There is no sphere which we regard as so peculiarly women's sphere as that of love.

Yet there is no sphere which in civilisation women have so far had so small a part in regulating.

Their deepest impulses--their modesty, their maternity, their devotion, their emotional receptivity--were used, with no conscious and deliberate Machiavellism, against themselves, to mould a moral world for their habitation which they would not themselves have moulded.

It is not of modern creation, nor by any means due, as some have supposed, to the asceticism of Christianity, however much Christianity may have reinforced it.

Indeed one may say that in course of time Christianity had an influence in weakening it, for Christianity discovered a new reservoir of tender emotion, and such emotion may be transferred, and, as a matter of fact, was transferred, from its first religious channel into erotic channels which were thereby deepened and extended, and without reference to any design of Christianity.