It may not be out of place to recall at this point, once more, the fact, fairly obvious indeed, that the judgments of men concerning women are very rarely matters of cold scientific observation, but are colored both by their own sexual emotions and by their own moral attitude toward the sexual impulse.  The ascetic who is unsuccessfully warring with his own carnal impulses may (like the voluptuary) see nothing in women but incarnations of sexual impulse; the ascetic who has subdued his own carnal impulses may see no elements of sex in women at all.  Thus the opinions regarding this matter are not only tinged by elements of primitive culture, but by elements of individual disposition.  Statements about the sexual impulses of women often tell us less about women than about the persons who make them.

The curious manner in which for men women become incarnations of the sexual impulse is shown by the tendency of both general and personal names for women to become applicable to prostitutes only.  This is the case with the words “garce” and “fille” in French, “Maedchen” and “Dirne” in German, as well as with the French “catin” (Catherine) and the German “Metze” (Mathilde).  (See, e.g., R. Kleinpaul, Die Raethsel der Sprache, 1890, pp. 197-198.)

At the same time, though we have to recognize the presence of elements which color and distort in various ways the judgments of men regarding women, it must not be hastily assumed that these elements render discussion of the question altogether unprofitable.  In most cases such prejudices lead chiefly to a one-sided solution of facts, against which we can guard.

While, however, these two opposing currents of opinion are of very ancient origin, it is only within quite recent times, and only in two or three countries, that they have led to any marked difference of opinion regarding the sexual aptitude of women.  In ancient times men blamed women for concupiscence or praised them for chastity, but it seems to have been reserved for the nineteenth century to state that women are apt to be congenitally incapable of experiencing complete sexual satisfaction, and peculiarly liable to sexual anesthesia.  This idea appears to have been almost unknown to the eighteenth century.  During the last century, however, and more especially in England, Germany, and Italy, this opinion has been frequently set down, sometimes even as a matter of course, with a tincture of contempt or pity for any woman afflicted with sexual emotions.

In the treatise On Generation (chapter v), which until recent times was commonly ascribed to Hippocrates, it is stated that men have greater pleasure in coitus than women, though the pleasure of women lasts longer, and this opinion, though not usually accepted, was treated with great respect by medical authors down to the end of the seventeenth century.  Thus A. Laurentius (Du Laurens),