On the whole, as far as my reading has enabled me to judge, I think I am safe in saying that the sexual passion has increased rather than diminished with the growth of civilization. It was during the very acme of Grecian, Roman and Babylonian intellectual enlightenment that sexual profligacy reached its greatest development; and in any comparative ethnological review of the human race it will be found that the vices of savages, much less than the luxuries of civilization, tend to impair and diminish the national life. This fact did not escape the keen observation of Lucretius,1 as well as that of more recent writers;3 and Mary Wol-lenstonecraft remarks that "people of sense and reflection are most apt to have violent and constant passions, and to be preyed upon by them."1

Heape, in his study of the " Sexual Season," regards it as highly probable that "the reproductive power of man has increased with civilization, precisely as it may be increased in the lower animals by domestication; a fact which suggests the far greater importance of the sexual function among civilized than savage communities, in its relation to both society and morals, A weak instinct involves laxity of the marriage tie, as a strong instinct tends to its vigor and continuance, as well as that constant idealizing of sex which, it would not be difficult to show, is the strongest factor not only in promoting marriage but in begetting fidelity in love; bo that the abuses and national ruin we have seen to follow sexual development in the older civilizations, must be based on moral, rather than social grounds.