We meet with another group of erotic symbolisms—­alike symbolisms of object and of act—­in connection with the two functions adjoining the anatomical sexual focus:  the urinary and alvine excretory functions.  These are sometimes termed the scatalogical group, with the two subdivisions of urolagnia and Coprolagnia.[24] Inter faeces et urinam nascimur is an ancient text which has served the ascetic preachers of old for many discourses on the littleness of man and the meanness of that reproductive power which plays so large a part in man’s life.  “The stupid bungle of Nature,” a correspondent writes, “whereby the generative organs serve as a means of relieving the bladder, is doubtless responsible for much of the disgust which those organs excite in some minds.”

At the same time, it is necessary to point out, such reflex influence may act not in one direction only, but also in the reverse direction.  From the standpoint of ascetic contemplation eager to belittle humanity, the excretory centers may cast dishonor upon the genital center which they adjoin.  From the more ecstatic standpoint of the impassioned lover, eager to magnify the charm of the woman he worships, it is not impossible for the excretory centers to take on some charm from the irradiating center of sex which they enclose.

Even normally such a process is traceable.  The normal lover may not idealize the excretory functions of his mistress, but the fact that he finds no repulsion in the most intimate contacts and feels no disgust at the proximity of the excretory orifices or the existence of their functions, indicates that the idealization of love has exerted at all events a neutralizing influence; indeed, the presence of an acute sensibility to the disturbing influence of this proximity of the excretory orifices and their functions must be considered abnormal; Swift’s “Strephon and Chloe”—­with the conviction underlying it that 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;”