hat it is an easy
matter for the excretory functions to drown the possibilities of
love--could only have proceeded from a morbidly sensitive brain.[25]

A more than mere neutralizing influence, a positively idealizing influence
of the sexual focus on the excretory processes adjoining it, may take
place in the lover's mind without the normal variations of sexual
attraction being over-passed, and even without the creation of an
excretory fetichism.

Reflections of this attitude may be found in the poets. In the
_Song of Songs_ the lover says of his mistress, "Thy navel is
like a round goblet, wherein no mingled wine is wanting;" in his
lyric "To Dianeme," Herrick says with clear reference to the
mons veneris:--

"Show me that hill where smiling love doth sit,
Having a living fountain under it;"

and in the very numerous poems in various languages which have
more or less obscurely dealt with the rose as the emblem of the
feminine pudenda there are occasional references to the stream
which guards or presides over the rose. It may, indeed, be
recalled that even in the name _nymphae_ anatomists commonly apply
to the _labia minora_ there is generally believed to be a poetic
allusion to the Nymphs who presided over streams, since the
_labia minora_ exert an influence on the direction of the urinary
stream.

In _Wilhelm Meister_ (Part I, Chapter XV), Goethe, on the basis
of his own personal experiences, describes his hero's emotions in
the humble surroundings of Marianne's little room as compared
with the stateliness and order of his own home. "It seemed to him
when he had here to remove her stays in order to reach the
harpsichord, there to lay her skirt on the bed before he could
seat himself, when she herself with unembarrassed frankness would
make no attempt to conceal from him many natural acts which
people are accustomed to hide from others out of decency--it
seemed to him, I say, that he became bound to her by invisible
bands." We are told of Wordsworth (Findlay's _Recollections of De
Quincey_, p. 36) that he read _Wilhelm Meister_ till "he came to
the scene where the hero, in his mistress's bedroom, becomes
sentimental over her dirty towels, etc., which struck him with
such disgust that he flung the book out of his hand, would never
look at it again, and declared that surely no Eng