it as a frequent cause of permanent sexual anaesthesia.  “This first moment in which the man’s individuality attains its full rights often decides the whole of life.  The unskilled, over-excited husband can then implant the seed of feminine insensibility, and by continued awkwardness and coarseness develop it into permanent anaesthesia.  The man who takes possession of his rights with reckless brutal masculine force merely causes his wife anxiety and pain, and with every repetition of the act increases her repulsion....  A large proportion of cold-natured women represent a sacrifice by men, due either to unconscious awkwardness, or, occasionally, to conscious brutality towards the tender plant which should have been cherished with peculiar art and love, but has been robbed of the splendor of its development.  All her life long, a wistful and trembling woman will preserve the recollection of a brutal wedding night, and, often enough, it remains a perpetual source of inhibition every time that the husband seeks anew to gratify his desires without adapting himself to his wife’s desires for love” (O.  Adler, Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, pp. 159 et seq., 181 et seq.).  “I have seen an honest woman shudder with horror at her husband’s approach,” wrote Diderot long ago in his essay “Sur les Femmes”; “I have seen her plunge in the bath and feel herself never sufficiently washed from the stain of duty.”  The same may still be said of a vast army of women, victims of a pernicious system of morality which has taught them false ideas of “conjugal duty” and has failed to teach their husbands the art of love.

Women, when their fine natural instincts have not been hopelessly perverted by the pruderies and prejudices which are so diligently instilled into them, understand the art of love more readily than men.  Even when little more than children they can often completely take the cue that is given to them.  Much more than is the case with men, at all events under civilized conditions, the art of love is with them an art that Nature makes.  They always know more of love, as Montaigne long since said, than men can teach them, for it is a discipline that is born in their blood.[386]

The extensive inquiries of Sanford Bell (loc. cit.) show that the emotions of sex-love may appear as early as the third year.  It must also be remembered that, both physically and psychically, girls are more precocious, more mature, than boys (see, e.g., Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, pp. 34 et seq., 200, etc.).  Thus, by the time she has reached the age of puberty a girl has had time to become an accomplished mistress of the minor arts of love.  That the age of puberty is for girls the age of love seems to be widely recognized by the popular mind.  Thus in a popular song of Bresse a girl sings:—­

“J’ai calcule mon age,
J’ai quatorze a quinze ans. 
Ne suis-je pas dans l’age
D’y avoir un amant?”