Tattooing, among certain races, is a phallic rite, and in the Tahitians the priapic origin of this procedure has been preserved in an interesting myth. Hinæreeremonoi was the daughter of the god and goddess Taaroa and Apouvaru. “As she grew up, in order to preserve her chasity, she was made pahio, or kept in a kind of inclosure, and constantly attended by her mother. Intent on her seduction, her brothers invented tattooing, and marked each other with the figure called Taomaro. Thus ornamented, they appeared before their sister, who admired the figures, and, in order to be tattooed herself, eluding the care of her mother, broke the inclosure that had been erected for her preservation, was tattooed, and became, also, the victim to the designs of her brothers. Tattooing thus originated among the gods, and was first practiced by the children of Taaroa, their principle deity. In imitation of their example, and for the accomplishment of the same purposes it was practiced among men.”[W][66]

With very few exceptions, primitive peoples, wherever found, have given or still give unmistakable evidence of a knowledge of phallic worship in some form or other. Many of them still practice it, generally combined with the religion from which it was evolved, i. e., sun worship. The Ainu of Japan is a notable example of a race whose religion shows the presence of the elements of both worships. The religion of this remarkable people, notwithstanding the fact that it has become decidedly ethical (they having arrived at a knowledge of the good and evil principles), shows its sun birth.[X] Until very recently the couvade existed in full force and vigor. “As soon as a child was born, the father had to consider himself very ill, and had, therefore, to stay at home, wrapped up, by the fire. But the wife, poor creature! had to stir about as much and as quickly as possible. The idea seems to have been that life was passing from the father into his child.”[67]

Among Slavonic races in early times, the worship of the generative principle was almost universal. This continued, in a measure, even after the establishment of Christianity, and we find phallic rites masquerading in the garb of Christian observances as late as the sixteenth century in parts of Russia and Hungary. Westermarck, in his chapter on the human rut season in primitive times, says: “Writers of the sixteenth century speak of the existence of certain festivals in Russia, at which great license prevailed. According to Pamphil, these annual gatherings took place, as a rule, at the end of June, the day before the festival of St. John the Baptist, which in pagan times was that of a divinity known by the name of Jarilo, corresponding to the Priapus of the Greeks.”[68] If my memory serves me correctly, Wappäus says that a like festival was in existence among the Hungarians two hundred years ago.[69] To this day certain religious sects of Russia and Hungary are in the habit of holding orgies at which all the ceremonies of the ancient Liberalia, Floralia, and Saturnalia are duplicated. These devotees claim that, when they have reached the acme of religious enthusiasm, the spirit of God directs them, hence their licentious and lustful acts cannot be immoral.

When Great Britain was invaded and conquered by northern savages, the latter, unquestionably, introduced their own religious beliefs, which were largely phallic in character. The Teutonic god Fréa was the same as the Latin Priapus; while Friga, from whom our Friday gets its name, because this day was sacred to her, was the Teutonic Venus. Fréa is called Freyr in old Norse, and in old German, Fro.

Among the Swedes he was worshiped under the name of Fricco, and a statue of him at Upsala represented him in the characteristic attitude of the god of procreation. “Tertius est Fricco, pacem voluptatemque largiens mortalibus, cujus etiam simulachrum fingunt ingenti priapo.”[70] From this god a vulgar word for copulation had its origin. This word is in use to-day among the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons, thus proving that the worship of the generative principle was in vogue among our own immediate ancestors.

Statuettes of Priapus, bronzes representing the sexual organs, and pottery covered with phallic scenes have been found all over England. These relics are remembrances of the Roman occupation when the worship of Priapus prevailed. In the parish of Adel, Yorkshire, was found an altar erected to Priapus, who seems to be called in this instance Mentula. At this place were found many other priapic relics, such as lamps, bracelets, amulets, etc., etc.[71] Several images of the triple phallus, as well as the single phallus, have been brought to light in London; also phallic lamps, bracelets, etc.

All over England the Anglo-Saxon Fréa, or Friga, has left remembrances of his or her worship in place-names. Fridaythorpe in Yorkshire, and Friston (Fréa’s stone), which occurs in several parts of England, are examples. “We seem justified in supposing that this and other names commencing with the syllable Fri or Fry, are so many monuments of the existence of phallic worship among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers.”[72] There are other words in the English language which point directly to this ancient religion; for instance, fascinate and fascination. These words were derivede directly from the Latin word fascinum, which was one of the names of the male organ of generation. The fascinum was worn suspended from the necks of women, and was supposed to possess magical powers; hence, to fascinate. Horace makes use of the word in Priapeia:

That the worship of the fascinum was in vogue during the eighth century[Y] in Italy and in other countries under the religious jurisdiction of the Pope, the following from the Judicia Sacerdotalia Criminibus, clearly indicates: “If any one has performed incantation to the fascinum, or any incantation whatever, except one who chaunts the Creed or the Lord’s Prayer, let him do penance on bread and water during three Lents.”[74][Z]

During the ninth century the Council of Chalons promulgated a similar law, and in the twelfth century Buchardus repeats it, thus showing that the worship of the generative principle was continuous throughout that time.[75] That the worship of the fascinum was in vogue as late as 1247 is proven by the statutes of the Synod of Mans, which declare that he who worships the fascinum shall be seriously dealt with.[76]

In Scotland, as late as 1268, according to the Chronicles of Lanercroft, the people were in the habit of rubbing two pieces of wood together until fire was produced. At the same time an image of the phallus was elevated, and certain prayers were said to Priapus. This was the famous “need fire,” and was obtained in this way in order that it might have the power of saving the cattle from the plague. Need fire was produced in this manner in the Highlands as late as 1356, at which time a cattle plague ravaged the country side. In Inverkeithing, a Catholic priest gathered all the young girls of the village and made them dance around a statue of Priapus. He himself led the dance, carrying a large wooden image of the phallus, and excited these medieval bacchantes to licentious movements and actions by his own actions and language.

When called to account by his bishop, he excused his action by stating that such performances were common in his parish. These phallic observances occurred in Easter week, March 29-April 15, 1282.[77]

In Ireland, the female sexual organs seem to have been the symbol of phallic worship most in use. In the arches over the doorways of churches, a female figure, with the person fully exposed, was invariably so placed that the external organs of generation at once caught the eye. These figures were called Shela-na-gig, which in Irish means “Julian the giddy.” Sometimes these images were placed on the walls and used as caryatides. From this symbol the horseshoe’s power to ward off evil and bring good luck has been evolved. The people in olden times were in the habit of painting, or sketching with charcoal, drawings of the female genitalia over the doors of their houses to ward off bad luck. These drawings were necessarily rude, and probably resembled a horseshoe more than they did the object for which they were intended. In course of time, when the symbol had lost its original significance, the horseshoe entirely took the place of the phallic image.

Herodotus says that Sesostris, king of Egypt, was in the habit of erecting pillars in the countries conquered by his armies, on which he had the female genitals engraved in order to show his contempt.[78] I think that the historian misinterprets the meaning of the pillars; the Egyptians were phallic worshipers, and these obelisks were, in all probability, altars to Priapus.

The beneficent influence of this particular phallic symbol has been well brought out in several classical stories. When Ceres was wandering over the world in her search after Proserpine, she came to the house of a peasant woman, Baubo by name. Baubo saw that the goddess was heart-sick and miserable, so she offered her a drink of cyceon (κυκεων). The goddess refused the refreshing mixture, and continued her lamentations. Fully believing in the virtue and efficacy of the symbol, Baubo lifted her robe and showed Ceres her genitals.[AA] The goddess burst into laughter and at once drank the cyceon.[79] The same superstition appears in a celebrated book of the sixteenth century, Le Moyen de Parvenir. The author of the “Worship of the Generative Powers” gives the following instructive extract from this work:

Hermès. On nomme ainsi ceux qui n’ont point vu le con de leur femme ou de leur garce. Le pauvre valet de chez nous n’étoit donc pas coquebin; il eut beau le voir.

Varro. Quand?

Hermès. Attendez, étant en fiançailles, il vouloit prendre le cas de sa fiancée; elle ne le vouloit pas: il faisoit le malade, et elle lui demandoit: “Qu’y a-t-il, mon ami?” “Hélas, ma mie, je suis si malade, que je n’en puis plus; je mourrai si je ne vois ton cas.” “Vraiment voire?” dit-elle. “Hélas! oui, si je l’avois vu, je guérirois.” Elle ne lui voulut point montrer; à la fin, ils furent mariés. Il advint, trois ou quatre mois après, qu’il fut fort malade; et il envoya sa femme au médicin pour porter de son eau. En allant, elle s’avisa de ce qu’il lui avoit dit en fiançailles. Elle retourna vitement, et se vint mettre sur le lit; puis, levant cotte et chemise lui présenta son cela en belle vue, et lui disoit: “Jean, regarde le con, et te guéris.”[80]

Sir William Hamilton writes to Richard Payne Knight from Naples in the year 1781, as follows:

“Having last year made a curious discovery, that in a province of this kingdom, not fifty miles from its capital, a sort of devotion is still paid to Priapus, the obscene divinity of the ancients (though under another denomination), I have thought it a circumstance worth recording; particularly as it offers a fresh proof of the similitude of the Popish and Pagan religion, so well observed by Dr. Middleton in his celebrated Letter from Rome; therefore I mean to deposit the authentic proofs of this assertion in the British Museum when a proper opportunity shall offer.” Sir William goes on to relate how he found many phallic amulets, charms, etc., in the possession of the people, and then describes the votive offerings laid upon the altar at a feast given in honor of Saints Cosmus and Damianus, in a church called by their names. The offerings were waxen images of the phallus. “The vows are chiefly presented by the female sex,” continues he, “and they are seldom such as represent legs, arms, etc., but most commonly the male parts of generation. A person who was at this fête in the year 1780, told me that he heard a woman say, at the time she presented a vow, ‘Santo Cosimo benedetto, cosi lo voglio.’”[81]

This church was in Isernia, a little village about fifty miles from Naples, and away from the direct line of travel, hence its inhabitants saw little of the world, and therefore kept to their old customs longer than their more favored neighbors. Thus it happened that, even in the latter half of the eighteenth century, Priapus had his votaries almost within the shadow of the Vatican! These phallic rites were finally abolished by episcopal command.

One of the most common amulets or charms against jettitura, or the “evil eye,” the bête noire of every Italian, is a little coral hand. The middle finger of this hand is extended, thus representing the penis, while the other fingers are closed on the palm, thus representing the testicles. In ancient times, when a man extended his hand, closed in this manner, it was a gesture of insult and anger; to-day this gesture is only made in derision and contempt. The hand closed in this way, or, rather, with the thumb projecting between the first and second fingers (another very common phallic symbol or sign), was called a “fig”; hence, the old expression of contempt and indifference, “a fico for you, sir,” now modernized into “I don’t care a fig.”[AB]

France, as well as Italy, had her phallic charms and her phallic saints. Priapus was a god to the ancients—to the people of the Middle Ages he was a saint. According to M. Dulaure, in the south of France, Provence, Languedoc, and the Lyonnais, he was worshiped under the name of St. Foutin. This name is derived from that of the first bishop of Lyons, Fotinus, to whom the people had transferred (as they have done to many other sainted individuals) the distinguishing characteristics of a god; in this instance, Priapus. At Lyons there was an immense wooden phallus, and the women were in the habit of scraping this image, and then steeping the wood-dust in water, which they drank as a remedy against barrenness. Sometimes they gave it to the men in order to stimulate sexuality or sensuality. At Varailles, in Provence, waxen images of the male and female sexual organs were offered to St. Foutin, and, since these images were suspended from the ceiling and moved by every vagrant current of air, the effect was sometimes very astonishing. “Témoin Saint Foutin de Varailles en Provence, auquel sont dédiées les parties honteuses de l’un et de l’ autre sexe, formées en cire; le plancher de la chapelle en est fort garni, et, quand le vent les fait entrebattre, cela débauche un peu les dévotions à l’honneur de ce Saint.”[82]

This worship at Varailles was identical with that of Isernia; the votive offerings were waxen images or models of the genital organs, while the saints differed only in name, not in character. At Embrun the worship of St. Foutin was a little different. The women at this last mentioned place poured wine on the phallus; this wine was collected in a bucket, and, when it became sour, it was used as a medicine for barrenness.

When Embrun was besieged and taken by the Protestants in 1585, this phallus was found among the other sacred relics, and its head “was red with the wine which had been poured upon it.”[83] In the church of St. Eutropius, at Orange, a large phallus covered with leather was seized and burnt by the Protestants in 1562. Dulaure says that the sexual organs were objects of worship at Porighy, Viviers, Vendre in the Bourbonnais, Cives, Auxerre, Puy-en-Velay, and at hundreds of other places. Some of these phalli were recreated as fast as they were worn away by zealous devotees. They were so arranged in the walls of the churches that, “as the phallic end in front became shortened (by scrapings), a blow from a mallet from behind thrust it forward, so that it was restored to its original length.”[84]

In the public square of Batavia there was formerly kept a bronze cannon which had been captured from the natives. The touch-hole of this piece of ordnance was made in the shape of a phallic hand or “fig,” which I have described elsewhere. The barren Malay women were in the habit of seating themselves on this hand in order that they might become pregnant.[AC] An analogous custom was prevalent in France and elsewhere in Europe during the Middle Ages. This habit led to sexual abuses, and was finally condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities. Indeed, the Church inflicted severe penances on the women who were guilty of using phalli: “Mulier qualique molimine aut se ipsam aut cum altera fornicans tres annos poeniteat, unum ex his pane et aqua. Cum sanctimoniali per machinam fornicans, annos septem poeniteat, duos ex his in pane et aqua.”[85] We see by this that nuns were more severely punished than were other women.

This use of the phallus is mentioned in the Bible, where it is bitterly condemned by one of the prophets: “Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them.”[86] Finally, it was the custom of the young girls of France during the Middle Ages (like the maidens of certain savage races), who were on the eve of marriage, to offer up to St. Foutin their last maiden robes. From the evidence here adduced, we see that phallic worship existed in some parts of Europe as late as the latter half of the eighteenth century, and that it was almost universal during the Middle Ages. According to Becan,[87] Golnitz,[88] and other historians, there were several other phallic saints besides St. Foutin who were worshiped in Belgium, Spain, Germany and other European countries; but, since their adoration was similar to that of St. Foutin, I do not think it necessary to give a description of it here. It has been shown conclusively that worship of the generative principle was in vogue among the Latins, the Greeks, the ancient Germans, the Saxons, the Danes, the Gauls, the Iberians, the Picts, the Celts and the Britons. It has been demonstrated, also, that vestiges of phallic worship existed in England, France, Italy, Spain and Germany during the Middle Ages. As late as the latter part of the eighteenth century wax images of the phallus were used as votive offerings in the town of Isernia, not many miles from Naples; the beribboned Maypole of our Mayday festival is but the flower decked phallus of the Roman matrons; charms against jettitura, “the evil eye,” little coral hands with the middle finger extended (in ancient days one of the most common symbols of Priapus) can still be purchased in the streets of Rome.[AD] “This worship” (that of Priapus) “which was but part of that of the generative powers, appears to have been the most ancient of the superstitions of the human race, and has prevailed more or less among all known peoples before the introduction of Christianity; and, singularly enough, so deeply it seems to have been implanted in human nature that even the promulgation of the gospel did not abolish it, for it continued to exist, accepted and often encouraged by the medieval clergy.”[89]

So very ancient was the inception of the worship of the generative principle that we have some reason for believing that even the cave-dwellers practiced this cult. It was stated in the Moniteur, January, 1865, that “in the province of Venice, in Italy, excavations in a bone-cave have brought to light, beneath ten feet of stalagmite, bones of animals, mostly post-tertiary, of the usual description found in such places, flint implements, with a needle of bone having an eye and point, and a plate of argillaceous compound, on which was scratched a rude drawing of the phallus.”[90] Thus we see that, possibly, from the time of the cave-dwellers to almost the beginning of the nineteenth century, phallic worship existed in Southern Europe! From the Sagas, folklore tales, and myths of the Norse we have every reason for believing that it existed for almost as great a length of time in Northern Europe. That in Western Europe, before and during the Middle Ages, it flourished in a variety of forms, we have unimpeachable testimony.

In this brief outline of phallic worship I have endeavored to show that the worship of the generative principle has been universal; that it is still practiced by primitive peoples, and that vestiges of it lingered among certain civilized peoples until, comparatively speaking, a recent time. In order to show what a height of idealization and abstraction it had reached at a time when Greece stood at the head of the civilized world, I will close this part of my essay with the following quotation from Knight’s strong, erudite, and exhaustive treatise: “The ancient theologists … finding that they could conceive no idea of infinity, were content to revere the Infinite Being in the most general and efficient exertion of his power—attraction; whose agency is perceptible through all matter, and to which all motion may, perhaps, be ultimately traced. His agency being supposed to extend through the whole material world, and to produce all the various revolutions by which its system is sustained, his attributes were, of course, extremely numerous and varied. These were expressed by various titles and epithets in the mystic hymns and litanies, which the artists endeavored to represent by various forms and characters of men and animals. The great characteristic attribute was represented by the organ of generation in that state of tension and rigidity which is necessary to the due performance of its functions. Many small images of this kind have been found among the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, attached to bracelets, which the chaste and pious matrons of antiquity wore round their necks and arms. In these the organ of generation appears alone, or accompanied by the wings of incubation, in order to show that the wearer devoted herself wholly and solely to procreation, the great end for which she was ordained. So expressive a symbol, being constantly in view, must keep her attention fixed on its natural object, and continually remind her of the gratitude she owed the Creator for having taken her into his service, made her partaker of his most valuable blessings, and employed her as the passive instrument in the exertion of his most beneficial power. The female organs of generation were revered as symbols of the generative power of nature or matter, as the male’s were of the generative powers of God.”[91]

CHAPTER III.
THE PSYCHICAL CORRELATION OF RELIGIOUS EMOTION AND SEXUAL DESIRE.

Beyond a question of doubt, man becomes religiously enthused most frequently either early in life, when pubescence is, or is about to be, established, or late in life, when sexual desire has become either entirely extinct or very much abated. Young boys and girls are exceedingly impressionable at, or just before, puberty, and are apt to embrace religion with the utmost enthusiasm. A distinguished evangelist declares that “men and women seldom or never enter into the kingdom of God after they have arrived at maturity. Out of a thousand converts, seven hundred are converted before they are twenty years old.”[92]

The Roman Catholic church is keenly alive to these facts, therefore requires the rite of confirmation to be administered, if possible, to its would-be communicants at, or before, the age of puberty.[AE]

Of all the insanities of the pubescent state, erotomania and religious mania are the most frequent and the most pronounced. Sometimes they go hand in hand, the most inordinate sensuality being coupled with abnormal religious zeal. A young woman of my acquaintance, whose conduct has given rise to much scandal, is, at times, a reincarnate Messalina, while at other times she is the very embodiment of ethical and religious purity. Another young girl, in whom vita sexualis was about to be established, became religiously insane and had delusions in which she declared that she was in heaven and sitting at the right hand of God. She declared this over and over again, while shamelessly committing manustrupation! Krafft-Ebing calls attention to this relation between religious and sexual feeling in psycho-pathological states. “It suffices,” says he, “to recall how intense sensuality makes itself manifest in the clinical history of many religious maniacs; the motley mixture of religious and sexual delusions that is so frequently observed in psychoses (e. g., in maniacal women who think they are or will be the mother of God), but particularly in masturbatic insanity; and finally, the sexual, cruel self-punishment, injuries, self-castrations, and even self-crucifixions, resulting from abnormal religio-sexual feeling.”[93]

An example of the last mentioned self-immolation (self-crucifixion) is given by Berghierri, and is a remarkable instance of the interchangeableness of religious emotion and sexual desire in psychopathic individuals. The man in question, who had been intensely sensual, manufactured a cross, nailed himself to it, and ingeniously managed to suspend himself and cross from the window of his sleeping apartment.

“All through the history of insanity the student has occasion to observe this close alliance of sexual and religious ideas; an alliance which may be partly accounted for because of the prominence which sexual themes have in most creeds, as illustrated in ancient times by the phallus worship of the Egyptians, the ceremonies of the Friga cultus of the Saxons, the frequent and detailed reference to sexual topics in the Koran and several other books of the kind, and which is further illustrated in the performances which, to come down to a modern period, characterize the religious revival and camp-meeting as they tinctured their medieval model, the Münster Anabaptist movement.”[94]

Men, owing to their greater freedom, soon learn the difference of the sexes and the delights of sexual congress; women, hedged in by conventionalities and deterred by their innate passivity, remain, for the most part, in ignorance of sexual knowledge until their marriage. For this reason it happens that very many more women than men experience religious emotion. Young married men and women, who are in perfect sexual health, and who have not experienced religion before marriage, seldom give this emotion a single thought until late in life, when both libido and vita sexualis are on the wane or are extinct. Voltaire cynically, though truthfully, observes that when woman is no longer pleasing to man she then turns to God. A woman who has been disappointed in love almost invariably seeks consolation in religion. The virtuous unmarried woman, who has been unsuccessful in the pursuit of a husband, invariably turns to God and religion with impassioned zeal and energy.

Ungratified, or, rather, unsatisfied, sensuality very frequently gives rise to great religio-sexual enthusiasm. The circumcised foreskin of Christ, where it was and what had become of it, was a source of continual worriment to the nun Blanbekin; in an ecstacy of ungratified libido, St. Catherine of Genoa would frequently cast herself on the hard floor of her cell, crying: “Love! love! I can endure it no longer;” St. Armelle and St. Elizabeth were troubled with libido for the child Jesus;[95] an old prayer is quite significant: “Oh, that I had found thee, Holy Emanuel; Oh, that I had thee in my bed to bring delight to body and soul! Come and be mine, and my heart shall be thy resting-place.”[96] Francis Parkman calls attention to the fact that the nuns sent over to America in colonization days were frequently seized with religio-sexual frenzy. “She heard,” writes he of Marie de l’Incarnation, “in a trance, a miraculous voice. It was that of Christ, promising to become her spouse. Months and years passed, full of troubled hopes and fears, when again the voice sounded in her ear, with assurance that the promise was fulfilled, and that she was, indeed, his bride. Now ensued phenomena which are not infrequent among Roman Catholic female devotees, when unmarried, or married unhappily, and which have their source in the necessities of a woman’s nature.” (The italics are my own.) “To her excited thought, her divine spouse became a living presence; and her language to him, as recorded by herself, is of intense passion. She went to prayer, agitated and tremulous, as if to a meeting with an earthly lover: ‘Oh, my Love,’ she exclaimed, ‘when shall I embrace you? Have you no pity on the torments that I suffer? Alas! alas! my Love, my Beauty, my Life! Instead of healing my pain, you take pleasure in it. Come, let me embrace you, and die in your sacred arms!’”[97] The historian remarks that the “holy widow,” as her biographers call her, is an example, and a lamentable one, of the tendency of the erotic principle to ally itself with high religious excitement and enthusiasm. Further along he says that “some of the pupils of Marie de l’Incarnation, also, had mystical marriages with Christ; and the impassioned rhapsodies of one of them being overheard, she nearly lost her character, as it was thought that she was apostrophizing an earthly lover.”[98]

The instances of religio-sexual outbursts in nuns and Roman Catholic female devotees who lead celibate lives are very numerous; I will, however, call attention to but one other: St. Veronica was so much in love with the divine lion that she took a young lion to bed with her, fondled and kissed it, and allowed it to suck her breasts.[99] Throughout sacred literature, beginning with the Bible itself, religio-sexual feeling is very much en evidence. Hosea married a prostitute because—so he declared—God commanded him so to do. If Solomon’s beautiful song is typical of the Church and the Christ (as some theologians teach), then it is an unmistakable instance of religio-sexual feeling; religious emotion and sexual desire walk hand in hand through the measures of this impassioned verse. Circumcision, now eminently a religious ceremony, was, unquestionably, a sexual fetich and a phallic rite, which has been handed down from antiquity, when all the world were phallic worshipers! The very pillars set up by the patriarchs in commemoration of certain events were but rude images of the phallus, while not a few of the mysteries of the Holy of Holies itself were but vestiges of Chaldean and Egyptian genital worship![AF]

That a relationship between, and an interchangeableness of, these two widely dissimilar psychical operations, i.e., religious emotion and sexual desire, does exist, there can be no doubt.[AG] Now, what is the cause of, the reason for, this relationship? Mantegazza, Maudsley, Schleiermacher, Krafft-Ebing, and many others have endeavored, incidentally, to assign reasons for this relationship, but have, in my opinion, signally failed. Spitzka has tentatively, and without elaborating his idea in the least, suggested a theory which, I believe, solves the problem in every essential point. Says he in “Insanity,” page 39: This “alliance” (between religious emotion and libido) “may be partly accounted for because of the prominence which sexual themes have in most creeds, as illustrated in ancient times by the phallus worship of the Egyptians, the ceremonies of the Friga cultus of the Saxons, the frequent and detailed reference to sexual topics in the Koran and several other books of the kind, etc.” Dr. Spitzka does not enter into any discussion of the matter; he simply asserts his belief in the cause of the relationship, and then dismisses the subject without further comment.

Now, permit me, as briefly as possible, to designate the cause of the relationship between, and the interchangeableness of, religious feeling and sexual desire, which, as I believe, is to be found in the once widespread existence of phallic worship.

Some ten or twelve years ago, in an article on Suicide, which was published in the American Practitioner and News, I suggested (as a possible explanation for certain psychical phenomena) the existence in man of two consciousnesses, an active, vigilant consciousness and a pseudo-dormant consciousness. Again, in the American Naturalist, in an essay entitled “The Psychology of Hypnotism,”[100] I reasserted this theory and, to a certain extent, elaborated it. I placed man’s active consciousness in the cortical portion of the brain, and his pseudo-dormant, unconscious consciousness (arbitrarily, be it confessed) in the basilar ganglia, and called this latter consciousness, “ganglionic consciousness.”

Recently, much has been written on the doctrine of duplex personality, notably by Mr. F. W. H. Myers, in a series of papers read before the Society of Psychical Research. Professor Newbold has also written very entertainingly and instructively on this subject. While not fully accepting the theory of “duplex personality,” i. e., active consciousness and subliminal consciousness (Myers’ name for the pseudo-dormant consciousness), as having been proven, Newbold says: “Of all the theories developed from the point of independence, Mr. Myers’ is the most comprehensive in its scope, is kept in most constant touch with what the author regards as facts, and displays the greatest philosophic insight.”[101] According to the theory of duplex personality, many instincts, desires, and emotions have been crowded out of the active consciousness and have been relegated to the pseudo-dormant consciousness. This has been brought about by a “process of selection out of an infinity of possible elements solely on the grounds of utility.” Thus the cause for our horror of incest is hidden away in our subliminal consciousness; yet we cannot but think, with Westermarck, that this instinct is but the result of natural selection,[102] the utility of the factor or factors occasioning it being no longer in evidence or required. Again, at certain seasons, man is seized with waldliebe (forest-love) and longs to flee from the haunts of men, and, with gun and rod, to revert, as far as possible, to the state of his savage ancestors. The desire is safely hidden away in his subliminal consciousness until favoring circumstances tempt it forth. It is not alone in “sleep, dreams, hypnosis, trance, and ecstacy that we see a temporary subsidence of the upper consciousness and the upheaval of a subliminal stratum”; there are many other states and many other causes for this strange psychical phenomenon.

I have demonstrated in the preceding pages that the worship of the generative principle was almost, if not wholly, universal; I have also shown that the beliefs, rites, and ceremonies of this cult made a lasting impression upon the minds of every people among whom it gained a foothold. Take the case of the ancient Hebrews. Notwithstanding the fact that they were tried in the furnace of Javeh’s awful wrath time and again; notwithstanding the fact that famine, pestilence, war, and imprisonment destroyed them by thousands; and, notwithstanding the fact that they were threatened with utter and absolute annihilation—all on account of this cult—they would not wholly abandon it. The words of the prophets become almost pathetic as we read, over and over again, that, although the kings did that which was pleasing in the sight of the Lord, “the high places and the groves were not destroyed.” Take the case of the Aztecs. Crushed beneath the iron heels of Spain’s hardy buccaneers, an utterly broken and conquered race, Cortez turned them over to the ministering care of his zealous priests. The prison, agonizing torture, and the awful stake succeeded, at last, in Christianizing them; they became children of Holy Mother Church! And yet, hundreds of years after this “glorious victory of the cross,” Biart finds the humble offerings of their descendants at the feet of Mictlanteuctli! The modern Christian Indian, in the deep shadows of the night, steals forth to offer up in secrecy a prayer at the feet of one of the phallic trinity! What matters it to the modern Aztec that his petition is offered to the ruler of Mictlan, the hell of his forefathers, instead of to the mighty Ipalnemoani, the Life-Giver?[103] In his opinion, Mictlanteuctli represents the entire Aztec theogony, for has not his white priest kept the name of this god green in his memory? All the other gods have been forgotten; their personalities have been absorbed into that of the god of hell, for he has had advertisers in the shape of Catholic priests ever since the fall of the Aztec Empire! Take the case of the Peruvians. Although the Place of Gold and the beautiful Virgins of the Sun are not even memories to the descendants of the Incas, the religion which gave rise to them is not wholly forgotten; “phallic rites and ceremonies are to be observed interwoven with their Christian ritual and belief!” Take the case of the Roman Catholic devotees of Isernia, of Varailles, of Lyons, of hundreds of other places during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Priapus died when the first Christian emperor took his seat on the throne of Imperial Rome, and yet, hundreds and hundreds of years thereafter, we behold some of the mysteries of Eleusis almost within the shadow of St. Peter’s!

Now, why is this? There can be but one answer, and that is that these people simply inherited a portion of the psychos of their forefathers, which made the tenets of this religion natural and easy of belief. I have demonstrated, I believe, that religious feeling was not a psychical trait in the beginning; like a number of other mental attributes, it was the result of evolution.[104] Mental abstraction, especially as associated with religious feeling, was the result of psychical growth, of psychically inherited experiences.[AH] As psychos grew beneath the fostering influence of ages of experience, the mind became able to formulate abstract thought. In the beginning, the process of ratiocination was, necessarily, very simple; but, simple as it was, it was able to recognize the source of life—first, in the sun, then, in the second place, in man himself; and, finally and abstractly, in a source outside of, but connected with, man. This abstract source, which sprung from sexuality, ab initio, they deified and worshiped. Thus we see that, in the very beginning, the worship of the generative principle sprung from, and was a part of, man himself. Throughout thousands and thousands of years, religious feeling and sexual desire, the component parts of phallic adoration, were intimately associated; finally, religio-sexuality became an instinct, just as a belief in the existence of a double or soul became an instinct.

Belief in the existence of a soul has never been repressed; its utility is still recognized; hence, it is present in our active consciousness. The accumulated experiences of civilization have, however, declared the inutility of phallic worship, hence, it has been crowded out of our active consciousness by a process of selection and has been relegated to the innermost recesses of our subliminal consciousness, where also dwell many other formerly active instincts of our savage ancestors. When circumstances favoring their appearances occur, these pseudo-dormant instincts always become evident; it is due to this fact that the correlation of religious emotion and sexual desire exists.

VIRAGINITY AND EFFEMINATION.

In following up the chain of evolution in animal life from its inception in primordial protoplasm to its end, as we now find it, we discover that the interlinking organisms are, in the beginning, either asexual or hermaphroditic. The moneron, the lowest form of animal life, simply multiplies by division. The different elements through which propagation and generation are carried on, are undoubtedly present even in the moneron, but are not differentiated. The moneron is an organless, structureless organism, consequently asexual. The cell, on the contrary, is hermaphroditic, for it contains within itself the necessary elements for reproducing itself. The amœba is the connecting link which connects all terrene life with primitive bathybian protoplasm, and is, strictly speaking, a true hermaphrodite. Ascending at once to the sixth stage in the ancestry of man, we come to the acoelomi, or worms without body cavity. These worms are phylogenetic, consequently hermaphroditic. I do not mean to say that these worms have the organs of each sex equally developed; therefore, in the use of the word hermaphrodite, I use it in its broadest sense. I simply mean that they are autogenetic. In the rhabdocoela the sexual organs appear in their simplest forms—a testis anterior to a single or double ovary. Other gliding worms have a more complex arrangement of the sexual organs, but most of them are true hermaphrodites. Next in the chain of evolutionary development, and one step nearer man, we find the soft worms (scolecidae); from a branch of this family the parent group of vertebrates was developed. The immediate ancestor of the vertebrates was either the amphioxus (lancelet) or some other notochordate animal, whose type is now extinct. Thus we have traced hermaphroditism from the amœba to the amphioxus, from the ancestor of the parent cell to the ancestor of the vertebrates. We could carry it further, but it is unnecessary. Effemination and viraginity, are due directly to the influence of that strange law laid down by Darwin—the law of reversion to ancestral types. It is an effort of nature to return man to the old hermaphroditic form from which he was evolved. It is an effort on the part of nature to incorporate the individualities of the male and female, both physical and psychical, in one body. The phenomenon of atavism is more apt to occur in feeble types than in strong, healthy and well-developed types. Microcephalism, occurring, as it most frequently does, among ignorant, ill-nourished, and unhealthy people, is an example. Dolichocephalism and a flattening of the cranial arch, with corresponding loss of capacity in the skull—types that we see everywhere among the depraved and vicious—are other examples of this tendency of atavism to seize on weakened and unhealthy subjects. Effemination finds more victims among the wealthy and the educated than among the poor and uneducated. This phenomenon is a psychic rather than a physical hermaphroditism, and is directly traceable to the enervation produced by the habits of the wealthy and unemployed. Wealth begets luxury, luxury begets debauchery and consequent enervation. Periods of moral decadence in the life of a nation are always coincident with periods of luxury and great wealth, with consequent enervation and effemination; examples of this may be found in the histories of Rome, Greece, and France. During the reign of Louis XV., examples of effemination crowded into the court and vied with the royal fop in the splendor of their raiment and effeminacy of their bearing. Psychic hermaphroditism does not occur naturally in uncivilized or half-civilized races. The reason for this is patent. Atavism finds among them no weakened and enervated subjects on whom to perpetrate this strange travesty on nature.

Large cities are the hotbeds and breeding-places of the various neuroses. There general paresis treads closely upon the heels of sexual neurasthenia, while the victims of hysteria and kindred ills are almost countless in their number. What wonder, then, that the offspring of such parents should be weak and neurasthenic, and fall easy victims to the thousand and one erotic fancies which beset them! What wonder that here atavism finds its richest field, and plays its strangest and most fearful pranks, sending men into the world with the tastes, desires, and habits of women, and women with all the mental hibitudes of men! Juvenal wrote in scathing, searing sarcasm of the degeneracy of the Roman youth; effemination was very prevalent, and this bitter satirist wrote burning words against their degrading and bestial practices. It seems to me that we are beginning to need a Juvenal for this day and generation!

People divide themselves into classes, and these classes are generally exceedingly clannish. It is not considered “good form” to marry out of the class to which an individual may belong, consequently, no new types of individuals are added. Luxury and debauchery enervate the classes which indulge in them. The people of these classes intermarry among themselves, no new blood is added, hence, in a very few generations, degeneration sets in.

Effemination and viraginity are common types of degeneration which always follow in the wake of luxury and debauchery. Effemination makes its appearance early in life. The young boy likes the society of girls; he plays with dolls, and, if permitted, will don female attire and dress his hair like a girl. He learns to sew, to knit, to embroider, to do “tatting.” He becomes a connoisseur in female dress, and likes to discuss matters pertaining to the toilet of females. He does not care for boyish sports, and when he grows older, takes no pleasure in the amusements and pursuits of his masculine acquaintances. He prefers to spend his time with women and to engage in their employments and amusements. As the change in his psychic being becomes more pronounced and more overpowering, he will endeavor to approach the female in gait, attitude, and style of dress.

I have seen mothers guilty of incalculable harm by fostering such inclinations in their sons. They think (the thought is a natural one) that such perversions of taste indicate gentleness and kindliness, and induce their sons to continue in the practice of them, thus assisting atavism in its baneful work.

Effemination is a disease which, taken at its inception, can generally be eradicated and cured. As soon as it is discovered, the boy’s surroundings should be changed; his mind should be directed into new channels, and his dormant boy’s nature aroused. Outdoor exercise and a free intercourse with companions of his own sex should be made important factors in the treatment of an incipient effeminant. He should be carefully watched until vita sexualis has been established; he should then be taught the dangers of youthful follies and indiscretions.

A dandified man is always ridiculous, but when he adds to his foppery, effemination, he then becomes contemptible.

Several years ago I had the opportunity of studying a pronounced effeminant. He is one of the best known young men of a Southern city, and is a leader in society. He took me to his “boudoir” and showed me his “lingerie.” The words quoted are his own. His nightgowns were marvels of artistic needlework, as far as I was able to judge, and were made by himself. His nightcaps were “sweetly pretty,” and one of them was a “perfect dream of beauty.” On his dressing-table were all the accessories of a modern society woman’s toilet, including rouge, powder, a complete manicure set, and numerous bottles of perfumes and toilet waters. In his wardrobe he had displayed on forms, some six or eight corsets and chemisettes—“corset-covers,” as he designated them.

This man’s voice and manner of speaking are decidedly feminine; all the little mannerisms and affectations of a society woman being faithfully reproduced. I understand from his associates that he is a splendid business man, and that not a breath of scandal has ever tarnished his good name. He was reared by his mother, and never associated with boys until his sixteenth year. I understood from him that she always treated him as a girl, and consulted him in all things pertaining to her toilet. He seemed utterly unconscious of his anomalous condition, and as his business associates are gentlemen, and his intimate friends are ladies, he may drift through life without a single jar to mar the serenity of his existence.

Viraginity is, comparatively, an infrequent occurrence, but under its influence the unfortunate victims are guilty of startling vagaries. The recent case of Alice Mitchell, who killed Miss Ward, at Memphis, Tenn., is an example of pronounced viraginity. We see daily in the newspapers accounts of women who masquerade as men, and history abounds in like instances. The celebrated writer Count Sandor V. was a woman who posed as a man, and who was in fact Sarolta (Charlotte), Countess V. “Among many foolish things that her father encouraged in her was the fact that he brought her up as a boy, called her Sandor, allowed her to ride, drive, and hunt, admiring her muscular energy.” At the age of thirteen she ran away from school, where she had been sent by her mother, and returned home. “Sarolta returned to her mother, who, however, could do nothing and was compelled to allow her daughter to again become Sandor, wear male clothes, and, at least once a year, to fall in love with persons of her own sex.”

Mothers, early in life, though not from any sense of danger to their daughters, begin to eradicate the tom-boy inclinations in their female children; hence the comparative infrequency of viraginity. The congenital viragint will always remain somewhat masculine in her tastes and ideas, but her inclinations and desires having been turned toward femininity early in life, she will escape the horrors of complete viraginity or gynandry. The victim of effemination, however, is saved by no such accidental forethought. The ignorant mother fosters feminine inclinations and desires in her effeminate son until his psychic being becomes entirely changed, and not even the establishment of vita sexualis will save him from effemination.

An only son, who is in the least degree neurasthenic, runs the risk of becoming an effeminant under the tutelage of a loving but ignorant mother who encourages his feminine tastes and inclinations. A young man of my acquaintance, who is an only son, is so situated. This young man devotes his entire attention to matters of the toilet. He paints his cheeks and powders his face; even his eyebrows and eyelashes are anointed with some dark-colored ointment or pomade.

Effemination and viraginity are more prevalent in the Old World than in the United States. The civilization and settlement of the United States are, comparatively speaking, new. The people are, as yet, a young, strong, and vigorous nation. Years of luxury and debauchery have not yet brought the penalty of enervation and neurasthenia to the masses, though in certain circles of society, it is becoming painfully evident that that penalty is being even now exacted.

In this article I have described only mild types of viraginity and effemination. In the more pronounced types of these singular examples of atavism or reversion, the victims commit the most unheard of and the most unnatural acts.

Almost every case of effemination or viraginity can be cured if recognized and treated in its incipiency. The parents should be the physicians. They should keep a watchful supervision over their offspring, and as soon as any evidences of effemination or viraginity become apparent, treatment, both physical and psychical, should at once be instituted.

Effemination has occasioned the downfall of many nations; let us guard against it with all our power. Let us train up our boys to be manly men, and our girls to be womanly women.

BORDERLANDS AND CRANKDOM.

When that bilious critic and merciless crucifier of human foibles, Carlyle, himself a degenerate, wrote that nine-tenths of the world were fools, he was much nearer truth than most men think. When we take an introspective view of our sane personality, we shudder to see how near it is to the borderlands of insanity and the bizarre and eccentric world of crankdom. There hardly lives a man who does not possess some eccentricity, or who does not cherish, hidden, perhaps, deep within himself, some small delusion, which he is ashamed to acknowledge to the outside world. Social relations and the iron rules of custom hold in place the balance-wheel of many a disordered mind. The mental equipoise is kept at the normal standard only by the powerful aid of the will, supported and assisted by extraneous adjuvants, such as fear of punishment, fear of personal harm, and, above all, by the fear of ridicule. Many a man hugs his delusions closely to his heart, indulges them only in the secret recesses of his soul, and, their sole owner and acquaintance, carries them with him to his grave.

Any man who has a retentive memory, and one capable of minute analysis, can look back in his life and recall moments when his insane personality got the better of his will, and ran riot in forbidden pathways. He may not have committed an insane act; yet the thought, the impulse, the delusion was there and only outside influences kept it from breaking forth. Who fails to remember certain times in his life when he has had an almost overpowering desire to cry out in church, or to laugh on some sad or solemn occasion; or, having a razor in his hand, has had an impulse, sudden and intense, to draw it across his throat; or, being on some high place, has been seized with the desire to hurl himself downward? This shows how near indeed the healthy mind ever hovers on the borderlands of insanity.

Man stands so close to the portals of insanity that he can look through the gateway, when he takes an introspective view of his psychical being, and can see the phantoms and mental ghosts of his insane personality.

We have every reason to believe that, among civilized races, there is a vast amount of latent insanity. Taking the tables of our insane asylums, we find a thousand and one causes given as the exciting factors in the mental overthrow. Love, religion, anger, disappointment, etc., down through the long list of psychic and æsthetic emotions, until it seems as though even a breath of wind would be sufficient to destroy the mental equipoise.

Among savage and uncivilized races, insanity is of infrequent occurrence. Only when a race begins to elevate itself and take on a higher view of morality, when new rules and new laws, new customs and innovations, tending to place individuals in a state of comparison, arise, does insanity make its appearance. The untutored savage, living in a state of communism, is untroubled by the jealousies and heart-burnings of his civilized congener. He lives in the to-day and allows the to-morrow to take care of itself. Devoid of ambition, a mere animal, sensual and indolent, he cares only for the gratification of his physical desires. The mental attributes of a civilized being are, in him, wanting.

Psychos is the result of evolutionary development, and the chief reason why insanity is not as prevalent in the savage as in the civilized man, is because the brain of the savage lacks development. I do not wish to convey the idea that insanity is purely psychical in its nature. Insanity is the result of a material change in the structure of the brain produced by morbific action. The manifestations of insanity are merely the symptoms of a disease that involves the brain. The savage has less development of psychical function, consequently he is less liable to mental lesion. I mean by psychical function that portion of the brain in which psychos has its origin. Alienists consider the habits of men as being the factor in the production of insanity. Habits and heredity are undoubted factors in the production of diseased minds, and, in fact, are the chief agents. You cannot, however, expect to find a disordered function where that function is absent. Savages have paresis, apoplexy, and imbecility, seldom or never insanity. The reason is patent—they lack the psychic function, that peculiar element, whatever it may be, which raises civilized man so high above them. That this element can be developed in savages I do not for one instant deny. The ploughshare of evolutionary civilization will bring it to the surface sooner or later, and when it does insanity follows. I have only to point to the American negro to prove the truth of my proposition; even he is partially exempt, simply because his civilization is of such recent date that his brain has not yet acquired its full quota of the psychic element.

I will venture to assert, so true is the fact that insanity is the product of civilization, that, if it were not for the combating influences of social laws, assisted not a little by scientific medical aid, all North America could not contain the vast and enormous army that would constitute the civilized world’s array of lunatics.

There seems to be in the minds of men an instinctive awe of anything that appertains to the insane. In olden times a disordered mind was considered of divine or diabolic origin as it evinced good or evil tendencies. This belief lasted even until the present century. Many old women who were the victims of senile dementia and kindred ills, were accused of witchcraft and intercourse with the devil, here in the United States, not a century ago. Witches were executed in England and men burned at the stake in Spain, not two hundred years ago, for the crime of demoniacal possession. Even in this enlightened age men are accustomed to consider insanity rather from its psychical standpoint than from its physical aspect. They do not take into consideration the fact that insanity is due to a physical lesion, and that its vagaries are but the symptoms of brain disease or brain deformity. The inhabitants of the borderlands are invested with a certain shadowy mystery which separates them from the rest of mankind, and which makes them appear to us as denizens of another psychical world than ours.

In the Middle Ages, cranks, whose eccentricities took a religious turn, were considered holy. St. Simon Stylites was a very pronounced crank, and a very holy man also, because he chose to live the greater portion of his life perched on a pillar seventy feet high. St. Anthony was another holy crank who never, in all his life, washed his feet. Poor Joan of Arc was burned at the stake because she was “possessed of a false and lying devil.” She has been recently proposed for canonization by the same church that burned her, and thus, in a measure, had justice done her. I do not think, however, that this is any recompense for the terrible agony inflicted on this unfortunate victim of hystero-epilepsy.

Says Maudsley in “Responsibility in Mental Disease”: “Some of the prophets of the Old Testament presented symptoms which can hardly be interpreted as other than the effects of madness; certainly if they were not mad, they imitated very closely some of its most striking features.” Jeremiah takes a long journey to the river Euphrates and hides a linen girdle in a hole of a rock. He then returns home and in a few days makes the same journey, and finds the girdle rotten and good for nothing. Ezekiel digs a hole in the wall of his house, and through it removes his household goods, instead of through the door. Hosea marries a prostitute because he said he had been commanded by God so to do. Isaiah stripped himself naked and paraded up and down in sight of all the people.

Some of the greatest changes in the world’s history have been effected by dwellers in the borderlands. Mahomet was an epileptic, and his first vision was the result on an epileptic convulsion or seizure. The character of his visions was exactly like that of those visions which an epileptic sees and describes at the present time. Mahomet believed in his visions, and, what is more, got more than half the world to believe in them also. Gautama was a dweller in the borderlands, yet his followers now number five hundred millions.

The novel mode in which an insane man regards things may be an inspiration which reflection could never attain, and it sometimes happens that opinions which seem to the world to be the ravings of a madman, have turned out to be true. The insane man has the world against him, and though he may pose for a short time as a reformer, sooner or later lands in the asylum.

It sometimes happens that the crank will succeed in getting converts. A notable instance is Schweinfurth, or “the Christ,” as he calls himself. I am firmly convinced that this man believes in his delusions. One thing is certain, and that is, his disciples believe in him implicitly. This man is dangerous to society, inasmuch as he has caused the separation of several wives from their husbands; the wives abandoning their husbands to follow him to “Heaven,” as he calls his farm house.

The crank is, generally, a harmless individual, and is not anti-social unless his delusions take the form of homicidal impulse, pyromania, kleptomania, etc.

Homicidal impulse is the most dangerous to society of the many mental vagaries and derangements which afflict the dwellers in the borderlands. Its invasion is sudden and its impulse is, generally, overpowering. A man may be walking the streets presumably in perfect health, and yet have, all the while, a voice whispering in his ear “kill, kill.” His insane desire at length reaches its acme, and he throws aside every mental restraint and kills the first individual he may chance to meet. Again, he may desire to kill some particular individual, and will carefully and systematically arrange his plans for the successful enactment of the homicide. The murderers of Garfield and Harrison probably belong to this latter class, though in the case of Prendergast, the slayer of Mayor Harrison, this opinion may be erroneous. There is something about his photograph that leads me to believe that he is a moral imbecile, rather than an intellectual dyscrasiac.