there is an analogous state, only with a difference in the
quality of pleasurable feeling. Here the conception of martyrdom
is also apperceived without its pain, for consciousness is filled
with the pleasurably colored idea of serving God, atoning for
sins, deserving Heaven, etc., through martyrdom." This statement
cannot be said to clear up the matter entirely; but it is fairly
evident that, when a woman says that she finds pleasure in the
pain inflicted by a lover, she means that under the special
circumstances she finds pleasure in treatment which would at
other times be felt as pain, or else that the slight real pain
experienced is so quickly followed by overwhelming pleasure that
in memory the pain itself seems to have been pleasure and may
even be regarded as the symbol of pleasure.

There is a special peculiarity of physical pain, which may be
well borne in mind in considering the phenomena now before us,
for it helps to account for the tolerance with which the idea of
pain is regarded. I refer to the great ease with which physical
pain is forgotten, a fact well known to all mothers, or to all
who have been present at the birth of a child. As Professor von
Tschisch points out ("Der Schmerz," _Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie
und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane_, Bd. xxvi, ht. 1 and 2, 1901),
memory can only preserve impressions as a whole; physical pain
consists of a sensation and of a feeling. But memory cannot
easily reproduce the definite sensation of the pain, and thus the
whole memory is disintegrated and speedily forgotten. It is quite
otherwise with moral suffering, which persists in memory and has
far more influence on conduct. No one wishes to suffer moral pain
or has any pleasure even in the idea of suffering it.

It is the presence of this essential tendency which leads to a certain
apparent contradiction in a woman's emotions. On the one hand, rooted in
the maternal instinct, we find pity, tenderness, and compassion; on the
other hand, rooted in the sexual instinct, we find a delight in roughness,
violence, pain, and danger, sometimes in herself, sometimes also in
others. The one impulse craves something innocent and helpless, to cherish
and protect; the other delights in the spectacle of recklessness,
audacity, sometimes even effrontery.[79] A woman is not perfectly happy in
her lover unless he can g