Borneo, the geographical center of the Indonesian world, appears also to be the district in which these instruments are most popular. The ampallang, palang, kambion, or sprit-sail yard, as it is variously termed, is a little rod of bone or metal nearly two inches in length, rounded at the ends, and used by the Kyans and Dyaks of Borneo. Before coitus it is inserted into a transverse orifice in the penis, made by a painful and somewhat dangerous operation and kept open by a quill. Two or more of these instruments are occasionally worn. Sometimes little brushes are attached to each end of the instrument. Another instrument, used by the Dyaks, but said to have been borrowed from the Malays, is the palang anus, which is a ring or collar of plaited palm-fiber, furnished with a pair of stiffish horns of the same wiry material; it is worn on the neck of the glans and fits tight to the skin so as not to slip off. (Brooke Low, "The Natives of Borneo," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, August and November, 1892, p. 45; the ampallang and similar instruments are described by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, Bd. i, chapter xvii; also in Untrodden Fields of Anthropology, by a French army surgeon, 1898, vol. ii, pp. 135-141; also Mantegazza, Gli Amori degli Uomini, French translation, p. 83 et seq.) Riedel informed Miklucho-Macleay that in the Celebes the Alfurus fasten the eyelids of goats with the eyelashes round the corona of the glans penis, and in Java a piece of goatskin is used in a similar way, so as to form a hairy sheath (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1876, pp. 22-25), while among the Batta, of Sumatra, Hagen found that small stones are inserted by an incision under the skin of the penis (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1891, ht. 3, p. 351).
In the Malay peninsula Stevens found instruments somewhat similar to the ampallang still in use among some tribes, and among others formerly in use. He thinks they were brought from Borneo. (H. V. Stevens, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1896, ht. 4, p. 181.) Bloch, who brings forward other examples of similar devices (Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, pp. 56-58), considers that the Australian mica operation may thus in part be explained.
Such instruments are not, however, entirely unknown in Europe. In France, in the eighteenth century, it appears that rings, sometimes set with hard knobs, and called "aides," were occasionally used by men to heighten the pleasure of women in intercourse. (Dühren, Marquis de Sade, 1901, p. 130.) In Russia, according to Weissenberg, of Elizabethsgrad, it is not uncommon to use elastic rings set with little teeth; these rings are fastened around the base of the glans. (Weissenberg, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1893, ht. 2, p. 135.) This instrument must have been brought to Russia from the East, for Burton (in the notes to his Arabian Nights) mentions a precisely similar instrument as in use in China. Somewhat similar is the "Chinese hedgehog," a wreath of fine, soft feathers with the quills solidly fastened by silver wire to a ring of the same metal, which is slipped over the glans. In South America the Araucanians of Argentina use a little horsehair brush fastened around the penis; one of these is in the museum at La Plata; it is said the custom may have been borrowed from the Patagonians; these instruments, called geskels, are made by the women and the workmanship is very delicate. (Lehmann-Nitsche, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1900, ht. 6, p. 491.) It is noteworthy that a somewhat similar tuft of horsehair is also worn in Borneo. (Breitenstein, 21 Jahre in India, 1899, pt. i, p. 227.) Most of the accounts state that the women attach great importance to the gratification afforded by such instruments. In Borneo a modest woman symbolically indicates to her lover the exact length of the ampallang she would prefer by leaving at a particular spot a cigarette of that length. Miklucho-Macleay considers that these instruments were invented by women. Brooke Low remarks that "no woman once habituated to its use will ever dream of permitting her bedfellow to discontinue the practice of wearing it," and Stevens states that at one time no woman would marry a man who was not furnished with such an apparatus. It may be added that a very similar appliance may be found in European countries (especially Germany) in the use of a condom furnished with irregularities, or a frill, in order to increase the woman's excitement. It is not impossible to find evidence that, in European countries, even in the absence of such instruments, the craving which they gratify still exists in women. Thus, Mauriac tells of a patient with vegetations on the glans who delayed treatment because his mistress liked him so best (art. "Végétations," Dictionnaire de Médecine et Chirurgie pratique).
It may seem that such impulses and such devices to gratify them are altogether unnatural. This is not so. They have a zoölogical basis and in many animals are embodied in the anatomical structure. Many rodents, ruminants, and some of the carnivora show natural developments of the penis closely resembling some of those artificially adopted by man. Thus the guinea-pigs possess two horny styles attached to the penis, while the glans of the penis is covered with sharp spines. Some of the Caviidæ also have two sharp, horny saws at the side of the penis. The cat, the rhinoceros, the tapir, and other animals possess projecting structures on the penis, and some species of ruminants, such as the sheep, the giraffe, and many antelopes, have, attached to the penis, long filiform processes through which the urethra passes. (F. H. A. Marshall, The Physiology of Reproduction, pp. 246-248.)
We find, even in creatures so delicate and ethereal as the butterflies, a whole armory of keen weapons for use in coitus. These were described in detail in an elaborate and fully illustrated memoir by P. H. Gosse ("On the Clasping Organs Ancillary to Generation in Certain Groups of the Lepidoptera," Transactions of the Linnæan Society, second series, vol. ii, Zoölogy, 1882). These organs, which Gosse terms harpes (or grappling irons), are found in the Papilionidæ and are very beautiful and varied, taking the forms of projecting claws, hooks, pikes, swords, knobs, and strange combinations of these, commonly brought to a keen edge and then cut into sharp teeth.
It is probable that all these structures serve to excite the sexual apparatus of the female and to promote tumescence.
To the careless observer there may seem to be something vicious or perverted in such manifestations in man. That opinion becomes very doubtful when we consider how these tendencies occur in people living under natural conditions in widely separated parts of the world. It becomes still further untenable if we are justified in believing that the ancestors of men possessed projecting epithelial appendages attached to the penis, and if we accept the discovery by Friedenthal of the rudiment of these appendages on the penis of the human fetus at an early stage (Friedenthal, "Sonderformen der menschlichen Leibesbildung," Sexual-Probleme, Feb., 1912, p. 129). In this case human ingenuity would merely be seeking to supply an organ which nature has ceased to furnish, although it is still in some cases needed, especially among peoples whose aptitude for erethism has remained at, or fallen to, a subhuman level.
At first sight the connection between love and pain—the tendency of men to delight in inflicting it and women in suffering it—seems strange and inexplicable. It seems amazing that a tender and even independent woman should maintain a passionate attachment to a man who subjects her to physical and moral insults, and that a strong man, often intelligent, reasonable, and even kind-hearted, should desire to subject to such insults a woman whom he loves passionately and who has given him every final proof of her own passion. In understanding such cases we have to remember that it is only within limits that a woman really enjoys the pain, discomfort, or subjection to which she submits. A little pain which the man knows he can himself soothe, a little pain which the woman gladly accepts as the sign and forerunner of pleasure—this degree of pain comes within the normal limits of love and is rooted, as we have seen, in the experience of the race. But when it is carried beyond these limits, though it may still be tolerated because of the support it receives from its biological basis, it is no longer enjoyed. The natural note has been too violently struck, and the rhythm of love has ceased to be perfect. A woman may desire to be forced, to be roughly forced, to be ravished away beyond her own will. But all the time she only desires to be forced toward those things which are essentially and profoundly agreeable to her. A man who fails to realize this has made little progress in the art of love. "I like being knocked about and made to do things I don't want to do," a woman said, but she admitted, on being questioned, that she would not like to have much pain inflicted, and that she might not care to be made to do important things she did not want to do. The story of Griselda's unbounded submissiveness can scarcely be said to be psychologically right, though it has its artistic rightness as an elaborate fantasia on this theme justified by its conclusion.
This point is further illustrated by the following passage from a letter written by a lady: "Submission to the man's will is still, and always must be, the prelude to pleasure, and the association of ideas will probably always produce this much misunderstood instinct. Now, I find, indirectly from other women and directly from my own experience, that, when the point in dispute is very important and the man exerts his authority, the desire to get one's own way completely obliterates the sexual feeling, while, conversely, in small things the sexual feeling obliterates the desire to have one's own way. Where the two are nearly equal a conflict between them ensues, and I can stand aside and wonder which will get the best of it, though I encourage the sexual feeling when possible, as, if the other conquers, it leaves a sense of great mental irritation and physical discomfort. A man should command in small things, as in nine cases out of ten this will produce excitement. He should advise in large matters, or he may find either that he is unable to enforce his orders or that he produces a feeling of dislike and annoyance he was far from intending. Women imagine men must be stronger than themselves to excite their passion. I disagree. A passionate man has the best chance, for in him the primitive instincts are strong. The wish to subdue the female is one of them, and in small things he will exert his authority to make her feel his power, while she knows that on a question of real importance she has a good chance of getting her own way by working on his greater susceptibility. Perhaps an illustration will show what I mean. I was listening to the band and a girl and her fiancé came up to occupy two seats near me. The girl sank into one seat, but for some reason the man wished her to take the other. She refused. He repeated his order twice, the second time so peremptorily that she changed places, and I heard him say: 'I don't think you heard what I said. I don't expect to give an order three times.'
"This little scene interested me, and I afterward asked the girl the following questions:—