IV.

[71]

Cf.Stanley Hall and T. Smith, "Showing Off and Bashfulness,"American Journal of Psychology, June, 1903.

Summary of the Factors of Modesty—The Future of Modesty—Modesty an Essential Element of Love.

We have seen that the factors of modesty are numerous. To attempt to explain modesty by dismissing it as merely an example of psychic paralysis, ofStauung, is to elude the problem by the statement of what is little more than a truism. Modesty is a complexus of emotions with their concomitant ideas which we must unravel to comprehend.

We have found among the factors of modesty: (1) the primitive animal gesture of sexual refusal on the part of the female when she is not at that moment of her generative life at which she desires the male's advances; (2) the fear of arousing disgust, a fear primarily due to the close proximity of the sexual centre to the points of exit of those excretions which are useless and unpleasant, even in many cases to animals; (3) the fear of the magic influence of sexual phenomena, and the ceremonial and ritual practices primarily based on this fear, and ultimately passing into simple rules of decorum which are signs and guardians of modesty; (4) the development of ornament and clothing, concomitantly fostering alike the modesty which represses male sexual desire and the coquetry which seeks to allure it; (5) the conception of women as property, imparting a new and powerful sanction to an emotion already based on more natural and primitive facts.

It must always be remembered that these factors do not usually occur separately. Very often they are all of them implied in a single impulse of modesty. We unravel the cord in order to investigate its construction, but in real life the strands are more or less indistinguishably twisted together.

It may still be asked finally whether, on the whole, modesty really becomes a more prominent emotion as civilization advances. I do not think this position can be maintained. It is a great mistake, as we have seen, to suppose that in becoming extendedmodesty also becomes intensified. On the contrary, this very extension is a sign of weakness. Among savages, modesty is far more radical and invincible than among the civilized. Of the Araucanian women of Chile, Treutler has remarked that they are distinctly more modest than the Christian white population, and such observations might be indefinitely extended. It is, as we have already noted, in a new and crude civilization, eager to mark its separation from a barbarism it has yet scarcely escaped, that we find an extravagant and fantastic anxiety to extend the limits of modesty in life, and art, and literature. In older and more mature civilizations—in classical antiquity, in old Japan, in France—modesty, while still a very real influence, becomes a much less predominant and all-pervading influence. In life it becomes subservient to human use, in art to beauty, in literature to expression.

Among ourselves we may note that modesty is a much more invincible motive among the lower social classes than among the more cultivated classes. This is so even when we should expect the influence of occupation to induce familiarity. Thus I have been told of a ballet-girl who thinks it immodest to bathe in the fashion customary at the seaside, and cannot make up her mind to do so, but she appears on the stage every night in tights as a matter of course; while Fanny Kemble, in herReminiscences, tells of an actress, accustomed to appear in tights, who died a martyr to modesty rather than allow a surgeon to see her inflamed knee. Modesty is, indeed, a part of self-respect, but in the fully-developed human being self-respect itself holds in check any excessive modesty.[72]

We must remember, moreover, that there are more definite grounds for the subordination of modesty with the developmentof civilization. We have seen that the factors of modesty are many, and that most of them are based on emotions which make little urgent appeal save to races in a savage or barbarous condition. Thus, disgust, as Richet has truly pointed out, necessarily decreases as knowledge increases.[73]As we analyze and understand our experiences better, so they cause us less disgust. A rotten egg is disgusting, but the chemist feels no disgust toward sulphuretted hydrogen; while a solution of propylamin does not produce the disgusting impression of that human physical uncleanliness of which it is an odorous constituent. As disgust becomes analyzed, and as self-respect tends to increased physical purity, so the factor of disgust in modesty is minimized. The factor of ceremonial uncleanness, again, which plays so urgent a part in modesty at certain stages of culture, is to-day without influence except in so far as it survives in etiquette. In the same way the social-economic factor of modesty, based on the conception of women as property, belongs to a stage of human development which is wholly alien to an advanced civilization. Even the most fundamental impulse of all, the gesture of sexual refusal, is normally only imperative among animals and savages. Thus civilization tends to subordinate, if not to minimize, modesty, to render it a grace of life rather than a fundamental social law of life. But an essential grace of life it still remains, and whatever delicate variations it may assume we can scarcely conceive of its disappearance.

In the art of love, however, it is more than a grace; it must always be fundamental. Modesty is not indeed the last word of love, but it is the necessary foundation for all love's most exquisite audacities, the foundation which alone gives worth and sweetness to what Sénancour calls its "delicious impudence."[74]Without modesty we could not have, nor rightly value at its true worth, that bold and pure candor which is at once the final revelation of love and the seal of its sincerity.

Even Hohenemser—who argues that for the perfect man there could be no shame, because shame rests on an inner conflict in one's own personality, and "the perfect man knows no inner conflict"—believes that, since humanity is imperfect, modesty possesses a high and, indeed, symptomatic value, for "its presence shows that according to the measure of a man's ideal personality, his valuations are established."Dugas goes further, and asserts that the ideals of modesty develop with human development, and forever take on new and finer forms. "There is," he declares, "a very close relationship between naturalness, or sincerity, and modesty, for in love, naturalness is the ideal attained, and modesty is only the fear of coming short of that ideal. Naturalness is the sign and the test of perfect love. It is the sign of it, for, when love can show itself natural and true, one may conclude that it is purified of its unavowable imperfections or defects, of its alloy of wretched and petty passions, its grossness, its chimerical notions, that it has become strong and healthy and vigorous. It is the ordeal of it, for to show itself natural, to be always true, without shrinking, it must have all the lovable qualities, and have them without seeking, as a second nature. What we call 'natural,' is indeed really acquired; it is the gift of a physical and moral evolution which it is precisely the object of modesty to keep. Modesty is the feeling of the true, that is to say, of the healthy, in love; it long exists as a vision, not yet attained; vague, yet sufficiently clear for all that deviates from it to be repelled as offensive and painful. At first, a remote and seemingly inaccessible ideal, as it comes nearer it grows human and individual, and emerges from the region of dream, ceasing not to be loved as ideal, even when it is possessed as real."At first sight, it seems paradoxical to define modesty as an aspiration towards truth in love; it seems, on the contrary, to be an altogether factitious feeling. But to simplify the problem, we have to suppose modesty reduced to its normal functions, disengaged from its superstitions, its variegated customs and prejudices, the true modesty of simple and healthy natures, as far removed from prudery as from immodesty. And what we term the natural, or the true in love, is the singular mingling of two forms of imaginations, wrongly supposed to be incompatible: ideal aspiration and the sense for the realities of life. Thus defined, modesty not only repudiates that cold and dissolving criticism which deprives love of all poetry, and prepares the way for a brutal realism; it also excludes that light and detached imagination which floats above love, the mere idealism of heroic sentiments, which cherishes poetic illusions, and passes, without seeing it, the love that is real and alive. True modesty implies a love not addressed to the heroes of vain romances, but to living people, with their feet on the earth. But on the other hand, modesty is the respectof love; if it is not shocked by its physical necessities, if it accepts physiological and psychological conditions, it also maintains the ideal of those moral proprieties outside of which, for all of us, love cannot be enjoyed. When love is really felt, and not vainly imagined, modesty is the requirement of an ideal of dignity, conceived as the very condition of that love. Separate modesty from love, that is, from love which is not floating in the air, but crystallized around a real person, and its psychological reality, its poignant and tragic character, disappears." (Dugas, "La Pudeur,"Revue Philosophique, Nov., 1903.) So conceived, modesty becomes a virtue, almost identical with the Romanmodestia.

Dugas goes further, and asserts that the ideals of modesty develop with human development, and forever take on new and finer forms. "There is," he declares, "a very close relationship between naturalness, or sincerity, and modesty, for in love, naturalness is the ideal attained, and modesty is only the fear of coming short of that ideal. Naturalness is the sign and the test of perfect love. It is the sign of it, for, when love can show itself natural and true, one may conclude that it is purified of its unavowable imperfections or defects, of its alloy of wretched and petty passions, its grossness, its chimerical notions, that it has become strong and healthy and vigorous. It is the ordeal of it, for to show itself natural, to be always true, without shrinking, it must have all the lovable qualities, and have them without seeking, as a second nature. What we call 'natural,' is indeed really acquired; it is the gift of a physical and moral evolution which it is precisely the object of modesty to keep. Modesty is the feeling of the true, that is to say, of the healthy, in love; it long exists as a vision, not yet attained; vague, yet sufficiently clear for all that deviates from it to be repelled as offensive and painful. At first, a remote and seemingly inaccessible ideal, as it comes nearer it grows human and individual, and emerges from the region of dream, ceasing not to be loved as ideal, even when it is possessed as real.

"At first sight, it seems paradoxical to define modesty as an aspiration towards truth in love; it seems, on the contrary, to be an altogether factitious feeling. But to simplify the problem, we have to suppose modesty reduced to its normal functions, disengaged from its superstitions, its variegated customs and prejudices, the true modesty of simple and healthy natures, as far removed from prudery as from immodesty. And what we term the natural, or the true in love, is the singular mingling of two forms of imaginations, wrongly supposed to be incompatible: ideal aspiration and the sense for the realities of life. Thus defined, modesty not only repudiates that cold and dissolving criticism which deprives love of all poetry, and prepares the way for a brutal realism; it also excludes that light and detached imagination which floats above love, the mere idealism of heroic sentiments, which cherishes poetic illusions, and passes, without seeing it, the love that is real and alive. True modesty implies a love not addressed to the heroes of vain romances, but to living people, with their feet on the earth. But on the other hand, modesty is the respectof love; if it is not shocked by its physical necessities, if it accepts physiological and psychological conditions, it also maintains the ideal of those moral proprieties outside of which, for all of us, love cannot be enjoyed. When love is really felt, and not vainly imagined, modesty is the requirement of an ideal of dignity, conceived as the very condition of that love. Separate modesty from love, that is, from love which is not floating in the air, but crystallized around a real person, and its psychological reality, its poignant and tragic character, disappears." (Dugas, "La Pudeur,"Revue Philosophique, Nov., 1903.) So conceived, modesty becomes a virtue, almost identical with the Romanmodestia.

[72]

Freud remarks that one may often hear, concerning elderly ladies, that in their youth in the country, they suffered, almost to collapse, from hæmorrhages from the genital passage, because they were too modest to seek medical advice and examination; he adds that it is extremely rare to find such an attitude among our young women to-day. (S. Freud,Zur Neurosenlehre, 1906, p. 182.) It would be easy to find evidence of the disappearance of misplaced signs of modesty formerly prevalent, although this mark of increasing civilization has not always penetrated to our laws and regulations.

[73]

"Disgust," he remarks, "is a sort of synthesis which attaches to the total form of objects, and which must diminish and disappear as scientific analysis separates into parts what, as a whole, is so repugnant."

[74]

Sénancour,De l'Amour, 1834, vol. i, p. 316. He remarks that a useless and false reserve is due to stupidity rather than to modesty.

The Various Physiological and Psychological Rhythms—Menstruation—The Alleged Influence of the Moon—Frequent Suppression of Menstruation among Primitive Races—Mittelschmerz—Possible Tendency to a Future Intermenstrual Cycle—Menstruation among Animals—Menstruating Monkeys and Apes—What is Menstruation—Its Primary Cause Still Obscure—The Relation of Menstruation to Ovulation—The Occasional Absence of Menstruation in Health—The Relation of Menstruation to "Heat"—The Prohibition of Intercourse during Menstruation—The Predominance of Sexual Excitement at and around the Menstrual Period—Its Absence during the Period Frequently Apparent only.

Throughout the vegetable and animal worlds the sexual functions are periodic. From the usually annual period of flowering in plants, with its play of sperm-cell and germ-cell and consequent seed-production, through the varying sexual energies of animals, up to the monthly effervescence of the generative organism in woman, seeking not without the shedding of blood for the gratification of its reproductive function, from first to last we find unfailing evidence of the periodicity of sex. At first the sun, and then, as some have thought, the moon, have marked throughout a rhythmic impress on the phenomena of sex. To understand these phenomena we have not only to recognize the bare existence of that periodic fact, but to realize its implications.

Rhythm, it is scarcely necessary to remark, is far from characterizing sexual activity alone. It is the character of all biological activity, alike on the physical and the psychic sides. All the organs of the body appear to be in a perpetual process of rhythmic contraction and expansion. The heart is rhythmic, so is the respiration. The spleen is rhythmic, so also the bladder. The uterus constantly undergoes regular rhythmic contractions at brief intervals. The vascular system, down to the smallest capillaries, is acted on by three series of vibrations, and everyseparate fragment of muscular tissue possesses rhythmic contractility. Growth itself is rhythmic, and, as Malling-Hansen and subsequent observers have found, follows a regular annual course as well as a larger cycle. On the psychic sides attention is rhythmic. We are always irresistibly compelled to impart a rhythm to every succession of sounds, however uniform and monotonous. A familiar example of this is the rhythm we can seldom refrain from hearing in the puffing of an engine. A series of experiments, by Bolton, on thirty subjects showed that the clicks of an electric telephone connected in an induction-apparatus nearly always fell into rhythmic groups, usually of two or four, rarely of three or five, the rhythmic perception being accompanied by a strong impulse to make corresponding muscular movements.[75]

It is, however, with the influence—to some extent real, to some extent, perhaps, only apparent—of cosmic rhythm that we are here concerned. The general tendency, physical and psychic, of nervous action to fall into rhythm is merely interesting from the present point of view as showing a biological predisposition to accept any periodicity that is habitually imposed upon the organism.[76]Menstruation has always been associated with the lunar revolutions.[77]Darwin, without specifically mentioning menstruation, has suggested that the explanation of the allied cycle of gestation in mammals, as well as incubation in birds, may be found in the condition under which ascidians live at high and low water in consequence of the phenomena of tidal change.[78]It must, however, be remembered that the ascidianorigin of the vertebrates has since been contested from many sides, and, even if we admit that at all events some such allied conditions in the early history of vertebrates and their ancestors tended to impress a lunar cycle on the race, it must still be remembered that the monthly periodicity of menstruation only becomes well marked in the human species.[79]Bearing in mind the influence exerted on both the habits and the emotions even of animals by the brightness of moonlight nights, it is perhaps not extravagant to suppose that, on organisms already ancestrally predisposed to the influence of rhythm in general and of cosmic rhythm in particular, the periodically recurring full moon, not merely by its stimulation of the nervous system, but possibly by the special opportunities which it gave for the exercise of the sexual functions, served to implant a lunar rhythm on menstruation. How important such a factor may be we have evidence in the fact that the daily life of even the most civilized peoples is still regulated by a weekly cycle which is apparently a segment of the cosmic lunar cycle.

Mantegazza has suggested that the sexual period became established with relation to the lunar period because moonlight nights were favorable to courting,[80]and Nelson remarks that in his experience young and robust persons are subject to recurrent periods of wakefulness at night which they attribute to the action of the full moon. One may perhaps refer also to the tendency of bright moonlight to stir the emotions of the young,especially at puberty, a tendency which in neurotic persons may become almost morbid.[81]

It is interesting to point out that, the farther back we are able to trace the beginnings of culture, the more important we find the part played by the moon. Next to the alteration of day and night, the moon's changes are the most conspicuous and startling phenomena of Nature; they first suggest a basis for reckoning time; they are of the greatest use in primitive agriculture; and everywhere the moon is held to have vast influence on the whole of organic life. Hahn has suggested that the reason why mythological systems do not usually present the moon in the supreme position which we should expect, is that its immense importance is so ancient a fact that it tends, with mythological development, to become overlaid by other elements.[82]According to Seler, Quetzalcouatl and Tezeatlipoca, the two most considerable figures in the Mexican pantheon, are to be regarded mainly as complementary forms of the moon divinity, and the moon was the chief Mexican measurer of time.[83]Even in Babylonia, where the sun was most specially revered, at the earliest period the moon ranked higher, being gradually superseded by the worship of the sun.[84]Although such considerations as these will by no means take us as far back as the earliest appearance of menstruation, they may serve to indicate that the phases of the moon probably played a large part in the earliest evolution of man. With that statement we must at present rest content.

It is possible that the monthly character of menstruation, while representing a general tendency of the human race, always and everywhere prevalent, may be modified in the future. It isa noteworthy fact that among many primitive races menstruation only occurs at long intervals. Thus among Eskimo women menstruation follows the peculiar cosmic conditions to which the people are subjected; Cook, the ethnologist of the Peary North Greenland expedition, found that menstruation only began after the age of nineteen, and that it was usually suppressed during the winter months, when there is no sun, only about one in ten women continuing to menstruate during this period.[85]It was stated by Velpeau that Lapland and Greenland women usually only menstruate every three months, or even only two or three times during the year. On the Faroe Islands it is said that menstruation is frequently absent. Among the Samoyeds, Mantegazza mentions that menstruation is so slight that some travelers have denied its existence. Azara noted among the Guaranis of Paraguay that menstruation was not only slight in amount, but the periods were separated by long intervals. Among the Indians in North America, again, menstruation appears to be scanty. Thus, Holder, speaking of his experience with the Crow Indians of Montana, says: "I am quite sure that full-blood Indians in this latitude do not menstruate so freely as white women, not usually exceeding three days."[86]Among the naked women of Tierra del Fuego, it is said that there is often no physical sign of the menses for six months at a time. These observations are noteworthy, though they clearly indicate, on the whole, that primitiveness in race is a very powerless factor without a cold climate. On the other hand, again, there is some reason to suppose that in Europe there is a latent tendency in some women for the menstrual cycle to split up further into two cycles, by the appearance of a latent minor climax in the middle of the monthly interval. I allude to the phenomenon usually calledMittelschmerz, middle period, or intermenstrual pain.

Since the investigations of Goodman, Stephenson, Van Ott, Reinl, Jacobi, and others, it has been generally recognized that menstruation is a continuous process, the flow being merely the climax of a menstrual cycle, a physiological wave which is in constant flux or reflux. This cycle manifests itself in all a woman's activities, in metabolism, respiration, temperature, etc., as well as on the nervous and psychic side. The healthier the woman is, the less conscious is the cyclic return of her life, but the cycle may be traced (as Hegar has found) even before puberty takes place, while Salerni has found that even in amenorrhœa the menstrual cycle still manifests itself in the temperature and respiration. (Rivista Sperimentale di Freniatria, XXX, fasc. 2-3.)For a summary of the phenomena of the menstrual cycle, see Havelock Ellis,Man and Woman, fourth ed., revised and enlarged, Ch. XI; "The Functional Periodicity of Women."Cf.Keller,Archives Générales de Médecine, May, 1897; Hegar,Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1901, Heft 2 and 3; Helen MacMurchy,Lancet, Oct. 5. 1901; A. E. Giles,Transactions Obstetrical Society London, vol. xxxix, p. 115, etc.Mittelschmerzis a condition of pain occurring about the middle of the intermenstrual period, either alone or accompanied by a slight sanguineous discharge, or, more frequently, a non-sanguineous discharge. (In a case described by Van Voornveld, the manifestation was confined to a regularly occurring rise of temperature.) The phenomenon varies, but seems usually to occur about the fourteenth day, and to last two or three days. Laycock, in 1840 (Nervous Diseases of Women, p. 46), gave instances of women with an intermenstrual period. Depaul and Guéniot (Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales, Art., "Menstruation," p. 694) speak of intermenstrual symptoms, and even actual flow, as occurring in women who are in a perfect state of health, and constituting genuine "règles surnuméraries." The condition is, however, said to have been first fully described by Valleix; then, in 18725 by Sir William Priestley; and subsequently by Fehling, Fasbender, Sorel, Halliday Croom, Findley, Addinsell, and others. (See, for instance, "Mittelschmerz," by J. Halliday Croom,Transactions of Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, vol. xxi, 1896. Also, Krieger,Menstruation, pp. 68-69.) Fliess (Die Beziehungen zwischen Nase und weiblichen Geschlechts-Organen, p. 118) goes so far as to assert that an intermenstrual period of menstrual symptoms—which he termsNebenmenstruation—is "a phenomenon well known to most healthy women." Observations are at present too few to allow any definite conclusions, and in some of the cases so far recorded a pathological condition of the sexual organs has been found to exist. Rosner, of Cracow, however, found that only in one case out of twelve was there any disease present (La Gynécologie, June, 1905), and Storer, who has met with twentycases, insists on the remarkable and definite regularity of the manifestations, wholly unlike those of neuralgia (Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, April 19, 1900). There is no agreement as to the cause ofMittelschmerz. Addinsell attributed it to disease of the Fallopian tubes. This, however, is denied by such competent authorities as Cullingworth and Bland Sutton. Others, like Priestley, and subsequently Marsh (American Journal of Obstetrics, July, 1897), have sought to find the explanation in the occurrence of ovulation. This theory is, however, unsupported by facts, and eventually rests on the exploded belief that ovulation is the cause of menstruation. Rosner, following Richelet, vaguely attributes it to the diffused hyperæmia which is generally present. Van de Velde also attributes it to an abnormal fall of vascular tone, causing passive congestion of the pelvic viscera. Others again, like Armand Routh and MacLean, in the course of an interesting discussion onMittelschmerzat the Obstetric Society of London, on the second day of March, 1898, believe that we may trace here a double menstruation, and would explain the phenomenon by assuming that in certain cases there is an intermenstrual as well as a menstrual cycle. The question is not yet ripe for settlement, though it is fully evident that, looking broadly at the phenomena of rut and menstruation, the main basis of their increasing frequency as we rise toward civilized man is increase of nutrition, heat and sunlight being factors of nutrition. When dealing with civilized man, however, we are probably concerned not merely with general nutrition, but with the nervous direction of that nutrition.

For a summary of the phenomena of the menstrual cycle, see Havelock Ellis,Man and Woman, fourth ed., revised and enlarged, Ch. XI; "The Functional Periodicity of Women."Cf.Keller,Archives Générales de Médecine, May, 1897; Hegar,Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1901, Heft 2 and 3; Helen MacMurchy,Lancet, Oct. 5. 1901; A. E. Giles,Transactions Obstetrical Society London, vol. xxxix, p. 115, etc.

Mittelschmerzis a condition of pain occurring about the middle of the intermenstrual period, either alone or accompanied by a slight sanguineous discharge, or, more frequently, a non-sanguineous discharge. (In a case described by Van Voornveld, the manifestation was confined to a regularly occurring rise of temperature.) The phenomenon varies, but seems usually to occur about the fourteenth day, and to last two or three days. Laycock, in 1840 (Nervous Diseases of Women, p. 46), gave instances of women with an intermenstrual period. Depaul and Guéniot (Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales, Art., "Menstruation," p. 694) speak of intermenstrual symptoms, and even actual flow, as occurring in women who are in a perfect state of health, and constituting genuine "règles surnuméraries." The condition is, however, said to have been first fully described by Valleix; then, in 18725 by Sir William Priestley; and subsequently by Fehling, Fasbender, Sorel, Halliday Croom, Findley, Addinsell, and others. (See, for instance, "Mittelschmerz," by J. Halliday Croom,Transactions of Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, vol. xxi, 1896. Also, Krieger,Menstruation, pp. 68-69.) Fliess (Die Beziehungen zwischen Nase und weiblichen Geschlechts-Organen, p. 118) goes so far as to assert that an intermenstrual period of menstrual symptoms—which he termsNebenmenstruation—is "a phenomenon well known to most healthy women." Observations are at present too few to allow any definite conclusions, and in some of the cases so far recorded a pathological condition of the sexual organs has been found to exist. Rosner, of Cracow, however, found that only in one case out of twelve was there any disease present (La Gynécologie, June, 1905), and Storer, who has met with twentycases, insists on the remarkable and definite regularity of the manifestations, wholly unlike those of neuralgia (Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, April 19, 1900). There is no agreement as to the cause ofMittelschmerz. Addinsell attributed it to disease of the Fallopian tubes. This, however, is denied by such competent authorities as Cullingworth and Bland Sutton. Others, like Priestley, and subsequently Marsh (American Journal of Obstetrics, July, 1897), have sought to find the explanation in the occurrence of ovulation. This theory is, however, unsupported by facts, and eventually rests on the exploded belief that ovulation is the cause of menstruation. Rosner, following Richelet, vaguely attributes it to the diffused hyperæmia which is generally present. Van de Velde also attributes it to an abnormal fall of vascular tone, causing passive congestion of the pelvic viscera. Others again, like Armand Routh and MacLean, in the course of an interesting discussion onMittelschmerzat the Obstetric Society of London, on the second day of March, 1898, believe that we may trace here a double menstruation, and would explain the phenomenon by assuming that in certain cases there is an intermenstrual as well as a menstrual cycle. The question is not yet ripe for settlement, though it is fully evident that, looking broadly at the phenomena of rut and menstruation, the main basis of their increasing frequency as we rise toward civilized man is increase of nutrition, heat and sunlight being factors of nutrition. When dealing with civilized man, however, we are probably concerned not merely with general nutrition, but with the nervous direction of that nutrition.

At this stage it is natural to inquire what the corresponding phenomena are among animals. Unfortunately, imperfect as is our comprehension of the human phenomena, our knowledge of the corresponding phenomena among animals is much more fragmentary and incomplete. Among most animals menstruation does not exist, being replaced by what is known as heat, or œstrus, which usually occurs once or twice a year, in spring and in autumn, sometimes affecting the male as well as the female.[87]There is, however, a great deal of progression in the upward march of the phenomena, as we approach our own andallied zoölogical series. Heat in domesticated cows usually occurs every three weeks. The female hippopotamus in the Zoölogical Gardens has been observed to exhibit monthly sexual excitement, with swelling and secretion from the vulva. Progression is not only toward greater frequency with higher evolution or with increased domestication, but there is also a change in the character of the flow. As Wiltshire,[88]in his remarkable lectures on the "Comparative Physiology of Menstruation," asserted as a law, the more highly evolved the animal, the more sanguineous the catamenial flow.

It is not until we reach the monkeys that this character of the flow becomes well marked. Monthly sanguineous discharges have been observed among many monkeys. In the seventeenth century various observers in many parts of the world—Bohnius, Peyer, Helbigius, Van der Wiel, and others—noted menstruation in monkeys.[89]Buffon observed it among various monkeys as well as in the orang-utan. J. G. St. Hilaire and Cuvier, many years ago, declared that menstruation exists among a variety of monkeys and lower apes. Rengger described a vaginal discharge in a species of cebus in Paraguay, while Raciborski observed in the Jardin des Plantes that the menstrual hæmorrhage in guenons was so abundant that the floor of the cage was covered by it to a considerable extent; the same variety of monkey was observed at Surinam, by Hill, a surgeon in the Dutch army, who noted an abundant sanguineous flow occurring at every new moon, and lasting about three days, the animal at this time also showing signs of sexual excitement.[90]

The macaque and the baboon appear to be the non-human animals, in which menstruation has been most carefully observed. In the former, besides the flow, Bland Sutton remarks that "all the naked or pale-colored parts of the body, such as the face, neck, and ischial regions, assume a lively pink color; in some cases, it is a vivid red."[91]The flow is slight, but the coloring lasts several days, and in warm weather the labia are much swollen.

Heape[92]has most fully and carefully described menstruation in monkeys. He found at Calcutta that theMacacus cynomolgusmenstruated regularly on the 20th of December, 20th of January, and about the 20th of February. TheCynocephalus porcariaand theSemnopithecus entellusboth menstruated each month for about four days. In theMacaci rhesusandcynomolgusat menstruation "the nipples and vulva become swollen and deeply congested, and the skin of the buttocks swollen, tense, and of a brilliant-red or even purple color. The abdominal wall also, for a short space upward, and the inside of the thighs, sometimes as far down as the heel, and the under surface of the tail for half its length or more, are all colored a vivid red, while the skin of the face, especially about the eyes, is flushed or blotched with red." In late gestation the coloring is still more vivid. Something similar is to be seen in the males also.

Distant, who kept a female baboon for some time, has recorded the dates of menstruation during a year. He found that nine periods occurred during the year. The average length between the periods was nearly six weeks, but they occurred more frequently in the late autumn and the winter than in the summer.[93]

It is an interesting fact, Heape noted, that, notwithstanding menstruation, the seasonal influence, or rut, still persisted in the monkeys he investigated.

In the anthropoid apes, Hartmann remarks that several observers have recorded periodic menstruation in the chimpanzee, with flushing and enlargement of the external parts, and protrusion of the external lips, which are not usually visible, while there is often excessive enlargement and reddening of these parts and of the posterior callosities during sexual excitement. Very little, however, appears to be definitely known regarding any form of menstruation in the higher apes. M. Deniker, who has made a special study of the anthropoid apes, informs me that he has so far been unable to make definite observations regarding the existence of menstruation. Moll remarks that he received information regarding such a phenomenon in the orang-utan. A pair of orang-utans was kept in the Berlin Zoölogical Gardens some years ago, and the female was stated to have at intervals a menstrual flow resembling that of women, and during this period to refrain from sexual congress, which was otherwise usually exercised at regular intervals, at least every two or three days; Moll adds, however, that, while his informant is a reliable man, the length of time that has elapsed may have led him to make mistakes in details. Keith, in a paper read before the Zoölogical Society of London, has described menstruation in a chimpanzee; it occurred every twenty-third or twenty-fourth day, and lasted for three days; the discharge was profuse, and first appeared in about the ninth or tenth year.[94]

What is menstruation? It is easy to describe it, by its obvious symptoms, as a monthly discharge of blood from the uterus, but nearly as much as that was known in the infancy of the world. When we seek to probe more intimately into the nature of menstruation we are still baffled, not merely as regards its cause, but even as regards its precise mechanism. "The primary cause of menstruation remains unexplained"; "the cause of menstruation remains as obscure as ever"; so conclude two of the most thorough and cautious investigators into this subject.[95]It is, however, widely accepted that the main cause ofmenstruation is a rhythmic contraction of the uterus,—the result of a disappointed preparation for impregnation,—a kind of miniature childbirth. This seems to be the most reasonable view of menstruation;i.e., as an abortion of a decidua. Burdach (according to Beard) was the first who described menstruation as an abortive parturition. "The hypothesis," Marshall and Jolly conclude, "that the entire pro-œstrous process is of the nature of a preparation for the lodgment of the ovum is in accordance with the facts."[96]Fortunately, since we are here primarily concerned with its psychological aspects, the precise biological cause and physiological nature of menstruation do not greatly concern us.

There is, however, one point which of late years has been definitely determined, and which should not be passed without mention: the relation of menstruation to ovulation. It was once supposed that the maturation of an ovule in the ovaries was the necessary accompaniment, and even cause, of menstruation. We now know that ovulation proceeds throughout the whole of life, even before birth, and during gestation,[97]and that removal of the ovaries by no means necessarily involves a cessation of menstruation. It has been shown that regular and even excessive menstruation may take place in the congenital absence of a trace of ovaries or Fallopian tubes.[98]On the other hand, a rudimentary state of the uterus, and a complete absence of menstruation, may exist with well-developed ovaries andnormal ovulation.[99]We must regard the uterus as to some extent an independent organ, and menstruation as a process which arose, no doubt, with the object, teleologically speaking, of cooperating more effectively with ovulation, but has become largely independent.[100]

It is sometimes stated that menstruation may be entirely absent in perfect health. Few cases of this condition have, however, been recorded with the detail necessary to prove the assertion. One such case was investigated by Dr. H. W. Mitchell, and described in a paper read to the New York County Medical Society, February 22, 1892 (to be found inMedical Reprints, June, 1892). The subject was a young, unmarried woman, 24 years of age. She was born in Ireland, and, until her emigration, lived quietly at home with her parents. Being then twenty years of age, she left home and came to New York. Up to that time no signs of menstruation had appeared, and she had never heard that such a function existed. Soon after her arrival in New York, she obtained a situation as a waiting-maid, and it was noticed, after a time, that she was not unwell at each month. Friends filled her ears with wild stories about the dreadful effects likely to follow the absence of menstruation. This worried her greatly, and as a consequence she became pale and anæmic, with loss of flesh, appetite, and sleep, and a long train of imaginary nervous symptoms. She presented herself for treatment, and insisted upon a uterine examination. This revealed nopathological condition of her uterus. She was assured that she would not die, or become insane, nor a chronic invalid. In consequence she soon forgot that she differed in any way from other girls. A course of chalybeate tonics, generous diet, and proper care of her general health, soon restored her to her normal condition. After close observation for several years, she submitted to a thorough examination, although entirely free from any abnormal symptoms. The examination revealed the following physical condition: Weight, 105 pounds (her weight before leaving Ireland was 130); girth of chest, twenty-nine and a half inches; girth of abdomen, twenty-five inches; girth of pelvis, thirty-four and a half inches; girth of thigh, upper third, twenty inches; heart healthy, sounds and rhythm perfectly normal; pulse, 76; lungs healthy; respiratory murmur clear and distinct over every part; respiration, easy and twenty per minute; the mammæ are well developed, firm, and round; nipples, small, no areola; her skin is soft, smooth, and healthy; figure erect, plump, and symmetrical; her bowels are regular; kidneys, healthy. She has a good appetite, sleeps well, and in no particular shows any sign of ill health. The uterine examination reveals a short vagina, and a small, round cervix uteri, rather less in size than the average, and projecting very slightly into the vaginal canal. Depth of uterus from os to fundus, two and a quarter inches, is very nearly normal. No external sign of abnormal ovaries. She is a well-developed, healthy young woman, performing all her physiological functions naturally and regularly, except the single function of menstruation. No vicarious menstruation takes the place of the natural function, though she has been watched very closely during the past two years, nor the least periodical excitement. It is added that, though the clitoris is normal, the mons veneris is almost destitute of hair, and the labia rather undeveloped, while, "as far as is known," sexual instincts and desire are entirely absent. These latter facts, I may add, would seem to suggest that, in spite of the health of the subject, there is yet some concealed lack of development of the sexual system, of congenital character. In a case recorded by Plant (Centralblatt für Gynäkologie, No. 9, 1896, summarized in theBritish Medical Journal, April 4, 1896), in which the internal sexual organs were almost wholly undeveloped, and menstruation absent, the labia were similarly undeveloped, and the pubic hair scanty, while the axillary hair was wholly absent, though that of the head was long and strong.

We may now regard as purely academic the discussion formerly carried on as to whether menstruation is to be regarded as analogous to heat in female animals. For many centuries at least the resemblance has been sufficiently obvious. Raciborskiand Pouchet, who first established the regular periodicity of ovulation in mammals, identified heat and menstruation.[101]During the past century there was, notwithstanding, an occasional tendency to deny any real connection. No satisfactory grounds for this denial have, however, been brought forward. Lawson Tait, indeed, and more recently Beard, have stated that menstruation cannot be the period of heat, because women have a disinclination to the approach of the male at that time.[102]But, as we shall see later, this statement is unfounded. An argument which might, indeed, be brought forward is the very remarkable fact that, while in animals the period of heat is the only period for sexual intercourse, among all human races, from the very lowest, the period of menstruation is the one period during which sexual intercourse is strictly prohibited, sometimes under severe penalties, even life itself. This, however, is a social, not a physiological, fact.

Ploss and Bartels call attention to the curious contrast, in this respect, between heat and menstruation. The same authors also mention that in the Middle Ages, however, preachers found it necessary to warn their hearers against the sin of intercourse during the menstrual period. It may be added that Aquinas and many other early theologians held, not only that such intercourse was a deadly sin, but that it engendered leprous and monstrous children. Some later theologians, however, like Sanchez, argued that the Mosaic enactments (such as Leviticus, Ch. XX, v. 18) no longer hold good. Modern theologians—in part influenced by the tolerant traditions of Liguori, and, in part, like Debreyne (Moechialogie, pp. 275et seq.) informed by medical science—no longer prohibit intercourse during menstruation, or regard it as only a venial sin.

We have here a remarkable, but not an isolated, example of the tendency of the human mind in its development to rebel against the claims of primitive nature. The whole of religion is a similar remolding of nature, a repression of natural impulses,an effort to turn them into new channels. Prohibition of intercourse during menstruation is a fundamental element of savage ritual, an element which is universal merely because the conditions which caused it are universal, and because—as is now beginning to be generally recognized—the causes of human psychic evolution are everywhere the same. A strictly analogous phenomenon, in the sexual sphere itself, is the opposed attitude in barbarism and civilization toward the sexual organs. Under barbaric conditions and among savages, when no magico-religious ideas intervene, the sexual organs are beautiful and pleasurable objects. Under modern conditions this is not so. This difference of attitude is reflected in sculpture. In savage and barbaric carvings of human beings, the sexual organs of both sexes are often enormously exaggerated. This is true of the archaic European figures on which Salomon Reinach has thrown so much light, but in modern sculpture, from the time when it reached its perfection in Greece onward, the sexual regions in both men and women are systematically minimized.[103]

With advancing culture—as again we shall see later—there is a conflict of claims, and certain considerations are regarded as "higher" and more potent than merely "natural" claims. Nakedness is more natural than clothing, and on many grounds more desirable under the average circumstances of life, yet, everywhere, under the stress of what are regarded as higher considerations, there is a tendency for all races to add more and more to the burden of clothes. In the same way it happens that the tendency of the female to sexual intercourse during menstruation[104]has everywhere been overlaid by the ideas of a culturewhich has insisted on regarding menstruation as a supernatural phenomenon which, for the protection of everybody, must be strictly tabooed.[105]This tendency is reinforced, and in high civilization replaced, by the claims of an æsthetic regard for concealment and reserve during this period. Such facts are significant for the early history of culture, but they must not blind us to the real analogy between heat and menstruation, an analogy or even identity which may be said to be accepted now by most careful investigators.[106]

If it is, perhaps, somewhat excessive to declare, with Johnstone, that "woman is the only animal in which rut is omnipresent," we must admit that the two groups of phenomena merge into or replace each other, that their object is identical, that they involve similar psychic conditions. Here, also, we see a striking example of the way in which women preserve a primitive phenomenon which earlier in the zoölogical series was common to both sexes, but which man has now lost. Heat and menstruation, with whatever difference of detail, are practically the same phenomenon. We cannot understand menstruation unless we bear this in mind.

On the psychic side the chief normal and primitive characteristic of the menstrual state is the more predominant presence of the sexual impulse. There are other mental and emotional signs of irritability and instability which tend to slightly impair complete mental integrity, and to render, in some unbalanced individuals explosions of anger or depression, in rarer cases crime, more common;[107]but the heightening of the sexual impulse, languor, shyness, and caprice are the more human manifestations of an emotional state which in some of the lower female animals during heat may produce a state of fury.

The actual period of the menstrual flow, at all events the first two or three days, does not, among European women, usually appear to show any heightening of sexual emotion.[108]This heighteningoccurs usually a few days before, and especially during, the latter part of the flow, and immediately after it ceases.[109]I have, however, convinced myself by inquiry that this absence of sexual feeling during the height of the flow is, in large part, apparent only. No doubt, the onset of the flow, often producing a general depression of vitality, may tend directly to depress the emotions, which are heightened by the general emotional state and local congestion of the days immediately preceding; but among some women, at all events, who are normal and in good health, I find that the period of menstruation itself is covered by the period of the climax of sexual feeling. Thus, a married lady writes: "My feelings are always very strong, not only just before and after, but during the period; very unfortunately, as, of course, they cannot then be gratified"; while a refined girl of 19, living a chaste life, without either coitus or masturbation, which she has never practiced, habitually feels very strong sexual excitement about the time of menstruation, and more especially during the period; this desire torments her life, prevents her from sleeping at these times, and she looks upon it as a kind of illness.[110]I could quote many other similar and equally emphatic statements, and the fact that so cardinal a relationship of the sexual life of women should be ignored or denied by most writers on this matter, is a curious proof of the prevailing ignorance.[111]

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