250 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



manages him by the most clever appeals to his sense 

 of importance and by a thorough understanding of 

 his sensual nature. The methods by which women 

 sometimes play on the weakness of strong men are 

 truthfully and vividly described by Thymian in her 

 pathetic " Diary of a Lost Soul." Men and women 

 who are bent on illicit sexual gratification are often 

 wonderfully acute and quick in singling out likely and 

 congenial partners. There seems to be, indeed, a 

 veritable art of seduction, and a cynical writer has 

 said that the successful seducer, like the poet, must 

 be born. While the knowledge that such traits ex- 

 ist, not very rarely, is unpleasant, the fact must be 

 regarded simply as a natural phenomenon represent- 

 ing an extreme phase of a natural and legitimate 

 instinct. The absence of sexual feeling, and the 

 complete lack of any instinct to flirt in legitimate 

 and decent ways, is certainly not to be counted a 

 virtue. The play and sparkle of wit and merriment 

 which is provoked by the admiration or liking of one 

 person for another of opposite sex are among the most 

 charming and delightful of human experiences ; and 

 among intellectual and cultivated people of artistic 

 temperament a moderate indulgence in this kind of 

 play may develop into an art which is not to be 

 scorned. Based as it is on the employment of re- 

 ciprocal male and female psychical qualities, and 

 in this sense sexual in origin it is absolutely de- 

 void of grossness. I think it true that this kind of 

 attraction is of great importance and benefit in its 



