ights to both sexes, the more absurd it is
to disregard the profoundness of their differences and to imagine that
these can ever be effaced.

=Flirtation.=--If we look in an English dictionary for the meaning of
the word _flirt_, we find it equivalent to coquetry. But this English
term has become fixed and modernized in another sense which has become
international, to express the old idea of a series of well-known
phenomena which must be clearly distinguished from coquetry.

Coquetry, an especially feminine attribute, is not in itself dependent
on the sexual appetite; it is an indirect irradiation, purely
psychical, and we shall speak of it later on. Flirtation, as we now
understand the term, is directly connected with the sexual appetite,
and constitutes its external impression in all the wealth of its
forms, as much in man as in woman. In a word, flirtation is a
polymorphous language which clearly expresses the sexual desires of an
individual to the one who awakens these desires, actual coitus alone
excepted.

Flirtation may be practiced in a more or less unconscious manner. It
is by itself neither a psychic attribute nor sexual appetite, for a
human being may so hide and overcome his appetites that no one remarks
them; and on the contrary, he may simulate sexual appetite without
feeling it, or at any rate behave in such a way as to excite it in his
partner. Flirtation thus consists in an activity calculated to
disclose the eroticism of the subject as well as to excite that of
others. It is needless to say that the nature of coquetry disposes to
flirtation.

Flirtation comprises all the sport of love, kisses, caresses and all
kinds of sexual excitation even to orgasm, without reaching the
consummation of coitus. All degrees may be noted; and, according to
temperament, flirtation may be limited to slight excitation of the
sexual appetite or may extend to violent and rapidly increasing
emissions. The considerable individual differences which exist in
sexual sensibility result in the same perception or the same act
having little effect on one individual, while it excites another to a
high degree. In the latter case, especially in man, flirtation may
even lead to venereal orgasm without coitus, and even without any
manipulations which resemble it. A woman of exuberant form, assuming
sensual and voluptuous attitudes, may thus provoke an ejaculation by
the slight and repeated friction of her dress against the penis of