Bell's edition,
vol. iii, p. 2) also gives a list of lost books on
love. Burton
himself dealt at length with the manifold signs of
love and its
grievous symptoms. Boissier de Sauvages, early in
the eighteenth
century, published a Latin thesis, _De Amore_,
discussing love
somewhat in the same spirit as Burton, as a psychic
disease to be
treated and cured.
The breath of Christian asceticism had passed over
love; it was
no longer, as in classic days, an art to be
cultivated, but only
a malady to be cured. The true inheritor of the
classic spirit in
this, as in many other matters, was not the
Christian world, but
the world of Islam. _The Perfumed Garden_ of the
Sheik Nefzaoui
was probably written in the city of Tunis early in
the sixteenth
century by an author who belonged to the south of
Tunis. Its
opening invocation clearly indicates that it departs
widely from
the conception of love as a disease: "Praise be to God who has
placed man's greatest pleasures in the natural parts
of woman,
and has destined the natural parts of man to afford
the greatest
enjoyments to woman." The Arabic book, _El Ktab_, or
"The Secret
Laws of Love," is a modern work, by Omer Haleby Abu Othmân, who
was born in Algiers of a Moorish mother and a
Turkish father.
For Christianity the permission to yield to the sexual impulse at all was
merely a concession to human weakness, an indulgence
only possible when it
was carefully hedged and guarded on every side. Almost from the first the
Christians began to cultivate the art of virginity, and they could not so
dislocate their point of view as to approve of the art of love. All their
passionate adoration in the sphere of sex went out
towards chastity.
Possessed by such ideals, they could only tolerate human love at all by
giving to one special form of it a religious sacramental character, and
even that sacramental halo imparted to love a quasi-
ascetic character
which precluded the idea of regarding love as an
art.[379] Love gained a
religious element but it lost a moral element, since,
outside
Christianity, the art of love is part of the foundation of sexual
morality, wherever such morality in any degree exists.
In Christendom love
in marriage was left to shift for itself as best it
might; the art of love
was a dubious art which was held to indicate a certain commerce with
immorality and even indeed to be itself immoral. That
feeling was
doubtless strengthened by the fact that Ovid was the
most conspicuous
master in literature of the art of love. His literary
reputation--far
greater than it now seems to us[380]--gave distinction to his position as
the author of the chief extant text-book of the art of love. With Humanism
and the Renaissance and the consequent realization that Christianity had
overlooked one side of life, Ovid's _Ars Amatoria_ was placed on a
pedestal it had not occupied before or since. It
represented a step
forward in civilization; it revealed love not as a mere animal instinct or
a mere pledged duty, but as a complex, humane, and
refined relationship
which demanded cultivation; "_arte regendus amor_."
Boccaccio made a wise
teacher put Ovid's _Ars Amatoria_ into the hands of the young. In an age
still oppressed by the mediæval spirit, it was a much
needed text-book,
but it possessed the fatal defect, as a text-book, of
presenting the
erotic claims of the individual as divorced from the
claims of good social
order. It never succeeded in establishing itself as a
generally accepted
manual of love, and in the eyes of many it served to
stamp the subject it
dealt with as one that lies outside the limits of good morals.
When, however, we take a wider survey, and inquire into the discipline for
life that is imparted to the young in many parts of the world, we shall
frequently find that the art of love, understood in
varying ways, is an
essential part of that discipline. Summary, though
generally adequate, as
are the educational methods of primitive peoples, they not seldom include
a training in those arts which render a woman agreeable to a man and a man
agreeable to a woman in the relationship of marriage,
and it is often more
or less dimly realized that courtship is not a mere
preliminary to
marriage, but a biologically essential part of the
marriage relationship
throughout.
Sexual initiation is carried out very thoroughly in
Azimba land,
Central Africa. H. Crawford Angus, the first
European to visit
the Azimba people, lived among them for a year, and
has described
the Chensamwali, or initiation ceremony, of girls.
"At the first
sign of menstruation in a young girl, she is taught
the mysteries
of womanhood, and is shown the different positions
for sexual
intercourse. The vagina is handled freely, and if
not previously
enlarged (which may have taken place at the harvest
festival when
a boy and girl are allowed to 'keep house' during
the day-time by
themselves, and when quasi-intercourse takes place)
it is now
enlarged by means of a horn or corn-cob, which is
inserted and
secured in place by bands of bark cloth. When all
signs [of
menstruation] have passed, a public announcement of
a dance is
given to the women in the village. At this dance no
men are
allowed to be present, and it was only with a great
deal of
trouble that I managed to witness it. The girl to be
'danced' is
led back from the bush to her mother's hut where she
is kept in
solitude to the morning of the dance. On that
morning she is
placed on the ground in a sitting position, while
the dancers
form a ring around her. Several songs are then sung
with
reference to the genital organs. The girl is then
stripped and
made to go through the mimic performance of sexual
intercourse,
and if the movements are not enacted properly, as is
often the
case when the girl is timid and bashful, one of the
older women
will take her place and show her how she is to
perform. Many
songs about the relation between men and women are
sung, and the
girl is instructed as to all her duties when she
becomes a wife.
She is also instructed that during the time of her
menstruation
she is unclean, and that during her monthly period
she must close
her vulva with a pad of fibre used for the purpose.
The object of
the dance is to inculcate to the girl the knowledge
of married
life. The girl is taught to be faithful to her
husband and to try
to bear children, and she is also taught the various
arts and
methods of making herself seductive and pleasing to
her husband,
and of thus retaining him in her power." (H.
Crawford Angus, "The
Chensamwali," _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1898, Heft 6, p.
479).
In Abyssinia, as well as on the Zanzibar coast,
according to
Stecker (quoted by Ploss-Bartels, _Das Weib_,
Section 119) young
girls are educated in buttock movements which
increase their
charm in coitus. These movements, of a rotatory
character, are
called Duk-Duk. To be ignorant of Duk-Duk is a great
disgrace to
a girl. Among the Swahili women of Zanzibar, indeed,
a complete
artistic system of hip-movements is cultivated, to
be displayed
in coitus. It prevails more especially on the coast,
and a
Swahili woman is not counted a "lady" (bibi) unless she is
acquainted with this art. From sixty to eighty young
women
practice this buttock dance together for some eight
hours a day,
laying aside all clothing, and singing the while.
The public are
not admitted. The dance, which is a kind of
imitation of coitus,
has been described by Zache ("Sitten und Gebräuche der Suaheli,"
_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1899, Heft 2-3, p.
72). The more
accomplished dancers excite general admiration.
During the latter
part of this initiation various feats are imposed,
to test the
girl's skill and self-control. For instance, she
must dance up to
a fire and remove from the midst of the fire a
vessel full of
water to the brim, without spilling it. At the end
of three
months the training is over, and the girl goes home
in festival
attire. She is now eligible for marriage. Similar
customs are
said to prevail in the Dutch East Indies and
elsewhere.
The Hebrews had erotic dances, which were doubtless
related to
the art of love in marriage, and among the Greeks,
and their
disciples the Romans, the conception of love as an
art which
needs training, skill, and cultivation, was still
extant. That
conception was crushed by Christianity which,
although it
sanctified the institution of matrimony, degraded
that sexual
love which is normally the content of marriage.
In 1176 the question was brought before a Court of
Love by a
baron and lady of Champagne, whether love is
compatible with
marriage. "No," said the baron, "I admire and respect the sweet
intimacy of married couples, but I cannot call it
love. Love
desires obstacles, mystery, stolen favors. Now
husbands and wives
boldly avow their relationship; they possess each
other without
contradiction and without reserve. It cannot then be
love that
they experience." And after mature deliberation the ladies of the
Court of Love adopted the baron's conclusions (E. de
la
Bedollière, _Histoire des Moeurs des Français_, vol.
iii, p.
334). There was undoubtedly an element of truth in
the baron's
arguments. Yet it may well be doubted whether in any
non-Christian country it would ever have been
possible to obtain
acceptance for the doctrine that love and marriage
are
incompatible. This doctrine was, however, as Ribot
points out in
his _Logique des Sentiments_, inevitable, when, as
among the
medieval nobility, marriage was merely a political
or domestic
treaty and could not, therefore, be a method of
moral elevation.
"Why is it," asked Rétif de la Bretonne, towards the end of the
eighteenth century, "that girls who have no morals are more
seductive and more loveable than honest women? It is
because,
like the Greek courtesans to whom grace and
voluptuousness were
taught, they have studied the art of pleasing. Among
the foolish
detractors of my _Contemporaines_, not one guessed
the
philosophic aim of nearly everyone of these tales,
which is to
suggest to honest women the ways of making
themselves loved. I
should like to see the institution of initiations,
such as those
of the ancients.... To-day the happiness of the
human species is
abandoned to chance; all the experience of women is
individual,
like that of animals; it is lost with those women
who, being
naturally amiable, might have taught others to
become so.
Prostitutes alone make a superficial study of it,
and the lessons
they receive are, for the most part, as harmful as
those of
respectable Greek and Roman matrons were holy and
honorable, only
tending to wantonness, to the exhaustion alike of
the purse and
of the physical faculties, while the aim of the
ancient matrons
was the union of husband and wife and their mutual
attachment
through pleasure. The Christian religion annihilated
the
Mysteries as infamous, but we may regard that
annihilation as one
of the wrongs done by Christianity to humanity, as
the work of
men with little enlightenment and bitter zeal,
dangerous puritans
who were the natural enemies of marriage" (Rétif de la Bretonne,
_Monsieur Nicolas_, reprint of 1883, vol. x, pp.
160-3). It may
be added that Dühren (Dr. Iwan Bloch) regards Rétif
as "a master
in the _Ars Amandi_," and discusses him from this point of view
in his _Rétif de la Bretonne_ (pp. 362-371).
Whether or not Christianity is to be held responsible, it cannot be
doubted that throughout Christendom there has been a
lamentable failure to
recognize the supreme importance, not only erotically
but morally, of the
art of love. Even in the great revival of sexual
enlightenment now taking
place around us there is rarely even the faintest
recognition that in
sexual enlightenment the one thing essentially necessary is a knowledge of
the art of love. For the most part, sexual instruction as at present
understood, is purely negative, a mere string of thou-
shalt-nots. If that
failure were due to the conscious and deliberate
recognition that while
the art of love must be based on physiological and
psychological
knowledge, it is far too subtle, too complex, too
personal, to be
formulated in lectures and manuals, it would be
reasonable and sound. But
it seems to rest entirely on ignorance, indifference, or worse.
Love-making is indeed, like other arts, an art that is partly natural--"an
art that nature makes"--and therefore it is a natural subject for learning
and exercising in play. Children left to themselves
tend, both playfully
and seriously, to practice love, alike on the physical and the psychic
sides.[381] But this play is on its physical side
sternly repressed by
their elders, when discovered, and on its psychic side laughed at. Among
the well-bred classes it is usually starved out at an
early age.
After puberty, if not before, there is another form in which the art of
love is largely experimented and practised, especially in England and
America, the form of flirtation. In its elementary
manifestations flirting
is entirely natural and normal; we may trace it even in animals; it is
simply the beginning of courtship, at the early stage
when courtship may
yet, if desired, be broken off. Under modern civilized conditions,
however, flirtation is often more than this. These
conditions make
marriage difficult; they make love and its engagements too serious a
matter to be entered on lightly; they make actual sexual intercourse
dangerous as well as disreputable. Flirtation adapts
itself to these
conditions. Instead of being merely the preliminary
stage of normal
courtship, it is developed into a form of sexual
gratification as complete
as due observation of the conditions already mentioned will allow. In
Germany, and especially in France where it is held in
great abhorrence,
this is the only form of flirtation known; it is
regarded as an
exportation from the United States and is denominated
"flirtage." Its
practical outcome is held to be the "demi-vierge," who knows and has
experienced the joys of sex while yet retaining her
hymen intact.
This degenerate form of flirtation, cultivated not
as a part of
courtship, but for its own sake, has been well
described by Forel
(_Die Sexuelle Frage_, pp. 97-101). He defines it as
including
"all those expressions of the sexual instinct of one individual
towards another individual which excite the other's
sexual
instinct, coitus being always excepted." In the
beginning it may
be merely a provocative look or a simple apparently
unintentional
touch or contact; and by slight gradations it may
pass on to
caresses, kisses, embraces, and even extend to
pressure or
friction of the sexual parts, sometimes leading to
orgasm. Thus,
Forel mentions, a sensuous woman by the pressure of
her garments
in dancing can produce ejaculation in her partner.
Most usually
the process is that voluptuous contact and revery
which, in
English slang, is called "spooning." From first to last there
need not be any explicit explanations, proposals, or
declarations
on either side, and neither party is committed to
any
relationship with the other beyond the period
devoted to
flirtage. In one form, however, flirtage consists
entirely in the
excitement of a conversation devoted to erotic and
indecorous
topics. Either the man or the woman may take the
active part in
flirtage, but in a woman more refinement and skill
is required to
play the active part without repelling the man or
injuring her
reputation. Indeed, much the same is true of men
also, for women,
while they often like flirting, usually prefer its
more refined
forms. There are infinite forms of flirtage, and
while as a
preliminary part of courtship, it has its normal
place and
justification, Forel concludes that "as an end in itself, and
never passing beyond itself, it is a phenomenon of
degeneration."
From the French point of view, flirtage and
flirtation generally
have been discussed by Madame Bentzon ("Family Life in America,"
_Forum_, March, 1896) who, however, fails to realize
the natural
basis of flirtation in courtship. She regards it as
a sin against
the law "Thou shalt not play with love," for it ought to have the
excuse of an irresistible passion, but she thinks it
is
comparatively inoffensive in America (though still a
deteriorating influence on the women) on account of
the
temperament, education, and habits of the people. It
must,
however, be remembered that play has a proper
relationship to all
vital activities, and that a reasonable criticism of
flirtation
is concerned rather with its normal limitations than
with its
right to exist (see the observations on the natural
basis of
coquetry and the ends it subserves in "The Evolution of Modesty"
in volume i of these _Studies_).
While flirtation in its natural form--though not in the perverted form of
"flirtage"--has sound justification, alike as a method of testing a lover
and of acquiring some small part of the art of love, it remains an
altogether inadequate preparation for love. This is
sufficiently shown by
the frequent inaptitude for the art of love, and even
for the mere
physical act of love, so frequently manifested both by men and women in
the very countries where flirtation most flourishes.
This ignorance, not merely of the art of love but even of the physical
facts of sexual love, is marked not only in women,
especially women of the
middle class, but also in men, for the civilized man, as Fritsch long ago
remarked, often knows less of the facts of the sexual
life than a
milkmaid. It shows itself differently, however, in the two sexes.
Among women sexual ignorance ranges from complete
innocence of the fact
that it involves any intimate bodily relationship at all to
misapprehensions of the most various kind; some think
that the
relationship consists in lying side by side, many that intercourse takes
place at the navel, not a few that the act occupies the whole night. It
has been necessary in a previous chapter to discuss the general evils of
sexual ignorance; it is here necessary to refer to its more special evils
as regards the relationship of marriage. Girls are
educated with the vague
idea that they will marry,--quite correctly, for the
majority of them do
marry,--but the idea that they must be educated for the career that will
naturally fall to their lot is an idea which as yet has never seemed to
occur to the teachers of girls. Their heads are crammed to stupidity with
the knowledge of facts which it is no one's concern to know, but the
supremely important training for life they are totally unable to teach.
Women are trained for nearly every avocation under the sun; for the
supreme avocation of wifehood and motherhood they are
never trained at
all!
It may be said, and with truth, that the present
incompetent training of
girls is likely to continue so long as the mothers of
girls are content to
demand nothing better. It may also be said, with even
greater truth, that
there is much that concerns the knowledge of sexual
relationships which
the mother herself may most properly impart to her
daughter. It may
further be asserted, most unanswerably, that the art of love, with which
we are here more especially concerned, can only be
learnt by actual
experience, an experience which our social traditions
make it difficult
for a virtuous girl to acquire with credit. Without here attempting to
apportion the share of blame which falls to each cause, it remains
unfortunate that a woman should so often enter marriage with the worst
possible equipment of prejudices and misapprehensions, even when she
believes, as often happens, that she knows all about it. <