But her erotic value is something that can exist only for the man whom she loves and who loves her. The first properly erotic love episode can never destroy or ruin but only create, or begin the creation, of a woman out of a gynecoid female. A true woman according to the use of the term in this book is a female who has become fused with a male. Then she becomes a woman and he a man. The nature of this fusion has been discussed elsewhere.
§ 83
As a woman’s all cannot be taken at one love episode, except that “all” which is constituted by her strictly egoistic-social property value, it follows that in the true erotic sense, nothing is taken unless possibly as one should chip a piece of marble from a block out of which one was to carve a statue of the Goddess of Love. The fragment of marble chiselled away at the first stroke of the hammer is no part of the statue.
§ 84
The thought that the husband is getting an egoistic-socially valuable possession by the exercise of his rights at the first love episode is therefore quite absurd. He is performing an act which is in the nature of a creation, if rightly carried out, but which is destruction if he does not himself hold his instincts under absolute control.
That the love episode does not take away from woman anything that makes her poorer is indicated by the fact, noticed by Ellis and others, that woman’s erotic nature is deeper and stronger than man’s. For the development of this great erotic nature it is as absolutely necessary for her to be controlled by a man quite master of his own sex instincts, as it is necessary for an ovum to be met by a zoösperm, if it is going to develop any further than its ovum condition.
At a single love episode, neither can the woman’s all be taken by a man nor can her development be completed. The first episode is only the beginning of a development, that needs the entire excess energies of her man for the rest of their joint lives. In the sections on virginity it will also appear that except in a superficial egoistic-social sense, her psychical virginity cannot always be terminated at the first love episode.
§ 85
The thought that she has given her all to him is worked out still further in the irrational conclusion, which comes to some men’s minds, that there may be nothing left for himself for a future occasion. Therefore he will not take all this time, so as to leave a little for next time.