[374] Howard, in his judicial History of Matrimonial Institutions (vol. ii. pp. 96 et seq.), cannot refrain from drawing attention to the almost insanely wild character of the language used in England not so many years ago by those who opposed marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, and he contrasts it with the much more reasonable attitude of the Catholic Church.  “Pictures have been drawn,” he remarks, “of the moral anarchy such marriages must produce, which are read by American, Colonial, and Continental observers with a bewilderment that is not unmixed with disgust, and are, indeed, a curious illustration of the extreme insularity of the English mind.”  So recently as A.D. 1908 a bill was brought into the British House of Lords proposing that desertion without cause for two years shall be a ground for divorce, a reasonable and humane measure which is law in most parts of the civilized world.  The Lord Chancellor (Lord Loreburn), a Liberal, and in the sphere of politics an enlightened and sagacious leader, declared that such a proposal was “absolutely impossible.”  The House rejected the proposal by 61 votes to 2.  Even the marriage decrees of the Council of Trent were not affirmed by such an overwhelming majority.  In matters of marriage legislation England has scarcely yet emerged from the Middle Ages.

CHAPTER XI.

THE ART OF LOVE.

Marriage Not Only for Procreation—­Theologians on the Sacramentum
Solationis—­Importance of the Art of Love—­The Basis of Stability in
Marriage and the Condition for Right Procreation—­The Art of Love the
Bulwark Against Divorce—­The Unity of Love and Marriage a Principle of
Modern Morality—­Christianity and the Art of Love—­Ovid—­The Art of Love
Among Primitive Peoples—­Sexual Initiation in Africa and Elsewhere—­The
Tendency to Spontaneous Development of the Art of Love in Early
Life—­Flirtation—­Sexual Ignorance in Women—­The Husband’s Place in Sexual
Initiation—­Sexual Ignorance in Men—­The Husband’s Education for
Marriage—­The Injury Done by the Ignorance of Husbands—­The Physical and
Mental Results of Unskilful Coitus—­Women Understand the Art of Love
Better Than Men—­Ancient and Modern Opinions Concerning Frequency of
Coitus—­Variation in Sexual Capacity—­The Sexual Appetite—­The Art of Love
Based on the Biological Facts of Courtship—­The Art of Pleasing Women—­The
Lover Compared to the Musician—­The Proposal as a Part of
Courtship—­Divination in the Art of Love—­The Importance of the
Preliminaries in Courtship—­The Unskilful Husband Frequently the Cause of
the Frigid Wife—­The Difficulty of Courtship—­Simultaneous Orgasm—­The
Evils of Incomplete Gratification in Women—­Coitus Interruptus—­Coitus
Reservatus—­The Human Method of Coitus—­Variations in Coitus—­Posture in
Coitus—­The Best Time for Coitus—­The Influence of Coitus in Marriage—­The