iren
einer Saengerin_ (a book which is said to be, though this seems
doubtful, genuinely autobiographical) in the same sense: "A man
who falls in love with a girl is not dragged out of his poetic
sphere by the thought that his beloved must relieve certain
natural necessities every day. It seems, indeed, to him to be
just the opposite. If one loves a person one finds nothing
obscene or disgusting in the object that pleases me." The
opposite attitude is probably in extreme cases due to the
influence of a neurotic or morbidly sensitive temperament. Swift
possessed such a temperament. The possession of a similar
temperament is doubtless responsible for the little prose poem,
"L'Extase," in which Huysmans in his first book, _Le Drageloir a
Epices_, has written an attenuated version of "Strephon and
Chloe" to express the disillusionment of love; the lover lies in
a wood clasping the hand of the beloved with rapturous emotion;
"suddenly she rose, disengaged her hand, disappeared in the
bushes, and I heard as it were the rustling of rain on the
leaves." His dream has fled.

In estimating the significance of the lover's attitude in this matter, it
is important to realize the position which scatologic conceptions took in
primitive belief. At certain stages of early culture, when all the
emanations of the body are liable to possess mysterious magic properties
and become apt for sacred uses, the excretions, and especially the urine,
are found to form part of religious ritual and ceremonial function. Even
among savages the excreta are frequently regarded as disgusting, but under
the influence of these conceptions such disgust is inhibited, and those
emanations of the body which are usually least honored become religious
symbols.

Urine has been regarded as the original holy water, and many
customs which still survive in Italy and various parts of Europe,
involving the use of a fluid which must often be yellow and
sometimes salt, possibly indicate the earlier use of urine. (The
Greek water of aspersion, according to Theocritus, was mixed
with salt, as is sometimes the modern Italian holy water. J.J.
Blunt, _Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs_, p. 173.) Among
the Hottentots, as Kolbein and others have recorded, the medicine
man urinated alternately on bride and bridegroom, and a
successful young warrior was sprinkled