It is, moreover, owing to the diffused character of the sexual emotions in women that it so often happens that emotion really having a sexual origin is not recognized as such even by the woman herself.  It is possible that the great prevalence in women of the religious emotional state of “storm and stress,” noted by Professor Starbuck,[179] is largely due to unemployed sexual impulse.  In this and similar ways it happens that the magnitude of the sexual sphere in woman is unrealized by the careless observer.

A number of converging facts tend to indicate that the sexual sphere is larger, and more potent in its influence on the organism, in women than in men.  It would appear that among the males and females of lower animals the same difference may be found.  It is stated that in birds there is a greater flow of blood to the ovaries than to the testes.

In women the system generally is more affected by disturbances in the sexual sphere than in men.  This appears to be the case as regards the eye.  “The influence of the sexual system upon the eye in man,” Power states, “is far less potent, and the connection, in consequence, far less easy to trace than in woman.” (H.  Power, “Relation of Ophthalmic Disease to the Sexual Organs,” Lancet, November 26, 1887.)

The greater predominance of the sexual system in women on the psychic side is clearly brought out in insane conditions.  It is well known that, while satyriasis is rare, nymphomania is comparatively common.  These conditions are probably often forms of mania, and in mania, while sexual symptoms are common in men, they are often stated to be the rule in women (see, e.g., Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, tenth edition, English translation, p. 465).  Bouchereau, in noting this difference in the prevalence of sexual manifestations during insanity, remarks that it is partly due to the naturally greater dependence of women on the organs of generation, and partly to the more active, independent, and laborious lives of men; in his opinion, satyriasis is specially apt to develop in men who lead lives resembling those of women. (Bouchereau, art.  “Satyriasis,” Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales.) Again, postconnubial insanity is very much commoner in women than in men, a fact which may indicate the more predominant part played by the sexual sphere in women. (Savage, art.  “Marriage and Insanity,” Dictionary of Psychological Medicine.)

Insanity tends to remove the artificial inhibitory influences that rule in ordinary life, and there is therefore significance in such a fact as that the sexual appetite is often increased in general paralysis and to a notable extent in women. (Pactet and Colin, Les Alienes devant la Justice, 1902, p. 122.)

Naecke, from his experiences among the insane, makes an interesting and possibly sound