The breasts have from the present point of view this special significance among the sexual centres that they primarily exist, not for the contact of the lover, but the contact of the child.  This is doubtless, indeed, the fundamental fact on which all the touch contacts we are here concerned with have grown up.  The sexual sensitivity of the lover’s lips to orificial contacts has been developed from the sensitivity of the infant’s lips to contact with his mother’s nipple.  It is on the ground of that evolution that we are bound to consider here the precise position of the breasts as a sexual centre.

As the great secreting organs of milk, the function of the breasts must begin immediately the child is cut off from the nutrition derived from direct contact with his mother’s blood.  It is therefore essential that the connection between the sexual organs proper, more especially the womb, and the breasts should be exceedingly intimate, so that the breasts may be in a condition to respond adequately to the demand of the child’s sucking lips at the earliest moment after birth.  As a matter of fact, this connection is very intimate, so intimate that it takes place in two totally distinct ways—­by the nervous system and by the blood.

The breasts of young girls sometimes become tender at puberty in sympathy with the evolution of the sexual organs, although the swelling of the breasts at this period is not normally a glandular process.  At the recurring periods of menstruation, again, sensations in the breasts are not uncommon.

It is not, however, until impregnation occurs that really decisive changes take place in the breasts.  “As soon as the ovum is impregnated, that is to say within a few days,” as W.D.A.  Griffith states it ("The Diagnosis of Pregnancy,” British Medical Journal, April 11, 1903), “the changes begin to occur in the breast, changes which are just as well worked out as are the changes in the uterus and the vagina, which, from the commencement of pregnancy, prepare for the labor which ought to follow nine months afterward.  These are changes in the direction of marked activity of function.  An organ which was previously quite passive, without activity of circulation and the effects of active circulation, begins to grow and continues to grow in activity and size as pregnancy progresses.”

The association between breasts and womb is so obvious that it has not escaped many savage peoples, who are often, indeed, excellent observers.  Among one primitive people at least the activity of the breast at impregnation seems to be clearly recognized.  The Sinangolo of British New Guinea, says Seligmann (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, July-December, 1902, p. 298) believe that conception takes place in the breasts; on this account they hold that coitus should never take place before the child is weaned or he might imbibe semen with the milk.