(_Traite de l'Impuissance_, pp. 151-3) is the time for coitus,
and even if desire is greater in the evening, pleasure is greater
in the morning. Osiander also advised early morning coitus, and
Venette, in an earlier century, discussing "at what hour a man
should amorously embrace his wife" (_La Generation de l'Homme_,
Part II, Ch. V), while thinking it is best to follow inclination,
remarks that "a beautiful woman looks better by sunlight than by
candlelight." A few authorities, like Burdach, have been content
to accept the custom of night coitus, and Busch (_Das
Geschlechtsleben des Weibes_, vol. i, p. 214) was inclined to
think the darkness of night the most "natural" time, while
Fuerbringer (Senator and Kaminer, _Health and Disease in Relation
to Marriage_, vol. i, p. 217) thinks that early morning is
"occasionally" the best time.

To some, on the other hand, the exercise of sexual intercourse in
the sunlight and the open air seems so important that they are
inclined to elevate it to the rank of a religious exercise. I
quote from a communication on this point received from Australia:
"This shameful thing that must not be spoken of or done (except
in the dark) will some day, I believe, become the one religious
ceremony of the human race, in the spring. (Oh, what springs!)
People will have become very sane, well-bred, aristocratic (all
of them aristocrats), and on the whole opposed to rites and
superstitions, for they will have a perfect knowledge of the
past. The coition of lovers in the springtime will be the one
religious ceremony they will allow themselves. I have a vision
sometimes of the holy scene, but I am afraid it is too beautiful
to describe. 'The intercourse of the sexes, I have dreamed, is
ineffably beautiful, too fair to be remembered,' wrote the chaste
Thoreau. Verily human beauty, joy, and love will reach their
divinest height during those inaugural days of springtide
coupling. When the world is one Paradise, the consummation of the
lovers, the youngest and most beautiful, will take place in
certain sacred valleys in sight of thousands assembled to witness
it. For days it will take place in these valleys where the sun
will rise on a dream of passionate voices, of clinging human
forms, of flowers and waters, and the purple and gold of the
sunrise are refle