e based solely on the physical act of sexual conjunction, and that they
are both exclusively self-regarding. So that they are, after all, although
the nearest approach to the erotic sphere he may be able to find, yet
still not really erotic. For love is not primarily self-regarding. It is
the intimate, harmonious, combined play--the play in the wide as well as
in the more narrow sense we are here concerned with--of two personalities.
It would not be love if it were primarily self-regarding, and the act of
intercourse, however essential to secure the propagation of the race, is
only an incident, and not an essential in love.

Let us turn to the average woman. Here the picture must usually be still
more unsatisfactory. The man at least, crude as we may find his two
fundamental notions to be, has at all events attained mental pride and
physical satisfaction. The woman often attains neither, and since the man,
by instinct or tradition, has maintained a self-regarding attitude, that
is not surprising. The husband--by primitive instinct partly, certainly by
ancient tradition--regards himself as the active partner in matters of
love and his own pleasure as legitimately the prime motive for activity.
His wife consequently falls into the complementary position, and regards
herself as the passive partner and her pleasure as negligible, if not
indeed as a thing to be rather ashamed of, should she by chance experience
it. So that, while the husband is content with a mere simulacrum and
pretence of the erotic life, the wife has often had none at all.

Few people realise--few indeed have the knowledge or the opportunity to
realise--how much women thus lose, alike in the means to fulfill their
own lives and in the power to help others. A woman has a husband, she has
marital relationships, she has children, she has all the usual domestic
troubles--it seems to the casual observer that she has everything that
constitutes a fully developed matron fit to play her proper part in the
home and in the world. Yet with all these experiences, which undoubtedly
are an important part of life, she may yet remain on the emotional
side--and, as a matter of fact, frequently remains--quite virginal, as
immature as a school-girl. She has not acquired an erotic personality, she
has not mastered the art of love, with the result that her whole nature
remains ill-developed and unharmonised, and that she is incapable of
bringing her personality--having indeed