The inferiority or perhaps the advantage which females have over males in this respect, depends on the passiveness which they naturally exercise in the act of generation: and hence their desires are less strong. The state of manners justifies their reserve in this respect, and points out a physiological fact, or rather they are the consequence of it. As to the pretended coquetry of animals, I do not believe in it strongly; and in regard to that of females I believe that it has caused more to err than their desires. If the venereal passion be equally developed in the two sexes, why is onanism more common in males than in females, notwithstanding certain conditions ought to produce a contrary state of things? And farther do not many wives yield themselves to the caresses of their husbands, without desire and without enjoyment? and yet this indifference does not prevent conception, for the sensation of love is not with them, as with the male, an indispensable condition of the work of generation. Finally would there be any prostitutes, if coition caused in females the same exhaustion as in the male? Females then are indisputably less sensual than males; and when this fact is taken in connexion with the circumstance that women are less frequently victims of venereal excess, does not this tend to prove, that, other things being equal, the act of venery is, as before stated, less injurious, in proportion, as the sensations attending it are less vivid? Perhaps this explains why females generally live longer by two or three years, than males, notwithstanding the pains and dangers of pregnancy, parturition and lactation: and this fact may be deduced according to Sir John Sinclair, from the registers of mortality of different countries, and from the rent tables which have been kept in Holland for a hundred and twenty-five years. Farther, it is well ascertained that every thing which contributes to give more force and duration to the sensations attending the act of venery, also increases the fatigue and disorder which follow it. Coition taken in its simplest sense, and considered only as an excretion of semen, undoubtedly causes much less injury than if it occurs with other sensations. Thus intercourse with public women and generally with those who do not excite strong sensations is generally attended with less derangement, as Hunter has remarked, than if accompanied with violent passion. Some authors however as Sanctorius and Tissot have advanced a contrary opinion; but they have evidently confounded the state of the mind with that of the body. When the soul is possessed of a violent passion, the ardors of love continue a longer time, are not so soon satisfied: but does it follow from this that the body presents more resistance. Certainly not, but only that the pernicious effects are felt less at the time; although at a later period they will be perceived.