Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 | Page 4

Havelock Ellis
remote of all
the senses in its appeal to the sexual impulse, and on that account it is,
when it intervenes, among the first to make its influence felt.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Taste must, I believe, be excluded, for if we abstract the parts of
touch and smell, even in those abnormal sexual acts in which it may
seem to be affected, taste could scarcely have any influence. Most of
our "tasting," as Waller puts it, is done by the nose, which, in man, is in
specially close relationship, posteriorly, with the mouth. There are at
most four taste sensations--sweet, bitter, salt, and sour--if even all of
these are simple tastes. What commonly pass for taste sensations, as
shown by some experiments of G.T.W. Patrick (Psychological Review,
1898, p. 160), are the composite results of the mingling of sensations of
smell, touch, temperature, sight, and taste.

TOUCH.
I.
The Primitive Character of the Skin--Its Qualities--Touch the Earliest
Source of Sensory Pleasure--The Characteristics of Touch--As the

Alpha and Omega of Affection--The Sexual Organs a Special
Adaptation of Touch--Sexual Attraction as Originated by
Touch--Sexual Hyperæsthesia to Touch--The Sexual Associations of
Acne.
We are accustomed to regard the skin as mainly owing its existence to
the need for the protection of the delicate vessels, nerves, viscera, and
muscles underneath. Undoubtedly it performs, and by its tough and
elastic texture is well fitted to perform, this extremely important service.
But the skin is not merely a method of protection against the external
world; it is also a method of bringing us into sensitive contact with the
external world. It is thus, as the organ of touch, the seat of the most
widely diffused sense we possess, and, moreover, the sense which is
the most ancient and fundamental of all--the mother of the other senses.
It is scarcely necessary to insist that the primitive nature of the sensory
function of the skin with the derivative nature of the other senses, is a
well ascertained and demonstrable fact. The lower we descend in the
animal scale, the more varied we find the functions of the skin to be,
and if in the higher animals much of the complexity has disappeared,
that is only because the specialization of the various skin regions into
distinct organs has rendered this complexity unnecessary. Even yet,
however, in man himself the skin still retains, in a more or less latent
condition, much of its varied and primary power, and the analysis of
pathological and even normal phenomena serves to bring these old
powers into clear light.
Woods Hutchinson (Studies in Human and Comparative Pathology,
1901, Chapters VII and VIII) has admirably set forth the immense
importance of the skin, as in the first place "a tissue which is silk to the
touch, the most exquisitely beautiful surface in the universe to the eye,
and yet a wall of adamant against hostile attack. Impervious alike, by
virtue of its wonderful responsive vitality, to moisture and drought,
cold and heat, electrical changes, hostile bacteria, the most virulent of
poisons and the deadliest of gases, it is one of the real Wonders of the
World. More beautiful than velvet, softer and more pliable than silk,
more impervious than rubber, and more durable under exposure than

steel, well-nigh as resistant to electric currents as glass, it is one of the
toughest and most dangerproof substances in the three kingdoms of
nature" (although, as this author adds, we "hardly dare permit it to see
the sunlight or breathe the open air"). But it is more than this. It is, as
Woods Hutchinson expresses it, the creator of the entire body; its
embryonic infoldings form the alimentary canal, the brain, the spinal
cord, while every sense is but a specialization of its general organic
activity. It is furthermore a kind of "skin-heart," promoting the
circulation by its own energy; it is the great heat-regulating organ of the
body; it is an excretory organ only second to the kidneys, which
descend from it, and finally it still remains the seat of touch.
It may be added that the extreme beauty of the skin as a surface is very
clearly brought out by the inadequacy of the comparisons commonly
used in order to express its beauty. Snow, marble, alabaster, ivory, milk,
cream, silk, velvet, and all the other conventional similes furnish
surfaces which from any point of view are incomparably inferior to the
skin itself. (Cf. Stratz, _Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers_,
Chapter XII.)
With reference to the extraordinary vitality of the skin, emphasized by
Woods Hutchinson, it may be added that, when experimenting on the
skin with the electric current, Waller found that healthy skin showed
signs of life ten days or more after excision. It has been found also that
fragments of skin which have been preserved in sterile
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