active reproductive life. That is, the erotic impulse continues to manifest itself after the cessation of menstrual activity, when the possibility of conception has passed. It appears, therefore, that sexual desire is not necessarily dependent upon ovulation.
Probably no other individual has written so extensively and at the same time so wisely of sex matters as Havelock Ellis,[1] who speaks of the differential characters of the sexual impulse in the female as follows:
"In courtship woman plays a more passive part than man; in woman the physiological mechanism of the sexual processes is more complicated, the organism develops more deliberately; the sexual impulse in woman needs more frequently to be actively stimulated; the culmination of sexual activity is attained later in life than in man; the strength of sexual desire in woman becomes greater after she has entered upon regular sexual intercourse. Women bear sexual excesses better than men; the sexual sphere is larger and more widely diffused in women than in men; finally, in woman the sexual impulse exhibits a distinct tendency to periodic exacerbations (increased severity of symptoms), and it is in any case much more variable than in man."
Ellis further maintains that the source of erotic pleasure in the case of the male lies in activity, but in the female in the passive state, in the experience of loving compulsion, as it were, and he holds that sexual subordination is a necessary element in the sexual enjoyment of women.
ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF THE FEMALE ORGANS
Whereas the male reproductive organs are for the most part located outside the body, the female organs of genera-
- ↑ Man and Woman: A Study of Human Secondary Sexual Characters. Fifth Edition. London.
