Page:The Sexual Question, 1908.djvu/140

116 exaltation; what imposes on women is especially masculine audacity, and in sexual matters this increases with experience and practice. The company of prostitutes often renders men incapable of understanding feminine psychology, for prostitutes are hardly more than automata trained for the use of male sensuality. When men look among these for the sexual psychology of woman they only find their own mirror.

Man's flirtation, and his art of paying court to women are naturally combined with his audacity, as we have already observed in birds and mammals, and some of the lower animals. The male seeks to please the female to gain her favors. The brilliant colors of butterflies and birds, song, skill and proof of strength, often come to the aid of the male sexual instinct. Even in certain animals supplicant and plaintive sounds assist the male after his repeated refusal, apparently or in reality, by the female. We shall see in Chapter VI that savage men have a much greater tendency to tattoo and adorn themselves than have the women.

The art which man employs to seduce and conquer woman has been described to satiety in romances and novels, as well as in ethnographic works; so that we shall not dwell on it here. On the contrary, we shall show that in higher civilizations man is in general more sought after than woman, so that the latter has surpassed him in the art of flirtation or sexual conquest.

It is also important to remark to what extent the increase of man's mental complexity transforms his sexual tactics. The simple, natural, and at the same time bashful, modest manner, in which a naive young man seeks to conquer a heart, usually produces no effect on the fashionable young lady, experienced in all refined pleasures and saturated with unhealthy novels. These young women are much more easily seduced by the art of Don Juan and the old roués, who are more adequate to deal with them because they have studied practically the psychology of the modern woman.

Instinct of Procreation.—Another irradiation of the male sexual instinct, connected with the preceding, is the instinct of procreation. If there were no other difficulties or consequences, man would without the least doubt be instinctively inclined to