Now the fact of this remarkable difference in the sex-status of women
and the same quality in all other female animals leads us to a great
number of interesting, not to say startling, conclusions, some of
which are as follows:

In the first place, the phenomenon clearly establishes the fact that
sex in the female human being _differs, pronouncedly_, from that of
all other female life. For, whereas, among all females except woman,
coitus is _impossible_, except at certain times and seasons, among
women the act can not only be permitted, but is as much possible or
_desired_ at one time as any other, regardless of the presence or
absence of the ovum in the womb. That is (and this point should be
noted well by the reader) there is a _possibility_, on the part of
the female humanity, for coitus, _under conditions that do not at all
obtain in any other female animal life_.

This is a conclusion which is of such far-reaching importance that its
limits are but dimly recognized, even in the clear thinking of most
married people. The fact of such difference is known to them, and
their practices in living conform to the conditions; but what it all
means, they are entirely ignorant of, _and they never stop to think
about it_.

And yet, _right here is the very center and core of the real success
or failure of married life_! Around this fact are grouped all the
troubles that come to husbands and wives. About it are gathered all
the joys and unspeakable delights of the happily married--the only
truly married. It is these items which make a knowledge of the real
conditions which exist, regarding this part of married life, of such
supreme importance. If these conditions could be rightly understood,