[“Madame Venus, beautiful lady,
Of sweet wine and kisses
I am sick unto death—
I yearn for a taste of bitterness.”]
Mental pain as a general sociological, literary, and philosophical phenomenon, manifests itself as Weltschmerz and pessimism. Both modes of perception conceal intense feelings of pleasure. Schopenhauer, who was well aware of this fact, remarks (“Works,” ed. Grisebach, i., 508) that the recognition of the sorrows of existence, of the misery which extends itself over the whole of life, is accompanied by a secret joy, which by the “most melancholy” of all nations was termed the “joy of grief.” Admirably also has Kuno Fischer, in his account of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, described the pleasure to be found in the pessimistic mode of perception; and O. Zimmermann has written an interesting psychological work upon the “Joy of Grief” (second edition; Leipzig, 1885).
The pleasure anyone experiences in his own pain, or in that of another, constitutes the nucleus of all algolagnistic phenomena, and to cruelty as an intermediator in this painful lasciviousness there belongs only a secondary rôle. The deeply-rooted instinct of cruelty, which first manifests itself in early childhood, is biologically associated with the perception of pain. Various theories of cruelty have been propounded. Thus, according to Schopenhauer, cruelty gives rise to pain in another, in order to diminish its own pain; and, according to this view, it is only a means of treatment for the relief of one’s own pain. More illuminating is the explanation of the English psychologist Bain, who derives cruelty from the consciousness of power and the enjoyment of power, from the delight felt in dominating the tortured individual. Nietzsche is the most celebrated apostle of this diffusion of power, this enjoyment of power in the “superman,” and by means of the “masterful morality.” He formally does homage to cruelty as a means of advancing towards higher civilization.
“Almost everything,” he says, “which we call higher civilization depends upon the spiritualization and deepening of cruelty.... That which constitutes the painful pleasure of comedy is cruelty; that which is agreeable to our senses in the so-called tragic sympathy—fundamentally, indeed, whatever is pleasurable to us up to the most intense and delicate metaphysical horror—obtains its sweetness only from the intermingled ingredient of cruelty. That which the Romans enjoyed in the arena, that which Christ enjoyed in the Passion of the Cross, the Spaniards regarding an auto-da-fe or a bull-fight, the Japanese of to-day, with his love for the tragic, the Parisian workman who has a passion for sanguinary revolutions, the Wagnerian rejoicing in the spectacle of Tristan and Isolde—all alike enjoy, all alike are suffused with secret ardour as they drain the Circe’s cup of ‘cruelty.’
“We must therefore,” he continues with justice, “for ever deny the absurd psychology which attempted to teach regarding cruelty that it arose only from the view of another’s pain! There exists an abundant—over-abundant—joy also in one’s own pain, in making one’s own self suffer; and whenever man persuades himself—it may be only to self-denial in the religious sense, or to self-mutilation like the Phœnicians and the ascetics, to self-torment in religion, to the puritanic convulsive penitence, to the vivisection of conscience, and to Pascal’s sacrifice of the intellect—in all these alike he is lured onwards and impelled forwards by his cruelty alone, by that dangerous emotion of cruelty directed against himself.”
With a few brilliant words Nietzsche thus describes the principal phenomena of algolagnia. Ethnology and the history of the world offer us in equal measure numerous interesting proofs of the primitive tendency of human nature to sadistic and masochistic manifestations. We must learn to recognize the diffusion throughout the entire world of active and passive algolagnia, making its appearance in the most diverse forms, in order to understand many occurrences of the present day. In my “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis” (vol. ii., pp. 43-75, 95, 96, 109-113, 120-157, 228-240) I have collected these anthropological and ethnological data, regarding the universal diffusion of algolagnia in all epochs and in all countries; and I have referred to the occurrence of sadism and masochism as affecting mankind in the mass, a fact of particular importance in this connexion. To give some examples: Campaigns, gladiatorial combats, man-hunts, beast-baiting, bull-fights,[596] sensational dramas, public executions, inquisition and witch trials, lynch-law as practised to-day in North America,[597] in the behaviour of the crowd of onlookers at the former punishment of the pillory, especially also in revolutions, of which to-day once more we have the most horrible examples in Russia (cf. also the [appendix] to this chapter), in the primeval custom of marriage by capture, in cannibalism, the belief in witches and werwolves, in slavery, flagellantism, and the scourgers of the middle ages, the horrible “satanism” of the same period, gynecocracy or the dominion of woman, the service of women of the Minne epoch, the Italian cicisbeato, and the Slavonic sexual slavery of men, asceticism and martyrdom, the ethnological diffusion of skatological, koprological, and urolagnistic practices, etc. These facts suffice to prove that in all times, and among all nations, sadism and masochism, in all the forms we still observe to-day, were most widely diffused; and to show that they arise from certain instincts deeply rooted in the soul of the people, whose existence even to-day manifests itself everywhere. Take, for example, the following extract from the Vossische Zeitung, No. 475, October 10, 1906:
“A great automobile race which took place in Long Island at the beginning of the month presented certain features reminding us of the old gladiatorial games. Three men were killed during the race, a woman and a boy were so seriously injured that at the time of writing they are at the point of death, and from twenty to thirty persons suffered fractures and other grave injuries. From all parts of the United States as many as half a million persons had assembled to see the races. At the very outset the huge crowd was in a state of hysterical excitement. The Automobile Club had taken the utmost care in its preparations for the safety of the course, and had shut it off on both sides by a net 8 feet in height. This protecting wall was, however, torn down by the crowd, which pressed in everywhere, especially at those places which the cars were to pass at their highest speed. Notwithstanding all the warnings of the police, those in search of sensation only tried to get out of the way when the cars were close upon them. At a turning in the course there were assembled 1,000 persons belonging to the best circles of New York society. Every time when, at this dangerous point, one of the cars had an accident, these people rushed forwards, in order to see as closely as possible what was going on; the women screamed and fainted from excitement, while the police bludgeoned the people blindly, in order to make room for the following cars, and in order to prevent worse evils. The spectators were as if mad with the desire to see blood. A lady who was pressing forward with the crowd, when one of the cars had upset, expressed her disappointment plainly, ‘Oh dear, there is no one killed!’”
In an essay entitled “Russia as It Now Is,” regarding the Russian punitive expeditions against the revolutionaries, the St. Petersburg correspondent of a German paper reports:
“These expeditions have long forgotten the political purpose of their ‘mission’; they murder simply out of congenital lust to murder, from racial love of blood, from plainly perceptible morbid perversity. The shooting of boys, the flogging of women, without mentioning the still worse ‘punishments’ which we cannot even venture to describe, which take place in the presence of, or with the actual assistance of, the greater and lesser provincial satraps, and regarding which I have collected extensive material—all produced in me, who have been a student of criminal psychology, very remarkable reflections.”
In these cases, no doubt, the principal cause of the actions in which cruelty becomes pleasurable is the powerful emotional disturbance, the violent excitement, which, again, increases sexual desire. De Sade himself was familiar with the fact that excitement produced by strong emotions had a powerful influence upon sexual processes; that it increased them, changed them, and led to abnormal manifestations. “All sensations increase one another mutually.” Anger, fear, rage, hatred, cruelty, increase sexual tension, and therewith also increase the pleasure of the discharge of that tension. Bouillier[598] drew attention to the fact that frequently in men, who otherwise have exhibited in their life very genial and sympathetic natures, it is not the desire of blood and suffering in itself which evokes sexual cruelty, but it is the desire for this associated increase in emotions. Similarly, Horwicz[599] explains the joy of martyrdom also as dependent upon the powerful sexual stimulation which it produces.