A special and detailed study of the normal characters of the sexual impulse in men seems unnecessary.  I have elsewhere discussed various aspects of the male sexual impulse, and others remain for later discussion.  But to deal with it broadly as a whole seems unnecessary, if only because it is predominantly open and aggressive.  Moreover, since the constitution of society has largely been in the hands of men, the nature of the sexual impulse in men has largely been expressed in the written and unwritten codes of social law.  The sexual instinct in women is much more elusive.  This, indeed, is involved at the outset in the organic psychological play of male and female, manifesting itself in the phenomena of modesty and courting.  The same elusiveness, the same mocking mystery, meet us throughout when we seek to investigate the manifestations of the sexual impulse in women.  Nor is it easy to find any full and authentic record of a social state clearly founded in sexual matters on the demands of woman’s nature.

An illustration of our ignorance and bias in these matters is furnished by the relationship of marriage, celibacy, and divorce to suicide in the two sexes.  There can be no doubt that the sexual emotions of women have a profound influence in determining suicide.  This is indicated, among other facts, by a comparison of the suicide-rate in the sexes according to age; while in men the frequency of suicide increases progressively throughout life, in women there is an arrest after the age of 30; that is to say, when the period of most intense sexual emotion has been passed.  This phenomenon is witnessed among peoples so unlike as the French, the Prussians, and the Italians.  Now, how do marriage and divorce affect the sexual liability to suicide?  We are always accustomed to say that marriage protects women, and it is even asserted that men have self-sacrificingly maintained the institution of marriage mainly for the benefit of women.  Professor Durkheim, however, who has studied suicide elaborately from the sociological standpoint, so far as possible eliminating fallacies, has in recent years thrown considerable doubt on the current assumption.  He shows that if we take the tendency to suicide as a test, and eliminate the influence of children, who are an undoubted protection to women, it is not women, but men, who are protected by marriage, and that the protection of women from suicide increases regularly as divorces increase.  After discussing these points exhaustively, “we reach a conclusion,” he states, “considerably removed from the current view of marriage and the part it plays.  It is regarded as having been instituted for the sake of the wife and to protect her weakness against masculine caprices.  Monogamy, especially, is very often presented as a sacrifice of man’s polygamous instincts, made in order to ameliorate the condition of woman in marriage.  In reality, whatever may have been the historical causes which determined this