Page:Sexology.djvu/139

 than man, although she has less strength, and is more subject to derangements of health. She produces more blood; her circulation is more active; her respiration more accelerated. She lives faster, and lives for two. Almost her whole existence is consecrated to the material conservation of the race. To man belongs the initiative in the work of generation. He furnishes the animating principle — the "breath of life" — while woman provides the material elements, and works the longer and more painfully in their elaboration. The region of the generative organs is much more developed, and all its dimensions are larger than in man. The influence of the reproductive sphere dominates her entire being. "We can scarcely exaggerate the depend- ence of the brain and other organs upon the condition of the womb. It would seem that all parts of a woman's body are so connected that whatever transpires in one region is felt immediately in all the others. One would suppose the genital organs to be the center of sensorial life, to which the entire organism is, in a manner, subor- dinated, so numerous are their nervous irradiations. The ramifications of the "great sympathetic" system of nerves establish a keen and intimate communication between the womb and the brain, lungs, heart, stomach, and even the breasts, the lips, and the throat; so when this organ is diseased the entire organism is troubled, and reciprocally, in serious derangements of other and distant parts, the womb sympathizes profoundly. Hence the habitual ex- pression of women to designate the periodical flow : "I am unwell." In man, on the contrary, sensation is limited by organic resistance no less than by his will, which holds his nervous system in subjection. In woman, sensation is like the electric spark — ^it usurps and traverses the organism, which it rules and masters completely. All her parts are