cted on hills illumined with pansies. [I know
not if the writer recalled George Chapman's "Enamelled pansies
used at nuptials still"], and repeated on golden human flesh and
human hair. In these sacred valleys the subtle perfume of the
pansies will mingle with the divine fragrance of healthy naked
young women and men in the spring coupling. You and I shall not
see that, but we may help to make it possible." This rhapsody (an
unconscious repetition of Saint-Lambert's at Mlle. Quinault's
table in the eighteenth century) serves to illustrate the revolt
which tends to take place against the unnatural and artificial
degradation of the sexual act.

In some parts of the world it has seemed perfectly natural and
reasonable that so great and significant an act as that of coitus
should be consecrated to the divinity, and hence arose the custom
of prayer before sexual intercourse. Thus Zoroaster ordained that
a married couple should pray before coitus, and after the act
they should say together: "O, Sapondomad, I trust this seed to
thee, preserve it for me, for it is a man." In the Gorong
Archipelago it is customary also for husband and wife to pray
together before the sexual act (Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_,
Bd. i, Ch. XVII). The civilized man, however, has come to regard
his stomach as the most important of his organs, and he utters
his conventional grace, not before love, but only before food.
Even the degraded ritual vestiges of the religious recognition of
coitus are difficult to find in Europe. We may perhaps detect it
among the Spaniards, with their tenacious instinct for ritual, in
the solemn etiquette with which, in the seventeenth century, it
was customary, according to Madame d'Aulnoy, for the King to
enter the bedchamber of the Queen: "He has on his slippers, his
black mantle over his shoulder, his shield on one arm, a bottle
hanging by a cord over the other arm (this bottle is not to drink
from, but for a quite opposite purpose, which you will guess).
With all this the King must also have his great sword in one hand
and a dark lantern in the other. In this way he must enter,
alone, the Queen's chamber" (Madame d'Aulnoy, _Relation du Voyage
d'Espagne_, 1692, vol. iii, p. 221).

In discussing the art of love it is necessary to give a primary place to
the central fact of coitus,