Page:Fielding - Sex and the Love Life.pdf/66

 tioned, she is placed in the somewhat paradoxical position of bearing excessive gratification on the one hand, and suppression on the other, better than man. This does not mean that either excessive gratification or suppression is harmless to woman. The pathology of womankind is only too largely a history of the results of these two factors. Generally speaking, either condition has been thrust upon her by circumstances—grossly discriminating social customs and traditions—quite beyond her control.

In dealing with the pathology of man's sexual life, we find less suppression because his dynamic sexual urges have never to any considerable extent submitted to suppression, and when he has over-indulged himself sexually, he has paid a greater physiological penalty than has woman.

"Love in woman," remarked Lombroso, who is always interesting, although sometimes inaccurate, "is in its fundamental nature no more than a secondary character of motherhood, and all feelings of affection that bind woman to man arise not from sexual impulses, but from instincts, acquired by adaptation, of subordination, and of self-surrender."

Lombroso's conception of the factor of motherhood (actual or potential), as having a predominating influence on woman's amative life is correct, but his denial of the sexual character of that impulse is wrong. He considers the term "sexual" in too restricted a sense. The whole function of motherhood, and all the instincts and impulses that lead to it, and that are concerned with woman's reproductive life, are decidedly sexual.

The same authority finds proof of the comparative sexual indifference of woman and of the greater sexual need of man in the existence of prostitution, with which can be contrasted the existence only among degenerate groups of a small number of male prostitutes.