in the man who is to awaken the woman to love. (O.  Adler, Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, 1904, pp. 47, 126 et seq.; also enlarged second edition, 1911; id., “Die Frigide Frau,” Sexual-Probleme, Jan., 1912.)

It must not, however, be supposed that this view of the natural tendency of women to frigidity has everywhere found acceptance.  It is not only an opinion of very recent growth, but is confined, on the whole, to a few countries.

“Turn to history,” wrote Brierre de Boismont, “and on every page you will be able to recognize the predominance of erotic ideas in women.”  It is the same today, he adds, and he attributes it to the fact that men are more easily able to gratify their sexual impulses. (Des Hallucinations, 1862, p. 431.)

    The laws of Manu attribute to women concupiscence and anger, the
    love of bed and of adornment.

    The Jews attributed to women greater sexual desire than to men. 
    This is illustrated, according to Knobel (as quoted by Dillmann),
    by Genesis, chapter iii, v. 16.

In Greek antiquity the romance and sentiment of love were mainly felt toward persons of the same sex, and were divorced from the more purely sexual feelings felt for persons of opposite sex.  Theognis compared marriage to cattle-breeding.  In love between men and women the latter were nearly always regarded as taking the more active part.  In all Greek love-stories of early date the woman falls in love with the man, and never the reverse.  AEschylus makes even a father assume that his daughters will misbehave if left to themselves.  Euripides emphasized the importance of women; “The Euripidean woman who ‘falls in love’ thinks first of all:  ‘How can I seduce the man I love?"’ (E.F.M.  Benecke, Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek Poetry, 1896, pp. 34, 54.)

The most famous passage in Latin literature as to the question of whether men or women obtain greater pleasure from sexual intercourse is that in which Ovid narrates the legend of Tiresias (Metamorphoses, iii, 317-333).  Tiresias, having been both a man and a woman, decided in favor of women.  This passage was frequently quoted down to the eighteenth century.

In a passage quoted from a lost work of Galen by the Arabian biographer, Abu-l-Faraj, that great physician says of the Christians “that they practice celibacy, that even many of their women do so.”  So that in Galen’s opinion it was more difficult for a woman than for a man to be continent.

    The same view is widely prevalent among Arabic authors, and there
    is an Arabic saying that “The longing of the woman for the penis
    is greater than that of the man for the vulva.”