Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 by Havelock Ellis, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. Read this book online for free on HackerNoon!

All the phenomena of sexual selection, so far as they are based externally, act through these four senses.

The sexual development of puberty involves a development of hair in various regions of the body which previously were hairless.

Reference has been made to the view of Alrutz, according to which tickling is a milder degree of itching.

"Of all the many varieties of sexual perversion, this, it seems to me, is the most debased that could be conceived of."

"A man should live in dirt as in a coat of mail, so that his soul may sojourn more securely within."

Ticklishness certainly arose from a non-sexual starting-point, and may well have protective uses in the young animal.

The first more highly organized sense to arise on the diffused tactile sensitivity of the skin is, in most cases, without doubt that of smell.

Odor is conveyed by the air, he believed, in the same way as heat.

The odor of the infant is said to be of butyric acid; that of old people to resemble dry leaves.

The most highly appreciated perfumes are often made up of elements which in stronger proportion would be regarded as highly unpleasant.

"man uses perfumes to impart energy to his passion,"

Among the ordinary civilized population in Europe the sexual influences of smell play a smaller and yet not altogether negligible part.

All muscular action being stimulated by rhythm, in its simple form or in its more developed form as music, rhythm is a stimulant to work.

Vision is the main channel by which man receives his impressions. To a large extent it has slowly superseded all the other senses.

Women have no external generative organ like the phallus to play a large part in life as a sacred symbol.

Beauty is thus the chief, but it is not the sole, element in the sexual appeal of vision.