friedlander has wisely remarked that there is more sensuality than sexuality in love. which after all means that sex is only a small part of love. it is only after the various senses have reported to the central nervous system the presence of numerous fetishes symbolising peace and safety, that the sex union is not only possible, but extremely attractive and creates a durable bond between two human beings.
sight is naturally the most important of the senses. like hearing, it is a long distance sense, which does not require close proximity like smell, nor close contact like taste and touch.
thru association of memories, sight becomes the perfect, all embracing, descriptive sense, able to substitute for all the other senses.
a glance reveals not only the color, size and shape of an object, but its consistency, firmness or softness, its state of preservation or deterioration, its probable odor and taste, etc.
[pg 57]
sight perceives the exposed and obvious fetishes and, thru memory associations, imagines those which are neither exposed nor obvious.
visual sensations are the most powerful experienced by the organism; a slight injury to the optic nerve produces a greater shock than major injuries to any other nerve of the body. the popularity of the movies is based upon that characteristic. to the unimaginative, primitive people who relish that childish form of entertainment, visual sensations replace and suggest almost every other form of sensory gratification.
i have shown in chapter iii that the large majority of fetishes are visual, being impressions of color and size, which were produced on the child's visual nerves thru close proximity with the mother's body.
auditory sensations which enhance erotic states also hark back very obviously to infancy. the caressing tone of the lovers' voices, the well modulated words of praise which they speak to each other in a low monotonous sing-song during their embraces, the baby talk in which so many lovers indulge, remind one unavoidably of the crooned lullabies with which the loving mother created a state of peace and safety that would enable the nursling to doze off.
[pg 58]
smell. in animals the sense of smell plays probably a more important part than the sense of sight. in man the olfactory sense has become more negative and protective than positive. it enables him to avoid rather than to locate certain objects. this partial atrophy of the positive olfactory capacities is undoubtedly due to the progress of hygiene and cleanliness in human life.
the child whose mother is carefully shampooed and bathed will not consider strong odors emanating from hair or arm pits as a symbol of safety. on the contrary, they will be something foreign to him, hence suggestive of danger.
in ancient times, bodily odors were frequently mentioned as love stimulants. the homeric poems, the song of songs, the kamasutra and other hindoo erotic works, the arabian perfumed garden and even in more recent times, poems like herrick's "julia's sweat," extolled strong body odors which at the present day not only are deemed offensive but cannot be mentioned except in medical writings.
the modern bathroom has exiled olfactory allusions from literature.
odors can be, not only fetishes but very often[pg 59] powerful antifetishes. this is partly due to a repression of the child's interest in his excretions which later burst forth in the use of perfume by women, smoking by men and women. cigar smoking for instance supplies an outlet for a number of childish polymorphous perversions, to use freud's expression.
in this case as in many others, violent repugnance to odors good or bad in adulthood may be traced to a morbid craving for them in childhood.
the sense of taste is not very important in love, altho some experienced lovers detect a distinct flavor in the skin of various parts of one woman's skin, cheeks, arms, etc.
taste observed in purely nutritional activities reveals constantly its unconscious infantile origin. however completely we may have been weaned, we constantly pay a tribute of appreciation to our first food.
the exaggerated and unjustified importance we attribute to milk in the diet of adults, the way in which we designate a white complexion as "milky" or "creamy," and in which we praise many tender foods by stating that they are "like cream" or "melt in our mouth" illustrates, together with the popularity[pg 60] of breast fetishism, the influence which infantile gustatory impressions have made on all of us.
touch is probably as important as sight for physico-chemical reasons. all animals seem to enjoy the close contact of other animals of their own species. even on very warm days, puppies, kittens and young birds derive a very great comfort from being huddled together in kennel, basket or nest.
there are two reasons for that craving for contact. the safest period of our life which our automatic nerves remember is the fetal period during which the contact of the child with the womb is constant and in perfect relation to the fetus' growth.
also, contact facilitates the electrical exchanges between human beings, especially between male and female, exchanges which owing to the removal of organic inhibitions, must be singularly powerful between lovers.
holding hands. whenever conditions separate their bodies, lovers generally revert to the childish practice of holding hands, which to the child meant an assurance of safety when led by the strong parents and also facilitated electrical exchanges of distinct value to the young and old alike.
the kiss. this brings us to the consideration of[pg 61] a love manifestation in which sensations of a tactile, gustatory and olfactory character are combined: the kiss.
the kiss, curiously enough, is found both in certain animal and human races but not in all human races.
many mammals, birds and insects exchange caresses which remind one of the human kiss. "love birds" seem to spend much of their time kissing each other.
on the other hand, eastern races do not seem to relish the caress which western peoples call a kiss. in china a form of affectionate greeting corresponding to our kiss consists in rubbing one's nose against the cheek of the other person after which a deep breath is taken thru the nose with the eyes half-shut.
in some primitive races the equivalent for our "kiss me" is "smell me." in other races, the kiss is a manifestation of respect rather than a proof of love. anglo saxons on certain occasions kiss the bible. in the early christian and arab civilisations, the kiss was a ritual gesture and has remained so in certain catholic customs: kissing the pope's foot, relics, a bishop's ring, etc.
in certain races, kissing is a proof of affection but not of love. japanese mothers kiss their children[pg 62] but japanese lovers do not exchange caresses of the lips, according to lafcadio hearn.
the dark races of africa are ignorant of that caress and so are the malays, the aborigines of australia and many other primitive tribes.
the birth of the kiss. it appears that even among the kissing races, the kiss is a relatively recent development. it is rarely mentioned in greek literature. in the middle ages it was a sign of refinement, being almost unknown among the lower classes.
some analysts have come to the conclusion that the kissing habit is derived from sucking the mother's nipple.
if this was the proper explanation, all the races would naturally indulge in it.
the kiss is infinitely more complicated than that. the freudian explanation should not be discarded entirely but it does not explain everything.
the kiss has grown in importance with the restrictions placed by civilisation on sexual activities. the more primitive the races, the more promiscuous they are and the less they kiss.
the kiss seems to have become among the more repressed and advanced races a displacement up[pg 63]ward of the act of possession, a sublimation of intercourse. it is, next to sexual union, the closest contact which the male and female may attain.
kisses and electricity. if we adopt crile's theory according to which the life stream is an electric current produced by the brain and constantly discharging itself, we may realise concretely the import of the kiss.
the physical union is probably the neutralisation of two electric currents, positive and negative, altho we do not know as yet what correspondence there is between sexes and opposite electric currents. anyone familiar, however, with experiences in galvanotropism, some of which i have mentioned in chapter ii, will when reflecting upon the way in which the spermatozoon directs itself infallibly toward the egg, conclude that it is headed toward a strong electric current issuing from the woman's womb and ovaries.
the kiss is only a milder, less complete neutralisation of the currents issuing from two human beings.
if the kiss on the lips is preferred by lovers, it is because the moist mucus of the lips is a better conductor of electrical current than the skin. in very passionate kisses, the lovers' tongues play a double part, a symbolic part, representing the mother's[pg 64] nipple, and a physico-chemical part, securing a closer connection, like plug and socket in electric appliances.
in anglo-saxon fiction which does not countenance descriptions of lovers' embraces, a very passionate kiss is always symbolical of complete surrender. physiologically this symbolism is quite accurate.
the temporary exhaustion which follows a protracted kiss is often equal to that following a lovers' embrace and this can be easily understood when we remember the protracted electrical discharge which must follow the contact of the conductive surfaces of the mucus of the lips.
