have seen that the art of love has an independent and amply justifiable
right to existence apart, altogether, from procreation. Even if we still
believed--as all men must once have believed and some Central Australians
yet believe[421]--that sexual intercourse has no essential connection with
the propagation of the race it would have full right to existence. In its
finer manifestations as an art it is required in civilization for the full
development of the individual, and it is equally required for that
stability of relationships which is nearly everywhere regarded as a demand
of social morality.

When we now turn to the second great constitutional factor of marriage,
procreation, the first point we encounter is that the art of love here
also has its place. In ancient times the sexual congruence of any man with
any woman was supposed to be so much a matter of course that all questions
of love and of the art of love could be left out of consideration. The
propagative act might, it was thought, be performed as impersonally, as
perfunctorily, as the early Christian Fathers imagined it had been
performed in Paradise. That view is no longer acceptable. It fails to
commend itself to men, and still less to women. We know that in
civilization at all events--and it is often indeed the same among
savages--erethism is not always easy between two persons selected at
random, nor even when they are more specially selected. And we also know,
on the authority of very distinguished gynaecologists, that it is not in
very many cases sufficient even to effect coitus, it is also necessary to
excite orgasm, if conception is to be achieved.

Many primitive peoples, as well as the theologians of the Middle
Ages, have believed that sexual excitement on the woman's part is
necessary to conception, though they have sometimes mixed up that
belief with false science and mere superstition. The belief
itself is supported by some of the most cautious and experienced
modern gynaecologists. Thus, Matthews Duncan (in his lectures on
_Sterility in Women_) argued that the absence of sexual desire in
women, and the absence of pleasure in the sexual act, are
powerful influences making for sterility. He brought forward a
table based on his case-books, showing that of nearly four
hundred sterile women, only about one-fourth experienced sexual
desire, while less than half experienced pleasure in the sexual