own inquiries go,
only a small proportion of men would appear to experience definite sexual
feelings on listening to music. And the fact that in woman the voice is so
slightly differentiated from that of the child, as well as the very significant
fact that among man's immediate or even remote ancestors the female's
voice can seldom have served to attract the male, sufficiently account for
the small part played by the voice and by music as a sexual allurement
working on men.[122]
It is otherwise with women. It may, indeed, be said at the outset that the
reasons which make it antecedently improbable that men should be sexually
attracted through hearing render it probable that women should be so
attracted. The change in the voice at puberty makes the deeper masculine
voice a characteristic secondary sexual attribute of man, while the fact that
among mammals generally it is the male that is most vocal—and that
chiefly, or even sometimes exclusively, at the rutting season—renders it
antecedently likely that among mammals generally, including the human
species, there is in the female an actual or latent susceptibility to the sexual
significance of the male voice,[123] a susceptibility which, under the
conditions of human civilization, may be transferred to music generally. It
is noteworthy that in novels written by women there is a very frequent

attentiveness to the qualities of the hero's voice and to its emotional effects
on the heroine.[124] We may also note the special and peculiar personal
enthusiasm aroused in women by popular musicians, a more pronounced
enthusiasm than is evoked in them by popular actors.
As an interesting example of the importance attached by women novelists
to the effects of the male voice I may refer to George Eliot's Mill on the
Floss, probably the most intimate and personal of George Eliot's works. In
Book VI of this novel the influence of Stephen Guest (a somewhat
commonplace young man) over Maggie Tulliver is ascribed almost
exclusively to the effect of his base voice in singing. We are definitely told
of Maggie Tulliver's "sensibility to the supreme excitement of music." Thus,
on one occasion, "all her intentions were lost in the vague state of emotion
produced by the inspiring duet—emotion that seemed to make her at once
strong and weak: strong for all enjoyment, weak for all resistance. Poor
Maggie! She looked very beautiful when her soul was being played on in
this way by the inexorable power of sound. You might have seen the
slightest perceptible quivering through her whole frame as she leaned a
little forward, clasping her hands as if to steady herself; while her eyes
dilated and brightened into that wideopen, childish expression of wondering
delight, which always came back in her happiest moments." George Eliot's
novels contain many allusions to the powerful emotional effects of music.
It is unnecessary to refer to Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata, in which music is
regarded as the Galeotto to bring lovers together—"the connecting bond of
music, the most refined lust of the senses."
In primitive human courtship music very frequently plays a considerable
part, though not usually the sole part, being generally found as the
accompaniment of the song and the dance at erotic festivals.[125] The Gilas,
of New Mexico, among whom courtship consists in a prolonged serenade
day after day with the flute, furnish a somewhat exceptional case. Savage
women are evidently very attentive to music; Backhouse (as quoted, by
Ling Roth[126]) mentions how a woman belonging to the very primitive and
now extinct Tasmanian race, when shown a musical box, listened "with
intensity; her ears moved like those of a dog or horse, to catch the sound."

I have found little evidence to show that music, except in occasional cases,
exerts even the slightest specifically sexual effect on men, whether musical
or unmusical. But I have ample evidence that it very frequently exerts to a
slight but definite extent such an influence on women, even when quite
normal. Judging from my own inquiries it would, indeed, seem likely that
the majority of normal educated women are liable to experience some
degree of definite sexual excitement from music; one states that orchestral
music generally tends to produce this effect; another finds it chiefly from
Wagner's music; another from military music, etc. Others simply state—
what, indeed, probably expresses the experience of most persons of either
sex—that it heightens one's mood. One lady mentions that some of her
friends, whose erotic feelings are aroused by music, are especially affected
in this way by the choral singing in Roman Catholic churches.[127]
In the typical cases just mentioned, all fairly normal and healthy women,
the sexual effects of music though definite were usually quite slight. In
neuropathic subjects they may occasionally be more pronounced. Thus, a
medical correspondent has communicated to me the case of a married lady
with one child, a refined, very beautiful, but highly neurotic, woman,
married to a man with whom she has nothing in common. Her tastes lie in
the direction of music; she is a splendid pianist, and her highly trained voice
would have made a fortune. She confesses to strong sexual feelings and
does not understand why intercourse never affords what she knows she
wants. But the hearing of beautiful music, or at times the excitement of her
own singing, will sometimes cause intense orgasm.
Vaschide and Vurpas, who emphasize the sexually stimulating effects of
music, only bring forward one case in any detail, and it is doubtless
significant that this case is a woman. "While listening to a piece of music X
changes expression, her eyes become bright, the features are accentuated, a
smile begins to form, an expression of pleasure appears, the body becomes
more erect, there is a general muscular hypertonicity. X tells us that as she
listens to the music she experiences sensations very like those of normal
intercourse. The difference chiefly concerns the local genital apparatus, for
there is no flow of vaginal mucus. On the psychic side the resemblance is
marked." (Vaschide and Vurpas, "Du Coefficient Sexual de l'Impulsion
Musicale," Archives de Neurologie, May, 1904.)

It is sometimes said, or implied, that a woman (or a man) sings better under
the influence of sexual emotion. The writer of an article already quoted, on
"Woman in her Psychological Relations" (Journal of Psychological
Medicine, 1851), mentions that "a young lady remarkable for her musical
and poetical talents naïvely remarked to a friend who complimented her
upon her singing: 'I never sing half so well as when I've had a love-fit.'"
And George Eliot says. "There is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes
of fear and grief, that does not make a man sing or play the better." While,
however, it may be admitted that some degree of general emotional
exaltation may exercise a favorable influence on the singing voice, it is
difficult to believe that definite physical excitement at or immediately
before the exercise of the voice can, as a rule, have anything but a
deleterious effect on its quality. It is recognized that tenors (whose voices
resemble those of women more than basses, who are not called upon to be
so careful in this respect) should observe rules of sexual hygiene; and
menstruation frequently has a definite influence in impairing the voice (H.
Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, p. 290). As the neighborhood of
menstruation is also the period when sexual excitement is most likely to be
felt, we have here a further indication that sexual emotion is not favorable
to singing. I agree with the remarks of a correspondent, a musical amateur,
who writes: "Sexual excitement and good singing do not appear to be
correlated. A woman's emotional capacity in singing or acting may be
remotely associated with hysterical neuroses, but is better evinced for art
purposes in the absence of disturbing sexual influences. A woman may,
indeed, fancy herself the heroine of a wanton romance and 'let herself go' a
little in singing with improved results. But a memory of sexual ardors will
help no woman to make the best of her voice in training. Some women can
only sing their best when they think of the other women they are
outsinging. One girl 'lets her soul go out into her voice' thinking of jamroll,
another thinking of her lover (when she has none), and most, no doubt,
when they think of nothing. But no woman is likely to 'find herself' in an
artistic sense because she has lost herself in another sense—not even if she
has done so quite respectably."
The reality of the association between the sexual impulse and music—and,
indeed, art generally—is shown by the fact that the evolution of puberty
tends to be accompanied by a very marked interest in musical and other

kinds of art. Lancaster, in a study of this question among a large number of
young people (without reference to difference in sex, though they were
largely female), found that from 50 to 75 per cent of young people feel an
impulse to art about the period of puberty, lasting a few months, or at most
a year or two. It appears that 464 young people showed an increased and
passionate love for music, against only 102 who experienced no change in
this respect. The curve culminates at the age of 15 and falls rapidly after 16.
Many of these cases were really quite unmusical.[128]

[86]
This view has been more especially developed by J. B. Miner,
Motor, Visual, and Applied Rhythms, Psychological Review
Monograph Supplements, vol. v, No. 4, 1903.

[87]
Sir S. Wilks, Medical Magazine, January, 1894; cf. Clifford
Allbutt, "Music, Rhythm, and Muscle," Nature, February 8, 1894.

[88]
Bücher, Arbeit und Rhythmus, third edition, 1902; Wundt,
Völkerpsychologie, 1900, Part I, p. 265.

[89]
Féré deals fully with the question in his book, Travail et Plaisir,
1904, Chapter III, "Influence du Rhythme sur le Travail."

[90]
Fillmore, "Primitive Scales and Rhythms," Proceedings of the
International Congress of Anthropology, Chicago, 1893.

[91]
"Love Songs among the Omaha Indians," in Proceedings of same
congress.

[92]
Groos, Spiele der Menschen, p. 33.

[93]
"Analysis of the Sexual Impulse," Studies in the Psychology of
Sex, vol. iii.

[94]
Féré, Sensation et Mouvement, Chapter V; id., Travail et Plaisir,
Chapter XII.

[95]
Scripture, Thinking, Feeling, Doing, p. 85.

[96]
Tarchanoff, "Influence de la Musique sur l'Homme et sur les
Animaux," Atti dell' XI Congresso Medico Internationale, Rome,
1894, vol. ii, p. 153; also in Archives Italiennes de Biologie, 1894.

[97]
"Love and Pain," Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. iii.

[98]
Féré, Travail et Plaisir, Chapter XII, "Action Physiologique des
Sens Musicaux." "A practical treatise on harmony," Goblot
remarks (Revue Philosophique, July, 1901, p. 61), "ought to tell
us in what way such an interval, or such a succession of intervals,
affects us. A theoretical treatise on harmony ought to tell us the
explanation of these impressions. In a word, musical harmony is a
psychological science." He adds that this science is very far from
being constituted yet; we have hardly even obtained a glimpse of
it.

[99]
American Journal of Psychology, April, 1898.

[100]
American Journal of Psychology, November, 1887. The influence
of rhythm on the involuntary muscular system is indicated by the
occasional effect of music in producing a tendency to contraction
of the bladder.

[101]
Archiv für Anatomie und Physiologie (Physiologisches
Abtheilung), 1880, p. 420.

[102]
M. L. Patrizi, "Primi esperimenti intorno all' influenza della
musica sulla circolozione del sangue nel cervello umano,"
International Congress für Psychologie, Munich, 1897, p. 176.

[103]
Philosophische Studien, vol. xi.

[104]
Binet and Courtier, "La Vie Emotionelle," Année Psychologique,
Third Year, 1897, pp. 104-125.

[105]
Guibaud, Contribution à l'étude expérimentale de l'influence de la
musique sur la circulation et la respiration. Thèse de Bordeaux,
1898, summarized in Année Psychologique, Fifth Year, 1899, pp.
645-649.

[106]
International Congress of Physiology, Berne, 1895.

[107]
The influence of association plays no necessary part in these
pleasurable influences, for Féré's experiments show that an
unmusical subject responds physiologically, with much precision,
to musical intervals he is unable to recognize. R. MacDougall
also finds that the effective quality of rhythmical sequences does
not appear to be dependent on secondary associations
(Psychological Review, January, 1903).

[108]
R. T. Lewis, in Nature Notes, August, 1891.

[109]
Cornish, "Orpheus at the Zoo," in Life at the Zoo, pp. 115-138.

[110]
Descent of Man, Chapters XIII and XIX.

[111]
"The Origin of Music" (1857), Essays, vol. ii.

[112]
Anyone who is in doubt on this point, as regards bird song, may
consult the little book in which the evidence has been well
summarized by Häcker, Der Gesang der Vögel, or the discussion
in Groos's Spiele der Thiere, pp. 274 et seq.

[113]
Thus, mosquitoes are irresistibly attracted by music, and
especially by those musical tones which resemble the buzzing of
the female; the males alone are thus attracted. (Nuttall and
Shipley, and Sir Hiram Maxim, quoted in Nature, October 31,
1901, p. 655, and in Lancet, February 22, 1902.)

[114]
Descent of Man, second edition, p. 567. Groos, in his discussion
of music, also expresses doubt whether hearing plays a
considerable part in the courtship of mammals, Spiele der
Menschen, p. 22.

[115]
Féré, L'Instinct Sexuel, second edition, p. 137.

[116]
See Biérent, La Puberté Chapter IV; also Havelock Ellis, Man
and Woman, fourth edition, pp. 270-272. Endriss (Die Bisherigen
Beobachtungen von Physiologischen und Pathologischen
Beziehungen der oberen Luftwege zu den Sexualorganen, Teil III)
brings together various observations on the normal and abnormal
relations of the larynx to the sexual sphere.

[117]
Moll, Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis, bd. 1, p. 133.

[118]
J. L. Roger, Traité des Effets de la Musique, 1803, pp. 234 and
342.

[119]
A typical example occurs in the early life of History I in
Appendix B to vol. iii of these Studies.

[120]
Vaschide and Vurpas state (Archives de Neurologie, May, 1904)
that in their experience music may facilitate sexual approaches in
some cases of satiety, and that in certain pathological cases the
sexual act can only be accomplished under the influence of music.

[121]
Féré, L'Instinct Sexuel, p. 137. Bloch (Beiträge, etc., vol. ii, p.
355) quotes some remarks of Kistemaecker's concerning the
sound of women's garments and the way in which savages and
sometimes civilized women cultivate this rustling and clinking.
Gutzkow, in his Autobiography, said that the frou-frou of a
woman's dress was the music of the spheres to him.

[122]
The voice is doubtless a factor of the first importance in sexual
attraction among the blind. On this point I have no data. The
expressiveness of the voice to the blind, and the extent to which
their likes and dislikes are founded on vocal qualities, is well
shown by an interesting paper written by an American physician,
blind from early infancy, James Cocke, "The Voice as an Index to
the Soul," Arena, January, 1894.

[123]
Long before Darwin had set forth his theory of sexual selection
Laycock had pointed out the influence which the voice of the
male, among man and other animals, exerts on the female
(Nervous Diseases of Women, p. 74). And a few years later the
writer of a suggestive article on "Woman in her Psychological
Relations" (Journal of Psychological Medicine, 1851) remarked:
"The sonorous voice of the male man is exactly analogous in its
effect on woman to the neigh and bellow of other animals. This
voice will have its effect on an amorous or susceptible
organization much in the same way as color and the other visual
ovarian stimuli." The writer adds that it exercises a still more
important influence when modulated to music: "in this respect
man has something in common with insects as well as birds."

[124]
Groos refers more than once to the important part played in
German novels written by women by what one of them terms the

"bearded male voice."

[125]
Various instances are quoted in the third volume of these Studies
when discussing the general phenomena of courtship and
tumescence, "An Analysis of the Sexual Impulse."

[126]
The Tasmanians, p. 20.

[127]
An early reference to the sexual influence of music on women
may perhaps be found in a playful passage in Swift's Martinus
Scriblerus (possibly due to his medical collaborator, Arbuthnot):
"Does not Ælian tell how the Libyan mares were excited to
horsing by music? (which ought to be a caution to modest women
against frequenting operas)." Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus,
Book I, Chapter 6. (The reference is to Ælian, Hist. Animal, lib.
XI, cap. 18, and lib. XII, cap. 44.)

[128]
E. Lancaster, "Psychology of Adolescence," Pedagogical
Seminary, July, 1897.

II.

Summary—Why the Influence of Music in Human Sexual Selection is
Comparatively Small.

We have seen that it is possible to set forth in a brief space the facts at
present available concerning the influence on the pairing impulse of stimuli
acting through the ear. They are fairly simple and uncomplicated; they
suggest few obscure problems which call for analysis; they do not bring
before us any remarkable perversions of feeling.
At the same time, the stimuli to sexual excitement received through the
sense of hearing, although very seldom of exclusive or preponderant
influence, are yet somewhat more important than is usually believed.
Primarily the voice, and secondarily instrumental music, exert a distinct
effect in this direction, an effect representing a specialization of a generally
stimulating physiological influence which all musical sounds exercise upon
the organism. There is, however, in this respect, a definite difference
between the sexes. It is comparatively rare to find that the voice or
instrumental music, however powerful its generally emotional influence,
has any specifically sexual effect on men. On the other hand, it seems
probable that the majority of women, at all events among the educated
classes, are liable to show some degree of sexual sensibility to the male
voice or to instrumental music.
It is not surprising to find that music should have some share in arousing
sexual emotion when we bear in mind that in the majority of persons the
development of sexual life is accompanied by a period of special interest in
music. It is not unexpected that the specifically sexual effects of the voice
and music should be chiefly experienced by women when we remember
that not only in the human species is it the male in whom the larynx and
voice are chiefly modified at puberty, but that among mammals generally it
is the male who is chiefly or exclusively vocal at the period of sexual
activity; so that any sexual sensibility to vocal manifestations must be
chiefly or exclusively manifested in female mammals.
At the best, however, although æsthetic sensibility to sound is highly
developed and emotional sensibility to it profound and widespread,

although women may be thrilled by the masculine voice and men charmed
by the feminine voice, it cannot be claimed that in the human species
hearing is a powerful factor in mating. This sense has here suffered between
the lower senses of touch and smell, on the one hand, with their vague and
massive appeal, and the higher sense, vision, on the other hand, with its
exceedingly specialized appeal. The position of touch as the primary and
fundamental sense is assured. Smell, though in normal persons it has no
decisive influence on sexual attraction, acts by virtue of its emotional
sympathies and antipathies, while, by virtue of the fact that among man's
ancestors it was the fundamental channel of sexual sensibility, it furnishes a
latent reservoir of impressions to which nervously abnormal persons, and
even normal persons under the influence of excitement or of fatigue, are
always liable to become sensitive. Hearing, as a sense for receiving distant
perceptions has a wider field than is in man possessed by either touch or
smell. But here it comes into competition with vision, and vision is, in man,
the supreme and dominant sense.[129] We are always more affected by what
we see than by what we hear. Men and women seldom hear each other
without speedily seeing each other, and then the chief focus of interest is at
once transferred to the visual centre.[130] In human sexual selection,
therefore, hearing plays a part which is nearly always subordinated to that
of vision.

[129]
Nietzsche has even suggested that among primitive men delicacy
of hearing and the evolution of music can only have been
produced under conditions which made it difficult for vision to
come into play: "The ear, the organ of fear, could only have
developed, as it has, in the night and in the twilight of dark woods
and caves.... In the brightness the ear is less necessary. Hence the
character of music as an art of night and twilight." (Morgenröthe,
p. 230.)

[130]
At a concert most people are instinctively anxious to see the
performers, thus distracting the purely musical impression, and

the reasonable suggestion of Goethe that the performers should be
invisible is still seldom carried into practice.

VISION
I.

Primacy of Vision in Man—Beauty as a Sexual Allurement—The Objective
Element in Beauty—Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Various Parts of the
World—Savage Women sometimes Beautiful from European Point of View
—Savages often Admire European Beauty—The Appeal of Beauty to some
Extent Common even to Animals and Man.

Vision is the main channel by which man receives his impressions. To a
large extent it has slowly superseded all the other senses. Its range is
practically infinite; it brings before us remote worlds, it enables us to
understand the minute details of our own structure. While apt for the most
abstract or the most intimate uses, its intermediate range is of universal
service. It furnishes the basis on which a number of arts make their appeal
to us, and, while thus the most æsthetic of the senses, it is the sense on
which we chiefly rely in exercising the animal function of nutrition. It is not
surprising, therefore, that from the point of view of sexual selection vision
should be the supreme sense, and that the love-thoughts of men have always
been a perpetual meditation of beauty.
It would be out of place here to discuss comparatively the origins of our
ideas of beauty. That is a question which belongs to æsthetics, not to sexual
psychology, and it is a question on which æstheticians are not altogether in
agreement. We need not even be concerned to make any definite assertion
on the question whether our ideas of sexual beauty have developed under
the influence of more general and fundamental laws, or whether sexual
ideals themselves underlie our more general conceptions of beauty.
Practically, so far as man and his immediate ancestors are concerned, the
sexual and the extra-sexual factors of beauty have been interwoven from the
first. The sexually beautiful object must have appealed to fundamental
physiological aptitudes of reaction; the generally beautiful object must have

shared in the thrill which the specifically sexual object imparted. There has
been an inevitable action and reaction throughout. Just as we found that the
sexual and the non-sexual influences of agreeable odors throughout nature
are inextricably mingled, so it is with the motives that make an object
beautiful to our eyes.[131]
The sexual element in the constitution of beauty is well recognized even by
those writers who concern themselves exclusively with the æsthetic
conception of beauty or with its relation to culture. It is enough to quote two
or three testimonies on this point. "The whole sentimental side of our
æsthetic sensibility," remarks Santayana, "—without which it would be
perceptive and mathematical rather than æsthetic,—is due to our sexual
organization remotely stirred.... If anyone were desirous to produce a being
with a great susceptibility to beauty, he could not invent an instrument
better designed for that object than sex. Individuals that need not unite for
the birth and rearing of each generation might retain a savage
independence. For them it would not be necessary that any vision should
fascinate, or that any languor should soften, the prying cruelty of the eye.
But sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which
carries his body and soul continually toward another; makes it one of the
dearest enjoyments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to
possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solitude
an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to suffuse the world
with the deepest meaning and beauty? The attention is fixed upon a well-
defined object, and all the effects it produces in the mind are easily regarded
as powers or qualities of that object.... To a certain extent this kind of
interest will center in the proper object of sexual passion, and in the special
characteristics of the opposite sex[131]; and we find, accordingly, that
woman is the most lovely object to man, and man, if female modesty would
confess it, the most interesting to woman. But the effects of so fundamental
and primitive a reaction are much more general. Sex is not the only object
of sexual passion. When love lacks its specific object, when it does not yet
understand itself, or has been sacrificed to some other interest, we see the
stifled fire bursting out in various directions.... Passion then overflows and
visibly floods those neighboring regions which it had always secretly
watered. For the same nervous organization which sex involves, with its
necessarily wide branchings and associations in the brain, must be partially

stimulated by other objects than its specific or ultimate one; especially in
man, who, unlike some of the lower animals, has not his instincts clearly
distinct and intermittent, but always partially active, and never active in
isolation. We may say, then, that for man all nature is a secondary object of
sexual passion, and that to this fact the beauty of nature is largely due." (G.
Santayana, The Sense of Beauty, pp. 59-62.)
Not only is the general fact of sexual attraction an essential element of
æsthetic contemplation, as Santayana remarks, but we have to recognize
also that specific sexual emotion properly comes within the æsthetic field. It
is quite erroneous, as Groos well points out, to assert that sexual emotion
has no æsthetic value. On the contrary, it has quite as much value as the
emotion of terror or of pity. Such emotion, must, however, be duly
subordinated to the total æsthetic effect. (K. Groos, Der Æsthetische
Genuss, p. 151.)
"The idea of beauty," Remy de Gourmont says, "is not an unmixed idea; it
is intimately united with the idea of carnal pleasure. Stendhal obscurely
perceived this when he defined beauty as 'a promise of happiness.' Beauty is
a woman, and women themselves have carried docility to men so far as to
accept this aphorism which they can only understand in extreme sexual
perversion.... Beauty is so sexual that the only uncontested works of art are
those that simply show the human body in its nudity. By its perseverance in
remaining purely sexual Greek statuary has placed itself forever above all
discussion. It is beautiful because it is a beautiful human body, such a one
as every man or every woman would desire to unite with in the perpetuation
of the race.... That which inclines to love seems beautiful; that which seems
beautiful inclines to love. This intimate union of art and of love is, indeed,
the only explanation of art. Without this genital echo art would never have
been born and never have been perpetuated. There is nothing useless in
these deep human depths; everything which has endured is necessary. Art is
the accomplice of love. When love is taken away there is no art; when art is
taken away love is nothing but a physiological need." (Remy de Gourmont,
Culture des Idées, 1900, p. 103, and Mercure de France, August, 1901, pp.
298 et seq.)
Beauty as incarnated in the feminine body has to some extent become the
symbol of love even for women. Colin Scott finds that it is common among

women who are not inverted for female beauty whether on the stage or in
art to arouse sexual emotion to a greater extent than male beauty, and this is
confirmed by some of the histories I have recorded in the Appendix to the
third volume of these Studies. Scott considers that female beauty has come
to be regarded as typical of ideal beauty, and thus tends to produce an
emotional effect on both sexes alike. It is certainly rare to find any æsthetic
admiration of men among women, except in the case of women who have
had some training in art. In this matter it would seem that woman passively
accepts the ideals of man. "Objects which excite a man's desire," Colin
Scott remarks, "are often, if not generally, the same as those affecting
woman. The female body has a sexually stimulating effect upon both sexes.
Statues of female forms are more liable than those of male form to have a
stimulating effect upon women as well as men. The evidence of numerous
literary expressions seems to show that under the influence of sexual
excitement a woman regards her body as made for man's gratification, and
that it is this complex emotion which forms the initial stage, at least, of her
own pleasure. Her body is the symbol for her partner, and indirectly for her,
through his admiration of it, of their mutual joy and satisfaction." (Colin
Scott, "Sex and Art," American Journal of Psychology, vol. vii, No. 2, p.
206; also private letter.)
At the same time it must be remembered that beauty and the conception of
beauty have developed on a wider basis than that of the sexual impulse
only, and also that our conceptions of the beautiful, even as concerns the
human form, are to some extent objective, and may thus be in part reduced
to law. Stratz, in his books on feminine beauty, and notably in Die
Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers, insists on the objective element in
beauty. Papillault, again, when discussing the laws of growth and the beauty
of the face, argues that beauty of line in the face is objective, and not a
creation of fancy, since it is associated with the highest human functions,
moral and social. He remarks on the contrast between the prehistoric man of
Chancelade,—delicately made, with elegant face and high forehead,—who
created the great Magdalenian civilization, and his seemingly much more
powerful, but less beautiful, predecessor, the man of Spy, with enormous
muscles and powerful jaws. (Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie, 1899,
p. 220.)

The largely objective character of beauty is further indicated by the fact that
to a considerable extent beauty is the expression of health. A well and
harmoniously developed body, tense muscles, an elastic and finely toned
skin, bright eyes, grace and animation of carriage—all these things which
are essential to beauty are the conditions of health. It has not been
demonstrated that there is any correlation between beauty and longevity,
and the proof would not be easy to give, but it is quite probable that such a
correlation may exist, and various indications point in this direction. One of
the most delightful of Opie's pictures is the portrait of Pleasance Reeve
(afterward Lady Smith) at the age of 17. This singularly beautiful and
animated brunette lived to the age of 104. Most people are probably
acquainted with similar, if less marked, cases of the same tendency.
The extreme sexual importance of beauty, so far, at all events, as conscious
experience is concerned is well illustrated by the fact that, although three
other senses may and often do play a not inconsiderable part in the
constitution of a person's sexual attractiveness,—the tactile element being,
indeed, fundamental,—yet in nearly all the most elaborate descriptions of
attractive individuals it is the visible elements that are in most cases chiefly
emphasized. Whether among the lowest savages or in the highest
civilization, the poet and story-teller who seeks to describe an ideally lovely
and desirable woman always insists mainly, and often exclusively, on those
characters which appeal to the eye. The richly laden word beauty is a
synthesis of complex impressions obtained through a single sense, and so
simple, comparatively, and vague are the impressions derived from the
other senses that none of them can furnish us with any corresponding word.
Before attempting to analyze the conception of beauty, regarded in its
sexual appeal to the human mind, it may be well to bring together a few
fairly typical descriptions of a beautiful woman as she appears to the men of
various nations.
In an Australian folklore story taken down from the lips of a native some
sixty years ago by W. Dunlop (but evidently not in the native's exact words)
we find this description of an Australian beauty: "A man took as his wife a
beautiful girl who had long, glossy hair hanging around her face and down
her shoulders, which were plump and round. Her face was adorned with red
clay and her person wrapped in a fine large opossum rug fastened by a pin

formed from the small bone of the kangaroo's leg, and also by a string
attached to a wallet made of rushes neatly plaited of small strips skinned
from their outside after they had been for some time exposed to the heat of
the fire; which being thrown on her back, the string passing under one arm
and across her breast, held the soft rug in a fanciful position of considerable
elegance; and she knew well how to show to advantage her queenlike figure
when she walked with her polished yam stick held in one of her small hands
and her little feet appearing below the edge of the rug" (W. Dunlop,
"Australian Folklore Stories," Journal of the Anthropological Institute,
August and November, 1898, p. 27).
A Malay description of female beauty is furnished by Skeat. "The brow (of
the Malay Helen for whose sake a thousand desperate battles are fought in
Malay romances) is like the one-day-old moon; her eyebrows resemble
'pictured clouds,' and are 'arched like the fighting-cock's (artificial) spur';
her cheek resembles the 'sliced-off cheek of a mango'; her nose, 'an opening
jasmine bud'; her hair, the 'wavy blossom shoots of the areca-palm'; slender
is her neck, 'with a triple row of dimples'; her bosom ripening, her waist
'lissom as the stalk of a flower,' her head; 'of a perfect oval' (literally, bird's-
egg shaped), her fingers like the leafy 'spears of lemon-grass' or the 'quills
of the porcupine,' her eyes 'like the splendor of the planet Venus,' and her
lips 'like the fissure of a pomegranate.'" (W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, 1900,
p. 363.)
In Mitford's Tales of Old Japan (vol. i, p. 215) a "peerlessly beautiful girl of
16" is thus described: "She was neither too fat nor too thin, neither too tall
nor too short; her face was oval, like a melon-seed, and her complexion fair
and white;; her eyes were narrow and bright, her teeth small and even; her
nose was aquiline, and her mouth delicately formed, with lovely red lips;
her eyebrows were long and fine; she had a profusion of long black hair;
she spoke modestly, with a soft, sweet voice, and when she smiled, two
lovely dimples appeared in her cheeks; in all her movements she was gentle
and refined." The Japanese belle of ancient times, Dr. Nagayo Sensai
remarks (Lancet, February 15, 1890) had a white face, a long, slender throat
and neck, a narrow chest, small thighs, and small feet and hands. Bälz, also,
has emphasized the ethereal character of the Japanese ideal of feminine
beauty, delicate, pale and slender, almost uncanny; and Stratz, in his

interesting book, Die Körperformen in Kunst und Leben der Japaner
(second edition, 1904), has dealt fully with the subject of Japanese beauty.
The Singalese are great connoisseurs of beauty, and a Kandyan deeply
learned in the matter gave Dr. Davy the following enumeration of a
woman's points of beauty: "Her hair should be voluminous, like the tail of
the peacock, long, reaching to her knees, and terminating in graceful curls;
her eyebrows should resemble the rainbow, her eyes, the blue sapphire and
the petals of the blue manilla-flower. Her nose should be like the bill of the
hawk; her lips should be bright and red, like coral or the young leaf of the
iron-tree. Her teeth should be small, regular, and closely set, and like
jessamine buds. Her neck should be large and round, resembling the
berrigodea. Her chest should be capacious; her breasts, firm and conical,
like the yellow cocoa-nut, and her waist small—almost small enough to be
clasped by the hand. Her hips should be wide; her limbs tapering; the soles
of her feet, without any hollow, and the surface of her body in general soft,
delicate, smooth, and rounded, without the asperities of projecting bones
and sinews." (J. Davy, An Account of the Interior of Ceylon, 1821, p. 110.)
The "Padmini," or lotus-woman, is described by Hindu writers as the type
of most perfect feminine beauty. "She in whom the following signs and
symptoms appear is called a Padmini: Her face is pleasing as the full moon;
her body, well clothed with flesh, is as soft as the Shiras or mustard flower;
her skin is fine, tender, and fair as the yellow lotus, never dark colored. Her
eyes are bright and beautiful as the orbs of the fawn, well cut, and with
reddish corners. Her bosom is hard, full, and high; she; has a good neck; her
nose is straight and lovely; and three folds or wrinkles cross her middle—
about the umbilical region. Her yoni [vulva] resembles the opening lotus
bud, and her love-seed is perfumed like the lily that has newly burst. She
walks with swanlike [more exactly, flamingolike] gait, and her voice is low
and musical as the note of the Kokila bird [the Indian cuckoo]; she delights
in white raiment, in fine jewels, and in rich dresses. She eats little, sleeps
lightly, and being as respectful and religious as she is clever and courteous,
she is ever anxious to worship the gods and to enjoy the conversation of
Brahmans. Such, then, is the Padmini, or lotus-woman." (The Kama Sutra
of Vatsyayana, 1883, p. 11.)

The Hebrew ideal of feminine beauty is set forth in various passages of the
Song of Songs. The poem is familiar, and it will suffice to quote one
passage:—

"How beautiful are thy feet in sandals, O
prince's daughter!
Thy rounded thighs are like jewels,
The work of the hands of a cunning
workman.
Thy navel is like a rounded goblet
Wherein no mingled wine is wanting;
Thy belly is like a heap of wheat
Set about with lilies.
Thy two breasts are like two fawns
They are twins of a roe.
Thy neck is like the tower of ivory;
Thine eyes as the pools in Heshbon, by the
gate of Bathrabbim;
Thy nose is like the tower of Lebanon
That looketh toward Damascus.
Thine head upon thee is like Carmel
And the hair of thine head like purple;
The king is held captive in the tresses thereof.
This thy stature is like to a palm-tree,
And thy breasts to clusters of grapes,
And the smell of thy breath like apples,
And thy mouth like the best wine."

And the man is thus described in the same poem:—

"My beloved is fair and ruddy,
The chiefest among ten thousand.
His head as the most fine gold,
His locks are bushy (or curling), and black as
a raven.
His eyes are like doves beside the water-
brooks,

Washed with milk and fitly set.
His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as banks of
sweet herbs;
His lips are as lilies, dropping liquid myrrh.
His hands are as rings of gold, set with beryl;
His body is as ivory work, overlaid with
sapphires.
His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon
sockets of fine gold.
His aspect is like Lebanon, excellent as the
cedars.
His mouth is most sweet; yea, he is altogether
lovely."
"The maiden whose loveliness inspires the most impassioned expressions in
Arabic poetry," Lane states, "is celebrated for her slender figure: She is like
the cane among plants, and is elegant as a twig of the oriental willow. Her
face is like the full moon, presenting the strongest contrast to the color of
her hair, which is of the deepest hue of night, and falls to the middle of her
back (Arab ladies are extremely fond of full and long hair). A rosy blush
overspreads the center of each cheek; and a mole is considered an
additional charm. The Arabs, indeed, are particularly extravagant in their
admiration of this natural beauty spot, which, according to its place, is
compared to a drop of ambergris upon a dish of alabaster or upon the
surface of a ruby. The eyes of the Arab beauty are intensely black,[132] large,
and long, of the form of an almond: they are full of brilliancy; but this is
softened by long silken lashes, giving a tender and languid expression that
is full of enchantment and scarcely to be improved by the adventitious aid
of the black border of kohl; for this the lovely maiden adds rather for the
sake of fashion than necessity, having what the Arabs term natural kohl. The
eyebrows are thin and arched; the forehead is wide and fair as ivory; the
nose straight; the mouth, small; the lips of a brilliant red; and the teeth, like
pearls set in coral. The forms of the bosom are compared to two
pomegranates; the waist is slender; the hips are wide and large; the feet and
hands, small; the fingers, tapering, and their extremities dyed with the deep
orange tint imparted by the leaves of the henna."

Lane adds a more minute analysis from an unknown author quoted by El-
Ishákee: "Four things in a woman should be black—the hair of the head, the
eyebrows, the eyelashes, and the dark part of the eyes; four white—the
complexion of the skin, the white of the eyes, the teeth, and the legs; four
red—the tongue, the lips, the middle of the cheeks, and the gums; four
round—the head, the neck, the forearms, and the ankles; four long—the
back, the fingers, the arms, and the legs; four wide—the forehead, the eyes,
the bosom, and the hips; four fine—the eyebrows, the nose, the lips, and the
fingers; four thick—the lower part of the back, the thighs, the calves of the
legs, and the knees; four small—the ears, the breasts, the hands, and the
feet." (E. W. Lane, Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, 1883, pp. 214-216.)
A Persian treatise on the figurative terms relating to beauty shows that the
hair should be black, abundant, and wavy, the eyebrows dark and arched.
The eyelashes also must be dark, and like arrows from the bow of the
eyebrows. There is, however, no insistence on the blackness of the eyes. We
hear of four varieties of eye: the dark-gray eye (or narcissus eye); the
narrow, elongated eye of Turkish beauties; the languishing, or love-
intoxicated, eye; and the wine-colored eye. Much stress is laid on the
quality of brilliancy. The face is sometimes described as brown, but more
especially as white and rosy. There are many references to the down on the
lips, which is described as greenish (sometimes bluish) and compared to
herbage. This down and that on the cheeks and the stray hairs near the ears
were regarded as very great beauties. A beauty spot on the chin, cheek, or
elsewhere was also greatly admired, and evoked many poetic comparisons.
The mouth must be very small. In stature a beautiful woman must be tall
and erect, like the cypress or the maritime pine. While the Arabs admired
the rosiness of the legs and thighs, the Persians insisted on white legs and
compared them to silver and crystal. (Anis El-Ochchâq, by Shereef-Eddin
Romi, translated by Huart, Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes,
Paris, fasc. 25, 1875.)
In the story of Kamaralzaman in the Arabian Nights El-Sett Budur is thus
described: "Her hair is so brown that it is blacker than the separation of
friends. And when it is arrayed in three tresses that reach to her feet I seem
to see three nights at once.

"Her face is as white as the day on which friends meet again. If I look on it
at the time of the full moon I see two moons at once.
"Her cheeks are formed of an anemone divided into two corollas; they have
the purple tinge of wine, and her nose is straighter and more delicate than
the finest sword-blade.
"Her lips are colored agate and coral; her tongue secretes eloquence; her
saliva is more desirable than the juice of grapes.
"But her bosom, blessed be the Creator, is a living seduction. It bears twin
breasts of the purest ivory, rounded, and that may be held within the five
fingers of one hand.
"Her belly has dimples full of shade and arranged with the harmony of the
Arabic characters on the seal of a Coptic scribe in Egypt. And the belly
gives origin to her finely modeled and elastic waist.
"At the thought of her flanks I shudder, for thence depends a mass so
weighty that it obliges its owner to sit down when she has risen and to rise
when she lies.
"Such are her flanks, and from them descend, like white marble, her
glorious thighs, solid and straight, united above beneath their crown. Then
come the legs and the slender feet, so small that I am astounded they can
bear so great a weight."
An Egyptian stela in the Louvre sings the praise of a beautiful woman, a
queen who died about 700 B.C., as follows: "The beloved before all
women, the king's daughter who is sweet in love, the fairest among women,
a maid whose like none has seen. Blacker is her hair than the darkness of
night, blacker than the berries of the blackberry bush (?). Harder are her
teeth (?) than the flints on the sickle. A wreath of flowers is each of her
breasts, close nestling on her arms." Wiedemann, who quotes this, adds:
"During the whole classic period of Egyptian history with few exceptions
(such, for example, as the reign of that great innovator, Amenophis IV) the
ideal alike for the male and the female body was a slender and but slightly
developed form. Under the Ethiopian rule and during the Ptolemaic period
in Egypt itself we find, for the first time, that the goddesses are represented
with plump and well-developed outlines. Examination of the mummies

shows that the earlier ideal was based upon actual facts, and that in ancient
Egypt slender, sinewy forms distinguished both men and women.
Intermarriage with other races and harem life may have combined in later
times to alter the physical type, and with it to change also the ideal of
beauty." (A. Wiedemann, Popular Literature in Ancient Egypt, p. 7.)
Commenting on Plato's ideas of beauty in the Banquet Eméric-David gives
references from Greek literature showing that the typical Greek beautiful
woman must be tall, her body supple, her fingers long, her foot small and
light, the eyes clear and moderately large, the eyebrows slightly arched and
almost meeting, the nose straight and firm, nearly—but not quite—aquiline,
the breath sweet as honey. (Eméric-David, Recherches sur l'Art Statuaire,
new edition, 1863, p. 42.)
At the end of classic antiquity, probably in the fifth century, Aristænetus in
his first Epistle thus described his mistress Lais: "Her cheeks are white, but
mixed in imitation of the splendor of the rose; her lips are thin, by a narrow
space separated from the cheeks, but more red; her eyebrows are black and
divided in the middle; the nose straight and proportioned to the thin lips; the
eyes large and bright, with very black pupils, surrounded by the clearest
white, each color more brilliant by contrast. Her hair is naturally curled,
and, as Homer's saying is, like the hyacinth. The neck is white and
proportioned to the face, and though unadorned more conspicuous by its
delicacy; but a necklace of gems encircles it, on which her name is written
in jewels. She is tall and elegantly dressed in garments fitted to her body
and limbs. When dressed her appearance is beautiful; when undressed she is
all beauty. Her walk is composed and slow; she looks like a cypress or a
palm stirred by the wind. I cannot describe how the swelling, symmetrical
breasts raise the constraining vest, nor how delicate and supple her limbs
are. And when she speaks, what sweetness in her discourse!"
Renier has studied the feminine ideal of the Provençal poets, the
troubadours who used the "langue d'oc." "They avoid any description of the
feminine type. The indications refer in great part to the slender, erect, fresh
appearance of the body, and to the white and rosy coloring. After the person
generally, the eyes receive most praise; they are sweet, amorous, clear,
smiling, and bright. The color is never mentioned. The mouth is laughing,
and vermilion, and, smiling sweetly, it reveals the white teeth and calls for

the delights of the kiss. The face is clear and fresh, the hand white and the
hair constantly blonde. The troubadours seldom speak of the rest of the
body. Peire Vidal is an exception, and his reference to the well-raised
breasts may be placed beside a reference by Bertran de Born. The general
impression conveyed by the love lyrics of the langue d'oc is one of great
convention. There seemed to be no salvation outside certain phrases and
epithets. The woman of Provence, sung by hundreds of poets, seems to have
been composed all of milk and roses, a blonde Nuremburg doll." (R. Renier,
Il Tipo Estetico della Donna nel Mediœvo, 1885, pp. 1-24.)
The conventional ideal of the troubadours is, again, thus described: "She is
a lady whose skin is white as milk, whiter than the driven snow, of peculiar
purity in whiteness. Her cheeks, on which vermilion hues alone appear, are
like the rosebud in spring, when it has not yet opened to the full. Her hair,
which is nearly always bedecked and adorned with flowers, is invariably of
the color of flax, as soft as silk, and shimmering with a sheen of the finest
gold." (J. F. Rowbotham, The Troubadours and Courts of Love, p. 228.)
In the most ancient Spanish romances, Renier remarks, the definite
indications of physical beauty are slight. The hair is "of pure gold," or
simply fair (rudios, which is equal to blondos, a word of later introduction),
the face white and rosy, the hand soft, white, and fragrant; in one place we
find a reference to the uncovered breasts, whiter than crystal. But usually
the ancient Castilian romances do not deal with these details. The poet
contents himself with the statement that a lady is the sweetest woman in the
world, "la mas linda mujer del mundo." (R. Renier, Il Tipo Estetico della
Donna nel Mediœvo, pp. 68 et seq.)
In a detailed and well-documented thesis, Alwin Schultz describes the
characteristics of the beautiful woman as she appealed to the German
authors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. She must be of medium
height and slender. Her hair must be fair, like gold; long, bright, and curly; a
man's must only reach to his shoulders. Dark hair is seldom mentioned and
was not admired. The parting of the hair must be white, but not too broad.
The forehead must be white and bright and rounded, without wrinkles. The
eyebrows must be darker than the hair, arched, and not too broad, as though
drawn with a pencil, the space between them not too broad. The eyes must
be bright, clear, and sparkling, not too large or too small; nothing definite

was said of the color, but they were evidently usually blue. The nose must
be of medium size, straight, and not curved. The cheeks must be white,
tinged with red; if the red was absent by nature women used rouge. The
mouth must be small; the lips full and red. The teeth must be small, white,
and even. The chin must be white, rounded, lovable, dimpled; the ears small
and beautiful; the neck of medium size, soft, white, and spotless; the arm
small; the hands and fingers long; the joints small, the nails white and
bright and well cared for. The bosom must be white and large; the breasts
high and rounded, like apples or pears, small and soft. The body generally
must be slender and active. The lower parts of the body are very seldom
mentioned, and many poets are even too modest to mention the breasts. The
buttocks must be rounded, one poet, indeed, mentions, and the thighs soft
and white, the meinel (mons) brown. The legs must be straight and narrow,
the calves full, the feet small and narrow, with high instep. The color of the
skin generally must be clear and of a tempered rosiness. (A. Schultz, Quid
de Perfecta Corporis Humani Pulchritudine Germani Sœculi XII et XIII
Senserint, 1866.) A somewhat similar, but shorter, account is given by K.
Weinhold (Die Deutschen Frauen im Mittelalter, 1882, bd. 1, pp. 219 et
seq.). Weinhold considers that, like the French, the Germans admired the
mixed eye, vair or gray.
Adam de la Halle, the Artois trouvère of the thirteenth century, in a piece
("Li Jus Adan ou de la feuillie") in which he brings himself forward, thus
describes his mistress: "Her hair had the brilliance of gold, and was twisted
into rebellious curls. Her forehead was very regular, white, and smooth; her
eyebrows, delicate and even, were two brown arches, which seemed traced
with a brush. Her eyes, bright and well cut, seemed to me vairs and full of
caresses; they were large beneath, and their lids like little sickles, adorned
by twin folds, veiled or revealed at her will her loving gaze. Between her
eyes descended the pipe of her nose, straight and beautiful, mobile when
she was gay; on either side were her rounded, white cheeks, on which
laughter impressed two dimples, and which one could see blushing beneath
her veil. Beneath the nose opened a mouth with blossoming lips; this
mouth, fresh and vermilion as a rose, revealed the white teeth, in regular
array; beneath the chin sprang the white neck, descending full and round to
the shoulder. The powerful nape, white and without any little wandering
hairs, protruded a little over the dress. To her sloping shoulders were

attached long arms, large or slender where they so should be. What shall I
say of her white hands, with their long fingers, and knuckles without knots,
delicately ending in rosy nails attached to the flesh by a clear and single
line? I come to her bosom with its firm breasts, but short and high pointed,
revealing the valley of love between them, to her round belly, her arched
flanks. Her hips were flat, her legs round, her calf large; she had a slender
ankle, a lean and arched foot. Such she was as I saw her, and that which her
chemise hid was not of less worth." (Houdoy, La Beauté des Femmes, p.
125, who quotes the original of this passage, considers it the ideal model of
the mediæval woman.)
In the twelfth century story of Aucassin et Nicolette, "Nicolette had fair
hair, delicate and curling; her eyes were gray (vairs) and smiling; her face
admirably modeled. Her nose was high and well placed; her lips small and
more vermilion than the cherry or the rose in summer; her teeth were small
and white; her firm little breasts raised her dress as would two walnuts. Her
figure was so slender that you could inclose it with your two hands, and the
flowers of the marguerite, which her toes broke as she walked with naked
feet, seemed black in comparison with her feet and legs, so white was she."
"Her hair was divided into a double tress," says Alain of Lille in the twelfth
century, "which was long enough to kiss the ground; the parting, white as
the lily and obliquely traced, separated the hair, and this want of symmetry,
far from hurting her face, was one of the elements of her beauty. A golden
comb maintained that abundant hair whose brilliance rivaled it, so that the
fascinated eye could scarce distinguish the gold of the hair from the gold of
the comb. The expanded forehead had the whiteness of milk, and rivaled the
lily; her bright eyebrows shone like gold, not standing up in a brush, and,
without being too scanty, orderly arranged. The eyes, serene and brilliant in
their friendly light, seemed twin stars, her nostrils embalsamed with the
odor of honey, neither too depressed in shape nor too prominent, were of
distinguished form; the nard of her mouth offered to the smell a treat of
sweet odors, and her half-open lips invited a kiss. The teeth seemed cut in
ivory; her cheeks, like the carnation of the rose, gently illuminated her face
and were tempered by the transparent whiteness of her veil. Her chin, more
polished than crystal, showed silver reflections, and her slender neck fitly
separated her head from the shoulders. The firm rotundity of her breasts
attested the full expansion of youth; her charming arms, advancing toward

you, seemed to call for caresses; the regular curve of her flanks, justly
proportioned, completed her beauty. All the visible traits of her face and
form thus sufficiently told what those charms must be that the bed alone
knew." (The Latin text is given by Houdoy, La Beauté des Femmes du XIIe
au XVIe Siècle, p. 119. Robert de Flagy's portrait of Blanchefleur in Sarin-
le-Loherain, written in same century, reveals very similar traits.)
"The young woman appeared with twenty brightly polished daggers and
swords," we read in the Irish Tain Bo Cuailgne of the Badhbh or Banshee
who appeared to Meidhbh, "together with seven braids for the dead, of
bright gold, in her right hand; a speckled garment of green ground, fastened
by a bodkin at the breast under her fair, ruddy countenance, enveloped her
form; her teeth were so new and bright that they appeared like pearls
artistically set in her gums; like the ripe berry of the mountain ash were her
lips; sweeter was her voice than the notes of the gentle harp-strings when
touched by the most skillful fingers, and emitting the most enchanting
melody; whiter than the snow of one night was her skin, and beautiful to
behold were her garments, which reached to her well molded, bright-nailed
feet; copious tresses of her tendriled, glossy, golden hair hung before, while
others dangled behind and reached the calf of her leg." (Ossianio
Transactions, vol. ii, p. 107.)
An ancient Irish hero is thus described: "They saw a great hero approaching
them; fairest of the heroes of the world; larger and taller than any man;
bluer than ice his eye; redder than the fresh rowan berries his lips; whiter
than showers of pearl his teeth; fairer than the snow of one night his skin; a
protecting shield with a golden border was upon him, two battle-lances in
his hands; a sword with knobs of ivory [teeth of the sea-horse], and
ornamented with gold, at his side; he had no other accoutrements of a hero
besides these; he had golden hair on his head, and had a fair, ruddy
countenance." (The Banquet of Dun na n-gedh, translated by O'Donovan,
Irish Archæological Society, 1842.)
The feminine ideal of the Italian poets closely resembles that of those north
of the Alps. Petrarch's Laura, as described in the Canzoniere, is white as
snow; her eyes, indeed, are black, but the fairness of her hair is constantly
emphasized; her lips are rosy; her teeth white; her cheeks rosy; her breast
youthful; her hands white and slender. Other poets insist on the tall, white,

delicate body; the golden or blonde hair; the bright or starry eyes (without
mention of color), the brown or black arched eyebrows, the straight nose,
the small mouth, the thin vermilion lips, the small and firm breasts. (Renier,
Il Tipo Estetico, pp. 87 et seq.)
Marie de France, a French mediæval writer of the twelfth century, who
spent a large part of her life in England, in the Lai of Lanval thus described
a beautiful woman: "Her body was beautiful, her hips low, the neck whiter
than snow, the eyes gray (vairs), the face white, the mouth beautiful, the
nose well placed, the eyebrows brown, the forehead beautiful, the head
curly and blonde; the gleam of gold thread was less bright than her hair
beneath the sun."
The traits of Boccaccio's ideal of feminine beauty, a voluptuous ideal as
compared with the ascetic mediæval ideal which had previously prevailed,
together with the characteristics of the very beautiful and almost classic
garments in which he arrayed women, have been brought together by Hortis
(Studi sulle opere Latine del Boccaccio, 1879, pp. 70 et seq.). Boccaccio
admired fair and abundant wavy hair, dark and delicate eyebrows, and
brown or even black eyes. It was not until some centuries later, as Hortis
remarks, that Boccaccio's ideal woman was embodied by the painter in the
canvases of Titian.
The first precise description of a famous beautiful woman was written by
Niphus in the sixteenth century in his De Pulchro et Amore, which is
regarded as the first modern treatise on æsthetics. The lady described is
Joan of Aragon, the greatest beauty of her time, whose portrait by Raphael
(or more probably Giulio Romano) is in the Louvre. Niphus, who was the
philosopher of the pontifical court and the friend of Leo X, thus describes
this princess, whom, as a physician, he had opportunities of observing
accurately: "She is of medium stature, straight, and elegant, and possesses
the grace which can only be imparted by an assemblage of characteristics
which are individually faultless. She is neither fat nor bony, but succulent;
her complexion is not pale, but white tinged with rose; her long hair is
golden; her ears are small and in proportion with the size of her mouth. Her
brown eyebrows are semicircular, not too bushy, and the individual hairs
short. Her eyes are blue (oæsius), brighter than stars, radiant with grace and
gaiety beneath the dark-brown eyelashes, which are well spaced and not too

long. The nose, symmetrical and of medium size, descends perpendicularly
from between the eyebrows. The little valley separating the nose from the
upper lip is divinely proportioned. The mouth, inclined to be rather small, is
always stirred by a sweet smile; the rather thick lips are made of honey and
coral. The teeth are small, polished as ivory, and symmetrically ranged, and
the breath has the odor of the sweetest perfumes. Her voice is that of a
goddess. The chin is divided by a dimple; the whole face approximates to a
virile rotundity. The straight long neck, white and full, rises gracefully from
the shoulders. On the ample bosom, revealing no indication of the bones,
arise the rounded breasts, of equal and fitting size, and exhaling the
perfume of the peaches they resemble. The rather plump hands, on the back
like snow, on the palm like ivory, are exactly the length of the face; the full
and rounded fingers are long and terminating in round, curved nails of soft
color. The chest as a whole has the form of a pear, reversed, but a little
compressed, and the base attached to the neck in a delightfully well-
proportioned manner. The belly, the flanks, and the secret parts are worthy
of the chest; the hips are large and rounded; the thighs, the legs, and the
arms are in just proportion. The breadth of the shoulders is also in the most
perfect relation to the dimensions of the other parts of the body; the feet, of
medium length, terminate in beautifully arranged toes." (Houdoy
reproduces this passage in La Beauté des Femmes; cf. also Stratz, Die
Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers, Chapter III.)
Gabriel de Minut, who published in 1587 a treatise of no very great
importance, De la Beauté, also wrote under the title of La Paulegraphie a
very elaborate description, covering sixty pages, of Paule de Viguier, a
Gascon lady of good family and virtuous life living at Toulouse. Minut was
her devoted admirer and addressed an affectionate poem to her just before
his death. She was seventy years of age when he wrote the elaborate
account of her beauty. She had blue eyes and fair hair, though belonging to
one of the darkest parts of France.
Ploss and Bartels (Das Weib, bd. 1, sec. 3) have independently brought
together a number of passages from the writers of many countries
describing their ideals of beauty. On this collection I have not drawn.
When we survey broadly the ideals of feminine beauty set down by the
peoples of many lands, it is interesting to note that they all contain many

features which appeal to the æsthetic taste of the modern European, and
many of them, indeed, contain no features which obviously clash with his
canons of taste. It may even be said that the ideals of some savages affect us
more sympathetically than some of the ideals of our own mediæval
ancestors. As a matter of fact, European travelers in all parts of the world
have met with women who were gracious and pleasant to look on, and not
seldom even in the strict sense beautiful, from the standpoint of European
standards. Such individuals have been found even among those races with
the greatest notoriety for ugliness.
Even among so primitive and remote a people as the Australians beauty in
the European sense is sometimes found. "I have on two occasions,"
Lumholtz states, "seen what might be called beauties among the women of
western Queensland. Their hands were small, their feet neat and well
shaped, with so high an instep that one asked oneself involuntarily where in
the world they had acquired this aristocratic mark of beauty. Their figure
was above criticism, and their skin, as is usually the case among the young
women, was as soft as velvet. When these black daughters of Eve smiled
and showed their beautiful white teeth, and when their eyes peeped
coquettishly from beneath the curly hair which hung in quite the modern
fashion down their foreheads," Lumholtz realized that even here women
could exert the influence ascribed by Goethe to women generally. (C.
Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 132.) Much has, again, been written about
the beauty of the American Indians. See, e.g., an article by Dr. Shufeldt,
"Beauty from an Indian's Point of View," Cosmopolitan Magazine, April,
1895. Among the Seminole Indians, especially, it is said that types of
handsome and comely women are not uncommon. (Clay MacCauley,
"Seminole Indians of Florida," Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of
Ethnology, 1883-1884, pp. 493 et seq.)
There is much even in the negress which appeals to the European as
beautiful. "I have met many negresses," remarks Castellani (Les Femmes au
Congo, p. 2), "who could say proudly in the words of the Song of Songs, 'I
am black, but comely.' Many of our peasant women have neither the same
grace nor the same delicate skin as some natives of Cassai or Songha. As to
color, I have seen on the African continent creatures of pale gold or even
red copper whose fine and satiny skin rivals the most delicate white skins;
one may, indeed, find beauties among women of the darkest ebony." He

adds that, on the whole, there is no comparison with white women, and that
the negress soon becomes hideous.
The very numerous quotations from travelers concerning the women of all
lands quoted by Ploss and Bartels (Das Weib, seventh edition, bd. i, pp. 88-
106) amply suffice to show how frequently some degree of beauty is found
even among the lowest human races. Cf., also, Mantegazza's survey of the
women of different races from this point of view, Fisiologia della Donna,
Cap. IV.
The fact that the modern European, whose culture may be supposed to have
made him especially sensitive to æsthetic beauty, is yet able to find beauty
among even the women of savage races serves to illustrate the statement
already made that, whatever modifying influences may have to be admitted,
beauty is to a large extent an objective matter. The existence of this
objective element in beauty is confirmed by the fact that it is sometimes
found that the men of the lower races admire European women more than
women of their own race. There is reason to believe that it is among the
more intelligent men of lower race—that is to say those whose æsthetic
feelings are more developed—that the admiration for white women is most
likely to be found.
"Mr. Winwood Reade," stated Darwin, "who has had ample opportunities
for observation, not only with the negroes of the West Coast of Africa, but
with those of the interior who have never associated with Europeans, is
convinced that their ideas of beauty are, on the whole, the same as ours; and
Dr. Rohlfs writes to me to the same effect with respect to Bornu and the
countries inhabited by the Pullo tribes. Mr. Reade found that he agreed with
the negroes in their estimation of the beauty of the native girls; and that
their appreciation of the beauty of European women corresponded with
ours.... The Fuegians, as I have been informed by a missionary who long
resided with them, considered European women as extremely beautiful ... I
should add that a most experienced observer, Captain [Sir R.] Burton,
believes that a woman whom we consider beautiful is admired throughout
the world." (Darwin, Descent of Man, Chapter XIX.)
Mantegazza quotes a conversation between a South American chief and an
Argentine who had asked him which he preferred, the women of his own

people or Christian women; the chief replied that he admired Christian
women most, and when asked the reason said that they were whiter and
taller, had finer hair and smoother skin. (Mantegazza, Fisiologia della
Donna, Appendix to Cap. VIII.)
Nordenskjöld, as quoted by Ploss and Bartels, states that the Eskimo regard
their own type as more ugly than that produced by crossing with white
persons, and, according to Kropf, the Nosa Kaffers admire and seek the
fairer half-castes in preference to their own women of pure race (Ploss and
Bartels, Das Weib, seventh edition, bd. 1, p. 78). There is a widespread
admiration for fairness, it may be added, among dark peoples. Fair men are
admired by the Papuans at Torres Straits (Reports of the Cambridge
Anthropological Expedition, vol. v, p. 327). The common use of powder
among the women of dark-skinned peoples bears witness to the existence of
the same ideal.
Stratz, in his books Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers and Die
Rassenschönheit des Weibes, argues that the ideal of beauty is
fundamentally the same throughout the world, and that the finest persons
among the lower races admire and struggle to attain the type which is found
commonly and in perfection among the white peoples of Europe. When in
Japan he found that among the numerous photographs of Japanese beauties
everywhere to be seen, his dragoman, a Japanese of low birth, selected as
the most beautiful those which displayed markedly the Japanese type with
narrow-slitted eyes and broad nose. When he sought the opinion of a
Japanese photographer, who called himself an artist and had some claim to
be so considered, the latter selected as most beautiful three Japanese girls
who in Europe also would have been considered pretty. In Java, also, when
selecting from a large number of Javanese girls a few suitable for
photographing, Stratz was surprised to find that a Javanese doctor pointed
out as most beautiful those which most closely corresponded to the
European type. (Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, fourth edition,
1903, p. 3; id., Die Körperformen der Japaner, 1904, p. 78.)
Stratz reproduces (Rassenschönheit, pp. 36 et seq.) a representation of
Kwan-yin, the Chinese goddess of divine love, and quotes some remarks of
Borel's concerning the wide deviation of the representations of the goddess,
a type of gracious beauty, from the Chinese racial type. Stratz further

reproduces the figure of a Buddhistic goddess from Java (now in the
Archæological Museum of Leyden) which represents a type of loveliness
corresponding to the most refined and classic European ideal.
Not only is there a fundamentally objective element in beauty throughout
the human species, but it is probably a significant fact that we may find a
similar element throughout the whole animated world. The things that to
man are most beautiful throughout Nature are those that are intimately
associated with, or dependent upon, the sexual process and the sexual
instinct. This is the case in the plant world. It is so throughout most of the
animal world, and, as Professor Poulton, in referring to this often
unexplained and indeed unnoticed fact, remarks, "the song or plume which
excites the mating impulse in the hen is also in a high proportion of cases
most pleasing to man himself. And not only this, but in their past history, so
far as it has been traced (e.g., in the development of the characteristic
markings of the male peacock and argus pheasant), such features have
gradually become more and more pleasing to us as they have acted as
stronger and stronger stimuli to the hen."[133]

[131]
"It is likely that all visible parts of the organism, even those with
a definite physiological meaning, appeal to the æsthetic sense of
the opposite sex," Poulton remarks, speaking primarily of insects,
in words that apply still more accurately to the human species. E.
Poulton, The Colors of Animals, 1890, p. 304.

[132]
"The Arabs in general," Lane remarks, "entertain a prejudice
against blue eyes—a prejudice said to have arisen from the great
number of blue-eyed persons among certain of their northern
enemies."

[133]
Nature, April 14, 1898, p. 55.

II.

Beauty to Some Extent Consists Primitively in an Exaggeration of the
Sexual Characters—The Sexual Organs—Mutilations, Adornments, and
Garments—Sexual Allurement the Original Object of Such Devices—The
Religious Element—Unæsthetic Character of the Sexual Organs—
Importance of the Secondary Sexual Characters—The Pelvis and Hips—
Steatopygia—Obesity—Gait—The Pregnant Woman as a Mediæval Type
of Beauty—The Ideals of the Renaissance—The Breasts—The Corset—Its
Object—Its History—Hair—The Beard—The Element of National or
Racial Type in Beauty—The Relative Beauty of Blondes and Brunettes—
The General European Admiration for Blondes—The Individual Factors in
the Constitution of the Idea of Beauty—The Love of the Exotic.

In the constitution of our ideals of masculine and feminine beauty it was
inevitable that the sexual characters should from a very early period in the
history of man form an important element. From a primitive point of view a
sexually desirable and attractive person is one whose sexual characters are
either naturally prominent or artificially rendered so. The beautiful woman
is one endowed, as Chaucer expresses it,

"With buttokes brode and brestës rounde and hye";

that is to say, she is the woman obviously best fitted to bear children and to
suckle them. These two physical characters, indeed, since they represent
aptitude for the two essential acts of motherhood, must necessarily tend to
be regarded as beautiful among all peoples and in all stages of culture, even
in high stages of civilization when more refined and perverse ideals tend to
find favor, and at Pompeii as a decoration on the east side of the
Purgatorium of the Temple of Isis we find a representation of Perseus
rescuing Andromeda, who is shown as a woman with a very small head,
small hands and feet, but with a fully developed body, large breasts, and
large projecting nates.[134]
To a certain extent—and, as we shall see, to a certain extent only—the
primary sexual characters are objects of admiration among primitive

peoples. In the primitive dances of many peoples, often of sexual
significance, the display of the sexual organs on the part of both men and
women is frequently a prominent feature. Even down to mediæval times in
Europe the garments of men sometimes permitted the sexual organs to be
visible. In some parts of the world, also, the artificial enlargement of the
female sexual organs is practised, and thus enlarged they are considered an
important and attractive feature of beauty.
Sir Andrew Smith informed Darwin that the elongated nymphæ (or
"Hottentot apron") found among the women of some South African tribes
was formerly greatly admired by the men (Descent of Man, Chapter XIX).
This formation is probably a natural peculiarity of the women of these races
which is very much exaggerated by intentional manipulation due to the
admiration it arouses. The missionary Merensky reported the prevalence of
the practice of artificial elongation among the Basuto and other peoples,
and the anatomical evidence is in favor of its partly artificial character. (The
Hottentot apron is fully discussed by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, bd. I, sec.
vi.)
In the Jaboo country on the Bight of Benin in West Africa, Daniell stated, it
was considered ornamental to elongate the labia and the clitoris artificially;
small weights were appended to the clitoris and gradually increased. (W. F.
Daniell, Topography of Gulf of Guinea, 1849, pp. 24, 53.)
Among the Bawenda of the northern Transvaal, the missionary Wessmann
states, it is customary for young girls from the age of 8 to spend a certain
amount of time every day in pulling the labia majora in order to elongate
them; in selecting a wife the young men attach much importance to this
elongation, and the girl whose labia stand out most is most attractive.
(Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1894, ht. 4, p. 363.)
It may be added that in various parts of the world mutilations of the sexual
organs of men and women, or operations upon them, are practiced, for
reasons which are imperfectly known, since it usually happens that the
people who practice them are unable to give the reason for this practice, or
they assign a reason which is manifestly not that which originally prompted
the practice. Thus, the excision of the clitoris, practiced in many parts of
East Africa and frequently supposed to be for the sake of dulling sexual

feeling (J. S. King Journal of the Anthropological Society, Bombay, 1890,
p. 2), seems very doubtfully accounted for thus, for the women have it done
of their own accord; "all Sobo women [Niger coast] have their clitoris cut
off; unless they have this done they are looked down upon, as slave women
who do not get cut; as soon, therefore, as a Sobo woman has collected
enough money, she goes to an operating woman and pays her to do the
cutting." (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, August-November, 1898,
p. 117.) The Comte de Cardi investigated this matter in the Niger Delta: "I
have questioned both native men and women," he states, "to try and get the
natives' reason for this rite, but the almost universal answer to my queries
was, 'it is our country's fashion.'" One old man told him it was practiced
because favorable to continence, and several old women said that once the
women of the land used to suffer from a peculiar kind of madness which
this rite reduced. (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, August-
November, 1899, p. 59.) In the same way the subincision of the urethra
(mika operation of Australia) is frequently supposed to be for the purpose of
preventing conception (See, e.g., the description of the operation by J. G.
Garson, Medical Press, February 21, 1894), but this is very doubtful, and E.
C. Stirling found that subincised natives often had large families.
(Intercolonial Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery, 1894.)
A passage in the Mainz Chronicle for 1367 (as quoted by Schultz, Das
Höfische Leben, p. 297) shows that at that time the tunics of the men were
so made that it was always possible for the sexual organs to be seen in
walking or sitting.
This insistence on the naked sexual organs as objects of attraction is,
however, comparatively rare, and confined to peoples in a low state of
culture. Very much more widespread is the attempt to beautify and call
attention to the sexual organs by tattooing,[135] by adornment and by
striking peculiarities of clothing. The tendency for beauty of clothing to be
accepted as a substitute for beauty of body appears early in the history of
mankind, and, as we know, tends to be absolutely accepted in civilization.
[136]
"We exclaim," as Goethe remarks, "'What a beautiful little foot!' when
we have merely seen a pretty shoe; we admire the lovely waist when
nothing has met out eyes but an elegant girdle." Our realities and our
traditional ideals are hopelessly at variance; the Greeks represented their
statues without pubic hair because in real life they had adopted the oriental

custom of removing the hairs; we compel our sculptors and painters to
make similar representations, though they no longer correspond either to
realities or to our own ideas of what is beautiful and fitting in real life. Our
artists are themselves equally ignorant and confused, and, as Stratz has
repeatedly shown, they constantly reproduce in all innocence the
deformations and pathological characters of defective models. If we were
honest, we should say—like the little boy before a picture of the Judgment
of Paris, in answer to his mother's question as to which of the three
goddesses he thought most beautiful—"I can't tell, because they haven't
their clothes on."
The concealment actually attained was not, however, it would appear,
originally sought. Various authors have brought together evidence to show
that the main primitive purpose of adornment and clothing among savages
is not to conceal the body, but to draw attention to it and to render it more
attractive. Westermarck, especially, brings forward numerous examples of
savage adornments which serve to attract attention to the sexual regions of
man and woman.[137] He further argues that the primitive object of various
savage peoples in practicing circumcision, as other similar mutilations, is
really to secure sexual attractiveness, whatever religious significance they
may sometimes have developed subsequently. A more recent view
represents the magical influence of both adornment and mutilation as
primary, as a method of guarding and insulating dangerous bodily
functions. Frazer, in The Golden Bough, is the most able and brilliant
champion of this view, which undoubtedly embodies a large element of
truth, although it must not be accepted to the absolute exclusion of the
influence of sexual attractiveness. The two are largely woven in together.
[138]

There is, indeed, a general tendency for the sexual functions to take on a
religious character and for the sexual organs to become sacred at a very
early period in culture. Generation, the reproductive force in man, animals,
and plants, was realized by primitive man to be a fact of the first magnitude,
and he symbolized it in the sexual organs of man and woman, which thus
attained to a solemnity which was entirely independent of purposes of
sexual allurement. Phallus worship may almost be said to be a universal
phenomenon; it is found even among races of high culture, among the

Romans of the Empire and the Japanese to-day; it has, indeed, been thought
by some that one of the origins of the cross is to be found in the phallus.
"Hardly any other object," remarks Dr. Richard Andree, "has been with
such great unanimity represented by nearly all peoples as the phallus, the
symbol of procreative force in the religions of the East and an object of
veneration at public festivals. In the Moabitic Baal Peor, in the cult of
Dionysos, everywhere, indeed, except in Persia, we meet with Priapic
representations and the veneration accorded to the generative organ. It is
needless to refer to the great significance of the Linga puja, the procreative
organ of the god Siva, in India, a god to whom more temples were erected
than to any other Indian deity. Our museums amply show how common
phallic representations are in Africa, East Asia, the Pacific, frequently in
connection with religious worship." (R. Andree, "Amerikansche Phallus-
Darstellungen," Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1895, ht. 6, p. 678.)
Women have no external generative organ like the phallus to play a large
part in life as a sacred symbol. There is, however, some reason to believe
that the triangle is to some extent such a symbol. Lejeune ("La
Representation Sexuelle en Religion, Art, et Pédagogie," Bulletin de la
Société d'Anthropologie, Paris, October 3, 1901) brings forward reasons in
favor of the view that the triangular hair-covered region of the mons veneris
has had considerable significance in this respect, and he presents various
primitive figures in illustration.
Apart from the religions and magical properties so widely accorded to the
primary sexual characters, there are other reasons why they should not often
have gained or long retained any great importance as objects of sexual
allurement. They are unnecessary and inconvenient for this purpose. The
erect attitude of man gives them here, indeed, an advantage possessed by
very few animals, among whom it happens with extreme rarity that the
primary sexual characters are rendered attractive to the eye of the opposite
sex, though they often are to the sense of smell. The sexual regions
constitute a peculiarly vulnerable spot, and remain so even in man, and the
need for their protection which thus exists conflicts with the prominent
display required for a sexual allurement. This end is far more effectively
attained, with greater advantage and less disadvantage, by concentrating the
chief ensigns of sexual attractiveness on the upper and more conspicuous

parts of the body. This method is well-nigh universal among animals as well
as in man.
There is another reason why the sexual organs should be discarded as
objects of sexual allurement, a reason which always proves finally decisive
as a people advances in culture. They are not æsthetically beautiful. It is
fundamentally necessary that the intromittent organ of the male and the
receptive canal of the female should retain their primitive characteristics;
they cannot, therefore, be greatly modified by sexual or natural selection,
and the exceedingly primitive character they are thus compelled to retain,
however sexually desirable and attractive they may become to the opposite
sex under the influence of emotion, can rarely be regarded as beautiful from
the point of view of æsthetic contemplation. Under the influence of art there
is a tendency for the sexual organs to be diminished in size, and in no
civilized country has the artist ever chosen to give an erect organ to his
representations of ideal masculine beauty. It is mainly because the
unæsthetic character of a woman's sexual region is almost imperceptible in
any ordinary and normal position of the nude body that the feminine form is
a more æsthetically beautiful object of contemplation than the masculine.
Apart from this character we are probably bound, from a strictly æsthetic
point of view, to regard the male form as more æsthetically beautiful.[139]
The female form, moreover, usually overpasses very swiftly the period of
the climax of its beauty, often only retaining it during a few weeks.
The following communication from a correspondent well brings out the
divergences of feeling in this matter:
"You write that the sex organs, in an excited condition, cannot be called
æsthetic. But I believe that they are a source, not only of curiosity and
wonder to many persons, but also objects of admiration. I happen to know
of one man, extremely intellectual and refined, who delights in lying
between his mistress's thighs and gazing long at the dilated vagina. Also
another man, married, and not intellectual, who always tenderly gazes at his
wife's organs, in a strong light, before intercourse, and kisses her there and
upon the abdomen. The wife, though amative, confessed to another woman
that she could not understand the attraction. On the other hand, two married
men have told me that the sight of their wives' genital parts would disgust
them, and that they have never seen them.

"If the sexual parts cannot be called æsthetic, they have still a strong charm
for many passionate lovers, of both sexes, though not often, I believe,
among the unimaginative and the uneducated, who are apt to ridicule the
organs or to be repelled by them. Many women confess that they are
revolted by the sight of even a husband's complete nudity, though they have
no indifference for sexual embraces. I think that the stupid bungle of Nature
in making the generative organs serve as means of relieving the bladder has
much to do with this revulsion. But some women of erotic temperament
find pleasure in looking at the penis of a husband or lover, in handling it,
and kissing it. Prostitutes do this in the way of business; some chaste,
passionate wives act thus voluntarily. This is scarcely morbid, as the
mammalia of most species smell and lick each others' genitals. Probably
primitive man did the same."
Brantôme (Vie des Dames Galantes, Discours II) has some remarks to much
the same effect concerning the difference between men, some of whom take
no pleasure in seeing the private parts of their wives or mistresses, while
others admire them and delight to kiss them.
I must add that, however natural or legitimate the attraction of the sexual
parts may be to either sex, the question of their purely æsthetic beauty
remains unaffected.
Remy de Gourmont, in a discussion of the æsthetic element in sexual
beauty, considers that the invisibility of the sexual organs is the decisive
fact in rendering women more beautiful than men. "Sex, which is
sometimes an advantage, is always a burden and always a flaw; it exists for
the race and not for the individual. In the human male, and precisely
because of his erect attitude, sex is the predominantly striking and visible
fact, the point of attack in a struggle at close quarters, the point aimed at
from a distance, an obstacle for the eye, whether regarded as a rugosity on
the surface or as breaking the middle of a line. The harmony of the feminine
body is thus geometrically much more perfect, especially when we consider
the male and the female at the moment of desire when they present the most
intense and natural expression of life. Then the woman, whose movements
are all interior, or only visible by the undulation of her curves, preserves her
full æsthetic value, while the man, as it were, all at once receding toward
the primitive state of animality, seems to throw off all beauty and become

reduced to the simple and naked condition of a genital organism." (Remy de
Gourmont, Physique de l'Amour, p. 69.) Remy de Gourmont proceeds,
however, to point out that man has his revenge after a woman has become
pregnant, and that, moreover, the proportions of the masculine body are
more beautiful than those of the feminine body.
The primary sexual characters of man and woman have thus never at any
time played a very large part in sexual allurement. With the growth of
culture, indeed, the very methods which had been adopted to call attention
to the sexual organs were by a further development retained for the purpose
of concealing them. From the first the secondary sexual characters have
been a far more widespread method of sexual allurement than the primary
sexual characters, and in the most civilized countries to-day they still
constitute the most attractive of such methods to the majority of the
population.
The main secondary sexual characters in woman and the type which they
present in beautiful and well-developed persons are summarized as follows
by Stratz, who in his book on the beauty of the body in woman sets forth
the reasons for the characteristics here given:—

Delicate bony structure.
Rounded forms and breasts.
Broad pelvis.
Long and abundant hair.
Low and narrow boundary of pubic hair.
Sparse hair in armpit.
No hair on body.
Delicate skin.
Rounded skull.
Small face.
Large orbits.
High and slender eyebrows.
Low and small lower jaw.
Soft transition from cheek to neck.
Rounded neck.
Slender wrist.
Small hand, with long index finger.

Rounded shoulders.
Straight, small clavicle.
Small and long thorax.
Slender waist.
Hollow sacrum.
Prominent and domed nates.
Sacral dimples.
Rounded and thick thighs.
Low and obtuse pubic arch.
Soft contour of knee.
Rounded calves.
Slender ankle.
Small toes.
Long second and short fifth toe.
Broad middle incisor teeth.
(Stratz, Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers, fourteenth edition, 1903, p.
200. This statement agrees at most points with my own exposition of the
secondary sexual characters: Man and Woman, fourth edition, revised and
enlarged, 1904.)
Thus we find, among most of the peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the
chief continents of the world, that the large hips and buttocks of women are
commonly regarded as an important feature of beauty. This secondary
sexual character represents the most decided structural deviation of the
feminine type from the masculine, a deviation demanded by the
reproductive function of women, and in the admiration it arouses sexual
selection is thus working in a line with natural selection. It cannot be said
that, except in a very moderate degree, it has always been regarded as at the
same time in a line with claims of purely æsthetic beauty. The European
artist frequently seeks to attenuate rather than accentuate the protuberant
lines of the feminine hips, and it is noteworthy that the Japanese also regard
small hips as beautiful. Nearly everywhere else large hips and buttocks are
regarded as a mark of beauty, and the average man is of this opinion even in
the most æsthetic countries. The contrast of this exuberance with the more
closely knit male form, the force of association, and the unquestionable fact
that such development is the condition needed for healthy motherhood,
have served as a basis for an ideal of sexual attractiveness which appeals to

nearly all people more strongly than a more narrowly æsthetic ideal, which
must inevitably be somewhat hermaphroditic in character.
Broad hips, which involve a large pelvis, are necessarily a characteristic of
the highest human races, because the races with the largest heads must be
endowed also with the largest pelvis to enable their large heads to enter the
world. The white race, according to Bacarisse, has the broadest sacrum, the
yellow race coming next, the black race last. The white race is also stated to
show the greatest curvature of the sacrum, the yellow race next, while the
black race has the flattest sacrum.[140] The black race thus possesses the
least developed pelvis, the narrowest, and the flattest. It is certainly not an
accidental coincidence that it is precisely among people of black race that
we find a simulation of the large pelvis of the higher races admired and
cultivated in the form of steatopygia. This is an enormously exaggerated
development of the subcutaneous layer of fat which normally covers the
buttocks and upper parts of the thighs in woman, and in this extreme form
constitutes a kind of natural fatty tumor. Steatopygia cannot be said to exist,
according to Deniker, unless the projection of the buttocks exceeds 4 per
cent of the individual's height; it frequently equals 10 per cent. True
steatopygia only exists among Bushman and Hottentot women, and among
the peoples who are by blood connected with them. An unusual
development of the buttocks is, however, found among the Woloffs and
many other African peoples.[141] There can be no doubt that among the
black peoples of Africa generally, whether true steatopygia exists among
them or not, extreme gluteal development is regarded as a very important, if
not the most important, mark of beauty, and Burton stated that a Somali
man was supposed to choose his wife by ranging women in a row and
selecting her who projected farthest a tergo.[142] In Europe, it must be
added, clothing enables this feature of beauty to be simulated. Even by
some African peoples the posterior development has been made to appear
still larger by the use of cushions, and in England in the sixteenth century
we find the same practice well recognized, and the Elizabethan dramatists
refer to the "bum-roll," which in more recent times has become the bustle,
devices which bear witness to what Watts, the painter, called "the persistent
tendency to suggest that the most beautiful half of humanity is furnished
with tails."[143] In reality, as we see, it is simply a tendency, not to simulate
an animal character, but to emphasize the most human and the most

feminine of the secondary sexual characters, and therefore, from the sexual
point of view, a beautiful feature.[144]
Sometimes admiration for this characteristic is associated with admiration
for marked obesity generally, and it may be noted that a somewhat greater
degree of fatness may also be regarded as a feminine secondary sexual
character. This admiration is specially marked among several of the black
peoples of Africa, and here to become a beauty a woman must, by drinking
enormous quantities of milk, seek to become very fat. Sonnini noted that to
some extent the same thing might be found among the Mohammedan
women of Egypt. After bright eyes and a soft, polished, hairless skin, an
Egyptian woman, he stated, most desired to obtain embonpoint; men
admired fat women and women sought to become fat. "The idea of a very
fat woman," Sonnini adds, "is nearly always accompanied in Europe by that
of softness of flesh, effacement of form, and defect of elasticity in the
outlines. It would be a mistake thus to represent the women of Turkey in
general, where all seek to become fat. It is certain that the women of the
East, more favored by Nature, preserve longer than others the firmness of
the flesh, and this precious property, joined to the freshness and whiteness
of their skin, renders them very agreeable. It must be added that in no part
of the world is cleanliness carried so far as by the women of the East."[145]
The special characteristics of the feminine hips and buttocks become
conspicuous in walking and may be further emphasized by the special
method of walking or carriage. The women of some southern countries are
famous for the beauty of their way of walk; "the goddess is revealed by her
walk," as Virgil said. In Spain, especially, among European countries, the
walk very notably gives expression to the hips and buttocks. The spine is in
Spain very curved, producing what is termed ensellure, or saddle-back—a
characteristic which gives great flexibility to the back and prominence to
the gluteal regions, sometimes slightly simulating steatopygia. The
vibratory movement naturally produced by walking and sometimes
artificially heightened thus becomes a trait of sexual beauty. Outside of
Europe such vibration of the flanks and buttocks is more frankly displayed
and cultivated as a sexual allurement. The Papuans are said to admire this
vibratory movement of the buttocks in their women. Young girls are
practiced in it by their mothers for hours at a time as soon as they have
reached the age of 7 or 8, and the Papuan maiden walks thus whenever she

is in the presence of men, subsiding into a simpler gait when no men are
present. In some parts of tropical Africa the women walk in this fashion. It
is also known to the Egyptians, and by the Arabs is called ghung.[146] As
Mantegazza remarks, the essentially feminine character of this gait makes it
a method of sexual allurement. It should be observed that it rests on
feminine anatomical characteristics, and that the natural walk of a
femininely developed woman is inevitably different from that of a man.
In an elaborate discussion of beauty of movement Stratz summarizes the
special characters of the gait in woman as follows: "A woman's walk is
chiefly distinguished from a man's by shorter steps, the more marked
forward movement of the hips, the greater length of the phase of rest in
relation to the phase of motion, and by the fact that the compensatory
movements of the upper parts of the body are less powerfully supported by
the action of the arms and more by the revolution of the flanks. A man's
walk has a more pushing and active character, a woman's a more rolling and
passive character; while a man seems to seek to catch his fleeing
equilibrium, a woman seems to seek to preserve the equilibrium she has
reached.... A woman's walk is beautiful when it shows the definitely
feminine and rolling character, with the greatest predominance of the
moment of extension over that of flexion." (Stratz, Die Schönheit des
Weiblichen Körpers, fourteenth edition, p. 275.)
An occasional development of the idea of sexual beauty as associated with
developed hips is found in the tendency to regard the pregnant woman as
the most beautiful type. Stratz observes that a woman artist once remarked
to him that since motherhood is the final aim of woman, and a woman
reaches her full flowering period in pregnancy, she ought to be most
beautiful when pregnant. This is so, Stratz replied, if the period of her full
physical bloom chances to correspond with the early months of pregnancy,
for with the onset of pregnancy metabolism is heightened, the tissues
become active, the tone of the skin softer and brighter, the breasts firmer, so
that the charm of fullest bloom is increased until the moment when the
expansion of the womb begins to destroy the harmony of the form. At one
period of European culture, however,—at a moment and among a people
not very sensitive to the most exquisite æsthetic sensations,—the ideal of
beauty has even involved the character of advanced pregnancy. In northern
Europe during the centuries immediately preceding the Renaissance the

ideal of beauty, as we may see by the pictures of the time, was a pregnant
woman, with protuberant abdomen and body more or less extended
backward. This is notably apparent in the work of the Van Eycks: in the Eve
in the Brussels Gallery; in the wife of Arnolfini in the highly finished
portrait group in the National Gallery; even the virgins in the great
masterpiece of the Van Eycks in the Cathedral at Ghent assume the type of
the pregnant woman.
"Through all the middle ages down to Dürer and Cranach," quite truly
remarks Laura Marholm (as quoted by I. Bloch, Beiträge zur Ætiologie der
Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil I, p. 154), "we find a very peculiar type which
has falsely been regarded as one of merely ascetic character. It represents
quiet, peaceful, and cheerful faces, full of innocence; tall, slender, young
figures; the shoulders still scanty; the breasts small, with slender legs
beneath their garments; and round the upper part of the body clothing that is
tight almost to the point of constriction. The waist comes just under the
bosom, and from this point the broad skirts in folds give to the most
feminine part of the feminine body full and absolutely unhampered power
of movement and expansion. The womanly belly even in saints and virgins
is very pronounced in the carriage of the body and clearly protuberant
beneath the clothing. It is the maternal function, in sacred and profane
figures alike, which marks the whole type—indeed, the whole conception—
of woman." For a brief period this fashion reappeared in the eighteenth
century, and women wore pads and other devices to increase the size of the
abdomen.
With the Renaissance this ideal of beauty disappeared from art. But in real
life we still seem to trace its survival in the fashion for that class of
garments which involved an immense amount of expansion below the waist
and secured such expansion by the use of whalebone hoops and similar
devices. The Elizabethan farthingale was such a garment. This was
originally a Spanish invention, as indicated by the name (from verdugardo,
provided with hoops), and reached England through France. We find the
fashion at its most extreme point in the fashionable dress of Spain in the
seventeenth century, such as it has been immortalized by Velasquez. In
England hoops died out during the reign of George III but were revived for
a time, half a century later, in the Victorian crinoline.[147]

Only second to the pelvis and its integuments as a secondary sexual
character in woman we must place the breasts.[148] Among barbarous and
civilized peoples the beauty of the breast is usually highly esteemed.
Among Europeans, indeed, the importance of this region is so highly
esteemed that the general rule against the exposure of the body is in its
favor abrogated, and the breasts are the only portion of the body, in the
narrow sense, which a European lady in full dress is allowed more or less to
uncover. Moreover, at various periods and notably in the eighteenth century,
women naturally deficient in this respect have sometimes worn artificial
busts made of wax. Savages, also, sometimes show admiration for this part
of the body, and in the Papuan folk-tales, for instance, the sole
distinguishing mark of a beautiful woman is breasts that stand up.[149] On
the other hand, various savage peoples even appear to regard the
development of the breasts as ugly and adopt devices for flattening this part
of the body.[150] The feeling that prompts this practice is not unknown in
modern Europe, for the Bulgarians are said to regard developed breasts as
ugly; in mediæval Europe, indeed, the general ideal of feminine slenderness
was opposed to developed breasts, and the garments tended to compress
them. But in a very high degree of civilization this feeling is unknown, as,
indeed, it is unknown to most barbarians, and the beauty of a woman's
breasts, and of any natural or artificial object which suggests the gracious
curves of the bosom, is a universal source of pleasure.
The casual vision of a girl's breasts may, in the chastest youth, evoke a
strange perturbation. (Cf., e.g., a passage in an early chapter of Marcelle
Tinayre's La Maison du Péché.) We need not regard this feeling as of purely
sexual origin; and in addition even to the æsthetic element it is probably
founded to some extent on a reminiscence of the earliest associations of life.
This element of early association was very well set forth long ago by
Erasmus Darwin:—
"When the babe, soon after it is born into this cold world, is applied to its
mother's bosom, its sense of perceiving warmth is first agreeably affected;
next its sense of smell is delighted with the odor of her milk; then its taste is
gratified by the flavor of it; afterward the appetites of hunger and of thirst
afford pleasure by the possession of their object, and by the subsequent
digestion of the aliment; and, last, the sense of touch is delighted by the

softness and smoothness of the milky fountain, the source of such variety of
happiness.
"All these various kinds of pleasure at length become associated with the
form of the mother's breast, which the infant embraces with its hands,
presses with its lips, and watches with its eyes; and thus acquires more
accurate ideas of the form of its mother's bosom than of the odor, flavor,
and warmth which it perceives by its other senses. And hence at our maturer
years, when any object of vision is presented to us which by its wavy or
spiral lines bears any similitude to the form of the female bosom, whether it
be found in a landscape with soft gradations of raising and descending
surface, or in the forms of some antique vases, or in other works of the
pencil or the chisel, we feel a general glow of delight which seems to
influence all our senses; and if the object be not too large we experience an
attraction to embrace it with our lips as we did in our early infancy the
bosom of our mothers." (E. Darwin, Zoönomia, 1800, vol. i, p. 174.)
The general admiration accorded to developed breasts and a developed
pelvis is evidenced by a practice which, as embodied in the corset, is all but
universal in many European countries, as well as the extra-European
countries inhabited by the white race, and in one form or another is by no
means unknown to peoples of other than the white race.
The tightening of the waist girth was little known to the Greeks of the best
period, but it was practiced by the Greeks of the decadence and by them
transmitted to the Romans; there are many references in Latin literature to
this practice, and the ancient physician wrote against it in the same sense as
modern doctors. So far as Christian Europe is concerned it would appear
that the corset arose to gratify an ideal of asceticism rather than of sexual
allurement. The bodice in early mediæval days bound and compressed the
breasts and thus tended to efface the specifically feminine character of a
woman's body. Gradually, however, the bodice was displaced downward,
and its effect, ultimately, was to render the breasts more prominent instead
of effacing them. Not only does the corset render the breasts more
prominent; it has the further effect of displacing the breathing activity of the
lungs in an upward direction, the advantage from the point of sexual
allurement thus gained being that additional attention is drawn to the bosom
from the respiratory movement thus imparted to it. So marked and so

constant is this artificial respiratory effect, under the influence of the waist
compression habitual among civilized women, that until recent years it was
commonly supposed that there is a real and fundamental difference in
breathing between men and women, that women's breathing is thoracic and
men's abdominal. It is now known that under natural and healthy conditions
there is no such difference, but that men and women breathe in a precisely
identical manner. The corset may thus be regarded as the chief instrument
of sexual allurement which the armory of costume supplies to a woman, for
it furnishes her with a method of heightening at once her two chief sexual
secondary characters, the bosom above, the hips and buttocks below. We
cannot be surprised that all the scientific evidence in the world of the evil of
the corset is powerless not merely to cause its abolition, but even to secure
the general adoption of its comparatively harmless modifications.
Several books have been written on the history of the corset. Léoty (Le
Corset à travers les Ages, 1893) accepts Bouvier's division of the phases
through which the corset has passed: (1) the bands, or fasciæ, of Greek and
Roman ladies; (2) period of transition during greater part of middle ages,
classic traditions still subsisting; (3) end of middle ages and beginning of
Renaissance, when tight bodices were worn; (4) the period of whalebone
bodices, from middle of sixteenth to end of eighteenth centuries; (5) the
period of the modern corset. We hear of embroidered girdles in Homer.
Even in Rome, however, the fasciæ were not in general use, and were
chiefly employed either to support the breasts or to compress their
excessive development, and then called mamillare. The zona was a girdle,
worn usually round the hips, especially by young girls. The modern corset
is a combination of the fascia and the zona. It was at the end of the
fourteenth century that Isabeau of Bavaria introduced the custom of
showing the breasts uncovered, and the word "corset" was then used for the
first time.
Stratz, in his Frauenkleidung (pp. 366 et seq.), and in his Schönheit des
Weiblichen Körpers, Chapters VIII, X, and XVI, also deals with the corset,
and illustrates the results of compression on the body. For a summary of the
evidence concerning the difference of respiration in man and woman, its
causes and results, see Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition,
1904, pp. 228-244. With reference to the probable influence of the corset
and unsuitable clothing generally during early life in impeding the

development of the mammary glands, causing inability to suckle properly,
and thus increasing infant mortality, see especially a paper by Professor
Bollinger (Correspondenz-blatt Deutsch. Gesell. Anthropologie, October,
1899).
The compression caused by the corset, it must be added, is not usually
realized or known by those who wear it. Thus, Rushton Parker and Hugh
Smith found, in two independent series of measurements, that the waist
measurement was, on the average, two inches less over the corset than
round the naked waist; "the great majority seemed quite unaware of the
fact." In one case the difference was as much as five inches. (British
Medical Journal, September 15 and 22, 1900.)
The breasts and the developed hips are characteristics of women and are
indications of functional effectiveness as well as sexual allurement. Another
prominent sexual character which belongs to man, and is not obviously an
index of function, is furnished by the hair on the face. The beard may be
regarded as purely a sexual adornment, and thus comparable to the
somewhat similar growth on the heads of many male animals. From this
point of view its history is interesting, for it illustrates the tendency with
increase of civilization not merely to dispense with sexual allurement in the
primary sexual organs, but even to disregard those growths which would
appear to have been developed solely to act as sexual allurements. The
cultivation of the beard belongs peculiarly to barbarous races. Among these
races it is frequently regarded as the most sacred and beautiful part of the
person, as an object to swear by, an object to which the slightest insult must
be treated as deadly. Holding such a position, it must doubtless act as a
sexual allurement. "Allah has specially created an angel in Heaven," it is
said in the Arabian Nights, "who has no other occupation than to sing the
praises of the Creator for giving a beard to men and long hair to women."
The sexual character of the beard and the other hirsute appendage is
significantly indicated by the fact that the ascetic spirit in Christianity has
always sought to minimize or to hide the hair. Altogether apart, however,
from this religious influence, civilization tends to be opposed to the growth
of hair on the masculine face and especially to the beard. It is part of the
well-marked tendency with civilization to the abolition of sexual
differences. We find this general tendency among the Greeks and Romans,
and, on the whole, with certain variations and fluctuations of fashion, in

modern Europe also. Schopenhauer frequently referred to this
disappearance of the beard as a mark of civilization, "a barometer of
culture."[151] The absence of facial hair heightens æsthetic beauty of form,
and is not felt to remove any substantial sexual attraction.
That even the Egyptians regarded the beard as a mark of beauty and an
object of veneration is shown by the fact that the priests wore it long and
cut it off in grief (Herodotus, Euterpe, Chapter XXXVI). The respect with
which the beard was regarded among the ancient Hebrews is indicated in
the narrative (II Samuel, Chapter X) which tells how, when David sent his
servants to King Hanun the latter shaved off half their beards; they were too
ashamed to return in this condition, and remained at Jericho until their
beards had grown again. A passage in Ordericus Vitalis (Ecclesiastical
History, Book VIII, Chapter X) is interesting both as regards the fashions of
the twelfth century in England and Normandy and the feeling that prompted
Ordericus. Speaking of the men of his time, he wrote: "The forepart of their
head is bare after the manner of thieves, while at the back they nourish long
hair like harlots. In former times penitents, captives and pilgrims usually
went unshaved and wore long beards, as an outward mark of their penance
or captivity or pilgrimage. Now almost all the world wear crisped hair and
beards, carrying on their faces the token of their filthy lust like stinking
goats. Their locks are curled with hot irons, and instead of wearing caps
they bind their heads with fillets. A knight seldom appears in public with his
head uncovered, and properly shaved, according to the apostolic precept (I
Corinthians, Chapter XI, verses 7 and 14)."
We have seen that there is good reason for assuming a certain fundamental
tendency whereby the most various peoples of the world, at all events in the
person of their most intelligent members, recognize and accept a common
ideal of feminine beauty, so that to a certain extent beauty may be said to
have an objectively æsthetic basis. We have further found that this æsthetic
human ideal is modified, and very variously modified in different countries
and even in the same country at different periods, by a tendency, prompted
by a sexual impulse which is not necessarily in harmony with æsthetic
cannons, to emphasize, or even to repress, one or other of the prominent
secondary sexual characters of the body. We now come to another tendency
which is apt to an even greater extent to limit the cultivation of the purely
æsthetic ideal of beauty: the influences of national or racial type.

To the average man of every race the woman who most completely
embodies the type of his race is usually the most beautiful, and even
mutilations and deformities often have their origin, as Humboldt long since
pointed out, in the effort to accentuate the racial type.[152] Eastern women
possess by nature large and conspicuous eyes, and this characteristic they
seek still further to heighten by art. The Ainu are the hairiest of races, and
there is nothing which they consider so beautiful as hair. It is difficult to be
sexually attracted to persons who are fundamentally unlike ourselves in
racial constitution.[153]
It frequently happens that this admiration for racial characteristics leads to
the idealization of features which are far removed from æsthetic beauty. The
firm and rounded breast is certainly a feature of beauty, but among many of
the black peoples of Africa the breasts fall at a very early period, and here
we sometimes find that the hanging breast is admired as beautiful.
The African Baganda, the Rev. J. Roscoe states (Journal of the
Anthropological Institute, January-June, 1902, p. 72), admire hanging
breasts to such an extent that their young women tie them down in order to
hasten the arrival of this condition.
"The most remarkable trait of beauty in the East," wrote Sonnini, "is to have
large black eyes, and nature has made this a characteristic sign of the
women of these countries. But, not content with this, the women of Egypt
wish their eyes to be still larger and blacker. To attain this Mussulmans,
Jewesses, and Christians, rich and poor, all tint their eyelids with galena.
They also blacken the lashes (as Juvenal tells us the Roman ladies did) and
mark the angles of the eye so that the fissure appears larger." (Sonnini,
Voyage dans la Haute et Basse Egypte, 1799, vol. i, p. 290.) Kohl is thus
only used by the women who have what the Arabs call "natural kohl." As
Flinders Petrie has found, the women of the so-called "New Race," between
the sixth and tenth dynasties of ancient Egypt, used galena and malachite
for painting their faces. Jewish women in the days of the prophets painted
their eyes with kohl, as do some Hindu women to-day.
"The Ainu have a great affection for their beards. They regard them as a
sign of manhood and strength and consider them as especially handsome.

They look upon them, indeed, as a great and highly prized treasure." (J.
Batchelor, The Ainu and their Folklore, p. 162.)
A great many theories have been put forward to explain the Chinese fashion
of compressing and deforming the foot. The Chinese are great admirers of
the feminine foot, and show extreme sexual sensitiveness in regard to it.
Chinese women naturally possess very small feet, and the main reason for
binding them is probably to be found in the desire to make them still
smaller. (See, e.g., Stratz, Die Frauenkleidung, 1904, p. 101.)
An interesting question, which in part finds its explanation here and is of
considerable significance from the point of view of sexual selection,
concerns the relative admiration bestowed on blondes and brunettes. The
question is not, indeed, one which is entirely settled by racial
characteristics. There is something to be said on the matter from the
objective standpoint of æsthetic considerations. Stratz, in a chapter on
beauty of coloring in woman, points out that fair hair is more beautiful
because it harmonizes better with the soft outlines of woman, and, one may
add, it is more brilliantly conspicuous; a golden object looks larger than a
black object. The hair of the armpit, also, Stratz considers should be light.
On the other hand, the pubic hair should be dark in order to emphasize the
breadth of the pelvis and the obtusity of the angle between the mons veneris
and the thighs. The eyebrows and eyelashes should also be dark in order to
increase the apparent size of the orbits. Stratz adds that among many
thousand women he has only seen one who, together with an otherwise
perfect form, has also possessed these excellencies in the highest measure.
With an equable and matt complexion she had blonde, very long, smooth
hair, with sparse, blonde, and curly axillary hair; but, although her eyes
were blue, the eyebrows and eyelashes were black, as also was the not
overdeveloped pubic hair.[154]
We may accept it as fairly certain that, so far as any objective standard of
æsthetic beauty is recognizable, that standard involves the supremacy of the
fair type of woman. Such supremacy in beauty has doubtless been further
supported by the fact that in most European countries the ruling caste, the
aristocratic class, whose superior energy has brought it to the top, is
somewhat blonder than the average population.

The main cause, however, in determining the relative amount of admiration
accorded in Europe to blondes and to brunettes is the fact that the
population of Europe must be regarded as predominantly fair, and that our
conception of beauty in feminine coloring is influenced by an instinctive
desire to seek this type in its finest forms. In the north of Europe there can,
of course, be no question concerning the predominant fairness of the
population, but in portions of the centre and especially in the south it may
be considered a question. It must, however, be remembered that the white
population occupying all the shores of the Mediterranean have the black
peoples of Africa immediately to the south of them. They have been liable
to come in contact with the black peoples and in contrast with them they
have tended not only to be more impressed with their own whiteness, but to
appraise still more highly its blondest manifestations as representing a type
the farthest removed from the negro. It must be added that the northerner
who comes into the south is apt to overestimate the darkness of the
southerner because of the extreme fairness of his own people. The
differences are, however, less extreme than we are apt to suppose; there are
more dark people in the north than we commonly assume, and more fair
people in the south. Thus, if we take Italy, we find in its fairest part,
Venetia, according to Raseri, that there are 8 per cent. communes in which
fair hair predominates, 81 per cent. in which brown predominates, and only
11 per cent. in which black predominates; as we go farther south black hair
becomes more prevalent, but there are in most provinces a few communes
in which fair hair is not only frequent, but even predominant. It is somewhat
the same with light eyes, which are also most abundant in Venetia and
decrease to a slighter extent as we go south. It is possible that in former
days the blondes prevailed to a greater degree than to-day in the south of
Europe. Among the Berbers of the Atlas Mountains, who are probably allied
to the South Europeans, there appears to be a fairly considerable proportion
of blondes,[155] while on the other hand there is some reason to believe that
blondes die out under the influence of civilization as well as of a hot
climate.
However this may be, the European admiration for blondes dates back to
early classic times. Gods and men in Homer would appear to be frequently
described as fair.[156] Venus is nearly always blonde, as was Milton's Eve.
Lucian refers to women who dye their hair. The Greek sculptors gilded the

hair of their statues, and the figurines in many cases show very fair hair.[157]
The Roman custom of dyeing the hair light, as Renier has shown, was not
due to the desire to be like the fair Germans, and when Rome fell it would
appear that the custom of dyeing the hair persisted, and never died out; it is
mentioned by Anselm, who died at the beginning of the twelfth century.[158]
In the poetry of the people in Italy brunettes, as we should expect, receive
much commendation, though even here the blondes are preferred. When we
turn to the painters and poets of Italy, and the æsthetic writers on beauty
from the Renaissance onward, the admiration for fair hair is unqualified,
though there is no correspondingly unanimous admiration for blue eyes.
Angelico and most of the pre-Raphaelite artists usually painted their women
with flaxen and light-golden hair, which often became brown with the
artists of the Renaissance period. Firenzuola, in his admirable dialogue on
feminine beauty, says that a woman's hair should be like gold or honey or
the rays of the sun. Luigini also, in his Libro della bella Donna, says that
hair must be golden. So also thought Petrarch and Ariosto. There is,
however, no corresponding predilection among these writers for blue eyes.
Firenzuola said that the eyes must be dark, though not black. Luigini said
that they must be bright and black. Niphus had previously said that the eyes
should be "black like those of Venus" and the skin ivory, even a little
brown. He mentions that Avicenna had praised the mixed, or gray eye.
In France and other northern countries the admiration for very fair hair is
just as marked as in Italy, and dates back to the earliest ages of which we
have a record. "Even before the thirteenth century," remarks Houdoy, in his
very interesting study of feminine beauty in northern France during
mediæval times, "and for men as well as for women, fair hair was an
essential condition of beauty; gold is the term of comparison almost
exclusively used."[159] He mentions that in the Acta Sanctorum it is stated
that Saint Godelive of Bruges, though otherwise beautiful, had black hair
and eyebrows and was hence contemptuously called a crow. In the Chanson
de Roland and all the French mediæval poems the eyes are invariably vairs.
This epithet is somewhat vague. It comes from varius, and signifies mixed,
which Houdoy regards as showing various irradiations, the same quality
which later gave rise to the term iris to describe the pupillary membrane.
[160] Vair would thus describe not so much the color of the eye as its

brilliant and sparkling quality. While Houdoy may have been correct, it still
seems probable that the eye described as vair was usually assumed to be
"various" in color also, of the kind we commonly call gray, which is usually
applied to blue eyes encircled with a ring of faintly sprinkled brown
pigment. Such eyes are fairly typical of northern France and frequently
beautiful. That this was the case seems to be clearly indicated by the fact
that, as Houdoy himself points out, a few centuries later the vair eye was
regarded as vert, and green eyes were celebrated as the most beautiful.[161]
The etymology was false, but a false etymology will hardly suffice to
change an ideal. At the Renaissance Jehan Lemaire, when describing Venus
as the type of beauty, speaks of her green eyes, and Ronsard, a little later,
sang:

"Noir je veux l'œil et brun le teint,
Bien que l'œil verd toute la France adore."

Early in the sixteenth century Brantôme quotes some lines current in
France, Spain, and Italy according to which a woman should have a white
skin, but black eyes and eyebrows, and adds that personally he agrees with
the Spaniard that "a brunette is sometimes equal to a blonde,"[162] but there
is also a marked admiration for green eyes in Spanish literature; not only in
the typical description of a Spanish beauty in the Celestina (Act. I) are the
eyes green, but Cervantes, for example, when referring to the beautiful eyes
of a woman, frequently speaks of them as green.
It would thus appear that in Continental Europe generally, from south to
north, there is a fair uniformity of opinion as regards the pigmentary type of
feminine beauty. Such variation as exists seemingly involves a somewhat
greater degree of darkness for the southern beauty in harmony with the
greater racial darkness of the southerner, but the variations fluctuate within
a narrow range; the extremely dark type is always excluded, and so it would
seem probable is the extremely fair type, for blue eyes have not, on the
whole, been considered to form part of the admired type.
If we turn to England no serious modification of this conclusion is called
for. Beauty is still fair. Indeed, the very word "fair" in England itself means
beautiful. That in the seventeenth century it was generally held essential
that beauty should be blonde is indicated by a passage in the Anatomy of

Melancholy, where Burton argues that "golden hair was ever in great
account," and quotes many examples from classic and more modern
literature.[163] That this remains the case is sufficiently evidenced by the
fact that the ballet and chorus on the English stage wear yellow wigs, and
the heroine of the stage is blonde, while the female villain of melodrama is
a brunette.
While, however, this admiration of fairness as a mark of beauty
unquestionably prevails in England, I do not think it can be said—as it
probably can be said of the neighboring and closely allied country of France
—that the most beautiful women belong to the fairest group of the
community. In most parts of Europe the coarse and unbeautiful plebeian
type tends to be very dark; in England it tends to be very fair. England is,
however, somewhat fairer generally than most parts of Europe; so that,
while it may be said that a very beautiful woman in France or in Spain may
belong to the blondest section of the community, a very beautiful woman in
England, even though of the same degree of blondness as her Continental
sister, will not belong to the extremely blonde section of the English
community. It thus comes about that when we are in northern France we
find that gray eyes, a very fair but yet unfreckled complexion, brown hair,
finely molded features, and highly sensitive facial expression combine to
constitute a type which is more beautiful than any other we meet in France,
and it belongs to the fairest section of the French population. When we
cross over to England, however, unless we go to a so-called "Celtic"
district, it is hopeless to seek among the blondest section of the community
for any such beautiful and refined type. The English beautiful woman,
though she may still be fair, is by no means very fair, and from the English
standpoint she may even sometimes appear somewhat dark:[164] In
determining what I call the index of pigmentation—or degree of darkness of
the eyes and hair—of different groups in the National Portrait Gallery I
found that the "famous beauties" (my own personal criterion of beauty not
being taken into account) was somewhat nearer to the dark than to the light
end of the scale.[165] If we consider, at random, individual instances of
famous English beauties they are not extremely fair. Lady Venetia Stanley,
in the early seventeenth century, who became the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby,
was somewhat dark, with brown hair and eyebrows. Mrs. Overall, a little
later in the same century, a Lancashire woman, the wife of the Dean of St.

Paul's, was, says Aubrey, "the greatest beauty in her time in England,"
though very wanton, with "the loveliest eyes that were ever seen"; if we
may trust a ballad given by Aubrey she was dark with black hair. The
Gunnings, the famous beauties of the eighteenth century, were not
extremely fair, and Lady Hamilton, the most characteristic type of English
beauty, had blue, brown-flecked eyes and dark chestnut hair. Coloration is
only one of the elements of beauty, though an important one. Other things
being equal, the most blonde is most beautiful; but it so happens that among
the races of Great Britain the other things are very frequently not equal, and
that, notwithstanding a conviction ingrained in the language, with us the
fairest of women is not always the "fairest." So magical, however, is the
effect of brilliant coloring that it serves to keep alive in popular opinion an
unqualified belief in the universal European creed of the beauty of
blondness.
We have seen that underlying the conception of beauty, more especially as
it manifests itself in woman to man, are to be found at least three
fundamental elements: First there is the general beauty of the species as it
tends to culminate in the white peoples of European origin; then there is the
beauty due to the full development or even exaggeration of the sexual and
more especially the secondary sexual characters; and last there is the beauty
due to the complete embodiment of the particular racial or national type. To
make the analysis fairly complete must be added at least one other factor:
the influence of individual taste. Every individual, at all events in
civilization, within certain narrow limits, builds up a feminine ideal of his
own, in part on the basis of his own special organization and its demands, in
part on the actual accidental attractions he has experienced. It is
unnecessary to emphasize the existence of this factor, which has always to
be taken into account in every consideration of sexual selection in civilized
man. But its variations are numerous and in impassioned lovers it may even
lead to the idealization of features which are in reality the reverse of
beautiful. It may be said of many a man, as d'Annunzio says of the hero of
his Trionfo della Morte in relation to the woman he loved, that "he felt
himself bound to her by the real qualities of her body, and not only by those
which were most beautiful, but specially by those which were least
beautiful" (the novelist italicizes these words), so that his attention was
fixed upon her defects, and emphasized them, thus arousing within himself

an impetuous state of desire. Without invoking defects, however, there are
endless personal variations which may all be said to come within the limits
of possible beauty or charm. "There are no two women," as Stratz remarks,
"who in exactly the same way stroke back a rebellious lock from their
brows, no two who hold the hand in greeting in exactly the same way, no
two who gather up their skirts as they walk with exactly the same
movement."[166] Among the multitude of minute differences—which yet
can be seen and felt—the beholder is variously attracted or repelled
according to his own individual idiosyncrasy, and the operations of sexual
selection are effected accordingly.
Another factor in the constitution of the ideal of beauty, but one perhaps
exclusively found under civilized conditions, is the love of the unusual, the
remote, the exotic. It is commonly stated that rarity is admired in beauty.
This is not strictly true, except as regards combinations and characters
which vary only in a very slight degree from the generally admired type.
"Jucundum nihil est quod non reficit variatas," according to the saying of
Publilius Syrus. The greater nervous restlessness and sensibility of
civilization heightens this tendency, which is not infrequently found also
among men of artistic genius. One may refer, for instance, to Baudelaire's
profound admiration for the mulatto type of beauty.[167] In every great
centre of civilization the national ideal of beauty tends to be somewhat
modified in exotic directions, and foreign ideals, as well as foreign
fashions, become preferred to those that are native. It is significant of this
tendency that when, a few years since, an enterprising Parisian journal hung
in its salle the portraits of one hundred and thirty-one actresses, etc., and
invited the votes of the public by ballot as to the most beautiful of them, not
one of the three women who came out at the head of the poll was French. A
dancer of Belgian origin (Cléo de Merode) was by far at the head with over
3000 votes, followed by an American from San Francisco (Sybil
Sanderson), and then a Polish woman.

[134]
Figured in Mau's Pompeii, p. 174.

[135]

As a native of Lukunor said to the traveler Mertens, "It has the
same object as your clothes, to please the women."

[136]
"The greatest provocations of lust are from our apparel," as
Burton states (Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Sec. II, Mem. II,
Subs. III), illustrating this proposition with immense learning.
Stanley Hall (American Journal of Psychology, vol. ix, Part III,
pp. 365 et seq.) has some interesting observations on the various
psychic influences of clothing; cf. Bloch, Beiträge zur Ætiologie
der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil II, pp. 330 et seq.

[137]
History of Human Marriage, Chapter IX, especially p, 201. We
have a striking and comparatively modern European example of
an article of clothing designed to draw attention to the sexual
sphere in the codpiece (the French braguette), familiar to us
through fifteenth and sixteenth century pictures and numerous
allusions in Rabelais and in Elizabethan literature. This was
originally a metal box for the protection of the sexual organs in
war, but subsequently gave place to a leather case only worn by
the lower classes, and became finally an elegant article of
fashionable apparel, often made of silk and adorned with ribbons,
even with gold and jewels. (See, e.g., Bloch, Beiträge zur
Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil I, p. 159.)

[138]
A correspondent in Ceylon has pointed out to me that in the
Indian statues of Buddha, Vishnu, goddesses, etc., the necklace
always covers the nipples, a sexually attractive adornment being
thus at the same time the guardian of the orifices of the body.
Crawley (The Mystic Rose, p. 135) regards mutilations as in the
nature of permanent amulets or charms.

[139]

Mantegazza, in his discussion of this point, although an ardent
admirer of feminine beauty, decides that woman's form is not, on
the whole, more beautiful than man's. See Appendix to Cap. IV of
Fisiologia della Donna.

[140]
For a discussion of the anthropology of the feminine pelvis, see
Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, bd. 1. Sec. VI.

[141]
Ploss and Bartels, loc. cit.; Deniker, Revue d'Anthropologie,
January 15, 1889, and Races of Man, p. 93.

[142]
Darwin.

[143]
G. F. Watts, "On Taste in Dress," Nineteenth Century, 1883.

[144]
From mediæval times onwards there has been a tendency to treat
the gluteal region with contempt, a tendency well marked in
speech and custom among the lowest classes in Europe to-day,
but not easily traceable in classic times. Dühren (Das
Geschlechtsleben in England, bd. II, pp. 359 et seq.) brings
forward quotations from æsthetic writers and others dealing with
the beauty of this part of the body.

[145]
Sonnini, Voyage, etc., vol. i, p. 308.

[146]

Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, bd. 1, Sec. III; Mantegazza,
Fisiologia della Donna, Chapter III.

[147]

Bloch brings together various interesting quotations concerning
the farthingale and the crinoline. (Beiträge zur Ætiologie der
Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil I, p. 156.) He states that, like most
other feminine fashions in dress, it was certainly invented by
prostitutes.

[148]
The racial variations in the form and character of the breasts are
great, and there are considerable variations even among
Europeans. Even as regards the latter our knowledge is, however,
still very vague and incomplete; there is here a fruitful field for
the medical anthropologist. Ploss and Bartels have brought
together the existing data (Das Weib, bd. I, Sec. VIII). Stratz also
discusses the subject (Die Schönheit das Weiblichen Körpers,
Chapter X).

[149]
Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v, p.
28.

[150]
These devices are dealt with and illustrations given by Ploss and
Bartels, Das Weib (loc. cit.).

[151]
See, e.g., Parerga und Paralipomena, bd. I, p. 189, and bd. 2, p.
482. Moll has also discussed this point (Untersuchungen über die
Libido Sexualis, bd. I, pp. 384 et seq.).

[152]
Speaking of some South American tribes, he remarks (Travels,
English translations, 1814, vol. iii. p. 236) that they "have as great
an antipathy to the beard as the Eastern nations hold it in
reverence. This antipathy is derived from the same source as the

predilection for flat foreheads, which is seen in so singular a
manner in the statues of the Aztec heroes and divinities. Nations
attach the idea of beauty to everything which particularly
characterizes their own physical conformation, their natural
physiognomy." See also Westermarck, History of Marriage, p.
261. Ripley (Races of Europe, pp. 49, 202) attaches much
importance to the sexual selection founded on a tendency of this
kind.

[153]
"Differences of race are irreducible," Abel Hermant remarks
(Confession d'un Enfant d'Hier, p. 209), "and between two beings
who love each other they cannot fail to produce exceptional and
instructive reactions. In the first superficial ebullition of love,
indeed, nothing notable may be manifested, but in a fairly short
time the two lovers, innately hostile, in striving to approach each
other strike against an invisible partition which separates them.
Their sensibilities are divergent; everything in each shocks the
other; even their anatomical conformation, even the language of
their gestures; all is foreign."

[154]
C. H. Stratz, Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers, fourteenth
edition, Chapter XII.

[155]
See, e.g., Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, pp. 59-75.

[156]
Sergi (The Mediterranean Race, Chapter 1), by an analysis of
Homer's color epithets, argues that in very few cases do they
involve fairness; but his attempt scarcely seems successful,
although most of these epithets are undoubtedly vague and
involve a certain range of possible color.

[157]
Léchat's study of the numerous realistic colored statues recently
discovered in Greece (summarized in Zentralblatt für
Anthropologie, 1904, ht. 1, p. 22) shows that with few exceptions
the hair is fair.

[158]
Renier, Il Tipo Estetico, pp. 127 et seq. In another book, Les
Femmes Blondes selon les Peintres de l'Ecole de Venise, par deux
Venitiens (one of these "Venetians" being Armand Baschet), is
brought together much information concerning the preference for
blondes in literature, together with a great many of the recipes
anciently used for making the hair fair.

[159]
J. Houdoy, La Beauté des Femmes dans la Littérature et dans
l'Art du XIIe au XVIe Siècle, 1876, pp. 32 et seq.

[160]
Houdoy, op. cit., pp. 41 et seq.

[161]
Houdoy, op. cit., p. 83.

[162]
Brantôme, Vie des Dames Galantes, Discours II.

[163]
Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Sec. II, Mem. II, Subs. II.

[164]
It is significant that Burton (Anatomy of Melancholy, loc. cit.),
while praising golden hair, also argues that "of all eyes black are

moist amiable," quoting many examples to this effect from classic
and later literature.

[165]
"Relative Abilities of the Fair and the Dark," Monthly Review,
August, 1901; cf. H. Ellis, A Study of British Genius, p. 215.

[166]
Stratz, Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers, p. 217.

[167]
Bloch (Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil II,
pp. 261 et seq.) brings together some facts bearing on the
admiration for negresses in Paris and elsewhere.

III.

Beauty not the Sole Element in the Sexual Appeal of Vision—Movement—
The Mirror—Narcissism—Pygmalionism—Mixoscopy—The Indifference
of Women to Male Beauty—The Significance of Woman's Admiration of
Strength—The Spectacle of Strength is a Tactile Quality made Visible.

Our discussion of the sensory element of vision in human sexual selection
has been mainly an attempt to disentangle the chief elements of beauty in so
far as beauty is a stimulus to the sexual instinct. Beauty by no means
comprehends the whole of the influences which make for sexual allurement
through vision, but it is the point at which all the most powerful and subtle
of these are focussed; it represents a fairly definite complexus, appealing at
once to the sexual and to the æsthetic impulses, to which no other sense can
furnish anything in any degree analogous. It is because this conception of
beauty has arisen upon it that vision properly occupies the supreme position
in man from the point of view which we here occupy.

Beauty is thus the chief, but it is not the sole, element in the sexual appeal
of vision. In all parts of the world this has always been well understood, and
in courtship, in the effort to arouse tumescence, the appeals to vision have
been multiplied and at the same time aided by appeals to the other senses.
Movement, especially in the form of dancing, is the most important of the
secondary appeals to vision. This is so well recognized that it is scarcely
necessary to insist upon it here; it may suffice to refer to a single typical
example. The most decent of Polynesian dances, according to William Ellis,
was the hura, which was danced by the daughters of chiefs in the presence
of young men of rank with the hope of gaining a future husband. "The
daughters of the chiefs, who were the dancers on these occasions, at times
amounted to five or six, though occasionally only one exhibited her
symmetry of figure and gracefulness of action. Their dress was singular, but
elegant. The head was ornamented with a fine and beautiful braid of human
hair, wound round the head in the form of a turban. A triple wreath of
scarlet, white, and yellow flowers adorned the head-dress. A loose vest of
spotted cloth covered the lower part of the bosom. The tihi, of fine white
stiffened cloth frequently edged with a scarlet border, gathered like a large
frill, passed under the arms and reached below the waist; while a handsome
fine cloth, fastened round the waist with a band or sash, covered the feet.
The breasts were ornamented with rainbow-colored mother-of-pearl shells,
and a covering of curiously wrought network and feathers. The music of the
hura was the large and small drum and occasionally the flute. The
movements were generally slow, but always easy and natural, and no
exertion on the part of the performers was wanting to render them graceful
and attractive."[168] We see here, in this very typical example, how the
extraneous visual aids of movement, color, and brilliancy are invoked in
conjunction with music to make the appeal of beauty more convincing in
the process of sexual selection.
It may be in place here to mention, in passing, the considerable place which
vision occupies in normal and abnormal methods of heightening
tumescence under circumstances which exclude definite selection by
beauty. The action of mirrors belongs to this group of phenomena. Mirrors
are present in profusion in high-class brothels—on the walls and also above
the beds. Innocent youths and girls are also often impelled to contemplate
themselves in mirrors and sometimes thus, produce the first traces of sexual

excitement. I have referred to the developed forms of this kind of self-
contemplation in the Study of Auto-erotism, and in this connection have
alluded to the fable of Narcissus, whence Näcke has since devised the term
Narcissism for this group of phenomena. It is only necessary to mention the
enormous production of photographs, representing normal and abnormal
sexual actions, specially prepared for the purpose of exciting or of
gratifying sexual appetites, and the frequency with which even normal
photographs of the nude appeal to the same lust of the eyes.
Pygmalionism, or falling in love with statues, is a rare form of erotomania
founded on the sense of vision and closely related to the allurement of
beauty. (I here use "pygmalionism" as a general term for the sexual love of
statues; it is sometimes restricted to cases in which a man requires of a
prostitute that she shall assume the part of a statue which gradually comes
to life, and finds sexual gratification in this performance alone; Eulenburg
quotes examples, Sexuale Neuropathie, p. 107.) An emotional interest in
statues is by no means uncommon among young men during adolescence.
Heine, in Florentine Nights, records the experiences of a boy who
conceived a sentimental love for a statue, and, as this book appears to be
largely autobiographical, the incident may have been founded on fact.
Youths have sometimes masturbated before statues, and even before the
image of the Virgin; such cases are known to priests and mentioned in
manuals for confessors. Pygmalionism appears to have been not uncommon
among the ancient Greeks, and this has been ascribed to their æsthetic
sense; but the manifestation is due rather to the absence than to the presence
of æsthetic feeling, and we may observe among ourselves that it is the
ignorant and uncultured who feel the indecency of statues and thus betray
their sense of the sexual appeal of such objects. We have to remember that
in Greece statues played a very prominent part in life, and also that they
were tinted, and thus more lifelike than with us. Lucian, Athenæus, Ælian,
and others refer to cases of men who fell in love with statues. Tarnowsky
(Sexual Instinct, English edition, p. 85) mentions the case of a young man
who was arrested in St. Petersburg for paying moonlight visits to the statue
of a nymph on the terrace of a country house, and Krafft-Ebing quotes from
a French newspaper the case which occurred in Paris during the spring of
1877 of a gardener who fell in love with a Venus in one of the parks. (I.

Bloch, Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil II, pp. 297-
305, brings together various facts bearing on this group of manifestations.)
Necrophily, or a sexual attraction for corpses, is sometimes regarded as
related to pygmalionism. It is, however, a more profoundly morbid
manifestation, and may perhaps he regarded as a kind of perverted sadism.
Founded on the sense of vision also we find a phenomenon, bordering on
the abnormal, which is by Moll termed mixoscopy. This means the sexual
pleasure derived from the spectacle of other persons engaged in natural or
perverse sexual actions. (Moll, Konträre Sexualempfindung, third edition, p.
308. Moll considers that in some cases mixoscopy is related to masochism.
There is, however, no necessary connection between the two phenomena.)
Brothels are prepared to accommodate visitors who merely desire to look
on, and for their convenience carefully contrived peepholes are provided;
such visitors are in Paris termed "voyeurs." It is said by Coffignon that
persons hide at night in the bushes in the Champs Elysées in the hope of
witnessing such scenes between servant girls and their lovers. In England
during a country walk I have come across an elderly man carefully
ensconced behind a bush and intently watching through his field-glass a
couple of lovers reclining on a bank, though the actions of the latter were
not apparently marked by any excess of indecorum. Such impulses are only
slightly abnormal, whatever may be said of them from the point of view of
good taste. They are not very far removed from the legitimate curiosity of
the young woman who, believing herself unobserved, turns her glass on to a
group of young men bathing naked. They only become truly perverse when
the gratification thus derived is sought in preference to natural sexual
gratification. They are also not normal when they involve, for instance, a
man desiring to witness his wife in the act of coitus with another man. I
have been told of the case of a scientific man who encouraged his wife to
promote the advances of a young friend of his own, in his own drawing-
room, he himself remaining present and apparently taking no notice; the
younger man was astonished, but accepted the situation. In such a case,
when the motives that led up to the episode are obscure, we must not too
hastily assume that masochism or even mixoscopy is involved. For
information on some of the points mentioned above see, e.g., I. Bloch,
Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil I, pp. 200 et seq.;
Teil II, pp. 195 et seq.

Wide, however, as is the appeal of beauty in sexual selection, it cannot be
said to cover by any means the whole of the visual field in its sexual
relationship. Beauty in the human species is, above all, a feminine attribute,
making its appeal to men. Even for women, as has already been noted,
beauty is still a feminine quality, which they usually admire, and in cases of
inversion worship with an ardor which equals, if it does not surpass, that
experienced by normal men. But the normal woman experiences no
corresponding cult for the beauty of man. The perfection of the body of man
is not behind that of woman in beauty, but the study of it only appeals to the
artist or the æsthetician; it arouses sexual enthusiasm almost exclusively in
the male sexual invert. Whatever may be the case among animals or even
among savages, in civilization the man is most successful with women is
not the most handsome man, and may be the reverse of handsome.[169] The
maiden, according to the old saying, who has to choose between Adonis and
Hercules, will turn to Hercules.
A correspondent writes: "Men are generally attracted in the first instance by
a woman's beauty, either of face or figure. Frequently this is the highest
form of love they are capable of. Personally, my own love is always
prompted by this. In the case of my wife there was certainly a leaven of
friendship and moral sympathies but these alone would never have been
translated into love had she not been young and good-looking. Moreover, I
have felt intense passion for other women, in my relations with whom the
elements of moral or mental sympathy have not entered. And always, as
youth and beauty went, I believe I should transfer my love to some one else.
"Now, in woman I fancy this element of beauty and youth does not enter so
much. I have questioned a large number of women—some married, some
unmarried, young and old ladies, shopgirls, servants, prostitutes, women
whom I have known only as friends, others with whom I have had sexual
relations—and I cannot recollect one instance when a woman said she had
fallen in love with a man for his looks. The nearest approach to any sign of
this was in the instance of one, who noticed a handsome man sitting near us
in a hotel, and said to me: 'I should like him to kiss me.'
"I have also noticed that women do not like looking at my body, when
naked, as I like looking at theirs. My wife has, on a few occasions, put her
hand over my body, and expressed pleasure at the feeling of my skin. (I

have very fair, soft skin.) But I have never seen women exhibit the
excitement that is caused in me by the sight of their bodies, which I love to
look at, to stroke, to kiss all over."
It is interesting to point out, in this connection, that the admiration of
strength is not confined to the human female. It is by the spectacle of his
force that the male among many of the lower animals sexually affects the
female. Darwin duly allows for this fact, while some evolutionists, and
notably Wallace, consider that it covers the whole field of sexual selection.
When choice exists, Wallace states, "all the facts appear to be consistent
with the choice depending on a variety of male characteristics, with some of
which color is often correlated. Thus, it is the opinion of some of the best
observers that vigor and liveliness are most attractive, and these are, no
doubt, usually associated with some intensity of color, ... There is reason to
believe that it is his [the male bird's] persistency and energy rather than his
beauty which wins the day." (A. R. Wallace, Tropical Nature, 1898, p. 199.)
In his later book, Darwinism (p. 295), Wallace reaffirms his position that
sexual selection means that in the rivalry of males for the female the most
vigorous secures the advantage; "ornament," he adds, "is the natural product
and direct outcome of superabundant health and vigor." As regards woman's
love of strength, see Westermarck, History of Marriage, p. 255.
Women admire a man's strength rather than his beauty. This statement is
commonly made, and with truth, but, so far as I am aware, its meaning is
never analyzed. When we look into it, I think, we shall find that it leads us
into a special division of the visual sphere of sexual allurement. The
spectacle of force, while it remains strictly within the field of vision, really
brings to us, although unconsciously, impressions that are correlated with
another sense—that of touch. We instinctively and unconsciously translate
visible energy into energy of pressure. In admiring strength we are really
admiring a tactile quality which has been made visible. It may therefore be
said that, while through vision men are sexually affected mainly by the
more purely visual quality of beauty, women are more strongly affected by
visual impressions which express qualities belonging to the more
fundamentally sexual sense of touch.
The distinction between the man's view and the woman's view, here pointed
out, is not, it must be added, absolute. Even for a man, beauty, with all these

components which we have already analyzed in it, is not the sole sexual
allurement of vision. A woman is not necessarily sexually attractive in the
ratio of her beauty, and with even a high degree of beauty may have a low
degree of attraction. The addition of vivacity or the addition of languor may
each furnish a sexual allurement, and each of these is a translated tactile
quality which possesses an obscure potency from vague sexual
implications.[170] But while in the man the demand for these translated
pressure qualities in the visible attractiveness of a woman are not usually
quite clearly realized, in a woman the corresponding craving for the visual
expression of pressure energy is much more pronounced and predominant.
It is not difficult to see why this should be so, even without falling back on
the usual explanation that natural selection implies that the female shall
choose the male who will be the most likely father of strong children and
the best protector of his family. The more energetic part in physical love
belongs to the man, the more passive part to the woman; so that, while
energy in a woman is no index to effectiveness in love, energy in a man
furnishes a seeming index to the existence of the primary quality of sexual
energy which a woman demands of a man in the sexual embrace. It may be
a fallacious index, for muscular strength is not necessarily correlated with
sexual vigor, and in its extreme degrees appears to be more correlated with
its absence. But it furnishes, in Stendhal's phrase, a probability of passion,
and in any case it still remains a symbol which cannot be without its effect.
We must not, of course, suppose that these considerations are always or
often present to the consciousness of the maiden who "blushingly turns
from Adonis to Hercules," but the emotional attitude is rooted in more or
less unerring instincts. In this way it happens that even in the field of visual
attraction sexual selection influences women on the underlying basis of the
more primitive sense of touch, the fundamentally sexual sense.
Women are very sensitive to the quality of a man's touch, and appear to
seek and enjoy contact and pressure to a greater extent than do men,
although in early adolescence this impulse seems to be marked in both
sexes. "There is something strangely winning to most women," remarks
George Eliot, in The Mill on the Floss, "in that offer of the firm arm; the
help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help—the
presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs—meets a continual
want of the imagination."

Women are often very critical concerning a man's touch and his method of
shaking hands. Stanley Hall (Adolescence, vol. ii, p. 8) quotes a gifted lady
as remarking: "I used to say that, however much I liked a man, I could
never marry him if I did not like the touch of his hand, and I feel so yet."
Among the elements of sexual attractiveness which make a special appeal
to women, extreme personal cleanliness would appear to take higher rank
than it takes in the eyes of a man, some men, indeed, seeming to make
surprisingly small demands of a woman in this respect. If this is so we may
connect it with the fact that beauty in a woman's eye is to a much greater
extent than in a man's a picture of energy, in other words, a translation of
pressure contracts, with which the question of physical purity is necessarily
more intimately associated than it is with the picture of purely visual
beauty. It is noteworthy that Ovid (Ars Amandi, lib. I) urges men who desire
to please women to leave the arts of adornment and effeminacy to those
whose loves are homosexual, and to practice a scrupulous attention to
extreme neatness and cleanliness of body and garments in every detail, a
sun-browned skin, and the absence of all odor. Some two thousand years
later Brummell in an age when extravagance and effeminacy often marked
the fashions of men, introduced a new ideal of unobtrusive simplicity,
extreme cleanliness (with avoidance of perfumes), and exquisite good taste;
he abhorred all eccentricity, and may be said to have constituted a tradition
which Englishmen have ever since sought, more or less successfully to
follow; he was idolized by women.
It may be added that the attentiveness of women to tactile contacts is
indicated by the frequency with which in them it takes on morbid forms, as
the délire du contact, the horror of contamination, the exaggerated fear of
touching dirt. (See, e.g., Raymond and Janet, Les Obsessions et la
Psychasthénie.)

[168]
William Ellis, Polynesian Researches, second edition, 1832, vol.
1, p. 215.

[169]

Stendhal (De l'Amour, Chapter XVIII) has some remarks on this
point, and refers to the influence over women possessed by
Lekain, the famous actor, who was singularly ugly. "It is
passion," he remarks, "which we demand; beauty only furnishes
probabilities."

[170]
The charm of a woman's garments to a man is often due in part to
their expressiveness in rendering impressions of energy, vivacity,
or languor. This has often been realized by the poets, and notably
by Herrick, who was singularly sensitive to these qualities in a
woman's garments.

IV.

The Alleged Charm of Disparity in Sexual Attraction—The Admiration for
High Stature—The Admiration for Dark Pigmentation—The Charm of
Parity—Conjugal Mating—The Statistical Results of Observation as
Regards General Appearance, Stature, and Pigmentation of Married
Couples—Preferential Mating and Assortative Mating—The Nature of the
Advantage Attained by the Fair in Sexual Selection—The Abhorrence of
Incest and the Theories of its Cause—The Explanation in Reality Simple—
The Abhorrence of Incest in Relation to Sexual Selection—The Limits to
the Charm of Parity in Conjugal Mating—The Charm of Disparity in
Secondary Sexual Characters.

When we are dealing with the senses of touch, smell, and hearing it is
impossible at present, and must always remain somewhat difficult, to
investigate precisely the degree and direction of their influence in sexual
selection. We can marshal in order—as has here been attempted—the main
facts and considerations which clearly indicate that there is and must be
such an influence, but we cannot even attempt to estimate its definite
direction and still less to measure it precisely. With regard to vision, we are
in a somewhat better position. It is possible to estimate the direction of the

influence which certain visible characters exert on sexual selection, and it is
even possible to attempt their actual measurement, although there must
frequently be doubt as to the interpretation of such measurements.
Two facts render it thus possible to deal more exactly with the influence of
vision on sexual selection than with the influence of the other senses. In the
first place, men and women consciously seek for certain visible characters
in the persons to whom they are attracted; in other words, their "ideals" of a
fitting mate are visual rather than tactile, olfactory, or auditory. In the
second place, whether such "ideals" are potent in actual mating, or whether
they are modified or even inhibited by more potent psychological or general
biological influences, it is in either case possible to measure and compare
the visible characters of mated persons.
The two visible characters which are at once most frequently sought in a
mate and most easily measurable are degree of stature and degree of
pigmentation. Every youth or maiden pictures the person he or she would
like for a lover as tall or short, fair or dark, and such characters are
measurable and have on a large scale been measured. It is of interest in
illustration of the problem of sexual selection in man to consider briefly
what results are at present obtainable regarding the influence of these two
characters.
It has long been a widespread belief that short people are sexually attracted
to tall people, and tall people to short; that in the matter of stature men and
women are affected by what Bain called the "charm of disparity." It has not
always prevailed. Many centuries ago Leonardo da Vinci, whose insight at
so many points anticipated our most modern discoveries, affirmed clearly
and repeatedly the charm of parity. After remarking that painters tend to
delineate the figures that resemble themselves he adds that men also fall in
love with and marry those who resemble themselves; "chi s'innamora
voluntieri s'innamorano de cose a loro simiglianti," he elsewhere puts it.
[171] But from that day to this, it would seem Leonardo's statements have

remained unknown or unnoticed. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre said that "love
is the result of contrasts," and Schopenhauer affirmed the same point very
decisively; various scientific and unscientific writers have repeated this
statement.[172]

So far as stature is concerned, there appears to be very little reason to
suppose that this "charm of disparity" plays any notable part in constituting
the sexual ideals of either men or women. Indeed, it may probably be
affirmed that both men and women seek tallness in the person to whom they
are sexually attracted. Darwin quotes the opinion of Mayhew that among
dogs the females are strongly attracted to males of large size.[173] I believe
this is true, and it is probably merely a particular instance of a general
psychological tendency.
It is noteworthy as an indication of the direction of the sexual ideal in this
matter that the heroines of male novelists are rarely short and the heroes of
female novelists almost invariably tall. A reviewer of novels addressing to
lady novelists in the Speaker (July 26, 1890) "A Plea for Shorter Heroes,"
publishes statistics on this point. "Heroes," he states, "are longer this year
than ever. Of the 192 of whom I have had my word to say since October of
last year, 27 were merely tall, and 11 were only slightly above the middle
height. No less than 85 stood exactly six feet in their stocking soles, and the
remainder were considerably over the two yards. I take the average to be six
feet three."
As a slight test alike of the supposed "charm of disparity" as well as of the
general degree in which tall and short persons are sought as mates by those
of the opposite sex I have examined a series of entries in the Round-About,
a publication issued by a club, of which the president is Mr. W. T. Stead,
having for its object the purpose of promoting correspondence, friendship,
and marriage between its members. There are two classes, of entries, one
inserted with a view to "intellectual friendship," the other with a view to
marriage. I have not thought it necessary to recognize this distinction here;
if a man describes his own physical characteristics and those of the lady he
would like as a friend, I assume that, from the point of view of the present
inquiry, he is much on the same footing as the man who seeks a wife. In the
series of entries which I have examined 35 men and women state
approximately the height of the man or woman they seek to know; 30 state
in addition their own height. The results are expressed in the table on the
following page.
Although the cases are few, the results are, in two main respects,
sufficiently clear without multiplication of data. In the first place, those who

seek parity, whether men or women, are in a majority over those who seek
disparity. In the second place, the existence of any disparity at all is due
only to the universal desire to find a tall person. Not one man or woman
sets down shortness as his or her ideal. The very fact that no man in these
initial announcements ventures to set himself down as short (although a
considerable proportion describe themselves as tall) indicates a
consciousness that shortness is undesirable, as also does the fact that the
women very frequently describe themselves as tall.
The same charm of disparity which has been supposed to rule in selective
attraction as regards stature has also been assumed as regards pigmentation.
The fair, it is said, are attracted to the dark, the dark to the fair. Again, it
must be said that this common assumption is not confirmed either by
introspection or by any attempt to put the matter on a statistical basis.[174]
WOMEN. MEN.
TOTALS.

Tall women seek tall men.. 8 Tall men seek tall
women.. 6 14
Short women seek short men 0 Short men seek short
women 0 0
Medium-sized women seek Medium-sized men seek
medium-sized men ....... 0 medium-sized women ....
3 3

Seek parity........... 8 Seek
parity........... 9 17

Tall women seek short men. 0 Tall men seek short
women. 0 0
Short women seek tall men. 4 Short men seek tall
women. 0 4
Medium-sized woman seeks Medium-sized men seek
tall
tall man................ 1 women
.................. 8 9

Seek disparity........ 5 Seek
disparity........ 8 13

Men of unknown height
seek

tall
women.............. 5 5

Most people who will carefully introspect their own feelings and ideals in
this matter will find that they are not attracted to persons of the opposite sex
who are strikingly unlike themselves in pigmentary characters. Even when
the abstract ideal of a sexually desirable person is endowed with certain
pigmentary characters, such as blue eyes or darkness,—either of which is
liable to make a vaguely romantic appeal to the imagination,—it is usually
found, on testing the feeling for particular persons, that the variation from
the personal type of the subject is usually only agreeable within narrow
limits, and that there is a very common tendency for persons of totally
opposed pigmentary types, even though they may sometimes be considered
to possess a certain æsthetic beauty, to be regarded as sexually unattractive
or even repulsive. With this feeling may perhaps be associated the feeling,
certainly very widely felt, that one would not like to marry a person of
foreign, even though closely allied, race.
From the same number of the Round-About from which I have extracted the
data on stature, I have obtained corresponding data on pigmentation, and
have embodied them in the following table. They are likewise very scanty,
but they probably furnish as good a general indication of the drift of ideals
in this matter as we should obtain from more extensive data of the same
character.
WOMEN. MEN.
TOTALS.

Fair women seek fair men. 2 Fair men seek
fair women 2 4
Dark woman seeks dark man 1 Dark men seek
dark women 7 8

Seek parity.......... 3 Seek
parity......... 9 12

Fair women seek dark men. 4 Fair men seek
dark women 3 7
Dark woman seeks fair man 1 Dark men seek
fair women 4 5
Medium-colored
man seeks

Seek disparity....... 5 dark woman
........... 1 1
Medium-colored
man seeks
fair woman
........... 1 1

Seek
disparity...... 9 14

Men of unknown
color seek
dark women
........... 3 3

It will be seen that in the case of pigmentation there is not as in the case of
stature a decided charm of parity in the formation of sexual ideals. The
phenomenon, however, remains essentially analogous. Just as in regard to
stature there is without exception an abstract admiration for tall persons, so
here, though to a less marked extent, there is a general admiration for dark
persons. As many as 6 out of 8 women and 14 out of 21 men seek a dark
partner. This tendency ranges itself with the considerations already brought
forward (p. 182), leading us to believe that, in England at all events, the
admiration of fairness is not efficacious to promote any sexual selection,
and that if there is actually any such selection it must be put down to other
causes. No doubt, even in England the abstract æsthetic admiration of
fairness is justifiable and may influence the artist. Probably also it
influences the poet, who is affected by a long-established convention in
favor of fairness, and perhaps also by a general tendency on the part of our
poets to be themselves fair and to yield to the charm of parity,—the
tendency to prefer the women of one's own stock,—which we have already
found to be a real force.[175] But, as a matter of fact, our famous English
beauties are not very fair; probably our handsomest men are not very fair,
and the abstract sexual ideals of both our men and our women thus go out
toward the dark.
The formation of a sexual ideal, while it furnishes a predisposition to be
attracted in a certain direction, and undoubtedly has a certain weight in
sexual choice, is not by any means the whole of sexual selection. It is not
even the whole of the psychic element in sexual selection. Let us take, for
instance, the question of stature. There would seem to be a general tendency

for both men and women, apart from and before experience, to desire
sexually large persons of the opposite sex. It may even be that this is part of
a wider zoölogical tendency. In the human species it shows itself also on the
spiritual plane, in the desire for the infinite, in the deep and unreasoning
feeling that it is impossible to have too much of a good thing. But it not
infrequently happens that a man in whose youthful dreams of love the
heroine has always been large, has not been able to calculate what are the
special nervous and other characteristics most likely to be met in large
women, nor how far these correlated characteristics would suit his own
instinctive demands. He may, and sometimes does, find that in these other
demands, which prove to be more important and insistent than the desire for
stature, the tall women he meets are less likely to suit him than the medium
or short women.[176] It may thus happen that a man whose ideal of woman
has always been as tall may yet throughout life never be in intimate
relationship with a tall woman because he finds that practically he has more
marked affinities in the case of shorter women. His abstract ideals are
modified or negatived by more imperative sympathies or antipathies.
In one field such sympathies have long been recognized, especially by
alienists, as leading to sexual unions of parity, notwithstanding the belief in
the generally superior attraction of disparity. It has often been pointed out
that the neuropathic, the insane and criminal, "degenerates" of all kinds,
show a notable tendency to marry each other. This tendency has not,
however, been investigated with any precision.[177]
The first attempt on a statistical basis to ascertain what degree of parity or
disparity is actually attained by sexual selection was made by Alphonse de
Candolle.[178] Obtaining his facts from Switzerland, North Germany, and
Belgium, he came to the conclusion that marriages are most commonly
contracted between persons with different eye-colors, except in the case of
brown-eyed women, who (as Schopenhauer stated, and as is seen in the
English data of the sexual ideal I have brought forward) are found more
attractive than others.
The first series of serious observations tending to confirm the result reached
by the genius of Leonardo da Vinci and to show that sexual selection results
in the pairing of like rather than of unlike persons was made by Hermann
Fol, the embryologist.[179] He set out with the popular notion that married

people end by resembling each other, but when at Nice, which is visited by
many young married couples on their honeymoons, he was struck by the
resemblances already existing immediately after marriage. In order to test
the matter he obtained the photographs of 251 young and old married
couples not personally known to him. The results were as follows:
RESEMBLANCES NONRESEMBLANCES
COUPLES. (PERCENTAGE). (PERCENTAGE).
TOTAL.

Young.............. 132, about 66,66 66, about 33.33
198
Old ............... 38, about 71.70 15, about 28.30
53

He concluded that in the immense majority of marriages of inclination the
contracting parties are attracted by similarities, and not by dissimilarities,
and that, consequently, the resemblances between aged married couples are
not acquired during conjugal life. Although Fol's results were not obtained
by good methods, and do not cover definite points like stature and eye-
color, they represented the conclusions of a highly skilled and acute
observer and have since been amply confirmed.
Galton could not find that the average results from a fairly large number of
cases indicated that stature, eye-color, or other personal characteristics
notably influenced sexual selection, as evidenced by a comparison of
married couples.[180] Karl Pearson, however, in part making use of a large
body of data obtained by Galton, referring to stature and eye-color, has
reached the conclusion that sexual selection ultimately results in a marked
degree of parity so far as these characters are concerned.[181] As regards
stature, he is unable to find evidence of what he terms "preferential
mating"; that is to say, it does not appear that any preconceived ideals
concerning the desirability of tallness in sexual mates leads to any
perceptibly greater tallness of the chosen mate; husbands are not taller than
men in general, nor wives than women in general. In regard to eye-color,
however, there appeared to be evidence of preferential mating. Husbands
are very decidedly fairer than men in general, and though there is no such
marked difference in women, wives are also somewhat fairer than women
in general. As regards "assortative mating" as it is termed by Pearson,—the
tendency to parity or to disparity between husbands and wives,—the result

were in both cases decisive. Tall men marry women who are somewhat
above the average in height; short men marry women who are somewhat
below the average, so that husband and wife resemble each other in stature
as closely as uncle and niece. As regards eye-color there is also a tendency
for like to marry like; the light-eyed men tend to marry light-eyed women
more often than dark-eyed women; the dark-eyed men tend to marry dark-
eyed women more often than light-eyed. There remains, however, a very
considerable difference in the eye-color of husband and wife; in the 774
couples dealt with by Pearson there are 333 dark-eyed women to only 251
dark-eyed men, and 523 light-eyed men to only 441 light-eyed women. The
women in the English population are darker-eyed than the men;[182] but the
difference is scarcely so great as this; so that even if wives are not so dark-
eyed as women generally it would appear that the ideal admiration for the
dark-eyed may still to some extent make itself felt in actual mating.
While we have to recognize that the modification and even total inhibition
of sexual ideals in the process of actual mating is largely due to psychic
causes, such causes do not appear to cover the whole of the phenomena.
Undoubtedly they count for much, and the man or the woman who, from
whatever causes, has constituted a sexual ideal with certain characters may
in the actual contacts of life find that individuals with other and even
opposed characters most adequately respond to his or her psychic demands.
There are, however, other causes in play here which at first sight may seem
to be not of a purely psychic character. One unquestionable cause of this
kind comes into action in regard to pigmentary selection. Fair people,
possibly as a matter of race more than from absence of pigment, are more
energetic than dark people. They possess a sanguine vigor and impetuosity
which, in most, though not in all, fields and especially in the competition of
practical life, tend to give them some superiority over their darker brethren.
The greater fairness of husbands in comparison with men in general, as
found by Karl Pearson, is thus accounted for; fair men are most likely to
obtain wives. Husbands are fairer than men in general for the same reason
that, as I have shown elsewhere,[183] created peers are fairer than either
hereditary peers or even most groups of intellectual persons; they have
possessed in higher measure the qualities that insure success. It may be
added that with the recognition of this fact we have not really left the field
of sexual psychology, for, as has already been pointed out, that energy

which thus insures success in practical life is itself a sexual allurement to
women. Energy in a woman in courtship is less congenial to her sexual
attitude than to a man's, and is not attractive to men; thus it is not
surprising, even apart from the probably greater beauty of dark women, that
the preponderance of fairness among wives as compared to women
generally, indicated by Karl Pearson's data, is very slight. It may possibly be
accounted for altogether by homogamy—the tendency of like to marry like
—in the fair husbands.
The energy and vitality of fair people is not, however, it is probable, merely
an indirect cause of the greater tendency of fair men to become husbands;
that is to say, it is not merely the result of the generally somewhat greater
ability of the fair to attain success in temporal affairs. In addition to this,
fair men, if not fair women, would appear to show a tendency to a greater
activity in their specifically sexual proclivities. This is a point which we
shall encounter in a later Study and it is therefore unnecessary to discuss it
here.
In dealing with the question of sexual selection in man various writers have
been puzzled by the problem presented by that abhorrence of incest which
is usually, though not always so clearly marked among the different races of
mankind.[184] It was once commonly stated, as by Morgan and by Maine,
that this abhorrence was the result of experience; the marriages of closely
related persons were found to be injurious to offspring and were therefore
avoided. This theory, however, is baseless because the marriages of closely
related persons are not injurious to the offspring. Consanguineous
marriages, so closely as they can be investigated on a large scale,—that is to
say, marriages between cousins,—as Huth was the first to show, develop no
tendency to the production of offspring of impaired quality provided the
parents are sound; they are only injurious in this respect in so far as they
may lead to the union of couples who are both defective in the same
direction. According to another theory, that of Westermarck, who has very
fully and ably discussed the whole question,[185] "there is an innate aversion
to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from
early youth, and, as such persons are in most cases related, this feeling
displays itself chiefly as a horror of intercourse between near kin."
Westermarck points out very truly that the prohibition of incest could not be
founded on experience even if (as he is himself inclined to believe)

consanguineous marriages are injurious to the offspring; incest is prevented
"neither by laws, nor by customs, nor by education, but by an instinct which
under normal circumstances makes sexual love between the nearest kin a
psychic impossibility." There is, however, a very radical objection to this
theory. It assumes the existence of a kind of instinct which can with
difficulty be accepted. An instinct is fundamentally a more or less
complicated series of reflexes set in action by a definite stimulus. An innate
tendency at once so specific and so merely negative, involving at the same
time deliberate intellectual processes, can only with a certain force be
introduced into the accepted class of instincts. It is as awkward and artificial
an instinct as would be, let us say, an instinct to avoid eating the apples that
grew in one's own yard.[186]
The explanation of the abhorrence to incest is really, however, exceedingly
simple. Any reader who has followed the discussion of sexual selection in
the present volume and is also familiar with the "Analysis of the Sexual
Impulse" set forth in the previous volume of these Studies will quickly
perceive that the normal failure of the pairing instinct to manifest itself in
the case of brothers and sisters, or of boys and girls brought up together
from infancy, is a merely negative phenomenon due to the inevitable
absence under those circumstances of the conditions which evoke the
pairing impulse. Courtship is the process by which powerful sensory stimuli
proceeding from a person of the opposite sex gradually produce the
physiological state of tumescence, with its psychic concomitant of love and
desire, more or less necessary for mating to be effected. But between those
who have been brought up together from childhood all the sensory stimuli
of vision, hearing, and touch have been dulled by use, trained to the calm
level of affection, and deprived of their potency to arouse the erethistic
excitement which produces sexual tumescence.[187] Brothers and sisters in
relation to each other have at puberty already reached that state to which old
married couples by the exhaustion of youthful passion and the slow usage
of daily life gradually approximate. Passion between brother and sister is,
indeed, by no means so rare as is sometimes supposed, and it may be very
strong, but it is usually aroused by the aid of those conditions which are
normally required for the appearance of passion, more especially by the
unfamiliarity caused by a long separation. In reality, therefore, the usual
absence of sexual attraction between brothers and sisters requires no special

explanation; it is merely due to the normal absence under these
circumstances of the conditions that tend to produce sexual tumescence and
the play of those sensory allurements which lead to sexual selection.[188] It
is a purely negative phenomenon and it is quite unnecessary, even if it were
legitimate, to invoke any instinct for its explanation. It is probable that the
same tendency also operates among animals to some extent, tending to
produce a stronger sexual attraction toward those of their species to whom
they have not become habituated.[189] In animals, and in man also when
living under primitive conditions, sexual attraction is not a constant
phenomenon[190]; it is an occasional manifestation only called out by the
powerful stimulation. It is not its absence which we need to explain; it is its
presence which needs explanation, and such an explanation we find in the
analysis of the phenomena of courtship.
The abhorrence of incest is an interesting and significant phenomenon from
our present point of view, because it instructively points out to us the limits
to that charm of parity which apparently makes itself felt to some
considerable extent in the constitution of the sexual ideal and still more in
the actual homogamy which seems to predominate over heterogamy. This
homogamy is, it will be observed, a racial homogamy; it relates to
anthropological characters which mark stocks. Even in this racial field, it is
unnecessary to remark, the homogamy attained is not, and could not be,
absolute; nor would it appear that such absolute racial homogamy is even
desired. A tall man who seeks a tall woman can seldom wish her to be as
tall as himself; a dark man who seeks a dark woman, certainly will not be
displeased at the inevitably greater or less degree of pigment which he finds
in her eyes as compared to his own.
But when we go outside the racial field this tendency to homogamy
disappears at once. A man marries a woman who, with slight, but agreeable,
variations, belongs to a like stock to himself. The abhorrence of incest
indicates that even the sexual attraction to people of the same stock has its
limits, for it is not strong enough to overcome the sexual indifference
between persons of near kin. The desire for novelty shown in this sexual
indifference to near kin and to those who have been housemates from
childhood, together with the notable sexual attractiveness often possessed
by a strange youth or maiden who arrives in a small town or village,

indicates that slight differences in stock, if not, indeed, a positive advantage
from this point of view, are certainly not a disadvantage. When we leave the
consideration of racial differences to consider sexual differences, not only
do we no longer find any charm of parity, but we find that there is an actual
charm of disparity. At this point it is necessary to remember all that has
been brought forward in earlier pages[191] concerning the emphasis of the
secondary sexual characters in the ideal of beauty. All those qualities which
the woman desires to see emphasized in the man are the precise opposite of
the qualities which the man desires to see emphasized in the woman. The
man must be strong, vigorous, energetic, hairy, even rough, to stir the
primitive instincts of the woman's nature; the woman who satisfies this man
must be smooth, rounded, and gentle. It would be hopeless to seek for any
homogamy between the manly man and the virile woman, between the
feminine woman and the effeminate man. It is not impossible that this
tendency to seek disparity in sexual characters may exert some disturbing
influences on the tendency to seek parity in anthropological racial
characters, for the sexual difference to some extent makes itself felt in racial
characters. A somewhat greater darkness of women is a secondary (or, more
precisely, tertiary) sexual character, and on this account alone, it is possible,
somewhat attractive to men[192]. A difference in size and stature is a very
marked secondary sexual character. In the considerable body of data
concerning the stature of married couples reproduced by Pearson from
Galton's tables, although the tall on the average tend to marry the tall, and
the short the short, it is yet noteworthy that, while the men of 5 ft. 4 ins.
have more wives at 5 ft. 2 ins. than at any other height, men of 6 ft. show, in
an exactly similar manner, more wives at 5 ft. 2 ins. than at any other
height, although for many intermediate heights the most numerous groups
of wives are taller[193].
In matters of carriage, habit, and especially clothing the love of sexual
disparity is instinctive, everywhere well marked, and often carried to very
great lengths. To some extent such differences are due to the opposing
demands of more fundamental differences in custom and occupation. But
this cause by no means adequately accounts for them, since it may
sometimes happen that what in one land is the practice of the men is in
another the practice of the women, and yet the practices of the two sexes are
still opposed[194]. Men instinctively desire to avoid doing things in women's

ways, and women instinctively avoid doing things in men's ways, yet both
sexes admire in the other sex those things which in themselves they avoid.
In the matter of clothing this charm of disparity reaches its highest point,
and it has constantly happened that men have even called in the aid of
religion to enforce a distinction which seemed to them so urgent[195]. One
of the greatest of sex allurements would be lost and the extreme importance
of clothes would disappear at once if the two sexes were to dress alike; such
identity of dress has, however, never come about among any people.

[171]
L. da Vinci, Frammenti, selected by Solmi, pp. 177-180.

[172]
Westermarck, who accepts the "charm of disparity," gives
references, History of Human Marriage, p. 354.

[173]
Descent of Man. Part II, Chapter XVIII.

[174]
Bloch (Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil II,
pp. 260 et seq.) refers to the tendency to admixture of races and to
the sexual attraction occasionally exerted by the negress and
sometimes the negro on white persons as evidence in favor of
such charm of disparity. In part, however, we are here concerned
with vague statements concerning imperfectly known facts, in
part with merely individual variations, and with that love of the
exotic under the stimulation of civilized conditions to which
reference has already been made (p. 184).

[175]
In this connection the exceptional case of Tennyson is of interest.
He was born and bred in the very fairest part of England
(Lincolnshire), but he himself and the stock from which he sprang

were dark to a very remarkable degree. In his work, although it
reveals traces of the conventional admiration for the fair, there is
a marked and unusual admiration for distinctly dark women, the
women resembling the stock to which he himself belonged. See
Havelock Ellis, "The Color Sense in Literature," Contemporary
Review, May, 1896.

[176]
It is noteworthy that in the Round-About, already referred to,
although no man expresses a desire to meet a short woman, when
he refers to announcements by women as being such as would be
likely to suit him, the persons thus pointed out are in a notable
proportion short.

[177]
It has been discussed by F. J. Debret, La Selection Naturelle dans
l'espèce humaine (Thèse de Paris), 1901. Debret regards it as due
to natural selection.

[178]
"Hérédité de la Couleur des Yeux dans l'espèce humaine,"
Archives des Sciences physiques et naturelles, sér. iii, vol. xii,
1884, p. 109.

[179]
Revue Scientifique, Jan., 1891.

[180]
F. Galton, Natural Inheritance, p. 85. It may be remarked that
while Galton's tables on page 206 show a slight excess of
disparity as regards sexual selection in stature, in regard to eye
color they anticipate Karl Pearson's more extensive data and in
marriages of disparity show a decided deficiency of observed
over chance results. In English Men of Science (pp. 28-33), also,

Galton found that among the parents parity decidedly prevailed
over disparity (78 to 31) alike as regards temperament, hair color,
and eye color.

[181]
Karl Pearson, Phil. Trans. Royal Society, vol. clxxxvii, p. 273,
and vol. cxcv, p. 113; Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. lxvi,
p. 28; Grammar of Science, second edition, 1900, pp. 425 et seq.;
Biometrika, November, 1903. The last-named periodical also
contains a study on "Assortative Mating in Man," bringing
forward evidence to show that, apart from environmental
influence, "length of life is a character which is subject to
selection;" that is to say, the long-lived tend to marry the long-
lived, and the short-lived to marry the short-lived.

[182]
For a summary of the evidence on this point see Havelock Ellis,
Man and Woman, fourth edition, 1904, pp. 256-264.

[183]
"The Comparative Abilities of the Fair and the Dark," Monthly
Review, August, 1901.

[184]
The fact that even in Europe the abhorrence to incest is not
always strongly felt is brought out by Bloch, Beiträge zur
Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil II, pp. 263 et seq.

[185]
Westermarck, History of Marriage, Chapters XIV and XV.

[186]
Crawley (The Mystic Rose, p. 446) has pointed out that it is not
legitimate to assume the possibility of an "instinct" of this

character; instinct has "nothing in its character but a response of
function to environment."

[187]
Fromentin, in his largely autobiographic novel Dominique, makes
Olivier say: "Julie is my cousin, which is perhaps a reason why
she should please me less than anyone else. I have always known
her. We have, as it were, slept in the same cradle. There may be
people who would be attracted by this almost fraternal
relationship. To me the very idea of marrying someone whom I
knew as a baby is as absurd as that of coupling two dolls."

[188]
It may well be, as Crawley argues (The Mystic Rose, Chapter
XVII), that sexual taboo plays some part among primitive people
in preventing incestuous union, as, undoubtedly, training and
moral ideas do among civilized peoples.

[189]
The remarks of the Marquis de Brisay, an authority on doves, as
communicated to Giard (L'Intermédiare des Biologistes,
November 20, 1897), are of much interest on this point, since
they correspond to what we find in the human species: "Two birds
from the same nest rarely couple. Birds coming from the same
nest behave as though they regarded coupling as prohibited, or,
rather, they know each other too well, and seem to be ignorant of
their difference in sex, remaining unaffected in their relations by
the changes which make them adults." Westermarck (op. cit., p.
334) has some remarks on a somewhat similar tendency
sometimes observed in dogs and horses.

[190]
See Appendix to vol. lii of these Studies, "The Sexual Impulse
among Savages."