§ 5. Various Pleasures. Venereal Movement

22. Special pleasures. Sensible enjoyment, according to itself, is more precisely called by the name pleasure, while the name joy is better reserved for the pleasure which follows reason and which can also be perceived concerning a sensible thing ¹.

¹ St. Thomas, Summa theol., I-II, q. 31, art. 3.

Provident God is accustomed to join subjective satisfaction to useful acts, which sweetly invites one to exercise the action.

Hence this saying received among theologians: pleasure is for the sake of operation.

There is therefore a pleasure proper to each sense: to sight, hearing, touch, taste, and carnal appetite. The former pleasures are called purely sensible, while the last is called venereal and has its proper seat in the sexual parts.

Observe, in this place, that the venereal sense does not have its seat on the surface of the skin, nor can it, any more than taste, be reduced to any form of touch. Rather, with blood flowing into the sexual organs, it passes into act in a reflex manner, as if of its own accord, after bodily or mental excitations.

Hence, when these parts have been removed, venereal pleasure can no longer be felt properly. A place nevertheless remains for its affection, its imaginative image, and pleasure.

23. Mixed pleasures. As we saw above, nos. 16-17, the individual senses, except taste, have very great power to excite venereal arousal. It thus easily happens, because of the nature of the object, or the agent's intention or moral disposition, that an object pleases insofar as it is seen, heard, touched, or smelled, and at the same time, often through the imagination or an association of ideas, begins to excite venery. A man then experiences a pleasure which can be called mixed, insofar as venereal appetite intervenes there in addition to another sense. Hence this pleasure is deservedly called sensible-carnal.

24. More general sensible pleasure. Besides that distinct cooperation of the other senses with some special sense, the wonderful concord of human nature brings it about that the whole body participates in the proper operations and pleasures of the individual senses by a certain harmonious disposition.

One might say that there is a certain diffusion of each of the senses through the rest of the body.

Hence students of physiology, besides the special sensations of the individual senses, recognize a certain general attunement to the individual sensations of the body, or a less definite and more general sensation (general somatic, visceral, and kinesthetic sensations). For with every human thought or intellectual representation there is that which in French they call an affective tone or emotional index. This affection consists of various bodily changes, whose particular form and intensity partly depend upon the nature of the thing represented. These changes are approximately the following: a more or less forceful and frequent palpitation of the heart; varying local pressure of the blood, through vasomotion; more or less ample and frequent breathing; more intense or more relaxed muscular tone; varying distribution of electrical potential throughout the body; varying affection and activity of the nerves, or differences of innervation; and so forth.

Concerning this change of the body it is useful, moreover, to note the following two things.

25. 1. This cooperation of the body can accompany a specific operation and can even, for example, if that operation has been foreseen and expected, precede it. What precedes, moreover, prepares the specific sensation.

Thus we all observe how, through hunger and a more abundant production of saliva, the satisfaction of taste is prepared. So also, for the contemplation of a beautiful spectacle or the hearing of a sweet harmony, the body disposes itself in a suitable condition. And in our matter, does not the mere hope of carnal commerce seize men, as it were, with venereal tendencies, so that they are able to do or contemplate nothing else? Indeed, it happens to not a few that, if for even a just cause, for example to care for or wash the body, they must do, indeed see or read, something unusual, they already beforehand, even against their will, impatient of delay and almost wholly affected toward the matter, feel and manifest venereal inclinations. They perhaps do not yet experience venereal pleasure, and they will remain apart from it, but they suffer a grave venereal "coenesthesia."

2. Properly spiritual love and carnal love are prepared and assisted, as though by a sympathetic companion, by a similar and related, though not strictly identical, condition and affection of the body (an analogous coenesthesia, not a strictly identical one). Thus there is a certain more general affection and attunement of the body almost common to both affections.

This physiological law of association then obtains: two affections which have a similar repercussion in the body can be excited by that repercussion itself, just as the one can also induce the repercussion of the other. Hence it is not so surprising that a man, especially a male, while fostering a spiritual, indeed a religious, affection, suffers against his will certain movements of the flesh, such as even the saints have sometimes experienced during prayer.

26. Since these things are so, this general disposition of the body, insofar as it is pleasant, gives place to a pleasure which:

a) is less defined by its object, and thus merits the general name of sensible pleasure;

b) according to the varying intention of the mind and the image depicted in the soul, must lead proximately to carnal pleasure or remain of itself apart from it. Hence, according to itself, it can be called intermediate and, according to the varying intention and thought, the same pleasure will deservedly be called sensible-carnal or sensible-spiritual;

c) is nevertheless shown, according to itself, to be more proximate and akin to carnal pleasure. Hence, unless the mind positively draws it upward with itself, of itself it rather prepares the way for sexual libido: one who deliberately adheres to it for its own sake will soon experience the flesh aroused.

Hence it happens that physicians and physiologists simply refer this general pleasure to sexual appetite. For theologians, however, this sensible pleasure is that intermediate pleasure which they sometimes seem to labor to describe or explain.

27. Let Palmieri be heard on this matter, as quoted by Ballerini ²: "Nevertheless, the distinction of sensible pleasure, which is other than venereal pleasure, into the purely sensible, the spiritual, and the sensible-carnal is not displeasing.

² Opus theol., vol. 2, no. 961.

"The first is that which the very aptitude of an object for a sense produces. The second is interior, arising from an honorable affection, for example toward one's mother, indeed even toward God, with a certain movement of the blood or spirits around the heart; to excite this, although sight and touch sometimes concur, a certain vehement thought or apprehension alone nevertheless suffices. The third is, with the same movement, determined by a less honorable affection, although not a venereal one, generally on account of the beauty or comeliness which pleases in some person; and it is accustomed to be perceived both with touch and by sight alone, and frequently by thought alone bringing the object back; this thought, although not obscene in itself, is nevertheless suited gradually to pave the way toward venereal arousal. The author, Busembaum, calls this sensuality."

In this description of his, Palmieri seems sufficiently to confuse the more general or intermediate pleasure, which, because of a connatural tendency, can be called sensible-carnal, with the special pleasure which, because it is mixed from sensible and carnal enjoyment, is also called sensible-carnal. What the "movement of blood around the heart, etc." represents can be gathered from our fuller description of coenesthesia. It is a certain notable part of that more general affective state.

Sensible-carnal pleasure is therefore of two kinds, namely, mixed and more general. In the mixed pleasure there is already carnal pleasure, but not it alone; in the other, carnal pleasure of itself stands proximately at hand.

28. Venereal pleasure is the proper pleasure of generation begun or perfected.

Venereal movement is a physical change of the body which brings about that pleasure.

We prefer this definition to the more common one, by which venereal movement is described as a pleasurable change of the exterior sexual parts. For this definition at once calls for these observations: not too much attention must be given to whether that very change is perceived as pleasurable. If anyone obtains from an imaginative representation both a change of the sexual parts and a pleasure distinct from the purely sensible, let him not doubt that he undergoes venereal movement or experiences venereal pleasure.

Conversely, however, if the proper pleasure is lacking, a simple erection of the male member is not yet to be called a movement strictly carnal or venereal. Experience, moreover, testifies that it often happens that the penis becomes erect at length because of causes disconnected from sexual appetite or related to it. A mechanical erection differs more from venereal arousal than does one which depends upon a center of the brain.

That which proceeds from a sexual image or sexual affection, however, even if it is not yet pleasurable in itself, is proximate to venereal pleasure.

Therefore, in the man, venereal movements will be the pleasurable erection of the penis and its movement, by which the emission of semen is prepared; in the woman, however, the pleasurable erection of the clitoris and contraction of the vagina.