nd enjoy domestic comfort, to realize a poetic and
chivalrous ideal in man, to gratify a general sensual need distributed
over the whole body and in no way concentrated in the sexual organs or
in the desire for coitus.

=Nature of the Sexual Appetite in Woman.=--The zone of sexual
excitation is less specially limited to the sexual organs in woman
than in man. The nipples constitute in her an entire zone and their
friction excites voluptuousness. If we consider the importance in the
life of woman, of pregnancy, suckling, and all the maternal functions,
we can understand why the mixture of her sentiments and sensations is
so different from that of man. Her smaller stature and strength,
together with her passive role in coitus, explain why she aspires to a
strong male support. This is simply a question of natural phylogenetic
adaptation. This is why a young girl sighs for a courageous, strong
and enterprising man, who is superior to her, whom she is obliged to
respect, and in whose arms she feels secure. Strength and skill in man
are the ideal of the young savage and uncultured girl, his
intellectual and moral superiority that of the young cultivated girl.

As a rule women are much more the slaves of their instincts and habits
than men. In primitive peoples, hardiness and boldness in men were
qualities which made for success. This explains why, even at the
present day, the boldest and most audacious Don Juans excite most
strongly the sexual desires of women, and succeed in turning the heads
of most young girls, in spite of their worst faults in other respects.
Nothing is more repugnant to the feminine instinct than timidity and
awkwardness in man. In our time women become more and more
enthusiastic over the intellectual superiority of man, which excites
their desire. Without being indifferent to it, simple bodily beauty in
man excites the appetite of women to a less extent. It is astonishing
to see to what point women often become enamored of old, ugly or
deformed men. We shall see later on that the normal woman is much more
particular than man in giving her love. While the normal man is
generally attracted to coitus by nearly every more-or-less young and
healthy woman, this is by no means the case in the normal woman with
regard to man. She is also much more constant than man from the sexual
point of view. It is rarely possible for her to experience sexual
desire for several men at once; her senses are nearly always attr