The greater complication and elaboration of sexual structure and function belonging to the female nature is due to the more important share given to woman in the work of parentage. The constant production in the female of living germs (ova), which require only a passing act of stimulation by the male to enter into a state of active and astonishingly rapid growth; the unique change of the small uterus into an enormous and powerful structure, capable of containing a perfect child, and sending it forth by tremendous efforts into the outer world; the changes in all the surrounding organs and tissues necessitated by the accomplishment of such a remarkable work in the short space of nine months; and the subjection of this great physical work to the law of individual freedom and perfection, are facts which show the superior complication and importance of the female sexual organization. The more elaborate processes of menstruation, as compared with the lesser work of sperm-emission, show the greater complication of the organs to be kept in good working order in the female than in the male. So extensive and important are the physical structures that must be kept in readiness for use in the mothers of the race, that their action is more withdrawn from the dominion of the will than is the case with men. In relation to the male, it is well known that the secretion of semen is very much controlled by the mental condition of the individual. Thus many a young man during keen nervous excitement (or during the strain of examinations) becomes alarmed by the appearance of unusual action never before noticed. It is a fact to be carefully noted that sufficient healthy action to insure reproductive aptitude is always maintained in the secreting organs throughout adult life, quite independently of the will. Nature never allows the male, any more than the female, to become impotent through abeyance of function. No such fear need ever disturb the mind. The utmost devotion to intellectual life, to lofty thought, to beneficent action, never injures the procreative power, which always remains intact, capable of its special faculty throughout the virile age. But the active exercise of the intellectual and moral faculties has remarkable power of diminishing the formation of semen, and limiting the necessity of its natural removal, the demand for such relief becoming rarer under ennobling and healthy influences. As Dr. Acton remarks, ‘sexual distress affects particularly the _semi-continent_--those who indeed see the better course and approve of it, but follow the worse; who, without the recklessness of the hardened or the strength of the pure, endure at once the sufferings of self-denial and the remorse of self-indulgence.’[2]