within about ten years it was always supposed that hysteria was enormously more frequent in women than in men. Sydenham recognised hysteria in men, especially among those of studious and sedentary habits (no doubt including what we should now call neurasthenia), but hysteria in the male had always been regarded as a rarity. Briquet, the chief authority on hysteria during the middle of the present century, found one man to twenty women. In Germany Bodenstein has found in the polyclinique of Eulen- burg and Mendel one man to ten women. But Pitres at Bordeaux finds one man to two women, and at Paris Gilles de la Tourette found that among Charcot's cases there was also one man to two women. It is no longer possible, therefore, to assert that hysteria in men is rare. At the same time there is excellent reason for believing that it is scarcely so frequent as these recent statistics would lead us to think. It is generally agreed that hysteria in men usually occurs among the poor and ill-nourished classes who frequent hospitals, while in women it occurs chiefly among the idle and well-to-do, whose numbers do not swell hospital statistics. Again, it has been found by Charcot and others that hysteria in the male is a more serious and obstinate affection, while in the female mild cases are much more usually seen; this also tends to vitiate the statistics of the frequency of hysteria according to sex, as it is only the serious cases which prominently attract medical attention. We may safely conclude that while hysteria in men is more frequent than was once supposed, it is much more common in women. Such a conclusion is in harmony with the opinions of the greatest masters in the science of morbid psychology, from Sydenham, who asserted that there are very few women (except those leading a hard and laborious life) who are entirely exempt from some trace of hysteria, down to Tonnini, in whose vigorous phrase the hysterical person is the colossal image of Google all that is most peculiarly feminine— la gigantessa delta feminilitct.
There is an interesting parallelism, and probably a real deep- lying nervous connection, between the suggestibility of women and the special liability of female birds and many mammals to be mimetic in coloration, etc. Mimicry, or suggestibility, is an adaptation to the environment, ensuring the protection of the sex that is less able to flee or to fight RELIGIOUS HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA.
There is a very intimate connection between hypnotic phenomena — understood in the broad sense in which I have here used the term — and the phenomena of religion. The part played by women as religious leaders is by no means so large as the large proportion of women in religious movements would lead us to expect, but it is considerable, and it has been most conspicuously exercised in that part of religion which covers the field of hypnotic phenomena. As " prophetesses," women, who seem to have fallen into the trance state and seen visions or heard dogmas, which they subsequently declared, have often been of the greatest service to religious leaders, and conspicuously helped to draw disciples by the charm of the supernatural. Apelles, the founder of the Apellaeans of the second century, was powerfully assisted by the prophetess Philumene. Montanus, who was himself similarly affected, was closely associated with the prophetesses Priscilla and Maxi- milla, who were subject to ecstasy, during which they had visions which seem to have influenced Tertullian, one of the greatest of the Latin Fathers. The Quintilians, led by the prophetess Quintilia, were a branch of the Montanists, and their virgins in public assembly wore white robes and exercised prophetic functions; they asserted that women are entitled to exercise all the sacerdotal and episcopal functions.
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Petersen, a visionary Millennarian of the eighteenth century, was aided by his wife, who was also a visionary, and with them was associated an inspired countess, who was also honoured with visions. It would not be difficult to multiply examples of women playing an important part in religious movements who have exhibited hypnotic phenomena in a high degree. A very large proportion of the most eminent female saints who led a conventual life were in the highest degree hysterical It will, however, be suffi- cient to refer to two religious sects which have both been founded or led by women, and which have both been intimately identified with (non-hysterical) forms of hypnotic phenomena. The Shakers were not founded by a woman, but by a man and a woman in conjunction, James Wardley, a Quaker tailor, and his wife; their most distinguished and successful leader was, however, Anne Leese, of Manchester, who transferred the sect to America, where, under her guidance and by means of her missionary zeal, it grew and flourished. The community was founded on a communistic basis, and the property was admir- ably managed; the religious characteristics of the sect, in which women always took a very prominent part, lay in their worship, in which music and singing were especially conspicuous, the ministry as ordinarily understood being entirely abolished; they held that the history of the return of the prodigal justified their adoption of music and dancing as leading parts of public worship, for it was the elder son, representing the natural man, who condemned these soul-reviving practices. Their religious exercises, we are told, con- sisted chiefly of "Shaking and trembling, singing and dancing, leaping and shouting, and prophesying and speaking with new tongues." Hypnotic phenomena, less crudely muscular in character, but not less well marked, form the chief distinguishing character- istics of the Theosophists. It is instructive to note that this is at once Dom the only modern religious Google HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA. 287 sect of any importance founded and led by women, and the only modern sect established on " magical " and esoteric doctrines and practices. It is thus of profound interest to the student of history, as it enables him to understand how "magical and esoteric sects — in which, again, women played a con- spicuous part — sprang up and flourished under eastern influence on the decay of the Roman Empire.
There is another great class of religious movements in which the various hypnotic phenomena, especially those of a contagious character, play so large a part that nearly every intellectual element disappears. Such religious movements, which are unquestionably morbid in character, are very largely and sometimes exclusively manifested in women, and they rarely possess any prominent leader. They are often saltatory in character, and are in some cases varieties of that epidemic nervous disorder called hysterical chorea. The Dancers, a religious sect of the fourteenth century, which arose at Aix-la-Chapelle and spread throughout Belgium, present an admirable example of religious hypnotic phenomena in which women played a prominent part. The Dancing Mania began immediately after the pagan midsummer orgies of St John the Baptist's Day in 1374. Men and women seemed to have lost all sell -control. Suddenly, whether in public or private, they would begin dancing, while holding each other's hands, and would continue dancing with extreme violence until they fell down exhausted; during these periods of muscular agitation they were insensible to outward impressions, and were favoured with wonderful visions. 1 The Camisards, or prophets of the Cevennes, who arose in Dauphin6 and Vivarais in the seventeenth century, and met with much success in France and England, exhibited a variety of hypnotic phenomena, in which, as usual, women were prominent adepts.
1 Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, " The Dancing Mania," Chap. i.
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These people were subject to ecstasy, and, as they con- sidered it, the inspiration of the Holy Ghost " They had strange fits," we are told, " which came upon them with tremblings and faintings, as in a swoon, which made them stretch out their arms and legs, and stagger several times before they dropped down. They struck themselves with their hands, they fell on their backs, shut their eyes, and heaved their breasts. The symptoms answer exactly to those pro- duced by inspiring nitrous oxide, and were the fact then discovered we should have been tempted to suspect imposture. They remained a while in trances, and coming out of them declared that they saw the heavens open, the angels, paradise, and hell. Those who were just on the point of receiving the spirit of prophecy dropped down, not only in the assemblies, but in the fields, and in their own houses, crying out Mercy. The least of their assemblies made up to four or five hundred, and some of them amounted to even three or four thousand. The hills rebounded with their loud cries for mercy, and with impreca- tions against the priests, the Pope, and his anti- Christian dominion; with predictions of the approach- ing fall of popery. All they said at these times was heard and received with reverence and awe." 1 This is an admirable picture of a religious orgy of the uncontrolled hypnotic activities of the human organism.
In the convulsive religious epidemic of Redruth, at the beginning of the present century, which spread with extreme rapidity over a considerable region from Helston to Camborne, and which was marked by uncontrollable movements of all parts of the body, no age or sex was exempt, but girls and women were 1 A Dictionary of All Religions, Art. "Camisars," in which references are given to Gregoire, Hist., vol. i. p. 370; Chauncey, Works, vol. iii. p. 2, etc.; Hughson, Fr. and Eng. Prophets; Lacey, Prophetic Warnings and A Brand Sttatched from the Burning; Wilson, Dissenting Churches, vol. iv. p. 77.
Google HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA. 289 the most frequent victims. The religious nervous affection of the Shetland Islands, which belongs to ahnnt the samp nerinH. was almnsf- irientiral in Google 290 MAN AND WOMAN.
possible to study all the various forms of hypnotic religious phenomena, and here indeed they may be studied in their most intense manifestations and on a very wide scale. The strong religious instincts of the people, the primitive conditions ot their life, their semi-pagan beliefs, and the suffering and oppression to which they are subjected, all tend to heighten the play of hypnotic religious emotion. During the present century a number of religious sects have been founded, or have developed, which have practised dancing, leaping, flagellation, even castration, although some of them have been at the same time of a practical and rationalistic character. In all these sects women play a very prominent part, in some the majority of the members are women, a few have been founded by women. It is not surprising that in these Russian sects women enjoy a position of freedom equal to that of the men. The sect of Christs believe that every person contains, or may contain, a portion of the divinity, and is worthy of adoration. Amid dancing and sobbing, which play a very important part in Russian mystical sects, the Holy Spirit descends. It is a wild and giddy dance which begins at mid- night, after long hours of prayers and psalm-singing and religious discussion. Then the Christs rise, both men and women remove all their garments and put on long white shirts and white cotton stockings. Candles are lighted, and after singing a monotonous chant a few begin to leap and to dance. Gradually the others join, and they beat time with their feet, the men in the direction of the sun, and the women in the opposite direction. Their movements increase in rapidity, and their sobs become more violent. Each Christ begins to revolve, the men to the right, the women to the left, with such rapidity that the face cannot be distinguished. They leap, they contort themselves, they run after each other, they flagellate each other. In the midst of mad laughter, of cries and sobs, loud shouts are heard: " It is coming! It Google HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA. 291 is coming! The Holy Spirit is coming! " Then the excitement of this strange danse macabre of shouting, half-naked, white-garmented figures — which produces a tremendous effect on the novice — begins to cul- minate. Men and women tear off their garments, go about on all fours, ride on one another's backs, and give way to the sexual erethism which had been exalted to the highest point. The Christs reject marriage, and generally practise asceticism, but at such moments they are carried beyond themselves, and they feel that the physical emotions they ex- perience are sanctified. There are a great many women among the Christs; at one of their resorts the police, in 1845, found nearly one hundred young girls. Women among them enjoy great honour, as well as equal rights with men. At their religious ceremonies some strong, beautiful, and intelligent young woman is often chosen for special adoration as the personifica- tion of divinity and the emblem of generative force; they call her the Virgin Mary, and they identify her with the Earth Goddess* She is their priestess; they prostrate themselves before her; she bears on her head a sacramental plate of raisins, and solemnly distributes them to the worshippers. Among the Skoptsy, a sect related to the Christs, the same observances and the same worship of women are carried to a still higher point; the castration or mutilation of both men and women is practised in their rites; they sometimes worship a naked young girl, cover her with kisses, and when she has reached the necessary pitch of reckless exaltation she allows them to communicate in her blood. It has sometimes been found among groups of Skoptsy that more than half the members are women. 1 Religious movements of this epidemic character find their chief adepts among persons in whom the 1 These and other semi -Christian mystical and rationalistic sects are described in the interesting work of N. Tsakni, La Russie Sectaire, Google 292 MAN AND WOMAN.
inhibiting influences of the higher intellectual centres are but in a lowly stage of development The com- paratively rare cases in which individuals of more than average mental culture are attracted in any number to a religious movement of this kind seem to belong to periods of over-strenuous intellectuality, during which a number of individuals are forced to adopt a rationalistic asceticism for which they are unfitted; at last the rationalistic fetters fall off, and the suppressed hypnotic centres explode with immense satisfaction. This is the most important key to the psychology of " conversion."
It is natural that we should find hypnotic pheno- mena most highly developed among primitive races, and the shaman, who is nearly everywhere the priest or priestess of savage races, presents the perfected type of hypnotic phenomena devoted to religious service and carried to the highest point of develop- ment.
Among the numerous religious movements of hypnotic nature among somewhat primitive races may be mentioned that exhibited by the Russian Klikuschi ("screaming women possessed"). The Klikuschi were women attacked by severe paroxysms of hysterical religious emotion, which usually lasted for a short time only, but might continue for a day or more. These women were persecuted and tortured in the Middle Ages. An allied form of hypnotic re- ligious emotion is the Ikota, which is found among the Samojed women of Siberia. It occurs almost ex- clusively in married women, and in its milder forms is characterised by listlessness, with occasional out- bursts of anger, and in its more developed forms by brief outbursts of maniacal excitement In Abyssinia, again, at the beginning of the present century, the Tigretier, as described by Nathaniel Pearce, an uneducated but reliable witness, closely resembled the mediaeval Dancing Mania, and was especially common among women, though " men are Google HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA. 293 sometimes afflicted, but not frequently." In Abyssinia to-day the women are very subject to hysteria.
One more form of hysterical religious emotion, propagated by imitation, is the Lata found among the Javanese, and in an allied form called Lattah in Malacca. It chiefly occurs among native women, both of higher and lower social rank, and is marked by paroxysmal outbursts of involuntary movement with rapid ejaculation of inarticulate sounds, corre- sponding to the " speaking with tongues" found among Christian sects. There is temporary loss of con- sciousness, but the mental powers are intact except during the paroxysm. Lata assumes many forms, but in most of them, as in the Tarantism of the Middle Ages, and indeed in nearly all hypnotic manifestations, there is an irresistible tendency to imitation, a boundless suggestibility. The case is mentioned of a woman who appeared to be quite normal, but on any one throwing off a coat in her presence she would suddenly pass into a state of frenzy, strip herself of her clothes, and conduct her- self in other indecent ways, whilst all the time she kept abusing the instigator of what she regarded as an outrage. Again, the ship's cook of one of the local steamers, a pronounced sufferer from the disease, was dandling his baby on the deck. One of the men noticing this, picked up a billet of wood, and, standing in front, commenced nursing it in the same way. Presently he began tossing the billet up to the awning, the cook imitating his motions with the baby. Suddenly the sailor opened his arms, and the billet fell to the deck; the unfortunate cook did the same, and the child, falling on the planking, was instantly killed. In other respects the subjects of Lata are mentally quite sound. 1 1 Art. "Klikuschi," " Ikota," "Lata," " Tigretier," Diet. Psych. Med. Also for Lattah, Art. in Pall Mall Gazette^ 10th July 1893. For several of these and allied hypnotic affections, occurring chiefly or exclusively in women, see Max Bartels, Medicin der Naturvolker^ pp.
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It is impossible here to deal at all adequately with the fascinating subject of religious psychology, but it will probably be sufficiently obvious that all the various forms and stages of hypnotic phenomena (as here understood) go to make up religious exaltation in its most characteristic forms. This fact is patent even to the devout historian of the Camisards, who, as we have seen, is struck by the close resemblance between the religious phenomena presented by that sect and the phenomena of anaesthesia by nitrous oxide, the lowest and least intellectual of the hypnotic stages. The general characteristic of all the various hypnotic forms is what we may express by saying that there is lessened control of the higher intellectual centres and increased activity of the more spontaneous and automatic motor and visceral centres. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the more highly co-ordinated action of the nerve centres gives way to their more inco-ordinated action, and therefore the presence of hypnotic phenomena indicates a somewhat lower degree of mental integration. 1 In catalepsy and anaesthesia there may be complete quiescence of the higher modes of action; in dreaming, ecstasy, and hypnotism proper, they are taken into comparatively uncontrolled spheres; in hallucinations they remain in the normal sphere, but are perverted; in neuras- thenia and hysteria there is merely a slightly lessened control of the higher centres; while the increased activity of the lower centres may be intertwined with a considerable degree of intellectual activity in the modes of religious exaltation.
It is not necessary here to discuss the causation of hypnotic religious phenomena. To do so would be to open up many interesting questions which are still scarcely ripe for solution. Tylor {Primitive Culture^ 3rd edit, 1891, vol. ii. pp. 128-142, and 1 "As we ascend the animal scale," as Ferrier remarks (Functions of the Brain, 1886), "the centres of which the cerehro-spinal system is composed become more and more intimately bound up and associated with each other in action."
Google HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA. 295 pp. 410-421) has briefly discussed in his usual masterly manner the evolution of what I have here called hypnotic religious phe- nomena, from the earliest savage times to the revivals of the present day. He insists on the importance of fasting in their development: " Bread and meat would have robbed the ascetic of many an angel's visit; the opening of the refectory door must many a time have closed the gates of heaven to his gaze." The importance of fasting in the evolution of visions is certainly great It must be added that sexual abstinence has played a very prominent part in producing the more typical motor phenomena. Continence is enjoined on the adepts of nearly all religions. It is only among a few sects, and at the climax of religious excitement, that the sexual emotion has been regarded as sanctified. Its repression has usually been necessary to assist in elaborating the process of religious auto-intoxication. But the final explosion of the suppressed sexual instincts is often violent. Having been, as it were, diverted into a foreign channel and their impetuosity at the same time increased, they finally break violently back into their normal channels. Anstie, an acute observer of some of the intimate details of the emo- tional life, has remarked (" Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System," Lancet, Jan. 1 ith, 1873): " I know no fact in pathology more striking and even terrifying than the way in which the phenomena of the ecstatic state — which have often been seized upon by sentimental theorisers as proofs of spiritual exaltation — may be plainly seen to bridge the gulf between the innocent fooleries of ordinary hypnotic patients and the degraded and repulsive phenomena of nymphomania and satyriasis." At the time when Anstie wrote the connection between spiritual exalta- tion and organic conditions was not so plain as it is at present, but he had clearly perceived the especial facility with which the ecstatic condition passes over into disordered sexual emotion. Since then the almost constant connection between ecstasy and sexual excitement has become fairly well recognised. (See, for instance, Conolly Norman, Art " Mania," Diet. Psych. Med.) The phenomena of the religious life generally are to a large extent based on the sexual life, and the majority of conversions (about 80 per cent.) take place during adolescence. (See a suggestive paper by A. H. Daniels, B.D., "The New Life: A Study of Regeneration," Am. Journal Psych., 1893, vol vi., No. 1; see also Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, 8th edit., It must be remembered that hypnotic phenomena are strictly physiological, although they are liable to be increased or modified to a degree that is distinctly morbid; an individual in whom the action of the Google 296 MAN AND WOMAN.
higher centres had largely abolished the stirrings of the lower hypnotic centres would be morbid to a still greater degree. Hypnotic phenomena form, with the allied vaso-motor movements, the chief physiological basis of what we more generally call "emotion." When, therefore, we conclude that women are more liable than men to present hypnotic phenomena, we have but discovered in a more definite and funda- mental manner that women are more " emotional " than men. We have now to define more precisely what is meant by the " emotionality " of women.
Google CHAPTER XIII.
THE AFFECTABILITY OF WOMEN.
WHAT IS AN EMOTION? — READIER RESPONSE OF THE VASO-MOTOR VASCULAR SYSTEM IN WOMEN — PHYSIO- LOGICAL AND PATHOLOGICAL EVIDENCE — THE HEART BLUSHING — AFFECTABILITY OF THE MUSCULAR SYSTEM — FACIAL EXPRESSION — THE IRIS — THE BLADDER SUSCEPTIBILITY TO FRIGHT — EMOTIONAL CAUSATION OF DISEASE PREDOMINATES IN WOMEN — DESTRUCTIVE TENDENCIES — "BREAKINGS OUT" — THE SOURCE OF THESE — THE CONGENITAL EXHAUSTIBILITY OF WOMEN — THE ADVANTAGES OF WOMEN'S AFFECTABILITY — ANAEMIA AND AFFECTABILITY — THE GREATER AFFECT- ABILITY OF WOMEN TO SOME EXTENT THE RESULT OF CIRCUMSTANCES, TO SOME EXTENT ORGANIC.
Women respond to stimuli, psychic or physical, more readily than men. This general statement, though it may be modified or limited in certain respects, is un- contested. By what word we may best describe this characteristic of women's nervous constitution is less clear. We may call it with perfect correctness a greater "irritability," or "plasticity," or "suggesti- bility." All these terms are legitimate, but on the whole I prefer to use an old word, approved by Laycock, 1 — sufficiently colourless to be unobjection- able, and indicating both the quick psychic and physical response to stimuli, — and to speak of the greater "affectability" of women.
1 Laycock, Nervous Diseases of Women, p. 76.
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In considering the preponderance of "hypnotic" phenomena in women — the tendency, that is, of the more primitive nervous centres to be stronger than the more recent centres, and to rise up in revolt against them — we were approaching on its most obscure side the greater emotionality of women. We are now approaching the emotionality of women from a somewhat less obscure side.
What is an emotion? We shall more easily gather the drift of the facts if we understand this at the out- set. It was formerly supposed, and is no doubt still supposed by many people, that an emotion is a purely mental phenomenon, and that anger or love may go on in the brain somewhat in the same way as an arith- metical calculation. This is not the case. It is conceivable that, if the head could be removed from the body at will, the brain when isolated could per- form a mathematical calculation; it is no longer possible to believe that it could feel anger or love, or any other emotion, save in the most remote and intellectual ised form. We all know that emotions are accompanied, in their most emphatic forms very obviously, by varying physical disturbances of the heart and blood-vessels, the viscera and muscles. It was formerly supposed that these physical changes were but the accidental consequences of the emotion. Recent advances in physiology make it more than probable that these physical changes, so far from being unessential, themselves constitute the emotion, and that in their absence no emotion is felt. An im- pression occurs in the nervous system, but until it has passed into the body and become mixed with a convulsion of blood and muscle and heart and other organs, according to the nature of the perception, it cannot return to the brain as an emotion. We know by experiments on the lower animals that all the manifestations of emotion may be called forth even in the absence of the cerebral hemispheres which are the basis of consciousness, so that it is superfluous to Google THE AFFECTABILITY OF WOMEN. 299 suppose that the emotion is created as well as registered in the brain. If it were found by the application of delicate physiological tests that a man's vascular and muscular systems were working at their usual normal tension, it could be positively affirmed that that man was not feeling emotion. No amount of self-control over the coarser expressions of emotion alters the case, for even to unscientific inspection the passion of the self-controlled man reveals itself by some quiver of muscle, some sudden pallor, some quickening of heart-beat Just as it may be said: no muscle, no motion; so it may equally be said: no muscle, no emotion.