, in the view of evolution, all
others take their rise. (2) Even after the remaining senses are
differentiated, the primary sense continues to be a leading
susceptibility of the mind. The soft, warm touch, if not a
first-class influence, is at least an approach to that. The combined
power of soft contact and warmth amounts to a considerable pitch of
massive pleasure; while there may be subtle influences not reducible
to these two heads, such as we term, from not knowing anything about
them, magnetic or electric. The sort of thrill from taking a baby in
arms is something beyond mere warm touch; and it may rise to the
ecstatic height, in which case, however, there may be concurring
sensations and ideas. Between male and female the sexual appetite is
aroused. A predisposed affection through other means, makes the
contact thrilling. (3) The strong fact that cannot be explained away
is, that under tender feeling there is a craving for the embrace.
Between the sexes there is the deeper appetite; while in mere tender
emotion, not sexual, there is nothing but the sense of touch to
gratify unless we assume the occult magnetic influences. As anger is
consummated, reaches a satisfactory term, by knocking some one down,
love is completed and satisfied with an embrace. This would seem to
show that the love emotion, while fed by sights and sounds, and even
by odors, reaches its climax in touch; and, if so, it must be more
completely identified with this sensibility than with any other. In a
word, our love pleasures begin and end in sensual contact. Touch is
both the alpha and omega of affection. As the terminal and satisfying
sensation, the _ne plus ultra_, it must be a pleasure of the highest
degree." While it is the contact through the sense of touch that acts
both as the most natural and most complete expression of love between
the sexes and a powerful sexual excitant, there is a contact of the
eyes of adolescent and adult lovers,--a sort of embrace by means of
the eyes--that is as exciting to many as contact through touch.

The pleasure derived from hugging and kissing, etc., in children who
have the emotion in this first stage of its development, is not
specifically sexual except in some cases which I am inclined to
consider as precocious. Normally, there appears to be no erethism of
the sexual organs during the process of love-making. But erethism, as
we shall see in another chapter upon the analysis of the sex impulse,
is not