n the other hand, may be more audacious in the
expression of his passion. This brings us back to what has been said
concerning the sexual differences.

A whole volume could be written on the forms of flirtation, which is
the indispensable expression of all sexual desire. Among engaged
couples it assumes a legal character and even a conventional form. The
way in which barmaids flirt with their customers is also somewhat
conventional, although in quite a different way. In society,
flirtation is generally seasoned with more Attic salt, whether it is
not allowed to exceed certain limits, or whether it leads to free
liaisons after the manner of the Greek hetaira. In the country, among
peasant girls and boys it takes a grosser form, if not more sensual,
than among the cultivated classes; in the latter, language takes the
principal part. Among rich idlers in watering places, large hotels,
and even in some sanatoriums, flirtation takes a dominant place and
constitutes, in all its degrees, the chief occupation of a great
number of the visitors. It grows like a weed wherever man has a
monotonous occupation or suffers from the ennui of idleness.

In certain individuals, flirtation takes the place of coitus from the
sensual, and love from the sentimental point of view. There are modern
crazy natures who spend their existence in all kinds of artificial
excitation of the senses, creatures of both sexes incapable of a
useful action.

As a momentary and transient expression of all the necessities of
love, flirtation has a right to existence; but, when cultivated on its
own account and always remaining as flirtation, it becomes a symptom
of degeneration or sexual depravity, among idle, crazy and vicious
persons of all kinds.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] The terms _grisette_ and _lorette_ are now obsolete, and the names
given to this class of women constantly varies. I shall, nevertheless,
employ them in the course of this work because they clearly define
certain special varieties of remunerated concubinage.

CHAPTER V

LOVE AND OTHER IRRADIATIONS OF THE SEXUAL APPETITE IN THE HUMAN MIND

=Generalities. Jealousy.=--We have seen that the mechanism of the
appetites consists in instincts inherited from our animal ancestors by
mnemic engraphia and selection, and that it is situated in the
primordial or lower cerebral centers (basal ganglia, spinal cord,
etc.). In some of the lower animals we already find other instinctive
nervous reac