Page:B20442294.djvu/260

232 and is never simply lust; and, moreover, takes place only at times suitable for breeding. Desire is simply the means employed by nature to secure the continuity of the species.

Although sexual congress is an end in itself for the prostitute, it must not be assumed that it is meaningless in the mother-type. Women who are sexually anaesthetic no doubt exist in both classes, but they are very rare, and many apparent cases may really be phenomena of hysteria.

The final importance attached by the prostitute to the sexual act is made plain by the fact that it is only that type in which coquetry occurs. Coquetry has invariably a sexual significance. Its purpose is to picture to the man the conquest of the woman before it has occurred, in order to induce him to make the conquest an actual fact. The readiness of the type to coquet with every man is an expression of her nature; whether it proceeds further depends on merely accidental circumstances.

The maternal type regards the sexual act as the beginning of a series of important events, and so attaches value to it equally with the prostitute, although in a different fashion. The one is contented, completed, satisfied; her life is made richer and of fuller meaning to her by it. The other, for whom the act is everything, the compression and end of all life, is never satisfied, never to be satisfied, were she visited by all the men in the world.

The body of a woman, as I have already shown, is sexual throughout, and the special sexual acts are only intensifications of a distributed sensation. Here, also, the difference between the two types displays itself. The prostitute type in coquetting is merely using the general sexuality of her body as an end in itself; for her there is a difference only in degree between flirtation and sexual congress. The maternal type is equally sexual, but with a different purpose; all her life, through all her body, she is being impregnated. In this fact lies the explanation of the "impression" which I referred to as being indubitable, although it is denied by men of science and physicians.

Paternity is a diffused relation. Many instances, disputed