lish lady would
ever read such a work." I have, however, heard a woman of high
intellectual distinction refer to the peculiar truth and beauty
of this very passage.

In one of his latest novels, _Les Rencontres de M. de Breot_,
Henri de Regnier, one of the most notable of recent French
novelists, narrates an episode bearing on the matter before us. A
personage of the story is sitting for a moment in a dark grotto
during a night fete in a nobleman's park, when two ladies enter
and laughingly proceed to raise their garments and accomplish a
natural necessity. The man in the background, suddenly overcome
by a sexual impulse, starts forward; one lady runs away, the
other, whom he detains, offers little resistance to his advances.
To M. de Breot, whom he shortly after encounters, he exclaims,
abashed at his own actions: "Why did I not flee? But could I
imagine that the spectacle of so disgusting a function would have
any other effect than to give me a humble opinion of human
nature?" M. de Breot, however, in proceeding to reproach his
interlocutor for his inconsiderate temerity, observes: "What you
tell me, sir, does not entirely surprise me. Nature has placed
very various instincts within us, and the impulse that led you to
what you have just now done is not so peculiar as you think. One
may be a very estimable man and yet love women even in what is
lowliest in their bodies." In harmony with this passage from
Regnier's novel are the remarks of a correspondent who writes to
me of the function of urination that it "appeals sexually to most
normal individuals. My own observations and inquiries prove this.
Women themselves instinctively feel it. The secrecy surrounding
the matter lends, too, I think, a sexual interest."

The fact that scatalogic processes may in some degree exert an
attraction even in normal love has been especially emphasized by
Bloch (_Beitraege zur AEtiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil
II, pp. 222, et seq.): "The man whose intellect and aesthetic
sense has been 'clouded by the sexual impulse' sees these things
in an entirely different light from him who has not been overcome
by the intoxication of love. For him they are idealized (sit
venia verbo) since they are a part of the beloved person, and in
consequence associated with love." Bloch quotes the _Memo