It is not perhaps very useful to describe human cavalage, which is not strictly a cavalage, as the woman is attacked from the front. Veritable cavalage has been, as one knows, praised by Lucretius, although, it has, and this detracts nothing from its merits, an air frankly animal; it is the form of love called by the theologians more bestiarum and by Lucretius more ferarum which is the same thing:
Et quibus ipsa modis tractetur blanda voluptas,
Quoque permagni refert; nam more ferarum,
Quadrupedumque magis ritu, plerumque putantur
Concipere uxores, quia sic loca sumere possunt,
Pectoribus positis, sublatis semina lumbis.
This mode, considered by Lucretius as the more favourable to fecundation, is that of most mammifers, of nearly all insects and of many animal families. Apes great and small know no other. The architecture of their bodies would make face to face copulation very difficult. One must not forget that their upright position is never more than momentary, even in orangs and chimpanzees; they are not much better equilibrated than bears, much less so than kangaroos, marmosets[1] and squirrels; even when they stand up one feels that they have four feet. Love among them is not free from the seasons, and although they are libidinous all the year, they do not seem fit for generation save through the weeks of their rutting time: then their genital organs acquire a permanent rigidity; the udders of the females, ordinarily as small as those of the males, only swell during this period. There is, therefore, a vast difference, from the sexual standpoint, between man and the great apes, his anatomic neighbours. Man even in the humblest species has mastered love and made it his daily slave, at the same time that he has varied the accomplishments of his desire and made possible its renewal after brief interval. This domestication of love is an intellectual work, due to the richness and power of our nervous system, which is as capable of long silences as of long physiological discourses, of action and of reflection. The brain of man is an ingenious master which has managed, without possessing any very evident superiority, to get out of the other organs work of the most complicated sorts, and most finely-sharpened pleasures; its (the brain's) mastery is very feeble in quadrumanes and other animals; it is very strong in insects as will be explained in a following chapter.
One need not wait for a minute description of the exterior love mechanism of all animal species. It would be long, difficult and boresome. A few characteristic examples will be enough. The duration of the coition is extremely variable, even in superior mammals. Very slow for dogs, coupling is but a thunderclap for the bull, the ram's is called the "lutte" (strife). The bull merely enters and leaves, and it is a spectacle for philosophers, for one understands immediately that what drives the fiery beast at his female is not the lure of a pleasure too swift to be deeply felt, but a force exterior to the individual although included in his organism. By its long grievous duration the coition of dogs leads to analogous reflections
In triviis quum sæpe canes discedere aventes
Diversi cupidine summis ex viribus tendunt.
—LUCRETIUS.
This is because the dog's penis contains a hollow bone giving passage to the urethra. Around this bone are gathered the erectile tissues whereof one, the node of the prong, swells disproportionately during coition and prevents the separation of the two animals after the act is accomplished. They remain a long time uncomfortable, not managing to free themselves until long after their desire has turned to disgust, grotesque and lamentable symbol of many a human liaison.
Our other familiar animal, the cat, is not more happy in his affections. His penis is indeed furnished with thorns, with homy papilla toward the tip, and the intromission as well as the separation is only accomplished with groans. What one hears at night are not cries of voluptuousness but of suffering, the bowlings of a beast whom nature has caught in the trap. This does not prevent the female from being very enterprising; responding to the cries of the pursuing male she excites him in a hundred ways, biting at neck and belly with an insistence which has, they say, provided a metaphor in the erotic vocabulary. Biting the neck is much more curious, as it is of a much less direct intention. Bitches also bite the neck of the dog in prelude. For near the neck is situated the bulb, original knot of nerves governing the secret parts and the genital region.
The pain which accompanies sexual acts ought to be differentiated, with precision, from passive suffering. It is very possible (women can testify to the fact) that sighs and even cries emitted at such time are the expression of a mixed sensation, wherein joy has almost as great a part as suffering. We must not judge feline exclamations from the shrillness of timbre; tortured by the male prong the she-cats howl, but they await the supreme benediction. The rigour of the first approaches is perhaps but the promise of deeper delights: at any rate some women have thought so.
One knows that a cat's tongue is rough: so is the tongue and all the mucous surfaces of negroes. This roughness of surface notably augments the genital pleasure, as men who have known negresses testify. It has been perfected. The Dyaks of Borneo pierce the extremity of the penis, through the navicular channel and fit into it a pin to both ends of which are attached tufts of stiff hair in the form of a brush. Before surrender the women by certain tricks and certain traditional gestures indicate the length of the brush desired. In Java one replaces this apparatus known as the ampallang, by a sheath of goat skin, more or less thick. In other countries there are incrustations of little pebbles, which give the gland the shape of an embossed mace; and these pebbles are sometimes replaced by tiny bells, so that the men make in running a sound like mules, and attentive women can judge their value according to the intensity of their sexual music. These customs, noted by de Paw among certain aborigines of America, have not been recently observed, doubtless because the Christian modesty of modern travellers has obliterated their eyes and ears at convenient moments. No custom is abolished save in the face of some other custom more useful to sensuality, and the imagination seems rather to advance than to recede in these matters. It is true that the inventors hide themselves, even in savage countries, sexual morality tending toward uniformity.
These artifices, which appear curious to us, have certainly been created at the instigation of women, since theirs is the profit of them. Males have submitted to them, happy no doubt to be delivered at the price of passing pain from the terrible lasciviousness of their females. Racked and flayed by such instruments the women ought, at least for a few days, to flee the male and brood in silence upon their luxurious memories. Chinese and Japs, whose women are likewise lascivious, are familiar with analogous means; to dominate their companions they have also invented ingenious onanist methods which give them time to attend to their own affairs, while peace reigns over their hearthstones. In the strange dissemblance between human races the Aryans have, for the same purpose, made use of the religious check-rein, of prayer, of the idea of sin, and finally of liberty, that is to say of the pleasure of vanity which bewilders the woman, and invites her to please someone else before satisfying herself.