lready educated in
vice.

I shall say no more concerning eroticism, which really exists in many
women, especially in those who are already experienced in sexual
matters. On the other hand there are women who deceive their husbands
and allow themselves to be seduced by any Don Juan, even when they
have never had the least sexual appetite, or felt a single venereal
orgasm. They allow themselves to be dragged in the mud and lose their
reputation, their fortune and their family; they even let their
seducer trample them under foot; they become defamed and treated as
women without character, without honor and without any notion of duty.
They are simply poor feeble creatures incapable of resisting
masculine proposals. With good psychological training they would often
become better women, active, devoted and full of life. It seems hardly
credible, but it is true, that one sometimes finds in this category
women who are highly gifted. It is then said that they are wanting in
moral sense, but this is not always correct. In other respects they
may be faithful to their duty, devoted, sometimes even energetic and
heroic; but they submit to masculine influence to such a degree that
they cannot conceive how to resist it. They find it quite natural to
give way to it and their mind does not understand that the complete
abandonment of their body to the man they love should not necessarily
follow immediately after the abandonment of their heart, or even after
the first kiss. It is impossible for them to make distinctions or to
trace limits.

=Idealism in Woman.=--The cases I have just described are extreme,
although very common; they give the note of a general phenomenon of
feminine love in its exaltation. It is needless to say that reasonable
women of high character behave themselves in quite another manner,
however profound their love. Nevertheless the trait which we have just
described is nearly always found at the bottom of all true love in
woman, however much it may be veiled, dissimulated or conquered.

It is not always audacity or heroic deeds like those of the bold
cavaliers of former days which excite love in woman. The external
qualities of man, such as beauty and elegance, etc., also play a part,
although their effect may be less decisive than that of the bodily
charms of woman in exciting love in man. Intellectual superiority,
high moral actions, and mental qualities in general, easily affect the
heart of woman, which becom