Friedlander has wisely remarked that there is more sensuality than sexuality in love. Which after all means that sex is only a small part of love. It is only after the various senses have reported to the central nervous system the presence of numerous fetishes symbolising peace and safety, that the sex union is not only possible, but extremely attractive and creates a durable bond between two human beings.
=Sight= is naturally the most important of the senses. Like hearing, it is a long distance sense, which does not require close proximity like smell, nor close contact like taste and touch.
Thru association of memories, sight becomes the perfect, all embracing, descriptive sense, able to substitute for all the other senses.
A glance reveals not only the color, size and shape of an object, but its consistency, firmness or softness, its state of preservation or deterioration, its probable odor and taste, etc.
Sight perceives the exposed and obvious fetishes and, thru memory associations, imagines those which are neither exposed nor obvious.
Visual sensations are the most powerful experienced by the organism; a slight injury to the optic nerve produces a greater shock than major injuries to any other nerve of the body. The popularity of the movies is based upon that characteristic. To the unimaginative, primitive people who relish that childish form of entertainment, visual sensations replace and suggest almost every other form of sensory gratification.
I have shown in Chapter III that the large majority of fetishes are visual, being impressions of color and size, which were produced on the child's visual nerves thru close proximity with the mother's body.
=Auditory Sensations= which enhance erotic states also hark back very obviously to infancy. The caressing tone of the lovers' voices, the well modulated words of praise which they speak to each other in a low monotonous sing-song during their embraces, the baby talk in which so many lovers indulge, remind one unavoidably of the crooned lullabies with which the loving mother created a state of peace and safety that would enable the nursling to doze off.
=Smell.= In animals the sense of smell plays probably a more important part than the sense of sight. In man the olfactory sense has become more negative and protective than positive. It enables him to avoid rather than to locate certain objects. This partial atrophy of the positive olfactory capacities is undoubtedly due to the progress of hygiene and cleanliness in human life.