“The sexual instinct, at any rate as regards consciousness, thus developed slowly and in what I believe to be a very usual sequence:  religion, admiration for an older woman, and art.  I am not sure that I have made quite enough of the first, yet I do not know that there is any more to say.  There were very strong physical feelings connected with all these which were identical with those now connected with passion, but they were completely satisfied by the mental idea which excited them.

“The first time I can remember feeling keen physical pleasure was when I was between 7 and 8 years old.  I can’t recollect the cause, but I remember lying quite still in my little cot clasping the iron rails at the top.  It may be said that this is hardly slow development, but I mean slow as regards (1) any connection of the idea with a man or (2) any physical means of excitation.

“I have laid stress on my desire for knowledge, as I think my sexual feelings were affected by it.  A great part of my feeling for my mother was due to the stores of information she appeared to possess.  The omniscience of God was to me his most striking attribute.  My French teacher’s capacity was her chief attraction.  When, as a girl, I thought of marriage, I desired a man who ‘could explain things to me.’  One learns later to live one’s mental and sexual life separately to a great extent.  But at 20 I could not have done so; given the opportunity, I should have made the mistake of Dorothea in Middlemarch.

“I have spoken of the depressing after-effects of pleasure brought about by a purely mental cause, but I do not think this is the case in childhood and early youth. (Perhaps some women feel no such depression afterward, and this may account for their coldness in regard to men.) This may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that it occurs much more rarely, and also it is perhaps a natural process before the sexual organs fully develop, and so not harmful.

“I always find it difficult in expressing the different degrees of physical excitement even to myself, though I know exactly what I felt.  As a child, from the time of the early experience already mentioned (about the age of 7 or 8), and as a young girl, the second stage (secretion of mucus) was always reached.  The amount of secretion has always been excessive, but at first secretion only lasted a short time; later it began to last for several hours, or even sometimes the whole night, if the natural gratification has been withheld for a long time (say, three months).  I do not remember ever feeling the third stage (complete orgasm) until I saw the first man I fancied I cared for.  I do not think that mental causes alone have ever produced more than the first two stages (general diffuse excitement and secretion).  I have sometimes wondered whether I could produce the third mechanically, but I have a curious unreasonable