It may be argued that pain cannot give pleasure, and that when what would usually be pain is felt as pleasure it cannot be regarded as pain at all.  It must be admitted that the emotional state is often somewhat complex.  Moreover, women by no means always agree in the statement of their experience.  It is noteworthy, however, that even when the pleasurableness of pain in love is denied it is still admitted that, under some circumstances, pain, or the idea of pain, is felt as pleasurable.  I am indebted to a lady for a somewhat elaborate discussion of this subject, which I may here quote at length:  “As regards physical pain, though the idea of it is sometimes exciting, I think the reality is the reverse.  A very slight amount of pain destroys my pleasure completely.  This was the case with me for fully a month after marriage, and since.  When pain has occasionally been associated with passion, pleasure has been sensibly diminished.  I can imagine that, when there is a want of sensitiveness so that the tender kiss or caress might fail to give pleasure, more forcible methods are desired; but in that case what would be pain to a sensitive person would be only a pleasant excitement, and it could not be truly said that such obtuse persons liked pain, though they might appear to do so.  I cannot think that anyone enjoys what is pain to them, if only from the fact that it detracts and divides the attention.  This, however, is only my own idea drawn from my own negative experience.  No woman has ever told me that she would like to have pain inflicted on her.  On the other hand, the desire to inflict pain seems almost universal among men.  I have only met one man in whom I have never at any time been able to detect it.  At the same time most men shrink from putting their ideas into practice.  A friend of my husband finds his chief pleasure in imagining women hurt and ill-treated, but is too tender-hearted ever to inflict pain on them in reality, even when they are willing to submit to it.  Perhaps a woman’s readiness to submit to pain to please a man may sometimes be taken for pleasure in it.  Even when women like the idea of pain, I fancy it is only because it implies subjection to the man, from association with the fact that physical pleasure must necessarily be preceded by submission to his will.”

    In a subsequent communication this lady enlarged and perhaps
    somewhat modified her statements on this point:—­

“I don’t think that what I said to you was quite correct. Actual pain gives me no pleasure, yet the idea of pain does, if inflicted by way of discipline and for the ultimate good of the person suffering it.  This is essential.  For instance, I once read a poem in which the devil and the lost souls in hell were represented as recognizing that they could not be good except under torture, but that while suffering the purifying actions of the flames of hell they so realized the beauty