Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

THE BIOLOGY OF SEXtory superiority over men. On the whole, it would appearthat, as Van de Velde and various other gynecologists nowagree, women are more affected, and more frequentlyaffected, than are men by olfactory impressions.Since there are chemical resemblances and identitieseven of odors from widely remote sources, perfumes mayhave the same sexual effects as are more primitively possessedby the body odors. It seems probable that, as hasbeen emphasized by Iwan Bloch, perfumes were primitivelyused by women, not as is sometimes the case incivilization, with the idea of disguising any possible naturalodor, but with the object of heightening and fortifyingthe natural odor. If the primitive man was inclinedto disparage a woman whose odor was slight or imperceptibleturning away from her with contempt, as thePolynesian turned away from the ladies of Sydney: "Theyhave no smell!" women would inevitably seek to supplementany natural defects in this respect, and to accentuatetheir odorous qualities, in the same way as, even in civilization,they have sought to accentuate the sexual prominencesof their bodies. In this way, we may, as Bloch suggests,explain the fact that until recent times the favoriteodors selected by women have not been the most delicatebut the strongest, the most animal, the most sexual: musk,castoreum, civet, and ambergris. The type among these iscertainly musk, which, with ambergris,is the chief memberof Linnaeus's group of Odores ambrosiaceZ; which insexual significance, Zwaardemaker remarks, ranks besidethe capryl group, and musk is that odor which is mostfrequentlyfound to resemble the odor of the humanbody.The special peculiarity of the olfactory group of sensationsin Man is that they manifest the decadence of asense which in Man's remote ancestors was a chief avenue[57]