he female. We shall see in Chapter VI that savage men
have a much greater tendency to tattoo and adorn themselves than have
the women.

The art which man employs to seduce and conquer woman has been
described to satiety in romances and novels, as well as in
ethnographic works; so that we shall not dwell on it here. On the
contrary, we shall show that in higher civilizations man is in general
more sought after than woman, so that the latter has surpassed him in
the art of flirtation or sexual conquest.

It is also important to remark to what extent the increase of man's
mental complexity transforms his sexual tactics. The simple, natural,
and at the same time bashful, modest manner, in which a naive young
man seeks to conquer a heart, usually produces no effect on the
fashionable young lady, experienced in all refined pleasures and
saturated with unhealthy novels. These young women are much more
easily seduced by the art of Don Juan and the old _roues_, who are
more adequate to deal with them because they have studied practically
the psychology of the modern woman.

=Instinct of Procreation.=--Another irradiation of the male sexual
instinct, connected with the preceding, is the instinct of
procreation. If there were no other difficulties or consequences, man
would without the least doubt be instinctively inclined to copulate
with as many women as he could, and procreate as many children as
possible. The more he is capable of satisfying his procreative
instinct, the more he becomes self-exalted, as he thus sees himself
multiplied and feels his power extended by the possession of a great
number of wives and children. This is one of the principal causes
which urge rich men and polygamous peoples to possess many women.

Coitus without object, like that of prostitution, can only assuage the
sexual appetite and does not satisfy any of its higher irradiations.
It is well known that a happy betrothal, reposing on true love, and
not on pecuniary interests, often transforms a young man from
pessimism to optimism, from misogyny to philogyny. Skeptics smile at
this transformation and regard it as only the transient intoxication
of love. This may be true in some cases, but, as we have seen above,
when love is ennobled by deep understanding and mutual education, when
each knows and respects the other, the transformation remains
definite, and is strengthened so much that the honeymoon of the silver
wedding is often happier and mor