It is clear, then, that while the joy of sex for man is intense, immense and indescribably pleasurable—for, in addition to the actual physical gratification it brings, there is the spiritual ecstasy of the exercise of power, and power in its most flattering form, i.e. over another human being—it is all concentrated into a few such brief moments, into a space so short as to seem ridiculous when the efforts made to experience it are taken into account. True, it is zenithal, stupendous, quintessential; but it is perhaps, for that very reason, short and exquisitely so. It is as if all the qualities of pleasure, physical and spiritual, had for man been distilled and re-distilled until they had been reduced to the smallest possible compass, in order that he might be quickly and sufficiently gratified, and yet not detained too long from those other duties to Life to which his other instincts direct him. And it is precisely this tabloid form of sexual ecstasy that enables man to know exactly the limits and boundaries of his part in sexual life. _He knows that there it begins and ends._ It is a definite thing that he can seek and find. He can be quite conscious about it and _is_ quite conscious about it from the start. It is small enough, short enough, intense enough, to be grasped and understood by consciousness. The only things connected with sex that _last_ and _endure_, where man is concerned, are its responsibilities—and these are, of course, the very aspects of it that the man with a declining social instinct wishes to cast off from the problem of sex. That is why the value of a man, as a man, may almost always be determined by his attitude towards Woman. The anarchist, the degenerate, loves the prostitute; the true artist, the sober, healthy citizen loves the mother.[33] To turn now to the attitude of the Positive Woman to the sexual act, how very different is the case with her! Take the little jewel constituting man’s small instant of sexual ecstasy and beat it out to a length sufficiently great to cover twenty to thirty months, and sometimes more, and you have its extended and attenuated equivalent for the female. Until Woman has gathered up all the experiences that constitute her participation and her share of pleasure in the sexual act, and which are distributed over the period above mentioned, her sexual life and the pleasure it brings to her, cannot be said to be complete. Even the craving for the proper functioning of her organs and the primary instinct that animates and actuates her cannot be gratified unless she picks up every one of the moments strewn over that space of time—unless, that is to say, she passes through the whole cycle of events and sensations that go to make up her complete relationship to man and to the child.