onest
disagreement. In other words, it is comparatively easy to deal with a
woman expecting an inferior position, whose individual tastes, wills,
ideas, and ideals have never been developed,--the ancient woman; it is
very much more difficult to deal with her modern sister.

Happily the day is passing when prudery governed the discussion of sex.
Lewdness exists in concealment, suggestion is more provocatory than
frankness. The morbidness of men who condemned themselves to celibacy
has influenced the world; their fear of sex led to a misguided silence
shrouding the wrecks of many a life.

The sex relationship is the basis of marriage. The famous couplet of
Rosalind still holds good. The sex instinct (or rather instincts, for
coupled with sex-desire is love of beauty, admiration, joy of
possession, triumph, etc.) has the unique place of being more regulated
by law and custom than any other basic instinct. The law holds that no
marriage is consummated until the sex act has taken place, regardless
of the words of preacher or State official. The happiness of the first
year or years of married life is mostly in its voluptuous bonds, for
companionship and comradeship have really not yet arisen. Complementary
to this it may be said that much of married misery, especially for the
woman, arises from the first marital embrace.

This last is because of the ignorance of men and women, an ignorance
wholly due to prudery. The majority of women have been chaste before
marriage; the majority of men have not. One would expect therefore
knowledge of men, the knowledge of experience. But the experience has
been gained with women of a certain type and has not equipped the man to
deal with his wife. Though most women know in advance what is expected
of them, some are even ignorant of the most elemental facts of sex, and
even those who know are unprepared for reality.

Too frequently the man regards himself as a Grand Seigneur with a
paramount "Jus Primis Noctis." True, the majority of men are abashed in
the presence of innocence and deal gently with it,--but others follow in
a repellent way their instinct of possession. Any neurologist of
experience has cases where sexual frigidity and neurasthenia in a woman
can be traced back to the shock of that all-important first night.

There are savage races in which preparation for marriage is an
elementary part of education. We need not follow them into absurdity,
but more than the last silly wh