got her with child.  It is only under a comparatively high stage of civilization that the kiss has been emphasized and developed in the art of love.  Thus the Arabic author of the Perfumed Garden, a work revealing the existence of a high degree of social refinement, insists on the great importance of the kiss, especially if applied to the inner part of the mouth, and he quotes a proverb that “A moist kiss is better than a hasty coitus.”  Such kisses, as well as on the face generally, and all over the body, are frequently referred to by Hindu, Latin, and more modern erotic writers as among the most efficacious methods of arousing love.[208]

A reason which may have stood in the way of the development of the kiss in a sexual direction has probably been the fact that in the near East the kiss was largely monopolized for sacred uses, so that its erotic potentialities were not easily perceived.  Among the early Arabians the gods were worshiped by a kiss.[209] This was the usual way of greeting the house gods on entering or leaving.[210] In Rome the kiss was a sign of reverence and respect far more than a method of sexual excitation.[211] Among the early Christians it had an all but sacramental significance.  It retains its ancient and serious meaning in many usages of the Western and still more the Eastern Churches; the relics of saints, the foot of the pope, the hands of bishops, are kissed, just as the ancient Greeks kissed the images of the gods.  Among ourselves we still have a legally recognized example of the sacredness of the kiss in the form of taking an oath by kissing the Testament.[212]

So far we have been concerned mainly with the tactile kiss, which is sometimes supposed to have arisen in remote times to the east of the Mediterranean—­where the vassal kissed his suzerain and where the kiss of love was known, as we learn from the Songs of Songs, to the Hebrews—­and has now conquered nearly the whole of Europe.  But over a much larger part of the world and even in one corner of Europe (Lapland, as well as among the Russian Yakuts) a different kind of salutation rules, the olfactory kiss.  This varies in form in different regions and sometimes simulates a tactile kiss, but, as it exists in a typical form in China, where it has been carefully studied by d’Enjoy, it may be said to be made up of three phases:  (1) the nose is applied to the cheek of the beloved person; (2) there is a long nasal inspiration accompanied by lowering of the eyelids; (3) there is a slight smacking of the lips without the application of the mouth to the embraced cheek.  The whole process, d’Enjoy considers, is founded on sexual desire and the desire for food, smell being the sense employed in both fields.  In the form described by d’Enjoy, we have the Mongolian variety of the olfactory kiss.  The Chinese regard the European kiss as odious, suggesting voracious cannibals, and yellow mothers in the French colonies still frighten children by threatening to