Page:The Sexual Question, 1908.djvu/145

Rh I may say here that it is most often men of low intellect, weak in judgment and principles, who think themselves most superior to the feminine sex, and who behave as tyrants to their wives.

Sexual braggardism has, moreover, grave consequences for the man himself, for it urges him to excesses which far exceed his appetites and especially his natural wants. In spite of other advantages, he wishes to shine by these excesses among his fellows and even among the grisettes whose minds are full of sexual matters.

Male sexual braggardism contributes with sexual appetite to entice reserved and high-minded young men toward prostitutes, against their better instincts, their reason and their moral sense. Alcohol especially facilitates the degeneration of sexual life.

The Pornographic Spirit.—The term eroticism is given to the state of excitation of the sexual appetite. When a person cultivates it artificially and abandons himself to purely animal sensuality, without combining it with higher intellectual or moral aspirations, there develop in the mind irradiations which may be designated by the term pornographic spirit. The entire circle of ideas of such individuals is so impregnated with eroticism that all their thoughts and sentiments are colored by it. They see everywhere, even in the most innocent objects, the most lewd allusions. Woman is only regarded by them as an object of sexual enjoyment, and her mind only appears to such satyrs as an ignoble erotic caricature, which is disgusting to every man capable of lofty sentiments.

Owing to its usually sensual and gross nature, male eroticism has succeeded in modeling a whole class of women in whom ideal character in their desires is wanting. Instead of recognising his own work and the vile image of his own person in these unnatural women, the libertine, as we have already seen, imagines them as the normal type of woman. From the height of his presumption, he then despises woman and does not perceive that it is himself whom he despises; for on the whole, from the sexual point of view, the dependent woman of to-day conforms herself to man and becomes what he makes her. The number of coitus, their details, the size and form of the sexual organs,