much for the idea.  As I have never suffered pain under a combination of all these conditions, I have no right to say that I should or should not experience pleasure from its infliction in reality.”

Another lady writes:  “I quite agree that the idea of pain may be pleasurable, but must be associated with something to be gained by it.  My experience is that it [coitus] does often hurt for a few moments, but that passes and the rest is easy; so that the little hurt is nothing terrible, but all the same annoying if only for the sake of a few minutes’ pleasure, which is not long enough.  I do not know how my experience compares with other women’s, but I feel sure that in my case the time needed is longer than usual, and the longer the better, always, with me.  As to liking pain—­no, I do not really like it, although I can tolerate pain very well, of any kind; but I like to feel force and strength; this is usual, I think, women being—­or supposed to be—­passive in love.  I have not found that ’pain at once kills pleasure.’”

Again, another lady briefly states that, for her, pain has a mental fascination, and that such pain as she has had she has liked, but that, if it had been any stronger, pleasure would have been destroyed.

The evidence thus seems to point, with various shades of gradation, to the conclusion that the idea or even the reality of pain in sexual emotion is welcomed by women, provided that this element of pain is of small amount and subordinate to the pleasure which is to follow it.  Unless coitus is fundamentally pleasure the element of pain must necessarily be unmitigated pain, and a craving for pain unassociated with a greater satisfaction to follow it cannot be regarded as normal.

In this connection I may refer to a suggestive chapter on “The Enjoyment of Pain” in Hirn’s Origins of Art.  “If we take into account,” says Hirn, “the powerful stimulating effect which is produced by acute pain, we may easily understand why people submit to momentary unpleasantness for the sake of enjoying the subsequent excitement.  This motive leads to the deliberate creation, not only of pain-sensations, but also of emotions in which pain enters as an element.  The violent activity which is involved in the reaction against fear, and still more in that against anger, affords us a sensation of pleasurable excitement which is well worth the cost of the passing unpleasantness.  It is, moreover, notorious that some persons have developed a peculiar art of making the initial pain of anger so transient that they can enjoy the active elements in it with almost undivided delight.  Such an accomplishment is far more difficult in the case of sorrow....  The creation of pain-sensations may be explained as a desperate device for enhancing the intensity of the emotional state.”

The relation of pain and pleasure to emotion has been thoroughly discussed, I may add,