needed to, as they may
express it, "clear the system," and, far from producing
sleepiness and fatigue, it renders them bright and lively.

The young and vigorous woman, who has lived a chaste life,
sometimes feels when she commences sexual relationships as though
she really required several husbands, and needed intercourse at
least once a day, though later when she becomes adjusted to
married life she reaches the conclusion that her desires are not
abnormally excessive. The husband has to adjust himself to his
wife's needs, through his sexual force when he possesses it, and,
if not, through his skill and consideration. The rare men who
possess a genital potency which they can exert to the
gratification of women without injury to themselves have been, by
Professor Benedikt, termed "sexual athletes," and he remarks that
such men easily dominate women. He rightly regards Casanova as
the type of the sexual athlete (_Archives d'Anthropologie
Criminelle_, Jan., 1896). Naecke reports the case of a man whom he
regards as a sexual athlete, who throughout his life had
intercourse once or twice daily with his wife, or if she was
unwilling, with another woman, until he became insane at the age
of seventy-five (_Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft_, Aug.,
1908, p. 507). This should probably, however, be regarded rather
as a case of morbid hyperaesthesia than of sexual athleticism.

At this stage we reach the fundamental elements of the art of love. We
have seen that many moral practices and moral theories which have been
widely current in Christendom have developed traditions, still by no means
extinct among us, which were profoundly antagonistic to the art of love.
The idea grew up of "marital duties," of "conjugal rights."[400] The
husband had the right and the duty to perform sexual intercourse with his
wife, whatever her wishes in the matter might be, while the wife had the
duty and the right (the duty in her case being usually put first) to
submit to such intercourse, which she was frequently taught to regard as
something low and merely physical, an unpleasant and almost degrading
necessity which she would do well to put out of her thoughts as speedily
as possible. It is not surprising that such an attitude towards marriage
has been highly favorable to conjugal unhappiness, more especially that of
the wife,[401] and it has tended to promot