That is why positive woman is conscious only of desiring the male, while her body insists blindly on obtaining the whole cycle. No young virgin who craves for children, or for a child of her own, is really sincere. Such a desire never reaches consciousness from the body. In fact the girls that make the best mothers are frequently absurdly impatient with and intolerant of other people’s children. My mother always told me that before she had her first child she took no keen interest in children whatsoever. A positive girl may be fond of children, and kind to children; but she is _consciously positive to man only_. It is only natural that she should be so. The body knows of no royal road to the love and possession of offspring save through the portals of sexual life. Very often, however, a very positive girl will, from mere bashfulness or decency, express her strong desire for man by what she conceives to be a more polite and more euphemistic way of revealing it, and will tell you that she longs for a child. This should deceive no one. It is either a pose on her part, or a very transparent disguise of her genuine feeling. Although, therefore, we may again be deceived, and frequently are deceived, by Woman’s double life—the unconscious life her body leads with all its determined aspirations and desires constantly directing her footsteps, and the mental or conscious life she leads, which frequently has not the smallest bearing on the true aims of the body, and as often misinterprets these aims—we cannot help admitting, notwithstanding, that positive Woman, though she appears to be, and will declare she is, positive to man and the sexual union alone, must unconsciously be positive to the whole cycle constituting the female sexual experience, _including particularly those long months spent with the child alone_. The prostitute, therefore, is merely a positive woman whom unfortunate circumstances have conspired to petrify and confirm in her misunderstanding of her true needs and desires. The important bearing this admission has on the subsequent chapters of this book, emboldens me to urge the reader to bear it well in mind from now onwards; for, simple as it seems in its baldest statement, it clears up so many of the apparent complications of practical sexual life, that unless it be properly grasped and remembered now it may in itself appear complicated before my task is done. I have but one more remark to make on positive Woman’s attitude to the sexual act, and with it I shall draw this necessary but delicate discussion to a close. After admitting that she, or rather her body, pronounces it, alone, inadequate, insufficient, why do I assume that though she consciously craves for it alone, she unconsciously craves for the whole cycle?