CHAPTER XII
In the previous chapter we repeatedly drew attention to the fact that free love is not identical with the sexual promiscuity indulged in at the present day to such an alarming extent and with such disastrous consequences—sexual promiscuity in the form of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse, irregular in character, and dependent almost entirely upon chance.
I am an ardent advocate of “free love,” by which I understand sexual union based upon intimate love, personal harmony, and spiritual affinity, entered on by the free resolve of both parties, involving the assumption of all the duties entailed by such free unions, and with satisfactory mutual assurances regarding health. But with corresponding emphasis I must condemn, from the standpoint of the physician and from that of public hygiene, and also on ethical grounds, the now so widely diffused “extra-conjugal” sexual intercourse, for which, in order to distinguish it from the entirely different extra-conjugal “free” love, I suggest the term “wild love.”
This wild love is the true cancer of our society, for its chief characteristic is that it constitutes an enduring connexion and means of transition between hygienically and ethically unexceptionable sexual intercourse and prostitution, and thus involves the unceasing risk of transferring to the former all the dangers of the latter. In this sense, wild love can really be regarded as a kind of irradiation of the whole nature of prostitution into the entirety of sexual relations in general. Thus, it remains a powerful hindrance to all ennoblement and resanation of the amatory life, and it is an invincible source of the moral and physical degeneration and the infective contamination of the nation.
Wild love is intimately connected with the artificial sensual life of our time, and with the manifold varieties of seduction[219] arising from that life. Wild love, the sensual life, and seduction, form, as it were, a triad, each member of which is the principal predisposing condition of the others.
He who wishes to characterize in a few words the European civilization of the present day may say that its nature consists in epicureanism, mitigated by toil and the struggle for life; but this epicureanism is of a very peculiar kind. It is no longer the unqualified sensual life of the eighteenth century, in which sensual lusts and epicurean refinements were to many the whole object of life, nor is it the comfortable enjoyment of “the good old times”; it is a quite peculiar concentrated enjoyment of the moment, in the midst of the hard work of life. The carpe diem of Horace has to-day become carpe horam!
The forced labour which the fierce struggle for existence at present entails upon the majority of men leaves no more time for a simple undisturbed enjoyment of existence, for the inward deep experience of reality, and for a quiet joy therein. No, our sensual life of to-day bears in it the sting of pain, because the will to live, which, according to Schopenhauer, continually strives for an “increase of life,” has now degenerated into a convulsive search for the most violent sensations possible, into a wild hunt after the strongest possible and most frequent enjoyments, because the time is lacking for a peaceful, harmonious existence. Each man asks himself anxiously whether he may not have “missed” this or that possibility of objective pleasure; and forgets in doing so that the true happiness of life lies within himself, and that the greatest possible sum of outward enjoyments cannot procure him this happiness.
The signature of our time is “amuse oneself,” a phrase which conveys the idea of all our modern superficial pleasures, and of our sensual and spiritual sensations, which must chase one another in rapid succession in order to enable the modern civilized man to feel that he “lives.”
For the majority of those living in great towns, amusement is equivalent to a continued succession of superficial sensual pleasures, as preparatory stimuli for an equally fugitive and debasing sexual act.
The frequently heard and favourite phrases “to go through with it,” “to live one’s life,” “to sow one’s wild oats,” etc., have all the same significance, in the sense of preparation for sexual indulgence by means of such stimuli.
From beer-saloons and public-houses of all kinds, especially those at which the attendants are women, from the cabarets and variety theatres, the low-class music-halls and dancing-saloons, also, however, from better-class balls, soirées, and luxurious dinners, the road is open to the prostitute, or to the arms of a girl excited by similar sensual stimuli to a similarly transitory sexual desire.
A great physician has said: “We eat three times too much.” I might add, in amplification of this saying, Not only do we eat three times too much, but we look for all other sensual pleasures in excess, and for this reason we love also three times too much, or rather, we indulge too often in sexual intercourse.
One of our most talented psychologists, Willy Hellpach, has described these relationships with great insight:
“To the enormous majority of our young men sexual indulgence is a matter of course, like their card-parties, their evenings at the club, their glass of beer; and of the few who live otherwise, a considerable proportion do so simply from timidity, or from poverty of spirit (they would like to, but they cannot screw their courage up). Another portion is honourably continent, but does not dare to make any display of this adhesion to principle, and rather pretends not to be distinguished in any way from the majority; and the very few young men who openly set their faces against the custom may be counted on the fingers of one hand. It is obvious that in this way the extra-conjugal sexual act loses the distinction of the unaccustomed; it is effected continually in a more heedless, light-hearted, frivolous manner—until, finally, the very idea of danger connected with indiscriminate sexual indulgence is forgotten; the preventive is thrown aside with an easy “Nothing has ever happened to me.” Indeed, many a man goes to his fate in the shape of infection with his eyes open, and with the most light-hearted confidence: if he is infected, there will be plenty of time before his marriage to be thoroughly cured.
“This factor comes the more readily into play in proportion to the degree in which the whole arrangement of the sensual life culminates in the stimulation of erotic activities. Such a tendency is inevitably associated with the development of the modern large town; and there ensues an imitation of the sensual life of large towns in smaller towns, and even in country villages.[220]
“Every large town provides the means for a much more extensive stimulation of the senses than country life; and the alternate stimulation and deadening of the senses, characteristic of town life, has in the very large towns of our time reached an unheard-of degree of intensity. The town is the typical habitat of that sensual and nervous condition of irritability which historically characterizes our own generation; the townsman is the typical representative of “nervousness” in its modern form. The verbal connexion between “senses” and “sensuality” represents an actual transition; and in ordinary parlance, by the “sensual” we understand the “erotic.” Where the senses are more strongly stimulated, there erotic desire grows, there it loses its periodical course in favour of a continuous wakefulness, or, at any rate, in favour of a light slumber, which the slightest stimulus will disturb. And the townsman is more easily impelled to the sexual act, not merely because the town offers him prostitutes, “intimates,” etc., in much greater numbers, but also because his over-stimulated nervous system impels him much more powerfully to search for these objects, and makes it much more difficult for him to safeguard himself against their allurements.
“And town life is nocturnal life! The more so, the larger the town; and we see the extreme form of this in the great capitals of Europe. The consequences in regard to the opportunities for and incitations to sexual enjoyment are not lacking. First of all, nocturnal life gives rise to a summation of stimuli, to an incredible variety of nervous titillation, and this induces an increasing sensuality; and once the sensual life has become habitually nocturnal, now, by a vicious circle, all enjoyment is unavoidably fettered to the town. Natural recuperation has become a secondary consideration, and in place of the relief of tension, we have apparent restoration by means of variety. All, all, tends in favour of a sharpening of sensual stimuli, of arousing the wish for erotic pleasures. And the town is untiring, inexhaustible, in its discovery of means for the gratification of these instincts. Variety theatres, gin-palaces, low music-halls, and all the amusements of similar kind, are simply unthinkable without the sensual note; and even where they maintain themselves to be free from that note, it will be unconsciously sought by the audience, will be easily found, and if it were absent, its absence would be angrily resented. The same is true, more or less, of entertainments of a higher æsthetic rank. With very few exceptions, our theatres are compelled to take into consideration the instincts of the public, and the instincts of the population of our large towns are chiefly concerned with eroticism. Even where sexual questions are elevated into the sphere of the highest art, and by the artist himself the common is detested, the audience will, after their kind, merely extract erotic stimulation; and that the opera and the stage are sought by many merely on account of these accessory influences, is too well known to need proof—not to say a word regarding the pantomime and the ballet.
“Perhaps the worst of all is yet to come. In his public dinners, his parties, his clubs, his balls, etc., the man of the upper classes, and also the man of the middle classes, does not find the much-to-be-desired ethical counterpoise to this characteristic sensual life of our young men; but rather finds the prolongation of it in a somewhat more masked and artificial form. From the outset, the relationship between the sexes is of so suggestive, so purposive a character, that this exercises a gentle, stimulating influence upon desire; and a man is thrown into a state of tension for which he often finds only one outlet, sexual gratification—which he must either buy or obtain by cunning—and thus he passes straightway from the influences of the public sensual life, to become the customer of the prostitute, the partner in the “intimacy,” the seducer in the nocturnal life of the great town. He then either runs the danger of infection with venereal diseases, or he occupies himself with their dissemination; for the man suffering from venereal disease is not merely a victim: he is commonly also a focus of infection, one who finds new victims in the shape of girls hitherto uninfected.
“To this evil a remarkable trait in the sensual life of the simpler woman extends ready assistance—I mean that servility, that erotic obsequiousness which finds expression already in the gossip, and in the favourite reading of the lower classes, and which makes them feel to some extent flattered if they are treated as means of enjoyment by a man of good position. It is well known that the prostitute in her talk gladly makes her lover a baron; but, unfortunately, a similar tendency characterizes the feminine half of the lower classes throughout, and to our regret, this is more especially true of the German people. Our commercial-traveller nature, to which, according to Sombart, we owe a portion of our ascendancy in the markets of the world, finds its most regrettable and disastrous seamy side in the readiness with which the masses forget their pride and self-respect, when it is a question of snatching a pleasure. This characteristic has, in recent lustra, unfortunately become not better, but rather worse; the desire to look well at any cost, with which the simple girl so often makes herself laughable, inspires also her longing to ‘walk out’ with a distinguished admirer.”[221]
But not only does the simple girl of the people sacrifice her life and health in this pursuit of pleasure; the young men also are not behindhand in the pursuit, which they regard as “gentlemanlike,” of enjoyment and of women. It is astonishing what an increase in recent times there has been in the number of youthful embezzlers, learners and clerks in merchants’ offices, whose offences have been committed simply in order to provide funds for the gratification of their pothouse pleasures. Among them one meets lads between the ages of fourteen and eighteen years, a symptom of the earlier sexual maturity of the present day. When, as usually happens, they are arrested after a few days, it comes out in evidence that the embezzled money was squandered in the society of prostitutes, but we learn that the tendency to such excess had existed in the embezzler long before he actually committed a crime. If the heads of businesses were to keep themselves better informed regarding the mode of life of their employees, many a disillusion and many a loss would be spared them.
Sexual seduction is at the present time effected less by individuals than by the environment. The sensual life as such, the entire stimulating sensual atmosphere of that life, plays to-day a rôle which at an earlier time, when our social life and pleasures were less fully developed, fell to the “seducer,” the galant homme and Don Juan of earlier days. Our young people are subjected rather to the general influences of the pursuit of amusement, which fascinates all circles, than to the allurements of the habitual seducer. To-day, the victims of public seduction, by means of the sensual life characteristic of our time, are far more numerous than those seduced by isolated individuals, though such there have been, and will be, at all times.
Before I pass to the consideration of the individual influences of the modern sensual life, those by which wild love is especially favoured, and before I describe the general seduction of the present day, I propose to touch upon the interesting question of “professional seduction,” to consider Don-Juanism and the practice of the “ars amandi.”
It is remarkable how strongly the history of the art of seduction reflects the general tendency of the evolution of love from purely physical impulses to spiritual love. This we learn simply from the study of the numerous text-books of the art of love, the so-called “ars amandi.”
Whereas in the earlier text-books of this subject, from Ovid’s “Ars Amandi,”[222] widely celebrated in antiquity, to the “Practica Artis Amandi,”[223] the “Morale Galante, ou l’Art de Bien Aimer,”[224] of the seventeenth century, and Gentil Bernard’s “L’Art d’Aimer,”[225] of the eighteenth century, the principal stress was laid upon all the possible sensual stimuli, and upon the superficial gallantry associated with this; in the modern text-books, in that of Manso[226] (still belonging to the eighteenth century), but especially in the more recent works by Stendhal,[227] Paul Bourget,[228] A. Silvestre,[229] Catulle Mendés,[230] Robert Hessen,[231] and Hjalmar Kjölenson,[232] we find much more stress laid on all the spiritual influences of the art of love. In this way it is possible to follow in these works the whole course of the enrichment of the spiritual and emotional life in love.[233]
The same process of development can be recognized also in the figure of Don Juan. His type has undergone gradual alteration, always becoming more and more intellectual. The purely sensual Don Juan, as Lord Chesterfield, for example, characterizes and embodies him, is to-day quite out of date even among sensual men of the ordinary type; whereas though Kierkegaard’s “Diary of a Seducer” describes an extreme type, that of the purely reflective libertine, yet in this extreme, the author has very rightly recognized the general tendency of evolution.
Recently, Oscar A. H. Schmitz has published an extremely original and thoughtful study of “Don Juan, Casanova, and other Erotic Characters” (Stuttgart, 1906), in which he distinguishes very sharply the seducer type of a Casanova from the seducer-type of a Don Juan. Don Juan is a deceitful, cunning seducer, to whom the sense of possession associated with the attainment of his aim, the danger, the activity of his desires for power and dominance, are the principal matters, but who is in himself unerotic; whereas Casanova is pre-eminently the erotic, also crafty and deceitful, not, however, for the gratification of his need for power, but rather for the agreeable satisfaction of his need for sensual love. Don Juan knows only “women”; for Casanova each one is “the woman.” Don Juan is demoniacal, devilish he goes on to the complete destruction of the women seduced by him, deliberately he ensures their unhappiness; Casanova is human, cares always for the happiness of the women he loves, and devotes to them a tender reflection. Don Juan despises women, he is of the type of the misogynist, of the satanic woman-hater; Casanova is the typical feminist, he possesses a profound understanding of woman’s soul, is not disappointed by love, and needs for his life’s happiness continuous contact with feminine natures. Don Juan seduces by means of his own elemental nature, by the attractive power of brutal wild force; Casanova does so by means of the sensual atmosphere which surrounds him.
With an accurate psychological insight, Schmitz remarks:
“It seems as if the love of one, or, where possible, of several, women inoculates the man, as it were, with a vital fluid, and gives his glance a fire which at times makes him irresistible. Men of pleasure declare that after the most fortunate nights, when, exhausted, they were returning home to sleep, on the way the most eager and meaning glances were cast upon them by the women whom they passed.”
This distinction between the two types of seducer, which Schmitz makes in his original book, containing excellent observations on the psychology of love, is indeed not new. Stendhal, in the chapter “Werther and Don Juan” of his book, “Ueber die Liebe,” pp. 241-251 (German edition, Leipzig, 1903), points out the same types. “The genuine Don Juans,” he says, “ultimately come to regard women as their enemies, and find actual pleasure in their manifold unhappiness”; whereas Werther, the equivalent of Casanova, regards all women as entrancing beings, towards whom we are far too unjust. The love of Don Juan is “a similar feeling to the love of the chase”; Werther’s love is gentle, idealizes the reality, is full of tender and romantic impressions. Don Juan is the conqueror; Werther is the erotic.
I myself also, in my work on “Sexual Life in England,” vol. ii., p. 159 (Berlin, 1903), have, earlier than Schmitz, clearly distinguished from one another these two seducer types, in a passage in which I depict the British Don Juan, in contrast to the French and Italian Don Juan.
The passage runs:
“The principal characteristic of the British Don Juans, who are completely distinct from the libertines of the Latin and of the other Teutonic countries, is the cold, brazen quietude with which they indulge in the sensual pleasures of life; love is much less to them an affair of passion than one of pride and of the gratification of their consciousness of power. The French, the Italian Don Juan is driven by ardent sensuality from conquest to conquest. This is the principal motive of their actions and of their mode of life. The English Don Juan seduces on principle, for the sake of experiment; he pursues love as a sport. Sensuality plays a part only in the second degree, and in the midst of his sensual enjoyment the coldness of his heart is still painfully apparent.
“This is the rake, the type of Lovelace, which Richardson, in his ‘Clarissa Harlowe,’ has described with incomparable mastery.”
Taine, also, in his “History of English Literature,” has described this British Don-Juanism, which hates rather than loves.
Finally, we find these types also in Rosa Mayreder’s book, “Zur Kritik der Weiblicheit” (“Critique of Femininity,” Leipzig, 1905), especially in the chapter, “A Few Words on the Powerful Faust” (pp. 210-243). Her type of the “masterful erotic” closely resembles the Don Juan type of Schmitz, and my own British seducer type.
“Erotic excitement,” says Rosa Mayreder, “gives rise in these men to the lust of dominion; to them the relationship with women signifies a grasping possession, an enjoyment of power, and they are unable to think of women except as subject and dependent. Only in so far as woman adapts herself to them as a means do they know her; as a personality, with individual aims, she does not exist for them.”
This masterful eroticism exists among men of quite low social position, just as much as among men of high position.[234] Their diametrical opposite is the love-perception of delicately sensitive, erotical, highly differentiated men, whose highest type constitutes the “erotic genius.” Rosa Mayreder characterizes this latter type in the following terms:
“The increasing differentiation of erotic perception brings with it a new faculty, which extinguishes the consciousness of superiority and transforms the need for contrast into the need for community, for reciprocity—the capacity for devotion. Thus comes to pass the most remarkable phenomenon in the masculine psyche, the great miracle, which effects a complete transformation of the primitive mode of perception, a transformation of the teleological sexual nature.
“The erotic genius grasps the nature of the opposite sex with intuitive understanding, and is capable of assimilating it completely. The other sex is to him the primevally akin and primevally allied; his love-relationships are accompanied by ideas of enlargement, fulfilment, liberation of his own essential nature, or even by the idea of a mystical union. To him sexuality does not denote an annulment or limitation of personality, but rather an enlargement and enrichment by means of the individuals with which, in this way, his personality is associated.”
As an erotic genius of such a kind, Rosa Mayreder points to Richard Wagner, as he manifests himself in his letters to Mathilde Wesendonk.
The sensibility and refinement of the modern woman, her emergence as a personality, must continually repel the masterful type of erotic—although doubtless that type will never be entirely eliminated. I do not believe in a complete transformation of the teleological sexual nature of man, which has always assigned to him the active aggressive rôle. But it is true that the possibilities of existence for the masterful erotic, the Don Juan type, have become limited. He must, as Schmitz rightly insists, intellectualize himself if he wishes to continue to exist. This psychological satanism of the modern Don Juan is wonderfully described by Kierkegaard, in his “Diary of a Seducer.”[235]
The hero of this book learns best from the girls themselves how they can be betrayed; he develops in them “spiritual eroticism,” in order then suddenly to abandon them, but they themselves must loosen the tie. Woman and love are not to him in themselves the principal need; what is important to him is, as he says at the conclusion, that he has been able to enrich himself with numerous erotic perceptions. The modern Don Juan is, therefore, nothing more than a cold psychological experimenter. It is in this way that, with prophetic insight, Choderlos de Laclos has described him in the Vicomte de Valmont, the hero of his “Liaisons Dangereuses.”
Yet another interesting Don Juan type of our time has to be considered, one which indeed is not a genuine Don Juan, but a pseudo Don Juan, or rather a pseudo Casanova; and this type makes its appearance also in the female sex.
Like Rétif de la Bretonne, it is the man or woman seeking eternally for the ideal, for true love; a type which only, in consequence of the ever-repeated disillusions and errors, assumes a Don Juanesque character. At the present day, we meet this type very often. It is only the expression of the increasing difficulty of the proper love choice, owing to the progressive differentiation of our time; and it is not originated by the desire for sensual lust, but rather by the eternally disillusioned yearning for genuine individual love.
But we must return after this excursion to the consideration of the commonest type of public seduction by means of the sensual life of our time. It is significant that this also possesses its literary guides and course of instruction, in the form of the numerous printed handbooks for the world of pleasure. Among these we may mention, “Guides du Viveur,” “Guides de Plaisir,” “Führer durch das Nächtliche Berlin” (“Guide to Berlin by Night”), “New London Guide to the Night Houses,” “Die Geheimnisse der Berliner Passage” (“Secrets of the ‘Passage’ of Berlin”), “Paris by Night,” “The Swell’s Night Guide through the Metropolis,” “Bruxelles la Nuit, Physiologie des Établissements Nocturnes de Bruxelles” (for Englishmen of pleasure, published under the title of “Brussels by Gas-light”), “Paris and Brussels after Dark,” “The Gentleman’s Night Guide,” “Hamburgs galante Häuser bei Nacht und Nebel” (“Hamburg’s Fast Houses by Night and Cloud”), “Das Galante Berlin,” “Naturgeschichte der galanten Frauen in Berlin” (“Natural History of the Fast Women of Berlin”), “Paris Intime et Mystérieux,” “Guide des Plaisirs Mondains et des Plaisirs Secrets à Paris.” All these have appeared during the last thirty years, some of them in several editions. For Vienna, Buda-Pesth, St. Petersburg, Rome, Milan, Barcelona, Madrid, Marseilles, Rotterdam, and New York, there also exist such guides to all open and secret enjoyments.
In order to give an idea of the contents of such a guide to the sensual life, I need merely enumerate the chapter headings of a book published in 1905, and, as the Paris bookseller from whom I obtained it informed me, immediately confiscated, but none the less still openly sold in the bookshops of the Boulevards and the Rue de Rivoli. It bears the title, “Pour s’Amuser. Guide du Viveur à Paris, par Victor Leca” (Paris, 1905). In his versified dedication, the compiler writes:
“Nous connaissons la Capitale,
Et nous l’aimons avec ferveur;
Ma science expérimentale
A fait ce ‘Guide du Viveur.’”
[“We know the Capital,
And we love it with fervour;
My experimental science
Has made this Guide for the Man about Town.”]
And he states in the preface that all the various pleasures of Paris, for the eye, the ear, and the sense of taste, lead ultimately to—woman, in complete agreement with the definition which I gave above of the sensual life of our time. All these pleasures concur in leading to sexual indulgence—that is the end, the climax of every “amusement,” the true punctum saliens of the life of pleasure of our large towns. Thus Leca, in his comprehensive and elaborate guide for men of pleasure, lays the principal stress on announcements regarding eroticism and on opportunities for erotic adventures in the individual places of pleasure. He enumerates these in series: the theatre, especially the “théâtres très légers,” the “cafés-concerts,” the dancing-saloons, the hippodromes, and circuses, the cabarets of Montmartre, the Quartier Latin, the women’s cafés, the boulevards, the halls of the central market, the brothels (with an exact indication of the streets, and with the numbers of the houses!!), the houses of accommodation (maisons de rendezvous), the likenesses of a few “ladies of pleasure,” the arcades, the parks and public gardens, the popular festivals, the races, drives, public bathing establishments, cemeteries, museums, and exhibitions—all, always, in relation to the feminine element.
These handbooks of the art of enjoyment are existing proofs, from the point of view of the history of civilization, of the fact that the sexual impulse is, in every possible way, influenced, increased, elaborated, and complicated, by the civilization of the present day. Especially the life of great towns, where the essence of modern civilization is found in its most concentrated form, is a sexual stimulant in the highest degree, with its haste and hunting, its “nocturnal life,”[236] with its multiplicity of enjoyments for all the senses, with its gastronomic and alcoholic excesses—in short, with its new device that after work comes pleasure, and not repose.
In my “Sexual Life in England” (vol. ii., p. 261 et seq.) I have described the momentous influence of the mode of life upon sexuality, and have proved how both in the old England and in the new the excessive consumption of meat and of alcoholic beverages has unnaturally stimulated the sexual impulse, and has conducted it into devious paths.
But of Germany also we may say that, apart from the times of “meat famine,” we eat too much meat and drink too much alcohol, the former especially among the higher classes, the latter among all classes of society.
The sexually stimulating influence of luxurious feeding, which, for example, Gabriele d’Annunzio describes in the early part of his romance “Lust,” and which Tolstoi, in the “Kreutzer Sonata,” describes as the principal cause of incitation to lasciviousness, is indeed a well-known fact of experience; and the later in the day these heavy meals are consumed, the more dangerous are they in respect of their influence on the sexual impulse. I am fully convinced that the good old German custom of taking the principal meal of the day at noon is greatly preferable to the so-called “English dinner,” when the principal meal is deferred to four or six o’clock. Luxurious suppers, or even midnight dinners, such as at the present day are quite customary, must be definitely regarded as aphrodisiac.
A far more momentous rôle is played by alcohol in the modern sensual life. A writer who is not himself a strict teetotaller may yet feel it his duty to lay all possible stress on this fact. Indeed, from the standpoint of medical experience and observation, I am prepared to term alcohol the evil genius of the modern sexual life, because in a malicious and underhand manner it delivers its victim to sexual misleading and corruption, to venereal infection, and to all the consequences of casual sexual intercourse.[237]
This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the drink question, or for stating the reasons for my own opinion, that complete abstinence is a Utopian idea, and that the moderate and careful use of alcohol, in quantities suited to the particular individuality, and at suitable times, does no harm worth mentioning. Though this be so, I cannot fail to recognize the deeply tragic rôle which the customary abuse of alcohol plays in the sexual corruption of our time. As to the connexion between alcohol and the sexual life, I must therefore speak at greater length.[238]
The influence of alcohol upon the sexual life and upon the psyche is a very peculiar one. Beer or wine, taken in very moderate quantities, unquestionably give rise, in addition to their general psychical stimulating influence, to sexual excitement of greater or less degree. This sexual excitement, if more alcohol is now taken, endures longer than the psychical excitement, which soon gives place to psychical paralysis, to a discontinuance of the inhibitory influences proceeding from the brain. It is in this unequal influence exercised upon the purely sensual-sexual and upon the psychical processes, that the peculiar danger of alcoholic excesses appears to me to depend. The sexual stimulation produced by the first draught of alcohol continues at a time when the man has already lost all control over reason and will, and thus he becomes an easy prey to sexual seduction.
It is only in this way that we can explain the momentous influence of alcohol, for we know, generally speaking, it is not a means for the increase of sexual power. On the contrary, it increases voluptuousness and sexual desire, but almost always hinders erection and delays the sexual orgasm.
Thus, a man under the influence of alcohol requires a longer time for the completion of the act of sexual intercourse than a sober man, and in this way the danger of venereal infection is notably increased, for the contact with the infecting person is considerably longer. I have inquired of many patients who were infected during intercourse with prostitutes after alcoholic excess, and was almost always informed that the act of intercourse, owing to the well-known relative impotence produced by alcohol, was exceptionally long in duration, and this naturally gave more opportunity for excessive contact, for mechanical injuries dependent upon increased friction, etc., and thus brought about infection.
In medical literature, numerous cases are reported in which two men have completed intercourse with an infected prostitute, shortly after one another, and, remarkable to relate, one only became infected, whilst the other remained healthy. More exact inquiry would show without doubt in many such cases that the uninfected man was sober, in comparison with the infected man, who must have been under the influence of alcohol.
In the case of women, with regard to whom there can be no question of any specific effect upon sexual “potency,” the influence of alcohol in exciting libido, in association with its withdrawal of all psychical inhibitions, makes itself all the more manifest. Thus, to woman, who, speaking generally, is far more intolerant of the drug than man, very moderate enjoyment of alcohol entails dangers.[239]
The seducer, the procuress, and the prostitute are all familiar with the above-described peculiar influence of alcohol upon the libido sexualis and upon the psyche, and it is precisely this discriminative duplex influence which is utilized by them. Not only in the so-called “Animierkneipen”—that is, the drinking-saloons with women attendants—and in the brothels does alcohol subserve this purpose, but the street-walkers also await their victims by preference outside the doors of the great restaurants, or after festival dinners, and keep an eye especially on drunken men, because in the case of these, in whom all self-command has been lost, they have, in every respect, an easy prey.[240]
A man under the influence of alcohol is as easily led and as devoid of will-power as a child. He is not particular in his choice: he generally fails to notice whether the prostitute who accosts him is young or old, pretty or ugly, clean or dirty; he follows her blindly, and in most cases with results disastrous to his pocket and to his health. The following case illustrates very clearly this loss of will produced in a man by indulgence in alcohol:
An officer of high rank, a married man, in general a man of solid repute, left the officers’ casino after a banquet late at night, very tipsy, to seek his house. Suddenly he felt an arm thrust into his; it was a prostitute who had noticed his condition, and she had turned it to her own advantage. Without reflection and without exercise of will, he allowed her to lead him to her dwelling, and there, still in a quite apathetic condition, had intercourse with her, without taking any precautions whatever. It was not until afterwards that he saw, being then somewhat sobered, that he was in the company of an elderly prostitute of the lowest class. His dread of venereal infection was justified a few days later by the appearance of a urethral discharge. In great alarm he consulted me. Microscopic examination of the urethral secretion, and the cure which ensued in a few days, showed me that he was suffering from a simple urethral catarrh, and not from gonorrhœa.
Such cases as this, however, do not always end so fortunately. It is notorious, and has been proved by the researches of leading physicians and medical statisticians, that the majority of venereal infections take place under the influence of alcohol.
For this reason, the continued increase in the consumption of alcohol leads to a further diffusion of venereal diseases. While our ancestors consumed alcoholic beverages to excess only on Sundays and festival days, at the present time spirits are freely consumed on weekdays—above all, during the evenings. Brandy and beer have become everyday beverages, especially beer, whose consumption increases year by year, so that in the year 1898 the beer drunk in Germany was valued at £100,000,000! Strümpell showed that labourers earning three marks a day are accustomed to spend eighty pfennige—that is, more than one-third of their income—on beer; these are by no means notorious drinkers, but steady fellows who only follow the general “custom.” The part played by beer in Germany is played by absinthe in France; the well-known “apéritif” to which prostitutes of Paris so often invite their male clients is in most cases absinthe. Wine, as the experienced Fiaux says, is merely an “ideal drink” in the dreams of the ordinary Parisian prostitute.
We shall return in subsequent chapters of this work to the consideration of alcohol in its relations to the sexual life in general, and to abnormal sexual manifestations in particular. We shall also have occasion to speak of the momentous rôle played by alcohol in the causation of offences against morality. Baer goes so far as to assert that alcohol is the cause in 77 per cent. of such offences.
Here we shall only once more insist upon the high degree to which the excessive enjoyment of alcohol assists in seduction and favours wild love—that is, sexual intercourse free from all choice and all regulation. This is to be seen with especial clearness at popular festivals and other occasions giving rise to alcoholic excesses; and the effects are later shown by the resulting increase in the number of illegitimate births.
Magnus Hirschfeld relates that when he was a student he spent one Christmas Eve in the company of a professor of medicine in Breslau. Among the guests were two of the maternity assistants, and first one, then the other, was called away to attend confinements. An old physician who was present thereupon remarked: “Yes, yes; these are the children of the Emperor’s birthday.” Hirschfeld, who asked for an explanation of this incomprehensible phrase, was told that on Christmas Night the lying in hospitals were overcrowded, because then the illegitimate children were born which had been procreated nine months earlier, on March 22, the birthday of the old Emperor, celebrated as a popular holiday.
The increase in wild love, in sexual intercourse dependent upon the inclination of the moment and upon chance, with a rapid succession of different individuals—this increase, which is associated in the way above described with the sensual life, is a characteristic of our own time.
In addition to prostitution, which we shall treat in a separate chapter, the so-called “intimacy” constitutes the true nucleus of wild love. When those who support coercive marriage speak of free love, they do not mean the free love, the higher individual love, which we have described in the previous chapter, but they always refer to the latter-day “intimacy,” which, in fact, does involve the most serious dangers, alike from the physical and from the moral point of view; for, on the one hand, the “intimacy” forms the principal intermediate agent in the wider diffusion of venereal diseases, and, on the other hand, this new form of sexual relationship has above all introduced the element of hypocrisy, lying, and mistrust, which poisons love to-day, separates the sexes continually more each from the other, and gives rise to that tragic sexual hate, enmity of men on the part of women, and misogyny on the part of men, which is also peculiarly characteristic of our own time.
The gradual differentiation of the originally ideal intimacy, to the wild love of the present day, has been admirably described and psychologically elucidated by Hellpach in his short work on “Love and Amatory Life in the Nineteenth Century.”
In this admirable characterization of the “intimacy,” the fact is first established, that it is above all and through and through a product of great towns, and consequently that it is closely connected with the capitalistic evolution which compels thousands of young girls to earn their own living, so that from them are especially recruited the great human class of shop-girls, and all the allied varieties, so typical of large towns. This is the soil in which the “intimacy” naturally develops. [Hellpach writes first of conditions of a generation ago, and then passes on thirty years to our own day.]
“By day these girls were occupied. When the evening came, bringing with it the greatly desired closing of the shop, the prospect opened to them of going home to poor surroundings, often enough of taking part in painful family scenes, then going to bed, and the next morning early returning to business. This was their life, day in, day out. Here was no very pleasant calendar, especially when the way from the places of business to their home led through streets crowded with brilliantly lighted beer saloons, cafes, theatres, and concert-halls. And all this during the years of sexual blossoming, when the ardent sensual desire for the first time ran through all the nerves! Who can wonder that the longing became absolutely fiery, after all the work of the day, to enjoy a little share of all the glories of the great town which lay extended before their gaze? After the confinement of the shop, not to return straightway to the confinement of the family, but to learn to know a little about the freedom of pleasure—and this under the most entrancing form of a little love affair?
“And the social conditions were such as to make it possible for this yearning to be fulfilled. Were there not thousands of young shopmen, hundreds of students, clerks, non-commissioned officers, who would rather walk about in the evening with a girl on their arm than alone? Prostitutes would be little suited for such companionship. Besides, it would not be always the young man’s intention to proceed to an extremity, to have a night of love following the evening of amusement; the young man simply was in the mood to walk about with the girl, to gossip, perhaps to embrace and kiss her a little.
“Here was the beginning. The young man accosted a shop-girl, accompanied her a little way, made an appointment for the following evening; then he went a little further; he saw how pleased the little one was; the tutoyer and the kiss followed. So it went on for a few evenings, and the young man felt that the happy girl was quite as eager as he himself was to take the last step; and when this was done, there was the “intimacy” complete. And in all respects it appeared preferable to prostitution; it was inexpensive, unassuming, very pleasant, and—involved no risk to health. Moreover, to both this amatory life did not seem a ‘necessary evil’ on the contrary, it was a glorious pleasure, and there were only two little shadows in the bright picture: the fear of having a child, and the thought of separation. Moreover, this cloud troubled the man only; girls then, as to-day, thought very little about matters so remote.
“In the development of the ‘intimacy’ during the last thirty years, many details have undergone change, but the picture as a whole has been but little affected. The young shop-girl of to-day does not need a long courting; she enters her business already fully aware that she will soon be ‘intimate’ with some one. At first she will always prefer to choose a man of whom it is possible to assume that he may marry her. A young shopman, a non-commissioned officer, will, therefore, be most in demand. It is not till later, when resignation comes, and the only remaining wish is for amusement, that University students have the preference; they are jollier, more entertaining, and the girl is vain about their position. That has all remained just as it used to be; only thirty years ago there were many shop-girls who, notwithstanding all their desire, remained untouched. For the girl brought up in the atmosphere of the lower middle classes there was a certain ill-odour about free sexual intercourse. This has completely passed away. The girls of this stratum, who, with open eyes, withstand all allurements, might be counted on the fingers. At the present day, these ‘intimacies’ extend deeply into the middle classes of society.
“As regards the men, there has certainly been one marked change. The illusion that sexual intercourse with an ‘intimate’ offered any guarantee against the danger of venereal disease has now long been dispelled. We are to-day confronted with the fact that the intimacy is the focus of venereal infection to a far greater extent[241] than is actual prostitution. In order to understand this, we must glance at the dissolution of the intimacy.
“We have already pointed out that in the German ‘intimacy’ there has never occurred a thorough development of a life like that of the Parisian ‘grisette’; and there will be no change in this respect within a time which we can at present foresee. Even in Berlin there are not many dwellings in which the landlord would tolerate the visits of ladies of doubtful reputation on any account whatever. But even those who let quarters on easy terms, or, as the student calls them, ‘storm-free’ rooms, would never allow their lodger to entertain a woman day after day, and could not do so without running the risk of being suspected by the police of procurement. Thus, the only thing that unites the two parties in the intimacy is in almost all cases sexual intercourse. The characteristic of grisette-love, the prose of the life in common, day after day, is hardly ever experienced in the ‘intimacy.’ In consequence of this, on the man’s side satiety very readily ensues. New impressions enchain and stimulate him. He breaks off the intimacy, and this is not usually done with tenderness. The possibilities are numerous, but the only decent way, the open verbal communication of the fact, is probably the rarest. He breaks off the intimacy without a word, and as far as he is concerned the matter is at an end; he is richer by an agreeable experience, and after a while begins to look round once more.
“The girl also. But for her, this dissolution of the intimacy is very often the first step upon a very steep downward path. At first there perhaps ensues a short period of bitterness, but the sexual impulse makes light of all other activities; a new intimacy begins. And now, gradually, the idea gains ground in her mind that a change in love is, after all, not such a bad thing. The second breach is borne with equanimity; and very soon it is by no means rare for the girl to limit her love associations to a few days, and ultimately, as a matter of daily custom, to seek fresh gratification with a new associate. It is not yet professional prostitution; psychologically also there is still a difference. There is still sensual perception at the root of her actions, and of such a strength, increasing owing to excess in sexual intercourse, that the personality of the partner in the sexual act becomes almost a matter of indifference. But now an economic difficulty commonly intervenes: discharge from her position, expulsion from her parents’ house, either or both being due to her dissipated life, with its heedlessness and the resulting dislike to hard work—and then the avalanche falls. Hunger drives her to do that for payment which hitherto she has done only for the gratification of her own desires. Prostitution has one victim the more.
“But the whole period between the beginning of the second intimacy and her enrolment in the list of prostitutes by the police offers to all her lovers the greatest possible danger of venereal infection. For the majority of girls actually become infected in their very first intimacy. The explanation of this goes back to the time in which the intimacy first began to become fashionable, and in which the control of prostitutes with regard to their condition of health was even more defective, and the safeguarding against the danger of venereal infection was even less understood than at the present day. In the majority of cases the young men of the large towns were infected in their very first experience of love; for it was with prostitutes that they always sought their first sexual gratification, as is still customary at the present day. For the inexperienced youth this course is easier, making, as it does, fewer demands on his adroitness, and none at all on his seductive skill; whereas in the formation of an ‘intimacy’ these qualities are somewhat in demand. Later, when he had had enough of prostitution, he sought an ‘intimate,’ and since at that time the treatment of gonorrhœa was still extremely defective, he promptly infected his partner in the intimacy. In this manner the girls engaged in intimacies, since they first became fashionable, have been systematically infected.”
Next to prostitution, the intimacy is the great focus of sexual infection; and wild love, from the psychological and ethical points of view, involves the same danger as prostitution. The frequent changes, the multiplicity of sexual intercourse in intimacies, allows no deeper spiritual relationships to be formed; thus, the girls are debased to become the simple objects of physical sensuality, and they are forced more and more to depend on the financially stronger men; thus, they rapidly become partial or complete prostitutes. To them now the sensual life, the pursuit of pleasure, is the principal thing, not love. Venereal infection is soon superadded, to deprave them more thoroughly. Still worse is the corruption of the world of men, who transfer to the intimacy the practices they have learned in their association with prostitutes; but, above all, they come finally to seek and to desire the rude sexual act solely for its own sake, without feeling the need for any deeper spiritual association. Hence results the fugitive character of these sexual relationships, the frequent changes on both sides, and the end—lies, mistrust, hatred.
Belief in and hope for true love disappear for ever; there remains only the cold, desolate, unspeakably embittered disillusionment, the distrust of the other sex which is so characteristic of our time. Never before were there so many woman-haters and man-haters on principle. In the intercourse between the sexes, neither believes the other any longer; and on both sides the “intimacy” is entered on without any illusions, the sole aim of both parties being to satisfy in the intensest possible way their desire for enjoyment and their sensual lusts.
Prostitution can destroy no illusions, for its true character is manifest at the first glance; but the modern intimacy has become the grave of love, and has given rise to a new corruption of the sexual life, which appears almost more dangerous than the old corruption dependent on prostitution. It has, moreover, become a second, and not less dangerous, focus of venereal infection, to the diffusion of which it is extraordinarily favourable.
He, therefore, who wishes to take part in the fight against the moral degeneration of our amatory life, and to assist in the campaign against venereal diseases, must attack and endeavour to suppress the modern development of the life of “intimacy” just as energetically as he attacks prostitution.
The wild love of the present day, “extra-conjugal” sexual intercourse (which, as I cannot too often repeat, has nothing whatever to do with “free love”), and coercive marriage, are the true causes of sexual corruption. They are intimately associated one with the other. The social, economic, and spiritual civilization of the present day demands free love, with which neither coercive marriage nor wild love is compatible.
Neither for prostitution, nor for the wild extra-conjugal sexual intercourse of our time, can any justification be found from the point of view of medicine, racial hygiene, or sociology. In their nature both lead to the same end: the death and destruction of all individual love, of all the finer activities of love, by which the spiritual nature of man is so greatly enriched; and they both give rise to a continuous increase and rapid diffusion of venereal diseases.
The salvation of our people is not to be found in the “recommendation” of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse for all those who are not in a position to marry—and the number of these grows from day to day—but it is to be found in the reform of marriage, in a freer configuration of the amatory life, in connexion with which we can confidently trust Ibsen’s saying in the “Lady from the Sea”:
“We can’t get away from this—that a voluntary promise is to the full as binding as a marriage.”
There shall not and must not be “sexual freedom,”[242] but there must be “freedom of love.”
When anyone asks me whether I should advise him to indulge in “extra-conjugal sexual intercourse,” as a physician and a man of science I am compelled to answer with a bald “No,” because I cannot undertake the responsibility of the consequences of such advice.
Fortunately, alike in the world of women and in the world of men, there manifests itself an increasing disapproval of wild love as it exhibits itself in the modern “intimacies.” There are already numerous intimacies which closely resemble free love, and in which all the conditions of free love are fulfilled, in respect of duration, of a profound spiritual relationship, a sense of sexual responsibility alike physical and moral, and in the joyful acceptance of the consequences in respect of offspring.
We must, however, continually keep up the fight against wild love as the enduring associate of prostitution, to which it constitutes the bridge or stage of transition. Therein lies its greatest danger. This we shall recognize more clearly in the ensuing chapter, in which we turn to consider the subject of prostitution.
[219] In the titular heading to this chapter, throughout the chapter, and in most cases throughout the book, the German word Verführung has been translated as seduction. Verführung means “leading astray,” and one of the commonest uses of the term is to denote sexual leading astray—the seduction of a woman by a man. But in some cases Verführung, like the English seduction, is used in its more primitive and wider signification. The context will suffice to show the sense in which the word is employed.—Translator.
[220] Thus, at the present day, in quite small country towns, we find variety theatres and low music-halls; and with these, prostitutes are commonly introduced into the town, so that the wild love, which was previously free from danger, now becomes a focus of venereal infection.
[221] Willy Hellpach, “Our Sensual Life and Venereal Diseases,” published in the “Reports of the German Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases,” 1905, vol. iii., Nos. 5 and 6, pp. 103-105.
[222] Of this work there recently appeared an excellent German translation, admirably modernized in blank verse by Karl Ettlinger, “Ovid’s Art of Love: a Modern Translation.” (An English translation of Ovid’s “Art of Love,” revised by Charles W. Ryle, was published in 1907 by Sisley.—Translator.)
[223] Hilarii Drudonis, “Practica Artis Amandi” (Amsterdam, 1652).
[224] Paris, 1659.
[225] Paris, 1775.
[226] J. F. C. Manso, “Die Kunst zu Lieben” (Berlin, 1794).
[227] Henry Beyle (Stendhal), “On Love.”
[228] Paul Bourget, “Physiologie de l’Amour Moderne.”
[229] Armand Silvestre, “Le Petit Art d’Aimer” (Paris, 1897).
[230] Catulle Mendés, “L’Art d’Aimer” (Paris).
[231] Robert Hessen, “Das Glück in der Liebe: Eine technische Studie” (Stuttgart, 1899).
[232] Hjalmar Kjölenson, “Die Erschliessung des Liebesglückes” (Leipzig, 1905).
[233] An exhaustive study of the history and literature of the ars amandi, by the author of the present work, is in course of preparation, and will appear shortly.
[234] Cf. regarding masterful erotics, also the exposition of Georg Hirth in “The Ways to Love,” p. 563.
[235] S. Kierkegaard, “Entweder—Oder. Ein Lebensfragment,” pp. 221-311. German translation by O. Gleib (Dresden and Leipzig, 1904).
[236] “The sun,” says Grillparzer in his “Diary,” “is hostile to voluptuousness. But the artificial sun of our nocturnal illumination in our large town, has the opposite effect.”
[237] The old proverb says: “From the two V’s, Vinum (wine) and Venus (woman), there arises a big W, Weh (woe or pain).”
[238] Cf., in addition to the great works on the subject of alcohol, the special monograph by B. Laquer, “A Lecture on Alcohol and Sexual Hygiene,” published in the “Reports of the German Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases,” 1904, vol. ii., Nos. 3 and 4, pp. 56-63; W. Hellpach, op. cit., pp. 100-102; Magnus Hirschfeld, “The Influence of Alcohol on the Sexual Life,” Berlin, 1905; Magnus Hirschfeld, “Alcohol and Family Life,” Berlin-Charlottenburg, 1906; Otto Lang, “Alcohol and Crime,” Basel; Oscar Rosenthal, “Alcohol and Prostitution,” Berlin, 1906; G. Rosenfeld, “Alcohol and the Sexual Life,” published in the Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1905, pp. 321-335.
[239] It has been established by Bonhoeffer, Hoppe, A. H. Hübner, and others, that chronic alcoholism constitutes an important cause of prostitution in the case of the so-called “late prostitutes”—that is to say, in those women who do not commence a life of professional prostitution at puberty, but usually after the age of twenty-five years. Cf. Artur Hermann Hübner, “Prostitutes in Relation to Criminal Jurisdiction,” published in Monatsschr. für Kriminalpsychologie, edited by G. Aschaffenburg, 1907, p. 5.
[240] At the great public dinner which, in 1890, the town of Berlin gave in the Rathaus to the members of the International Medical Congress, and at which 4,000 persons consumed 15,382 bottles of wine, 22 hectolitres (484 gallons) of beer, and 300 bottles of brandy, there were witnessed in and outside the Rathaus the most disgusting scenes of drunkenness. “As the blowflies gather round a piece of carrion, so in the street in front of the Rathaus there had gathered a swarm of prostitutes, who found a rich booty among the drunken, staggering guests” (cf. Rosenfeld, op. cit., p. 325).—A striking example of the manner in which alcohol sometimes completely annihilates every æsthetic perception is reported by E. Kraepelin (“The Psychiatric Duties of the State,” p. 6; Jena, 1900): “A number of students were infected by a prostitute, who from early youth had been weak-minded, and who was suffering from both lupus of the nose and recent syphilis.”
[241] It is not yet quite so bad as this. But the number of venereal infections that occur in consequence of wild love, and of free sexual intercourse in these relations of “intimacy,” is continually on the increase.
[242] Sexual freedom—that is to say, the formal organization of sexual promiscuity—was demanded by a certain Dr. Roderich Hellmann in a book which has now become very rare, because it was confiscated immediately after publication. Its title was “Sexual Freedom: a Philosophic Attempt to Increase Human Happiness” (Berlin, 1878). The author demands that immediately after puberty “the sexual organs shall have the opportunity of a regulated activity,” and that it shall now be allowed to persons of both sexes “to indulge in sexual intercourse as much as they please,” of course, with the avoidance of injury to health and of pregnancy. This remarkable freak proceeds to demand that public lavatories shall be done away with, so that persons of both sexes shall relieve themselves freely in one another’s presence in the open street, and, with equal freedom, shall display their sexual organs to one another for the purpose of sexual allurement!!
CHAPTER XIII
PROSTITUTION
“On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds and civilizations arise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people.”—Lecky.