The disgrace which has overtaken the sexual act, and rendered it a deed of darkness, is doubtless largely responsible for the fact that the chief time for its consummation among modern civilized peoples is the darkness of the early night in stuffy bedrooms when the fatigue of the day’s labors is struggling with the artificial stimulation produced by heavy meals and alcoholic drinks.  This habit is partly responsible for the indifference or even disgust with which women sometimes view coitus.

Many more primitive peoples are wiser.  The New Guinea Papuans of Astrolabe Bay, according to Vahness (Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, 1900, Heft 5, p. 414), though it must be remembered that the association of the sexual act with darkness is much older than Christianity, and connected with early religious notions (cf.  Hesiod, Works and Days, Bk.  II), always have sexual intercourse in the open air.  The hard-working women of the Gebvuka and Buru Islands, again, are too tired for coitus at night; it is carried out in the day time under the trees, and the Serang Islanders also have coitus in the woods (Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, Bk. i, Ch.  XVII).

It is obviously impracticable to follow these examples in modern cities, even if avocation and climate permitted.  It is also agreed that sexual intercourse should be followed by repose.  There seems to be little doubt, however, that the early morning and the daylight are a more favorable time than the early night.  Conception should take place in the light, said Michelet (L’Amour, p. 153); sexual intercourse in the darkness of night is an act committed with a mere female animal; in the day-time it is union with a loving and beloved individual person.

This has been widely recognized.  The Greeks, as we gather from Aristophanes in the Archarnians, regarded sunrise as the appropriate time for coitus.  The South Slavs also say that dawn is the time for coitus.  Many modern authorities have urged the advantages of early morning coitus.  Morning, said Roubaud (Traite de l’Impuissance, pp. 151-3) is the time for coitus, and even if desire is greater in the evening, pleasure is greater in the morning.  Osiander also advised early morning coitus, and Venette, in an earlier century, discussing “at what hour a man should amorously embrace his wife” (La Generation de l’Homme, Part II, Ch.  V), while thinking it is best to follow inclination, remarks that “a beautiful woman looks better by sunlight than by candlelight.”  A few authorities, like Burdach, have been content to accept the custom of night coitus, and Busch (Das Geschlechtsleben des Weibes, vol. i, p. 214) was inclined to think the darkness of night the most “natural” time, while Fuerbringer (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation