Page:The Perfumed Garden - Burton - 1886.djvu/164

148 they fight sanguinary combats. And if such effects are produced upon animals, what must they be for man. And so it is that all the wars spring from the search of the voluptuous pleasure which the vagina procures, and which is the highest fortune of this world; it is a part of the delights of paradise awarded to us by God as a fore-taste of what is waiting for us, namely, delights a thousand times superior, and above which only the sight of the Benevolent (God) is to be placed.

More names might certainly be found applicable to the sexual organs of woman, but the number of those mentioned above appears to me ample. The principal object of this work is to collect together all the remarkable and attractive matters concerning the coitus, so that he who is in trouble may find a conclusion in it, and the man to whom erection offers difficulties may be able to look into it for a remedy against his weakness. Wise physicians have written that people whose members have lost their strength, and are afflicted with impotence, should assiduously read books treating of coition, and study carefully the different kind of lovemaking, in order to recover their former vigour. A certain means of provoking erection is to look at animals in the act of coition. As it is not always everywhere possible to see animals whilst in the act of copulation, books on the subject of generation are indispensable. In every country, large or small, both the rich and poor have a taste for this sort of books, which may be compared to the stone of philosophy transforming common metals into gold.

It is related (and God penetrates the most obscure matters, and he is the most wise!) that once upon a time, before the reign of the great Kalif Haroun er Rachid,