the conditions are somewhat different.  Restraints, both internal and external, are very much greater.  Virginity, at all events in its physical fact, is retained, for the most part, till long past girlhood, and when it is lost that loss is concealed with a scrupulous care and prudence unknown to the working-classes.  Yet the fundamental tendencies remain the same.  So far as England is concerned, Geoffrey Mortimer quite truly writes (Chapters on Human Love, 1898, p. 117) that the two groups of (1) women who live in constant secret association with a single lover, and (2) women who give themselves to men, without fear, from the force of their passions, are “much larger than is generally supposed.  In all classes of society there are women who are only virgins by repute.  Many have borne children without being even suspected of cohabitation; but the majority adopt methods of preventing conception.  A doctor in a small provincial town declared to me that such irregular intimacies were the rule, and not by any means the exception in his district.”  As regards Germany, a lady doctor, Frau Adams-Lehmann, states in a volume of the Transactions of the German Society for Combating Venereal Disease (Sexualpaedagogik, p. 271):  “I can say that during consultation hours I see very few virgins over thirty.  These women,” she adds, “are sensible, courageous and natural, often the best of their sex; and we ought to give them our moral support.  They are working towards a new age.”

It is frequently stated that the pronounced tendency witnessed at the present time to dispense as long as possible with the formal ceremony of binding marriage is unfortunate because it places women in a disadvantageous position.  In so far as the social environment in which she lives views with disapproval sexual relationship without formal marriage, the statement is obviously to that extent true, though it must be remarked, on the other hand, that when social opinion strongly favors legal marriage it acts as a compelling force in the direction of legitimating free unions.  But if the absence of the formal marriage bond constituted a real and intrinsic disadvantage to women in sexual relations they would not show themselves so increasingly ready to dispense with it.  And, as a matter of fact, those who are intimately acquainted with the facts declare that the absence of formal marriage tends to give increased consideration to women and is even favorable to fidelity and to the prolongation of the union.  This seems to be true as regards people of the most different social classes and even of different races.  It is probably based on fundamental psychological facts, for the sense of compulsion always tends to produce a movement of exasperation and revolt.  We are not here concerned with the question as to how far formal marriage also is based on natural facts; that is a question which will come up for discussion at a later stage.