her childhood in complete purity, now, with awakened senses and warm impetuous womanliness, gives herself to a man in love or even only in passion, they all stand up and scream that she is ‘dishonored!’ And, not least, the prostituted girl with the hymen.  It is she indeed who screams loudest and throws the biggest stones.  Yet the ‘dishonored’ woman, who is sound and wholesome, need not fear to tell what she has done to the man who desires her in marriage, speaking as one human being to another.  She has no need to blush, she has exercised her human rights, and no reasonable man will on that account esteem her the less” (Dr. H. Paul, “Die Ueberschaetzung der Jungfernschaft,” Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. ii, p. 14, 1907).

In a similar spirit writes F. Erhard (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. i, p. 408):  “Virginity in one sense has its worth, but in the ordinary sense it is greatly overestimated.  Apart from the fact that a girl who possesses it may yet be thoroughly perverted, this over-estimation of virginity leads to the girl who is without it being despised, and has further resulted in the development of a special industry for the preparation, by means of a prudishly cloistral education, of girls who will bring to their husbands the peculiar dainty of a bride who knows nothing about anything.  Naturally, this can only be achieved at the expense of any rational education.  What the undeveloped little goose may turn into, no man can foresee.”

Freud (Sexual-Probleme, March, 1908) also points out the evil results of the education for marriage which is given to girls on the basis of this ideal of virginity.  “Education undertakes the task of repressing the girl’s sensuality until the time of betrothal.  It not only forbids sexual relations and sets a high premium on innocence, but it also withdraws the ripening womanly individuality from temptation, maintaining a state of ignorance concerning the practical side of the part she is intended to play in life, and enduring no stirring of love which cannot lead to marriage.  The result is that when she is suddenly permitted to fall in love by the authority of her elders, the girl cannot bring her psychic disposition to bear, and goes into marriage uncertain of her own feelings.  As a consequence of this artificial retardation of the function of love she brings nothing but deception to the husband who has set all his desires upon her, and manifests frigidity in her physical relations with him.”

Senancour (De l’Amour, vol. i, p. 285) even believes that, when it is possible to leave out of consideration the question of offspring, not only will the law of chastity become equal for the two sexes, but there will be a tendency for the situation of the sexes to be, to some extent, changed.  “Continence becomes a counsel rather than a precept, and it is in women that the voluptuous inclination will be regarded with most indulgence.  Man is