Not in vain has nature made the human female a virgin, and denied us the sorrowful virtue of virginity. The woman who yields to the first amorous pruriency is a Messalina; the man who darts the first arrow of love is a warrior who with wise prudence prepares the weapons for the long battle that awaits him. Man begins with "yes" and "I will"; woman begins and ends with "no" and "I will not." The sudden caprice of the senses is in her harassed by so many physical, social and religious impediments that she must really be more than an Amazon to overthrow them in a single dash. Everything incites man to a swift assault which perhaps does not even bruise the epidermis of his heart; everything defends woman from these caprices. To yield she must have had a long struggle against nature and society; laws and religions offer her a thousand allies for defense, and not once in a hundred times she can say without touching the frontiers of prostitution: "I had a caprice." No one believes in the efficiency of overbearingness, much less woman herself, unless she should need this faith to justify her own sin. In love every fault, every crime, even patricide and incest, are possible--but not theft. Let woman never profane herself nor spoil the cause, often very just, which she defends, by speaking of seduction and violence. Let her rather speak of the irresistible impulse of vengeance, of the law of retaliation; let her discuss the natural right, because there she is on the ground of truth and justice; let her complain aloud because in the human organism she is the left side, the weakest, the least honored and the most oppressed. Let her demand the right to love and to be loved, but never ask equality of punishment for sins too disparate.