These are the facts, and it is an insult to the sex when men treat women, whether single or even their own wives, as though they were as sensually minded as themselves. Says Acton, “We offer, I think, no apology for light conduct when we admit that there are some few women, who, like men, in consequence of hereditary predisposition or ill-directed moral education, find it difficult to restrain their passions, while their more fortunate sisters have never been tempted, and have, therefore, never fallen. This, however, does not alter the fact which I would venture again to impress on the reader, that in general women do not feel any great sexual tendencies. The unfortunately large numbers whose lives would seem to prove the contrary, are to be accounted for on much more mercenary motives—vanity, giddiness, greediness, love of dress, distress, hunger, make women prostitutes, but not generally sensuality.”[42] I know that there are none so prone to plunge a fallen woman deeper into the mire, alike by their acts and their tongues, as women themselves. Thoughtless, forgetting that if exposed to the same dangers or the same temptations they also might have erred, women too often give to us men the impression that they are themselves but hypocrites and whited sepulchres; too often the first step towards a woman’s ruin has been from mere curiosity to see if she were really the immaculate and unapproachable creature her words would proclaim her. A woman’s hasty and uncharitable condemnation of an erring sister may well serve as a challenge to the tester of souls. As for us, he that is without sin let him cast the first stone.