is much more mature and full grown as regards her
reproductive power than a young man. These phenomena extend to the
whole mental life of woman, who is less capable of an ulterior
development in old age than man, because she generally becomes settled
and automatic much more rapidly than the latter. No doubt these
phenomena are partly due to the defective mental education of women,
but this explanation is insufficient. Here again we must distinguish
the phylogenetic disposition of woman from the effects of education
during her ontogenetic development.

The sexual appetite of woman manifests itself at first in vague
desires, in a want of love, and does not as a rule develop locally
till after coitus. It often follows that in ontogenetic evolution the
sexual appetite of women increases at a more advanced age (between
thirty and forty). At this age women often become enamored with young
boys, whom they seduce easily. Widows are especially disposed to form
unions with men younger than themselves; these unions are rarely
happy, for the woman who is older than her husband easily becomes
jealous, and the husband soon becomes tired of a woman whose charms
have faded. We can therefore affirm that, as a rule, in order to be
both normal and lasting, a monogamous union requires that the husband
should be from six to twelve years older than his wife, and that the
latter should marry as young as possible.

In the sexual ontogeny of normal woman, pregnancies, childbirth, the
nursing and education of children play an infinitely greater role than
the sexual appetite. These important events in woman's life, together
with affection for her husband occupy a great part of the cerebral
activity of every woman, and are at the same time the conditions for
her true happiness.

We should expect the sexual appetite in woman to diminish or cease at
the menopause; but this is not usually the case, and elderly women are
sometimes tormented by the sexual appetite, which is all the more
painful because men are not attracted by them. Such hyperaesthesia
cannot, however, be considered as normal; most often the sexual
appetite diminishes with age and is replaced, as in man, by the
tranquil love of old age, of which we have spoken.

Old women are often spoken of with contempt. No doubt, unsatisfied
passions and wounded feelings of all kinds, want of intellectual
culture and high ideals, and especially a pathological condition of
the brain, make many o