Sex efficiency through exercises : special physical culture for women / by Th. H. van de Velde ; [photos, by E. Steinemann].
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womanhood into play, in the problems of the community as a whole. For indeed the woman of to-day has acquired conscious- ness of herself as an individual. Yet she is perturbed and tormented by the need to reconcile the strange contradiction in her being ; for she is, biologically and organically, first and foremost, not an isolated independent unit, but linked with other lives as the vehicle of the race. The message we bring here should help to solve her problem by harmonising the individual need for experience and culture with the instinctive life of the race ; by making the child-bearer more efficient and "fit" in motherhood, and the lover more apt and happy in love ; for that love is, at its best, at once the supreme triumph and the supreme surrender, the quint- essence of abandonment and of achievement. These are emotions as profound and as permanent as any of which human nature is capable, but which can only be experienced through the instrument of a sexually efficient body in the fullest sense. So I trust these physical exercises may be of help in soothing the unrest, solving the perplexities, and widening the horizon of women to-day, torn as they often are between instinct and conscious intention, and uncertain of their goal. May the book bring them greater sex efficiency and en- hanced potential womanhood, and, through these, greater and more perfect humanity and happiness !