[169] Ovid remarks (_Ars Amatoria_, bk. i) that, if men were silent, women
would take the active and suppliant part.
[170] Ferrand, _De la Maladie d'Amour_, 1623, ch. ii.
[171] Tarde, _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, May 15, 1897. Marro,
who quotes this observation (_Pubertà_, p. 467; in French edition, p. 61),
remarks that his own evidence lends some support to Lombroso's conclusion
that under ordinary circumstances woman's sensory acuteness is less than
that of man. He is, however, inclined to impute this to defective
attention; within the sexual sphere women's attention becomes
concentrated, and their sensory perceptions then go far beyond those of
men. There is probably considerable truth in this subtle observation.
[172] A well-known gynecologist writes from America: "Abhorrence due to
suffering on first nights I have repeatedly seen. One very marked case is
that of a fine womanly young woman with splendid figure; she is a very
good woman, and admires her husband, but, though she tries to develop
desire and passion, she cannot succeed. I fear the man will some day
appear who will be able to develop the latent feelings."
[173] It is curious that, while the sexual impulse in women tends to
develop at a late age more frequently than in men, it would also appear to
develop more frequently at a very early age than in the other sex. The
majority of cases of precocious sexual development seems to be in female
children. W. Roger Williams ("Precocious Sexual Development," _British
Gynæcological Journal_, May, 1902) finds that 80 such cases have been
recorded in females and only 20 in males, and, while 13 is the earliest
age at which boys have proved virile, girls have been known to conceive at
8.
[174] I find the same remark made by Plazzonus in the seventeenth century.
[175] Art. "Fécondation," _Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences
Médicales_.
[176] This also is an ancient remark, for in the early treatise _De
Secretis Mulierum_, once attributed to Michael Scot, it is stated,
concerning the woman who finds pleasure in coitus, "cantat libenter."
[177] It is scarcely necessary to add that prostitutes can furnish little
evidence one way or the other. Not only may prostitutes refuse to
participate in the sexual orgasm, but the evils of a prostitute's life are
obviously connected with causes quite other than mere excess of sexual
gratification.
[178] This is, for instance, indicated by the experiments of Gualino
concerning the sexual sensitiveness of the lips (_Archivio di
Psichiatria_, 1904, fasc. 3). He found that mechanical irritation applied
to the lips produced more or less sexual feeling in 12 out of 20 women,
but in only 10 out of 25 men, i.e., in three-fifths of the women and
two-fifths of the men.
[179] "Adolescence is for women primarily a period of storm and stress,
while for men it is in the highest sense a period of doubt," (Starbuck,
_Psychology of Religion_, p. 241.) It is interesting to note that in the
religious sphere, also, the emotions of women are more diffused than those
of men; Starbuck confirms the conclusion of Professor Coe that, while
women have at least as much religious emotion as men, in them it is more
all pervasive, and they experience fewer struggles and acute crises.
(Ibid., p. 80.)
[180] Marro, _La Pubertà_, p. 233. This table covers all those cases,
nearly 3000, of patients entering the Turin asylum, from 1886 to 1895, in
which the age of the first appearance of insanity was known.