Article II: Introduction Concerning Sexual Matter

Usefulness. A sufficiently distinct knowledge of bodily constitution and function is required, so that several moral solutions can be given and understood in their foundation.

I. Fecundation. , by which provision is made for the human race by multiplication, requires that some zoosperm or nemasperm (spermatozoid) should have penetrated the feminine ovule. This penetration occurs in the ovary or in the oviducts, that is, the uterine tube.

2. To this fecundation the genital apparatus of each sex is adapted:

a) The male organs are the twin testes or testicles, which before birth are hidden in the abdomen, but from the birth of the infant are contained in the scrotum, and in which the zoosperms are elaborated. These glands are at the same time sources of an internal secretion which is mixed with the blood, and to which are attributed the signs of virility (beard, hairs in the pubic region, masculine voice) and the force of nourishing, through the so-called "hormones," the sexual appetite. - There are besides two deferent canals (vasa deferentia), very slender, which from the testes through the abdomen and prostate flow together into the urethra as ejaculatory canals. But the secretion of the testes is led to them through the epididymis, or a canal often folded back on itself, so that, under the exterior skin, it seems to be, as it were, an interior tunic of the testes. Moreover several little canals (10-15) first bring the same secretion to the epididymis itself. They are called afferent canals or cones. - Then, there are two seminal vesicles, which, placed between the rectum and the urinary bladder, are so called because formerly they were thought to be receptacles of the nemasperms, whereas now they are considered rather as the organ of a certain secretion. This secretion, together with secretion from the end of the deferent vessel, from the prostate, and perhaps from the glands of Littré and Cowper, accompanies the flow from the testes. - Then there is the prostate, which is a gland hidden in the abdomen under the urinary bladder and the seminal vesicles, through which the ejaculatory ducts and the urethra pass. - Then the two glands of Cowper, which, situated under the prostate, also flow into the urethra.

Then there is the urethra, or urethral canal, which is the lower part of the male member and emits both sperm and urine. - Finally, there is the male member (penis, little rod, mentula, veretrum), which is constituted by two joined cavernous bodies, under which the urethra is. It is erected when it is filled with blood. The glans, very excitable, holds the extreme part of the member and is covered by the prepuce, a membrane which by no means adheres to the glans.

Under the prepuce, at the root or crown of the glans, the so-called smegma of the prepuce is gathered, which among many, when the prepuce has been drawn back, must sometimes be removed, lest it become foul-smelling or even impel to masturbation.

b) The female organs of generation are: the vulva, under which name come the exterior parts of the woman's genitals, i.e.: the large lips, which are two folds of the exterior skin, these alone being seen externally; the small lips, or nymphae, i.e. two smaller folds, situated between the large lips, where smegma of the same nature as the smegma of the prepuce, frequently needing removal, is produced; the clitoris, or very small penis without a urethra, which is an instrument of pleasure and is delightfully erected.

Then there is the vagina, of cylindrical form, always closed by the three coverings of which it consists. Its opening¹, among virgins, is regularly covered by a membrane, called the hymen, which is wont to imitate the figure of a half-moon, so also that it does not cover the whole opening. In the vagina there are glands named after Bartholin, which, in very vehement heat, emit a fluid rather similar to the fluid emitted by the man in seminal emission: this emission is feminine pollution, and was formerly thought to be the woman's semination. - Then there is the uterus or womb, which, rather similar to a small flask, is, by its lower part, which is called the neck, inserted as it were into the vagina¹, while the upper part, or body of the uterus, has a triangular form. In the middle of the neck, the interior part of which is called the tench's snout (museau de tanche), there is a small mouth by which the uterus communicates with the vagina. But the interior surface of the vagina and of the uterus is wrinkled. - Then there are the fallopian tubes or oviducts: they are two canals, nearly 10-12 centimeters long, which communicate with the uterus through the so-called uterine opening. - The ovaries, or two glands, to the right and to the left of the uterus, by which eggs are produced.

The oviducts are not constantly applied to the ovaries. But they end in a certain kind of shell or end of the tube (pavillon de la trompe), which, at the time when the mature ovules fall from the ovaries from the so-called vesicles of Graaf, is adapted to the ovaries so that it may receive the ovules which are afterward led through the tube toward the uterus. This time recurs nearly every month. When no fecundation has occurred, the ovules are emitted through the vagina together with blood dripping drop by drop: this is called the menstrual flow. It ceases during pregnancy. - Finally, the breasts or paps are destined for producing and giving milk.

¹ The opening of the vagina is placed between the urinary meatus, or the mouth which, placed under the clitoris, is destined for emitting urine, and the anus.

¹ By that insertion there are effected, on the right and left of the neck, in the vagina itself, two bends or recesses where part of the sperm can lie hidden before it penetrates the uterus.

Virginity. , or the viridity of intact flesh, i.e. of flesh immune from libidinous contact, is demonstrated by no physical indication in the male, while, in the female sex, physical virginity designates that apparent integrity of the body which consists in the preserved seal or enclosure of virginity.

Most persons, especially the more ancient, place the virginal enclosure in the hymen; nevertheless the hymen can be absent from birth; it is broken for various other causes; nor is it always torn in the first acts of copulation. Therefore others place this enclosure in a certain contraction and compression by which the parts of the opening of the vagina are constricted, until they have been dilated by carnal copulation. But neither from this side is an altogether certain sign had.

Male seed. , or sperm, contains, besides the nemasperms, fluids distilled or secreted through the other glands, so that there is obtained a liquid mixture which can flow and be ejaculated. This is complete sperm, or sperm strictly so called, in which the zoosperms swim. Besides these zoosperms, the testes contribute almost nothing to that fluid. If zoosperms are lacking, there remains, on account of the other fluids, sperm or male seed more broadly so called.

The female seed is seen to be constituted by ovules.

Intervention of the threefold life. The production and emission of sperm, the spontaneous production and falling of ovules, and the very conjunction of each element, or fecundation, are, according to themselves, functions of the vegetative life, like the chewing and assimilation of food: they occur in plants. But provident God joined sensations and delight to a function so useful and so necessary for preserving the species, by which the sensitive life, or inferior psychic life, intervenes. Then these sensible affections are perceived by higher cognition and are ruled, at least in part, by rational appetite, so that the higher psychic life with imputable action is by no means excluded. Hence venereal delight, venereal appetite, sexual instinct.

1. Venereal delight. can be described as the proper delight of an operation generative in itself, so that it is felt fully or perfectly in the operation itself, but incompletely in its beginnings. But that operation is copulation. This denotes penetration of the erect male member, with effusion of seed, at least broadly so called, into the vagina of the female, who herself is accustomed to have her own motions attracting the seed and to experience a delightful heat.

In each effusion, nemasperms are contained in an immense number, which they estimate at 250,000,000 to 200,000,000. If the man has perfectly penetrated the vagina, already in the very act of copulation many nemasperms enter the uterus. But such is their motion that they traverse the hundredth part of a meter within ten moments (minutes). Moreover the beginning of the vagina is distant from the opening of the uterus by 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 centimeters; but by 10 to 15 centimeters from the fallopian tubes, where, if they meet the female ovule, which descends by a slow motion, fecundation is wont to occur, unless it occurs in the ovaries themselves. Therefore, when all things proceed in the best way, fecundation already takes place after an hour and a half from the completed copulation.

2. Both complete and incomplete venereal delight is described materially as a delightful change of the organs proximately serving generation.

For rightly understanding this description, one must beware: a) lest you think that the organs of generation are, simultaneously and in all their extension, the seat of venereal pleasure. This seat, in the man, is the male member, especially the glans by which it is terminated; in the woman it is the clitoris, the vagina up to the uterus, and to some extent the nipples of the breasts. Wherefore they think the woman's venereal delight is greater than that of the man; b) lest you confuse the seat of pleasure with the place whence excitation can proceed. Thus, from the exciting place, they distinguish in the woman papillary, uterine, and clitoral pollution; and even in the man touches exercised on parts neighboring the sexual organs, which have a nervous affinity, can excite venery. And in more distant parts secondary centers are observed, for example the lips, where a touch of the surface can induce or increase venereal stirring. Nor is contact needed. Through the other senses also, whether immediately, or especially through the mediation of phantasy, which alone suffices, man is excited; c) lest you think that delight is so proper to those organs that you exclude or deny the participation of other parts, while not a few moderns contend that sensations are perfected in the brain itself; d) lest there be too much attention to this, that that very change of the organs itself be perceived as delightful. Let one who, from a phantastic representation, obtains at the same time both a change of the sexual parts and a delight distinct from the purely sensible, not doubt that he experiences venereal delight.

3. But the more accurate or formal definition of venereal delight is: a psychic state brought on by venereal sensation and a joined affection.

But venereal sensations are: a) an external sensation, so called from an exterior object or cause, when by the contact itself in the glans, etc., the proper titillation of the sexual organ is excited; b) kinesthetic sensations, by which the situation or motion of the sexual organs is perceived, when they arise from a strictly venereal impulse, for example from an obscene phantasm, or are directed to a strictly venereal act, copulation or emission of seed; c) organic sensations brought on by the blood with which the cavernous bodies of the penis and clitoris are filled, especially those which are joined with the emission of seed at least broadly so called.

Moreover those sensations induce an affection (impression, sentiment) of pleasantness (de bien-être), either pure, as in the complete act, or mixed with some less pleasant tension, as in an incomplete or not yet perfect act.

— In what manner the delight of the sensitive order is special it is useful to indicate more accurately. Now indeed it is special insofar as it is taken as incorporated in the sensation, and effects something one with it. But if the enjoyment of the subject is taken according to itself, the more probable opinion today holds that various sensible enjoyments (jouissances) taken as if separated from the cause do indeed vary in intensity and in unequal participation of body and soul, but are reduced to one common satisfaction generically or specifically, so that the moral specification must be derived from the cause.

In joy, or higher delight, the object not merely brings satisfaction, but, being reflexively known, estimated, and loved, enters the delight itself and changes it, so that this separation cannot be had, and joys are truly specifically diverse.

Venereal appetite. The affection of pleasantness brings about prosecutive tendencies which compose appetite. Therefore the inferior venereal appetite, spontaneously, as satiative, embraces the complete act; if it is not complete or is altogether lacking, it is spontaneously borne through sexual instinct to completing the same or to procuring it by apt actions.

When reason intervenes and complies, there is then added a formal pursuit of rest in the possessed good, or of preserving the pleasantness and increasing it artificially.

This appetite can be sound or regular, which, both in force or intensity, and in the mode in which it is excited, and in the object to which it is borne, is adapted to human nature; and it can be infected by various vices, i.e.: a) considered in its force or intensity, it can labor under anesthesia or hypesthesia, when it is none or too weak; or, on the contrary, it can rage too much through hyperesthesia, which in the man is called satyriasis, in the woman nymphomania; b) considered in its object or term, it can be borne either toward one's own body, or toward the same sex, or toward another genus, in animals; c) considered in the mode of excitation, it can be excited by things which commonly do not excite others, for example by sight or touch of an animal or of a material object, or not be excited in circumstances which commonly would be the cause of grave heat. The vices sketched under b) and c) are called by the common name, besides their proper names, paresthesias.

Sexual instinct. strictly so called is an innate propensity toward sexual acts which procure venereal delight.

Observe, therefore, that it does not incline toward generation as such, but toward copulation, which of itself denotes an order toward generation.

But in man there must also be considered sexual instinct broadly so called, which seeks the very person of the other sex on account of secondary sexual characters¹, i.e. on account of psychic and somatic qualities which render the intercourse of one sex with the other sex pleasant or agreeable. But since at the same time the whole body is present close by, this pursuit of the person remotely disposes to venereal delight. The passage from spiritual appetite to carnal appetite is rendered more difficult or easier according to the nature of the affection and of the qualities attracting.

For the affection can be one of piety, as between father and daughter, mother and son, between brothers and sisters; and then the very reverence which enters that affection is wont to restrain carnal appetite. It can be simple friendship, founded on intellectual, moral, supernatural endowments; and this, placid, tranquil, without envy, seeks bodily demonstrations of kisses and embraces less even than piety. It can be love, or an affection similar to that which is wont to join both spouses. This affection between strangers is of suspect honesty, contains a certain mutual handing over which, since it lacks a useful end, gives place to scruples; it is wont to be fostered between two only, with others jealously excluded; and it impels to frequent significations of affection, which are wont to render the mind unquiet. Founded more on typical bodily qualities, it frequently induces physiological changes in the genital organs themselves, so that a carnal appetite is mixed with the more noble one.

¹ Primary characters result from the genital apparatus itself.

Sensible delight, merely sensible. Carefully to be distinguished from venereal delight, just described, is sensible delight, whether that special delight of the exterior senses, for example the touch of a soft thing, which can also be obtained in the sexual organs, or the less defined delight which is brought by an affection depending on sexual instinct broadly so called. And when the passage to carnal commotion is easy, that delight is called sensible-carnal, and those who indulge it are said especially to favor sensuality.

Merely sensible is the delight of sight, hearing, and touch without relation to the sexual appetite.

It also happens, because love properly spiritual and carnal love are helped by a similar and allied bodily disposition and affection, i.e. by a similar coenesthesia¹, that, on account of the physiological law of association, a man, especially a male, while he fosters a spiritual, indeed a religious affection, unwillingly suffers certain motions of the flesh. According to that law of association, two affections which have a similar repercussion in the body can be excited by that very repercussion, just as also one repercussion can induce the other.

¹ Do not confuse kinesthetic sensations, by which the situation and motion of the organs are perceived, with coenesthetic sensations, or sensations common to several operations.

Extension of the sexual appetite in man. It is also proper to man that even in another person of the same sex, indeed in his own person, he finds sources of satisfaction either broadly or strictly sexual. Whence, even without any perversion or inversion of appetite, he can yield to sexual instinct broadly or strictly so called in his intercourse with persons of the same sex or alone, and can will to procure for himself sensible-carnal or strictly carnal delight. Think of the dangerous friendships of adolescents of the same sex in boarding schools, which, by the aforesaid marks of love, are distinguished from friendship properly so called.

Venereal instinct. impels to various contacts which, by new stimuli, increase carnal excitation. Nor does what is called the appetite for "contacts" have any other signification than a carnal one among brute animals. In man, on the contrary, kisses and embraces can also be commanded by a noble affection, for example of piety or friendship, or by a dangerous affection, not yet, however, carnal.

These things must be accurately distinguished, observing especially whether the propensity is moderate, quiet, content with the accustomed signs of affection, or, on the contrary, tends toward excessive and unusual demonstrations: this avidity introduces suspicion of a carnal affection.

Carnal motions or acts. which are strictly sexual now seem to have been sufficiently declared. They are in every use of venereal things as such, or in any "actuation" of the genital apparatus, which from the end of the work is destined to procreating offspring.

Therefore, besides the complete use of natural or unnatural copulation and of pollution, there are, in the man, a pleasurable, not every nervous, erection of the member and agitation of the member; in the woman, a delightful erection of the clitoris and contraction of the vagina.

Force of phantasy. By the phantasms themselves sensations can be represented and similar effects brought about as by exterior sensations.

For in the brain itself there is a center of excitation; another is had in the spinal cord; a third, in a certain part of the genital apparatus.

1. Fecundation, which is wont to occur in the ovary or oviduct, requires that some zoosperm should have penetrated the feminine ovule.

2. Zoosperms are elaborated in the testicles, which at the same time are sources of an internal secretion by which, through the so-called hormones, the sexual appetite itself is nourished; while the feminine ovule, nearly every month, from puberty to the age of about 50 years, which thence is called menopause, spontaneously falls with a flow of blood, menstruation. Complete male sperm contains besides fluids secreted through other glands, in which the zoosperms swim.

3. To the function generative in itself, or copulation, God has joined the proper delight which is called venereal, and which is materially described: the delightful change of the organs proximately serving generation; but formally it can be defined: a psychic state brought on by venereal sensation and a joined affection. It can be complete or incomplete: the latter tends toward the complete.

4. Venereal appetite denotes concupiscence of that delight; and it can be sound or regular, such as commonly is had, or labor under the vice of anesthesia or hypesthesia, hyperesthesia, and paresthesia. It can exist without or with the participation of reason.

5. Appetite is fostered by sexual instinct, which, strictly taken, is an innate propensity toward sexual acts which induce venereal delight; but, taken more broadly, it seeks the person of the other sex on account of secondary sexual characters.

6. Sensible delight is contained in every enjoyment of the sense. Merely sensible delight excludes venereal delight; sensible-carnal delight is a less defined bodily satisfaction which easily passes to carnal commotion. The voluntary pursuit of sensible delight, if it is either excessive or is borne toward the sensible-carnal, which, in unmarried persons, can always be called excessive, is called sensuality.

7. A carnal motion, or a strictly sexual act, is had in any actuation of the genital apparatus which, from the end of the work, is destined for generating offspring.

Therefore there is, besides the complete use of the faculty, in the man an erection pleasurable in itself and agitation of the member; in the woman, a delightful erection of the clitoris and contraction of the vagina.

A threefold center of venereal excitation is had finally: the brain, the spinal cord, and part of the genital apparatus.

8. Bodily integrity in the female alone is regularly demonstrated by a visible indication, i.e. either by an intact hymen or by a complication of the parts.