In general, we may say, regarding the women of our own part of the world, that in those who are healthy, who lead a regular life, are well fed, free from the pressure of anxieties, with their sexual functions sufficiently exercised, the duration of the sexual life is longer than in women whose circumstances are the reverse of those just enumerated. It is a sign of decadence when women of the well-to-do classes, leading a life of ease, manifest a diminished duration of the sexual life. The greatest physical power and the highest ethical development are associated with a lengthening of life in general, and associated also with a lengthening alike in the sexual life of woman and the sexual potency of man. A decline in morals and culture entails a diminution of sexual vital capacity, this being true alike of individuals, of families, and of nations. Woman is venerated and valued the more, the longer the duration of her sexual life; a woman in whom the sexual life is short quickly loses value and significance, both in domestic and in social circles. The social significance of the sexual life of woman is disproportionately greater and farther reaching than the sexuality of the male, as the former is concerned with the fundamental principles of human social life, influencing the constitution of the family, and controlling the good of the coming race. Sexual purity, which to the youth is a romantic dream, is to the maiden a vital condition of existence; adultery, in the husband a pardonable transgression, is in the wife an overwhelming sin committed against family life. To the freedom of the male in affairs of love is opposed the strict restraint of the female, based on monogamic marriage. The sexual needs and desires of the female are transformed in an ideal manner by means of the feeling of duty of the wife and mother; the violent pressure of the sexual impulse is restrained by the opposition of ethical forces. When this restraint fails, the running off the rails that ensues has a far profounder influence in the case of the female than of the male, an influence not limited to her own personality, but dragging down the whole family into the abyss of consequences, into the depths of moral and physical destruction. Though in nature everywhere the same, the sexual life of woman exhibits in the various gradations of social life different outward manifestations, from the brutal sexual congress that does not greatly shun publicity, to the modern would-be philosophical free love. And throughout all variations the two darkest points remain, the illegitimate child and venereal infection, both of which entail upon the woman the most unspeakable anxieties and the greatest possible misery, whilst the man who is in either case to blame passes comparatively unscathed.