The sexual act, he maintains, is not a simple matter; it is part of an art, the art of lovemaking. This is based on the fact that, normally, the woman is more slow than the man to respond to sexual stimulus, and must be aroused. The man is swift, ready and active; the woman slow, unresponsive and passive. In order to bring her full response, there must be an interval of wooing. And it is this, from Havelock Ellis’s point of view, which makes sexuality a beautiful and a human thing, raising the act, in his mind, to something almost sacramental, something in which the poetry and mystery of existence participate. While sexuality in its origin was merely an instinct aiming at generation and reproduction, like every other instinct it has been turned into an art by man and become a rich part of his life. Eating, too, is an instinctive performance; yet very few find satisfaction in eating alone and in a plain way. Man, at his best, has raised eating to a joyous affair, where people not only share the food, but share each other’s society. Even the food itself may be prepared and served in an artistic manner and in pleasant surroundings. So, too, sexuality, according to Havelock Ellis, has become an end in itself: the joyous union of man and woman in the mystery of love. For instance, he says, in India the art is well known, and the act often prolonged for hours. The West he finds backward in both the knowledge and the practice of this art. The sexual act he divides into two parts: the forepleasure and the act itself. The forepleasure is the preparation and wooing. It summarizes, according to him, all those so-called childish things which taken separately are called perversions. As we have seen, the child goes through every phase: sucking, rubbing, looking, exhibiting, caressing, etc., and in various ways. These, according to Ellis’s studies, are found in the sexual act wherever it is practiced as an art. And he finds them natural and good insofar as they contribute toward the complete arousal of the woman and the final act itself. They become perversions only, he says, where they are ends in themselves. A man, for instance, who cares mainly for expression of the mouth has a perverted sexuality; but if this is merely a step toward complete sexuality, it is part of the natural process and enhances the act. In short, in the sexual act as an art the man and woman relive their whole development from the stage of suckling to the act itself. Havelock Ellis also maintains that the positions assumed by the man and woman need not be the so-called normal, but any that is found satisfactory. In fact, he believes that a sense of equality between the sexes may be cultivated by the man assuming what is usually the woman’s position.