From all these facts may be deduced the untenability of a purely clinical and pathological conception of sexual aberrations and perversions. We must now accept the point of view that, although numerous morbid degenerate and psychopathic individuals exhibit sexual anomalies, yet these identical anomalies and aberrations are extraordinarily common in healthy persons.
Ethnological research, for more exact details of which I may refer to my own work already mentioned, and to the pioneer works of Ploss-Bartels,[473] Mantegazza,[474] Friedrich S. Krauss,[475] and Havelock Ellis,[476] has adduced stringent proof that sexual aberrations and perversions are ubiquitous, diffused throughout the entire world, just as much among primitive races as among civilized nations, that on the psycho-physical side they are “elementary ideas” in Bastian’s sense, that they recur everywhere in a qualitatively identical manner as a result of similar conditions. As it is with prostitution, so it is also with sexual perversions—a tendency to sexual aberration is deeply rooted in human nature. It is a primitive, purely anthropological phenomenon, which is not strengthened by civilization, but, on the contrary, is mitigated thereby. Charles Darwin rightly points out that the hatred of sexual immorality and of sexual aberrations is a “modern virtue,” appertaining exclusively to “civilized life,” and entirely foreign to the nature of primitive man. Primitive man revelled in wild indecency (as Wilhelm Roscher also proves), in sexual perversions, and libertinism.[477] The sexual aberrations of civilized mankind are for the most part imitations of the examples given by primitive peoples.
Thus, the well-known “stimulating rings” of European rubber manufacturers (cf. Weissenberg, in the “Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Berlin,” 1893, p. 135) correspond to the “stimulating stones” of the Battaks (Staudinger, op. cit., 1891, p. 351), to the “penis stones” of the savage Orang Sinnoi in Malacca (Vaughan Stevens in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1896, pp. 181, 182), the “ampallang” of the Sunda Islands (see Miklucho-Maclay in the “Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Berlin,” 1876, pp. 22-28). The “renifleurs” and “gamahucheurs” of the Parisian brothels and houses of accommodation find their typical analogues in the urine fetichists and cunnilingi of the Island of Ponape, in the Carolines (cf. Ploss-Bartels), who are, in truth, far removed from the fin-de-siècle life. And what a perverse imagination have the women of this same island! According to Otto Finsch (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1880, p. 316), the men of this island have all only one testicle, because in boys at the age of seven or eight years the left testicle is removed by a piece of sharpened bamboo. This is said to make the men more desirable to the women! Among the Masai, for similar reasons, circumcision is effected in such a manner that a portion of the prepuce is left behind to form a kind of firm button of skin. “This mode of circumcision is greatly prized by the women. Among the black races, indeed, everything turns round the question of sensual enjoyment” (“Medical Notes from Central Africa,” by M. C., published in the Deutsche Medizinische Presse, 1902, No. 14, p. 116). And how can our roués compete with the Tauni islanders of the South Seas? These select certain women, who are not allowed to marry, but are reserved as simple “objects of sensual pleasure,” and with these every kind of sexual artifice is practised (Dempwolf, “Medical Notes on the Tauni Islanders,” published in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1902, p. 335).
Thus between primitive and civilized races in these respects there are no important differences; and according to recent researches we find the same may be said with regard to civilized nations, that there is no difference between town and country.[478] I quote here the account given by an experienced author sixty years ago:
“People usually believe that in the country morals are much better than in the towns, but this belief is quite erroneous. Brothels and professional prostitutes naturally cannot exist in the country, but nearly every peasant-girl in the country is equivalent to a secret prostitute. It is incredible what sexual excesses go on between the masculine and feminine inhabitants of the villages. Every barn, every shed, every haystack, every copse, bears witness to this. Especially disadvantageous to morals is it when in the heat of summer persons of different sexes work side by side, half undressed, in remote fields for the whole day, and lie down to rest side by side.”[479]
We may here allude to a fact that we shall have to discuss later—that young men, after the conclusion of their term of military service, carry back with them to the country the knowledge of sexual excesses and perversities which they have acquired in the town, and thus diffuse these tendencies more and more widely.
Since sexual anomalies constitute a phenomenon generally characteristic of humanity, race and nationality, as such, have less to do with the matter than is commonly imagined. The Mongol and the Malay are not less voluptuous than the Semites, or than many Aryan races. Among the Semites, the Arabs and the Turks are pre-eminently sexually perverse nations. They seek sexual gratification indifferently in the female harem and in the boys’ brothel (see numerous descriptions of travellers on the moral customs of Turkey, the Levant, Cairo, Morocco, the Arabian Soudan, the Arabs in Africa, etc.). Among the Aryan races the Aryans of India must be considered pre-eminent as refined practitioners of psychopathia sexualis, which they have reduced to a system. In addition to recognizing forty-eight figuræ Veneris (different postures in sexual intercourse), they practise every possible variety of sexual perversion; and they have in various textbooks[480] a systematic introduction to sexual immorality. Here there is manifestly no trace of morbid conditions, of degeneration, or of psychopathia; it is simply a matter of popular manners and customs. Sexual perversion among the Greeks and the Romans, two other Aryan nations, is too well known to need detailed description. In modern Europe the French were at one time believed to lead the way in sexual artifices. For a long time this has ceased to be true, and, in fact, never was true. They do, indeed, excel, if one may use the expression, all other nations in the outward technique and in the elegance of their sexual excesses. To them from very early times there has been ascribed a certain preference for the skatological element in the sexual life; but according to the recent researches of Friedrich S. Krauss regarding the Slavs, published in his “Anthropophyteia,” this alleged pre-eminence is extremely doubtful. That among the Slavs sexual perversions of every kind have an extraordinarily wide diffusion has been shown by this investigator by the collection of an enormous mass of material. It is also very generally known that the English from early days have exhibited a marked tendency to sadistic practices, and especially to flagellation. I will return later to this remarkable phenomenon. The French accuse the Germans of an especial tendency to homosexuality (le vice Allemand), but there are no sufficient grounds for this accusation. In psychopathia sexualis, the Germans are as cosmopolitan as they are in other respects.
With regard to the age of the individual in relation to sexual perversions, the frequency of these is greater after puberty than before,[481] and the frequency increases with advancing years. The time at which the imagination unfolds its greatest activity, the commencement of manhood, is extremely favourable to the origination of sexual aberrations, and to their becoming habitual practices; and, again, the age at which the sexual powers begin to decline, and when for their incitation new stimuli are needed, is one at which abnormal varieties of sexual gratification frequently originate.[482]
Which sex is more inclined to abnormalities of the sexual impulse, the male or the female?
The primitively more powerful sexual impulsive life of man in association with his greater use of alcohol makes him distinctly more inclined to follow sexual bypaths than woman, whose sexuality at first develops very gradually, and experiences, in consequence of motherhood, powerful inhibitions to the development of any sexual anomalies. On the other hand, the much more difficult development of voluptuous sensations in women, by means of normal coitus, is not rarely the cause of a tendency to perverse varieties of sexual intercourse. They often seduce man in this direction, and excel him in the discovery of sexual artifices. Among primitive races, where the relationships are clearest, this is still easily recognizable, whereas by civilization the matter is often obscured. All the artificial deformities of the male genital organs amongst savages, which give the man much more trouble than pleasure, but which, on the other hand, increase the voluptuous enjoyment of the woman during the sexual act, cannot otherwise be explained except on the ground of an original demand on the part of women. To this category belong incisions in the glans penis, and the implanting of small stones in the wounds until the skin has a warty appearance (Java); perforation of the penis to enable rods beset with bristles, feathers, rods with balls (the well-known “ampallang” of the Dyaks of Borneo), bodkins, rings, bell-shaped apparatus, to be inserted through these perforations; the wrapping up of the penis in strips of fur with the hair outwards, or enveloping it in a leaden cylinder, etc. The feminine imagination has proved inexhaustible in this direction. Miklucho-Maclay, the great authority on the sexual psychology of the savage races of the Malay Archipelago and the South Sea Islands, declares it to be extremely probable that all these customs and all these apparatus were invented by or for women. The women reject all men who do not possess these stimulating apparatus on the penis. Finsch and Kubary confirm this, and state that in most cases it is the frigidity of the women which makes them desire such means of artificial stimulation. Among civilized races, also, abundant material can be collected with regard to sexual perversities among women, as has recently been done by Paul de Régla in “Les Perversités de la Femme” (Paris, 1904), and by René Schwaeblé in “Les Détraquées de Paris” (Paris, 1904).