aged to be married, it was found that in most countries
more than 50 per cent. met their conjugal partners at dances. The
smallest proportion was in Norway, with only 39 per cent., and
the highest, Germany, with 97 per cent. Intermediate are France,
83 per cent.; America, 80 per cent.; Italy, 70 per cent.; Spain,
68 per cent.; Holland, Bulgaria, and England, 65 per cent.;
Australia and Roumania, 60 per cent., etc. Of the teachers
themselves 92 per cent. met their partners at dances. (Quoted
from the _Figaro_ in Beiblatt "Sexualreform" to _Geschlecht und
Gesellschaft_, 1907, p. 175.)

In civilization, however, dancing is not only an incitement to love and a
preliminary to courtship, but it is often a substitute for the normal
gratification of the sexual instinct, procuring something of the pleasure
and relief of gratified love. In occasional abnormal cases this may be
consciously realized. Thus Sadger, who regards the joy of dancing as a
manifestation of "muscular eroticism," gives the case of a married
hysterical woman of 21, with genital anesthesia, but otherwise strongly
developed skin eroticism, who was a passionate dancer: "I often felt as
though I was giving myself to my partner in dancing," she said, "and was
actually having coitus with him. I have the feeling that in me dancing
takes the place of coitus."[42] Normally something of the same feeling is
experienced by many young women, who will expend a prodigious amount of
energy in dancing, thus procuring, not fatigue, but happiness and
relief.[43] It is significant that, after sexual relations have begun,
girls generally lose much of their ardor in dancing. Even our modern
dances, it is worthy of note, are often of sexual origin; thus, the most
typical of all, the waltz, was originally (as Schaller, quoted by Groos,
states) the close of a complicated dance which "represented the romance of
love, the seeking and the fleeing, the playful sulking and shunning, and
finally the jubilation of the wedding."[44]

Not only is movement itself a source of tumescence, but even the spectacle
of movement tends to produce the same effect. The pleasure of witnessing
movement, as represented by its stimulating effect on the muscular
system,--for states of well-being are accompanied by an increase of
power,--has been found susceptible of exact measurement by Fere. He has
shown that to watch a colored disk when in motion produced stronger
muscul