in pursuing her; that was a part which I burned to play."[15] It is the instinct of the sophisticated and the unsophisticated alike.  The Arabs have developed an erotic ideal of sensuality, but they emphasize the importance of feminine modesty, and declare that the best woman is “she who sees not men and whom they see not."[16] This deep-rooted modesty of women towards men in courtship is intimately interwoven with the marriage customs and magic rites of even the most primitive peoples, and has survived in many civilized practices to-day.[17] The prostitute must be able to simulate the modesty she may often be far from feeling, and the immense erotic advantage of the innocent over the vicious woman lies largely in the fact that in her the exquisite reactions of modesty are fresh and vigorous.  “I cannot imagine anything that is more sexually exciting,” remarks Hans Menjago, “than to observe a person of the opposite sex, who, by some external or internal force, is compelled to fight against her physical modesty.  The more modest she is the more sexually exciting is the picture she presents."[18] It is notable that even in abnormal, as well as in normal, erotic passion the desire is for innocent and not for vicious women, and, in association with this, the desired favor to be keenly relished must often be gained by sudden surprise and not by mutual agreement.  A foot fetichist writes to me:  “It is the stolen glimpse of a pretty foot or ankle which produces the greatest effect on me.”  A urolagnic symbolist was chiefly excited by the act of urination when he caught a young woman unawares in the act.  A fetichistic admirer of the nates only desired to see this region in innocent girls, not in prostitutes.  The exhibitionist, almost invariably, only exposes himself to apparently respectable girls.

A Russian correspondent, who feels this charm of women in a particularly strong degree, is inclined to think that there is an element of perversity in it.  “In the erotic action of the idea of feminine enjoyment,” he writes, “I think there are traces of a certain perversity.  In fact, owing to the impressions of early youth, woman (even if we feel contempt for her in theory) is placed above us, on a certain pedestal, as an almost sacred being, and the more so because mysterious.  Now sensuality and sexual desire are considered as rather vulgar, and a little dirty, even ridiculous and degrading, not to say bestial.  The woman who enjoys it, is, therefore, rather like a profaned altar, or, at least, like a divinity who has descended on to the earth.  To give enjoyment to a woman is, therefore, like perpetrating a sacrilege, or at least like taking a liberty with a god.  The feelings bequeathed to us by a long social civilization maintain themselves in spite of our rational and deliberate opinions.  Reason tells us that there is nothing evil in sexual enjoyment, whether in man or woman, but an unconscious feeling directs our emotions, and this feeling