by the woman, who told him her husband had just died and that she and her daughter were very nervous and would be glad if he would stay the night, but that as the corpse occupied the other bedroom he would have to share their bed ("We don’t think very much of that among us,” my informant added).  He agreed, and went to bed, and when, a little later, the two women also came to bed, the girl, at her own suggestion, lay next to the youth.  Nothing happened during the night, but in the morning, when the mother went down to light the fire, the daughter immediately threw off the bedclothes, exposing her naked person, and before the youth had realized what was happening she had drawn him over on to her.  He was so utterly surprised that nothing whatever happened, but the incident made a life-long impression on him.

In this connection reference may be made to the story of the Ephesian matron in Petronius; the story of the widow, overcome by grief, who watches by her husband’s tomb, and very speedily falls into the arms of the soldier who is on guard.  This story, in very various forms, is found in China and India, and has occurred repeatedly in European literature during the last two thousand years.  The history of the wanderings of this story has been told by Grisebach (Eduard Grisebach, Die Treulose Witwe, third edition, 1877).  It is not probable, however, that all the stories of this type are actually related; in any case it would seem that their vitality is due to the fact that they have been found to show a real correspondence to life; one may note, for instance, the curious tone of personal emotion with which George Chapman treated this theme in his play, Widow’s Tears.

It may be added that, in explaining the resort to pain as an emotional stimulus, we have to take into account not only the biological and psychological considerations here brought forward, but also the abnormal physiological conditions under which stimuli usually felt as painful come specially to possess a sexually exciting influence.  The neurasthenic and neuropathic states may be regarded as conditions of more or less permanent fatigue.  It is true that under the conditions we are considering there may be an extreme sensitiveness to stimuli not usually felt as of sexual character, a kind of hyperesthesia; but hyperesthesia, it has well been said, is nothing but the beginning of anesthesia.[151] Sergeant Bertrand, the classical example of necrophily,[152] began to masturbate at the age of 9, stimulating a sexual impulse which may have been congenitally feeble by accompanying thoughts of ill-treating women.  It was not till subsequently that he began to imagine that the women were corpses.  The sadistic thoughts were only incidents in the emotional evolution, and the real object throughout was to procure strong emotion and not to inflict cruelty.  Some observations of Fere’s as to the conditions which influence the amount of muscular work accomplished