In China, remarks Dr. Coltman, “when an old gentleman of my acquaintance was visiting me my little daughter, 5 years old, ran into the room, and, climbing upon my knee, kissed me.  My visitor expressed his surprise, and remarked:  ’We never kiss our daughters when they are so large; we may when they are very small, but not after they are 3 years old,’ said he, ’because it is apt to excite in them bad emotions.’” (Coltman, The Chinese, 1900, p. 99.)

The early Christian Fathers clearly show that they regard women as more inclined to sexual enjoyment than men.  That was, for instance, the opinion of Tertullian (De Virginibus Velandis, chapter x), and it is clearly implied in some of St. Jerome’s epistles.

Notwithstanding the influence of Christianity, among the vigorous barbarian races of medieval Europe, the existence of sexual appetite in women was not considered to be, as it later became, a matter to be concealed or denied.  Thus in 1068 the ecclesiastical historian, Ordericus Vitalis (himself half Norman and half English), narrates that the wives of the Norman knights who had accompanied William the Conqueror to England two years earlier sent over to their husbands to say that they were consumed by the fierce names of desire ("saeva libidinis face urebantur"), and that if their husbands failed to return very shortly they proposed to take other husbands.  It is added that this threat brought a few husbands back to their wanton ladies ("lascivis dominabus suis").

During the medieval period in Europe, largely in consequence, no doubt, of the predominance of ascetic ideals set up by men who naturally regarded woman as the symbol of sex, the doctrine of the incontinence of woman became firmly fixed, and it is unnecessary and unprofitable to quote examples.  It is sufficient to mention the very comprehensive statement of Jean de Meung (in the Roman de la Rose, 9903):—­

        “Toutes estes, seres, ou futes
        De fait ou de volunte putes.”

The satirical Jean de Meung was, however, a somewhat extreme and untypical representative of his age, and the fourteenth century Johannes de Sancto Amando (Jean de St. Amand) gives a somewhat more scientifically based opinion (quoted by Pagel, Neue litterarische Beitraege zur Mittelalterlichen Medicin, 1896, p. 30) that sexual desire is stronger in women than in men.

Humanism and the spread of the Renaissance movement brought in a spirit more sympathetic to women.  Soon after, especially in Italy and France, we begin to find attempts at analyzing the sexual emotions, which are not always without a certain subtlety.  In the seventeenth century a book of this kind was written by Venette.  In matters of love, Venette declared, “men are but children compared to women.  In these matters women have a more lively imagination, and they