this is regarded as an indication that the proper moment for intercourse has arrived.  Such a practice rests on physiologically sound facts whatever may be thought of it from an aesthetic standpoint.

The contrast between the normal aesthetic standpoint in this matter and the lover’s is well illustrated by the following quotations:  Dr. A.B.  Holder, in the course of his description of the American Indian bote, remarks, concerning fellatio:  “Of all the many varieties of sexual perversion, this, it seems to me, is the most debased that could be conceived of.”  On the other hand, in a communication from a writer and scholar of high intellectual distinction occurs the statement:  “I affirm that, of all sexual acts, fellatio is most an affair of imagination and sympathy.”  It must be pointed out that there is no contradiction in these two statements, and that each is justified, according as we take the point of view of the ordinary onlooker or of the impassioned lover eager to give a final proof of his or her devotion.  It must be added that from a scientific point of view we are not entitled to take either side.

Of the whole of this group of phenomena, the most typical and the most widespread example is certainly the kiss.  We have in the lips a highly sensitive frontier region between skin and mucous membrane, in many respects analogous to the vulvo-vaginal orifice, and reinforcible, moreover, by the active movements of the still more highly sensitive tongue.  Close and prolonged contact of these regions, therefore, under conditions favorable to tumescence sets up a powerful current of nervous stimulation.  After those contacts in which the sexual regions themselves take a direct part, there is certainly no such channel for directing nervous force into the sexual sphere as the kiss.  This is nowhere so well recognized as in France, where a young girl’s lips are religiously kept for her lover, to such an extent, indeed, that young girls sometimes come to believe that the whole physical side of love is comprehended in a kiss on the mouth; so highly intelligent a woman as Madam Adam has described the agony she felt as a girl when kissed on the lips by a man, owing to the conviction that she had thereby lost her virtue.  Although the lips occupy this highly important position as a secondary sexual focus in the sphere of touch, the kiss is—­unlike cunnilingus and fellatio—­confined to man and, indeed, to a large extent, to civilized man.  It is the outcome of a compound evolution which had its beginning outside the sphere of touch, and it would therefore be out of place to deal with the interesting question of its development in this place.  It will be discussed elsewhere.[18]

There is yet another orificial frontier region which is a highly important tactile sexual focus:  the nipple.  The breasts raise, indeed, several interesting questions in their intimate connection with the sexual sphere and it may be worth while to consider them at this point.