independent and irresponsible divines take the side of denunciation, those
theologians who have had thrust upon them the grave responsibilities of
ecclesiastical statesmanship have rather tended towards the reluctant
moral justification of prostitution. Of this we have an example of the
first importance in St. Augustine, after St. Paul the chief builder of the
Christian Church. In a treatise written in 386 to justify the Divine
regulation of the world, we find him declaring that just as the
executioner, however repulsive he may be, occupies a necessary place in
society, so the prostitute and her like, however sordid and ugly and
wicked they may be, are equally necessary; remove prostitutes from human
affairs and you would pollute the world with lust: "Aufer meretrices de
rebus humanis, turbaveris omnia libidinibus."[194] Aquinas, the only
theological thinker of Christendom who can be named with Augustine, was of
the same mind with him on this question of prostitution. He maintained the
sinfulness of fornication but he accepted the necessity of prostitution as
a beneficial part of the social structure, comparing it to the sewers
which keep a palace pure.[195] "Prostitution in towns is like the sewer in
a palace; take away the sewers and the palace becomes an impure and
stinking place." Liguori, the most influential theologian of more modern
times, was of the like opinion.

This wavering and semi-indulgent attitude towards prostitution was indeed
generally maintained by theologians. Some, following Augustine and
Aquinas, would permit prostitution for the avoidance of greater evils;
others were altogether opposed to it; others, again, would allow it in
towns but nowhere else. It was, however, universally held by theologians
that the prostitute has a right to her wages, and is not obliged to make
restitution.[196] The earlier Christian moralists found no difficulty in
maintaining that there is no sin in renting a house to a prostitute for
the purposes of her trade; absolution was always granted for this and
abstention not required.[197] Fornication, however, always remained a sin,
and from the twelfth century onwards the Church made a series of organized
attempts to reclaim prostitutes. All Catholic theologians hold that a
prostitute is bound to confess the sin of prostitution, and most, though
not all, theologians have believed that a man also must confess
intercourse with a prostitute. At the same time, while there was a certain
indulgence to the prostitute herself, the Church was always very severe on
those who lived on the profits of promoting prostitution, on the
_lenones_. Thus the Council of Elvira, which was ready to receive without
penance the prostitute who married, refused reconciliation, even at death,
to persons who had been guilty of _lenocinium_.[198]

Protestantism, in this as in many other matters of sexual morality, having
abandoned the confessional, was usually able to escape the necessity for
any definite and responsible utterances concerning the moral status of
prostitution. When it expressed any opinion, or sought to initiate any
practical action, it naturally founded itself on the Biblical injunctions
against fornication, as expressed by St. Paul, and showed no mercy for
prostitutes and no toleration for prostitution. This attitude, which was
that of the Puritans, was the more easy since in Protestant countries,
with the exception of special districts at special periods--such as Geneva
and New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--theologians
have in these matters been called upon to furnish religious exhortation
rather than to carry out practical policies. The latter task they have
left to others, and a certain confusion and uncertainty has thus often
arisen in the lay Protestant mind. This attitude in a thoughtful and
serious writer, is well illustrated in England by Burton, writing a
century after the Reformation. He refers with mitigated approval to "our
Pseudo-Catholics," who are severe with adultery but indulgent to
fornication, being perhaps of Cato's mind that it should be encouraged to
avoid worse mischiefs at home, and who holds brothels "as necessary as
churches" and "have whole Colleges of Courtesans in their towns and
cities." "They hold it impossible," he continues, "for idle persons,
young, rich and lusty, so many servants, monks, friars, to live honest,
too tyrannical a burden to compel them to be chaste, and most unfit to
suffer poor men, younger brothers and soldiers at all to marry, as also
diseased persons, votaries, priests, servants. Therefore as well to keep
and ease the one as the other, they tolerate and wink at these kind of
brothel-houses and stews. Many probable arguments they have to prove the
lawfulness, the necessity, and a toleration of them, as of usery; and
without question in policy they are not to be contradicted, but altogether
in religion."[199]

It was not until the beginning of the following century that the ancient
argument of St. Augustine for the moral justification of prostitution was
boldly and decisively stated in Protestant England, by Bernard Mandeville
in his _Fable of the Bees_, and at its first promulgation it seemed so
offensive to the public mind that the book was suppressed. "If courtesans
and strumpets were to be prosecuted with as much rigor as some silly
people would have it," Mandeville wrote, "what locks or bars would be
sufficient to preserve the honor of our wives and daughters?... It is
manifest that there is a necessity of sacrificing one part of womankind to
preserve the other, and prevent a filthiness of a more heinous nature.
From whence I think I may justly conclude that chastity may be supported
by incontinence, and the best of virtues want the assistance of the worst
of vices."[200] After Mandeville's time this view of prostitution began to
become common in Protestant as well as in other countries, though it was
not usually so clearly expressed.

It may be of interest to gather together a few more modern
examples of statements brought forward for the moral
justification of prostitution.

Thus in France Meusnier de Querlon, in his story of _Psaphion_,
written in the middle of the eighteenth century, puts into the
mouth of a Greek courtesan many interesting reflections
concerning the life and position of the prostitute. She defends
her profession with much skill, and argues that while men imagine
that prostitutes are merely the despised victims of their
pleasures, these would-be tyrants are really dupes who are
ministering to the needs of the women they trample beneath their
feet, and themselves equally deserve the contempt they bestow.
"We return disgust for disgust, as they must surely perceive. We
often abandon to them merely a statue, and while inflamed by
their own desires they consume themselves on insensible charms,
our tranquil coldness leisurely enjoys their sensibility. Then it
is we resume all our rights. A little hot blood has brought
these proud creatures to our feet, and rendered us mistresses of
their fate. On which side, I ask, is the advantage?" But all men,
she adds, are not so unjust towards the prostitute, and she
proceeds to pronounce a eulogy, not without a slight touch of
irony in it, of the utility, facility, and convenience of the
brothel.

A large number of the modern writers on prostitution insist on
its socially beneficial character. Thus Charles Richard concludes
his book on the subject with the words: "The conduct of society
with regard to prostitution must proceed from the principle of
gratitude without false shame for its utility, and compassion for
the poor creatures at whose expense this is attained" (_La
Prostitution devant le Philosophe_, 1882, p. 171). "To make
marriage permanent is to make it difficult," an American medical
writer observes; "to make it difficult is to defer it; to defer
it is to maintain in the community an increasing number of
sexually perfect individuals, with normal, or, in cases where
repression is prolonged, excessive sexual appetites. The social
evil is the natural outcome of the physical nature of man, his
inherited impulses, and the artificial conditions under which he
is compelled to live" ("The Social Evil," _Medicine_, August and
September, 1906). Woods Hutchinson, while speaking with strong
disapproval of prostitution and regarding prostitutes as "the
worst specimens of the sex," yet regards prostitution as a social
agency of the highest value. "From a medico-economic point of
view I venture to claim it as one of the grand selective and
eliminative agencies of nature, and of highest value to the
community. It may be roughly characterized as a safety valve for
the institution of marriage" (_The Gospel According to Darwin_,
p. 193; cf. the same author's article on "The Economics of
Prostitution," summarized in _Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal_, November 21, 1895). Adolf Gerson, in a somewhat similar
spirit, argues ("Die Ursache der Prostitution,"
_Sexual-Probleme_, September, 1908) that "prostitution is one of
the means used by Nature to limit the procreative activity of
men, and especially to postpone the period of sexual maturity."
Molinari considers that the social benefits of prostitution have
been manifested in various ways from the first; by sterilizing,
for instance, the more excessive manifestations of the sexual
impulse prostitution suppressed the necessity for the infanticide
of superfluous children, and led to the prohibition of that
primitive method of limiting the population (G. de Molinari, _La
Viriculture_, p. 45). In quite another way than that mentioned by
Molinari, prostitution has even in very recent times led to the
abandonment of infanticide. In the Chinese province of Ping-Yang,
Matignon states, it was usual not many years ago for poor parents
to kill forty per cent. of the girl children, or even all of
them, at birth, for they were too expensive to rear and brought
nothing in, since men who wished to marry could easily obtain a
wife in the neighboring province of Wenchu, where women were
very easy to obtain. Now, however, the line of steamships along
the coast makes it very easy for girls to reach the brothels of
Shang-Hai, where they can earn money for their families; the
custom of killing them has therefore died out (Matignon,
_Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1896, p. 72). "Under
present conditions," writes Dr. F. Erhard ("Auch ein Wort zur
Ehereform," _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Jahrgang I, Heft 9),
"prostitution (in the broadest sense, including free
relationships) is necessary in order that young men may, in some
degree, learn to know women, for conventional conversation cannot
suffice for this; an exact knowledge of feminine thought and
action is, however, necessary for a proper choice, since it is
seldom possible to rely on the certainty of instinct. It is good
also that men should wear off their horns before marriage, for
the polygamous tendency will break through somewhere.
Prostitution will only spoil those men in whom there is not much
to spoil, and if the desire for marriage is thus lost, the man's
unbegotten children may have cause to thank him." Neisser, Naecke,
and many others, have pleaded for prostitution, and even for
brothels, as "necessary evils."

It is scarcely necessary to add that many, among even the
strongest upholders of the moral advantages of prostitution,
believe that some improvement in method is still desirable. Thus
Berault looks forward to a time when regulated brothels will
become less contemptible. Various improvements may, he thinks, in
the near future, "deprive them of the barbarous attributes which
mark them out for the opprobrium of the skeptical or ignorant
multitude, while their recognizable advantages will put an end to
the contempt aroused by their cynical aspect" (_La Maison de
Tolerance_, These de Paris, 1904).

4. _The Civilizational Value of Prostitution._--The moral argument for
prostitution is based on the belief that our marriage system is so
infinitely precious that an institution which serves as its buttress must
be kept in existence, however ugly or otherwise objectionable it may in
itself be. There is, however, another argument in support of prostitution
which scarcely receives the emphasis it deserves. I refer to its influence
in adding an element, in some form or another necessary, of gaiety and
variety to the ordered complexity of modern life, a relief from the
monotony of its mechanical routine, a distraction from its dull and
respectable monotony. This is distinct from the more specific function of
prostitution as an outlet for superfluous sexual energy, and may even
affect those who have little or no commerce with prostitutes. This
element may be said to constitute the civilizational value of
prostitution.

It is not merely the general conditions of civilization, but more
specifically the conditions of urban life, which make this factor
insistent. Urban life imposes by the stress of competition a very severe
and exacting routine of dull work. At the same time it makes men and women
more sensitive to new impressions, more enamored of excitement and change.
It multiplies the opportunities of social intercourse; it decreases the
chances of detection of illegitimate intercourse while at the same time it
makes marriage more difficult, for, by heightening social ambitions and
increasing the expenses of living, it postpones the time when a home can
be created. Urban life delays marriage and yet renders the substitutes for
marriage more imperative.[201]

There cannot be the slightest doubt that it is this motive--the effort to
supplement the imperfect opportunities for self-development offered by our
restrained, mechanical, and laborious civilization--which plays one of the
chief parts in inducing women to adopt, temporarily or permanently, a
prostitute's life. We have seen that the economic factor is not, as was
once supposed, by any means predominant in this choice. Nor, again, is
there any reason to suppose that an over-mastering sexual impulse is a
leading factor. But a large number of young women turn instinctively to a
life of prostitution because they are moved by an obscure impulse which
they can scarcely define to themselves or express, and are often ashamed
to confess. It is, therefore, surprising that this motive should find so
large a place even in the formal statistics of the factors of
prostitution. Merrick, in London, found that 5000, or nearly a third, of
the prostitutes he investigated, voluntarily gave up home or situation
"for a life of pleasure," and he puts this at the head of the causes of
prostitution.[202] In America Sanger found that "inclination" came almost
at the head of the causes of prostitution, while Woods Hutchinson found
"love of display, luxury and idleness" by far at the head. "Disgusted and
wearied with work" is the reason assigned by a large number of Belgian
girls when stating to the police their wish to be enrolled as prostitutes.
In Italy a similar motive is estimated to play an important part. In
Russia "desire for amusement" comes second among the causes of
prostitution. There can, I think, be little doubt that, as a thoughtful
student of London life has concluded, the problem of prostitution is "at
bottom a mad and irresistible craving for excitement, a serious and wilful
revolt against the monotony of commonplace ideals, and the uninspired
drudgery of everyday life."[203] It is this factor of prostitution, we may
reasonably conclude, which is mainly responsible for the fact, pointed out
by F. Schiller,[204] that with the development of civilization the supply
of prostitutes tends to outgrow the demand.

Charles Booth seems to be of the same opinion, and quotes (_Life
and Labor of the People_, Third Series, vol. vii, p. 364) from a
Rescue Committee Report: "The popular idea is, that these women
are eager to leave a life of sin. The plain and simple truth is
that, for the most part, they have no desire at all to be
rescued. So many of these women do not, and will not, regard
prostitution as a sin. 'I am taken out to dinner and to some
place of amusement every night; why should I give it up?'"
Merrick, who found that five per cent. of 14,000 prostitutes who
passed through Millbank Prison, were accustomed to combine
religious observance with the practice of their profession, also
remarks in regard to their feelings about morality: "I am
convinced that there are many poor men and women who do not in
the least understand what is implied in the term 'immorality.'
Out of courtesy to you, they may assent to what you say, but they
do not comprehend your meaning when you talk of virtue or purity;
you are simply talking over their heads" (Merrick, op. cit., p.
28). The same attitude may be found among prostitutes everywhere.
In Italy Ferriani mentions a girl of fifteen who, when accused of
indecency with a man in a public garden, denied with tears and
much indignation. He finally induced her to confess, and then
asked her: "Why did you try to make me believe you were a good
girl?" She hesitated, smiled, and said: "Because _they say_ girls
ought not to do what I do, but ought to work. But I am what I am,
and it is no concern of theirs." This attitude is often more than
an instinctive feeling; in intelligent prostitutes it frequently
becomes a reasoned conviction. "I can bear everything, if so it
must be," wrote the author of the _Tagebuch einer Verlorenen_ (p.
291), "even serious and honorable contempt, but I cannot bear
scorn. Contempt--yes, if it is justified. If a poor and pretty
girl with sick and bitter heart stands alone in life, cast off,
with temptations and seductions offering on every side, and, in
spite of that, out of inner conviction she chooses the grey and
monotonous path of renunciation and middle-class morality, I
recognize in that girl a personality, who has a certain
justification in looking down with contemptuous pity on weaker
girls. But those geese who, under the eyes of their shepherds and
life-long owners, have always been pastured in smooth green
fields, have certainly no right to laugh scornfully at others who
have not been so fortunate." Nor must it be supposed that there
is necessarily any sophistry in the prostitute's justification of
herself. Some of our best thinkers and observers have reached a
conclusion that is not dissimilar. "The actual conditions of
society are opposed to any high moral feeling in women," Marro
observes (_La Puberta_, p. 462), "for between those who sell
themselves to prostitution and those who sell themselves to
marriage, the only difference is in price and duration of the
contract."

We have already seen how very large a part in prostitution is furnished by
those who have left domestic service to adopt this life (_ante_ p. 264).
It is not difficult to find in this fact evidence of the kind of impulse
which impels a woman to adopt the career of prostitution. "The servant, in
our society of equality," wrote Goncourt, recalling somewhat earlier days
when she was often admitted to a place in the family life, "has become
nothing but a paid pariah, a machine for doing household work, and is no
longer allowed to share the employer's human life."[205] And in England,
even half a century ago, we already find the same statements concerning
the servant's position: "domestic service is a complete slavery," with
early hours and late hours, and constant running up and down stairs till
her legs are swollen; "an amount of ingenuity appears too often to be
exercised, worthy of a better cause, in obtaining the largest possible
amount of labor out of the domestic machine"; in addition she is "a kind
of lightning conductor," to receive the ill-temper and morbid feelings of
her mistress and the young ladies; so that, as some have said, "I felt so
miserable I did not care what became of me, I wished I was dead."[206] The
servant is deprived of all human relationships; she must not betray the
existence of any simple impulse, or natural need. At the same time she
lives on the fringe of luxury; she is surrounded by the tantalizing
visions of pleasure and amusement for which her fresh young nature
craves.[207] It is not surprising that, repelled by unrelieved drudgery
and attracted by idle luxury, she should take the plunge which will alone
enable her to enjoy the glittering aspects of civilization which seem so
desirable to her.[208]

It is sometimes stated that the prevalence of prostitution among
girls who were formerly servants is due to the immense numbers of
servants who are seduced by their masters or the young men of the
family, and are thus forced on to the streets. Undoubtedly in a
certain proportion of cases, perhaps sometimes a fairly
considerable proportion, this is a decisive factor in the matter,
but it scarcely seems to be the chief factor. The existence of
relationships between servants and masters, it must be
remembered, by no means necessarily implies seduction. In a
large number of cases the servant in a household is, in sexual
matters, the teacher rather than the pupil. (In "The Sexual
Impulse in Women," in the third volume of these _Studies_, I have
discussed the part played by servants as sexual initiators of the
young boys in the households in which they are placed.) The more
precise statistics of the causes of prostitution seldom assign
seduction as the main determining factor in more than about
twenty per cent. of cases, though this is obviously one of the
most easily avowable motives (see _ante_, p. 256). Seduction by
any kind of employer constitutes only a proportion (usually less
than half) even of these cases. The special case of seduction of
servants by masters can thus play no very considerable part as a
factor of prostitution.

The statistics of the parentage of illegitimate children have
some bearing on this question. In a series of 180 unmarried
mothers assisted by the Berlin Bund fuer Mutterschutz, particulars
are given of the occupations both of the mothers, and, as far as
possible, of the fathers. The former were one-third
servant-girls, and the great majority of the remainder assistants
in trades or girls carrying on work at home. At the head of the
fathers (among 120 cases) came artisans (33), followed by
tradespeople (22); only a small proportion (20 to 25) could be
described as "gentlemen," and even this proportion loses some of
its significance when it is pointed out that some of the girls
were also of the middle-class; in nineteen cases the fathers were
married men (_Mutterschutz_, January, 1907, p. 45).

Most authorities in most countries are of opinion that girls who
eventually (usually between the ages of fifteen and twenty)
become prostitutes have lost their virginity at an early age, and
in the great majority of cases through men of their own class.
"The girl of the people falls by the people," stated Reuss in
France (_La Prostitution_, p. 41). "It is her like, workers like
herself, who have the first fruits of her beauty and virginity.
The man of the world who covers her with gold and jewels only has
their leavings." Martineau, again (_De la Prostitution
Clandestine_, 1885), showed that prostitutes are usually
deflowered by men of their own class. And Jeannel, in Bordeaux,
found reason for believing that it is not chiefly their masters
who lead servants astray; they often go into service because they
have been seduced in the country, while lazy, greedy, and
unintelligent girls are sent from the country into the town to
service. In Edinburgh, W. Tait (_Magdalenism_, 1842) found that
soldiers more than any other class in the community are the
seducers of women, the Highlanders being especially notorious in
this respect. Soldiers have this reputation everywhere, and in
Germany especially it is constantly found that the presence of
the soldiery in a country district, as at the annual manoeuvres,
is the cause of unchastity and illegitimate births; it is so also
in Austria, where, long ago, Gross-Hoffinger stated that
soldiers were responsible for at least a third of all
illegitimate births, a share out of all proportion to their
numbers. In Italy, Marro, investigating the occasion of the loss
of virginity in twenty-two prostitutes, found that ten gave
themselves more or less spontaneously to lovers or masters, ten
yielded in the expectation of marriage, and two were outraged
(_La Puberta_, p. 461). The loss of virginity, Marro adds, though
it may not be the direct cause of prostitution, often leads on to
it. "When a door has once been broken in," a prostitute said to
him, "it is difficult to keep it closed." In Sardinia, as A.
Mantegazza and Ciuffo found, prostitutes are very largely
servants from the country who have already been deflowered by men
of their own class.

This civilizational factor of prostitution, the influence of luxury and
excitement and refinement in attracting the girl of the people, as the
flame attracts the moth, is indicated by the fact that it is the
country-dwellers who chiefly succumb to the fascination. The girls whose
adolescent explosive and orgiastic impulses, sometimes increased by a
slight congenital lack of nervous balance, have been latent in the dull
monotony of country life and heightened by the spectacle of luxury acting
on the unrelieved drudgery of town life, find at last their complete
gratification in the career of a prostitute. To the town girl, born and
bred in the town, this career has not usually much attraction, unless she
has been brought up from the first in an environment that predisposes her
to adopt it. She is familiar from childhood with the excitements of urban
civilization and they do not intoxicate her; she is, moreover, more shrewd
to take care of herself than the country girl, and too well acquainted
with the real facts of the prostitute's life to be very anxious to adopt
her career. Beyond this, also, it is probable that the stocks she belongs
to possess a native or acquired power of resistance to unbalancing
influences which has enabled them to survive in urban life. She has become
immune to the poisons of that life.[209]

In all great cities a large proportion, if not the majority, of
the inhabitants have usually been born outside the city (in
London only about fifty per cent. of heads of households are
definitely reported as born in London); and it is not therefore
surprising that prostitutes also should often be outsiders. Still
it remains a significant fact that so typically urban a
phenomenon as prostitution should be so largely recruited from
the country. This is everywhere the case. Merrick enumerates the
regions from which came some 14,000 prostitutes who passed
through Millbank Prison. Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Devon
are the counties that stand at the head, and Merrick estimates
that the contingent of London from the four counties which make
up London was 7000, or one-half of the whole; military towns like
Colchester and naval ports like Plymouth supply many prostitutes
to London; Ireland furnished many more than Scotland, and Germany
far more than any other European country, France being scarcely
represented at all (Merrick, _Work Among the Fallen_, 1890, pp.
14-18). It is, of course, possible that the proportions among
those who pass through a prison do not accurately represent the
proportions among prostitutes generally. The registers of the
London Salvation Army Rescue Home show that sixty per cent. of
the girls and women come from the provinces (A. Sherwell, _Life
in West London_, Ch. V). This is exactly the same proportion as
Tait found among prostitutes generally, half a century earlier,
in Edinburgh. Sanger found that of 2000 prostitutes in New York
as many as 1238 were born abroad (706 in Ireland), while of the
remaining 762 only half were born in the State of New York, and
clearly (though the exact figures are not given) a still smaller
proportion in New York City. Prostitutes come from the
North--where the climate is uncongenial, and manufacturing and
sedentary occupations prevail--much more than from the South;
thus Maine, a cold bleak maritime State, sent twenty-four of
these prostitutes to New York, while equidistant Virginia, which
at the same rate should have sent seventy-two, only sent nine;
there was a similar difference between Rhode Island and Maryland
(Sanger, _History of Prostitution_, p. 452). It is instructive to
see here the influence of a dreary climate and monotonous labor
in stimulating the appetite for a "life of pleasure." In France,
as shown by a map in Parent-Duchatelet's work (vol. i, pp. 37-64,
1857), if the country is divided into five zones, on the whole
running east and west, there is a steady and progressive decrease
in the number of prostitutes each zone sends to Paris, as we
descend southwards. Little more than a third seem to belong to
Paris, and, as in America, it is the serious and hard-working
North, with its relatively cold climate, which furnishes the
largest contingent; even in old France, Dufour remarks (_op.
cit._, vol. iv, Ch. XV), prostitution, as the _fabliaux_ and
_romans_ show, was less infamous in the _langue d'oil_ than in
the _langue d'oc_, so that they were doubtless rare in the
South. At a later period Reuss states (_La Prostitution_, p. 12)
that "nearly all the prostitutes of Paris come from the
provinces." Jeannel found that of one thousand Bordeaux
prostitutes only forty-six belonged to the city itself, and
Potton (Appendix to Parent-Duchatelet, vol. ii, p. 446) states
that of nearly four thousand Lyons prostitutes only 376 belonged
to Lyons. In Vienna, in 1873, Schrank remarks that of over 1500
prostitutes only 615 were born in Vienna. The general rule, it
will be seen, though the variations are wide, is that little more
than a third of a city's prostitutes are children of the city.

It is interesting to note that this tendency of the prostitute to
reach cities from afar, this migratory tendency--which they
nowadays share with waiters--is no merely modern phenomenon.
"There are few cities in Lombardy, or France, or Gaul," wrote St.
Boniface nearly twelve centuries ago, "in which there is not an
adulteress or prostitute of the English nation," and the Saint
attributes this to the custom of going on pilgrimage to foreign
shrines. At the present time there is no marked English element
among Continental prostitutes. Thus in Paris, according to Reuss
(_La Prostitution_, p. 12), the foreign prostitutes in decreasing
order are Belgian, German (Alsace-Lorraine), Swiss (especially
Geneva), Italian, Spanish, and only then English. Connoisseurs in
this matter say, indeed, that the English prostitute, as compared
with her Continental (and especially French) sister, fails to
show to advantage, being usually grasping as regards money and
deficient in charm.

It is the appeal of civilization, though not of what is finest and best in
civilization, which more than any other motive, calls women to the career
of a prostitute. It is now necessary to point out that for the man also,
the same appeal makes itself felt in the person of the prostitute. The
common and ignorant assumption that prostitution exists to satisfy the
gross sensuality of the young unmarried man, and that if he is taught to
bridle gross sexual impulse or induced to marry early the prostitute must
be idle, is altogether incorrect. If all men married when quite young, not
only would the remedy be worse than the disease--a point which it would be
out of place to discuss here--but the remedy would not cure the disease.
The prostitute is something more than a channel to drain off superfluous
sexual energy, and her attraction by no means ceases when men are married,
for a large number of the men who visit prostitutes, if not the majority,
are married. And alike whether they are married or unmarried the motive
is not one of uncomplicated lust.

In England, a well-informed writer remarks that "the value of
marriage as a moral agent is evidenced by the fact that all the
better-class prostitutes in London are almost entirely supported
by married men," while in Germany, as stated in the interesting
series of reminiscences by a former prostitute, Hedwig Hard's
_Beichte einer Gefallenen_, (p. 208), the majority of the men who
visit prostitutes are married. The estimate is probably
excessive. Neisser states that only twenty-five per cent. of
cases of gonorrhoea occur in married men. This indication is
probably misleading in the opposite direction, as the married
would be less reckless than the young and unmarried. As regards
the motives which lead married men to prostitutes, Hedwig Hard
narrates from her own experiences an incident which is
instructive and no doubt typical. In the town in which she lived
quietly as a prostitute a man of the best social class was
introduced by a friend, and visited her habitually. She had often
seen and admired his wife, who was one of the beauties of the
place, and had two charming children; husband and wife seemed
devoted to each other, and every one envied their happiness. He
was a man of intellect and culture who encouraged Hedwig's love
of books; she became greatly attached to him, and one day
ventured to ask him how he could leave his lovely and charming
wife to come to one who was not worthy to tie her shoe-lace.
"Yes, my child," he answered, "but all her beauty and culture
brings nothing to my heart. She is cold, cold as ice, proper,
and, above all, phlegmatic. Pampered and spoilt, she lives only
for herself; we are two good comrades, and nothing more. If, for
instance, I come back from the club in the evening and go to her
bed, perhaps a little excited, she becomes nervous and she thinks
it improper to wake her. If I kiss her she defends herself, and
tells me that I smell horribly of cigars and wine. And if perhaps
I attempt more, she jumps out of bed, bristles up as though I
were assaulting her, and threatens to throw herself out of the
window if I touch her. So, for the sake of peace, I leave her
alone and come to you." There can be no doubt whatever that this
is the experience of many married men who would be well content
to find the sweetheart as well as the friend in their wives. But
the wives, from a variety of causes, have proved incapable of
becoming the sexual mates of their husbands. And the husbands,
without being carried away by any impulse of strong passion or
any desire for infidelity, seek abroad what they cannot find at
home.

This is not the only reason why married men visit prostitutes.
Even men who are happily married to women in all chief respects
fitted to them, are apt to find, after some years of married
life, a mysterious craving for variety. They are not tired of
their wives, they have not the least wish or intention to abandon
them, they will not, if they can help it, give them the slightest
pain. But from time to time they are led by an almost
irresistible and involuntary impulse to seek a temporary intimacy
with women to whom nothing would persuade them to join themselves
permanently. Pepys, whose _Diary_, in addition to its other
claims upon us, is a psychological document of unique importance,
furnishes a very characteristic example of this kind of impulse.
He had married a young and charming wife, to whom he is greatly
attached, and he lives happily with her, save for a few
occasional domestic quarrels soon healed by kisses; his love is
witnessed by his jealousy, a jealousy which, as he admits, is
quite unreasonable, for she is a faithful and devoted wife. Yet a
few years after marriage, and in the midst of a life of strenuous
official activity, Pepys cannot resist the temptation to seek the
temporary favors of other women, seldom prostitutes, but nearly
always women of low social class--shop women, workmen's wives,
superior servant-girls. Often he is content to invite them to a
quiet ale-house, and to take a few trivial liberties. Sometimes
they absolutely refuse to allow more than this; when that happens
he frequently thanks Almighty God (as he makes his entry in his
_Diary_ at night) that he has been saved from temptation and from
loss of time and money; in any case, he is apt to vow that it
shall never occur again. It always does occur again. Pepys is
quite sincere with himself; he makes no attempt at justification
or excuse; he knows that he has yielded to a temptation; it is an
impulse that comes over him at intervals, an impulse that he
seems unable long to resist. Throughout it all he remains an
estimable and diligent official, and in most respects a tolerably
virtuous man, with a genuine dislike of loose people and loose
talk. The attitude of Pepys is brought out with incomparable
simplicity and sincerity because he is setting down these things
for his own eyes only, but his case is substantially that of a
vast number of other men, perhaps indeed of the typical _homme
moyen sensuel_ (see Pepys, _Diary_, ed. Wheatley; e.g., vol. iv,
passim).

There is a third class of married men, less considerable in
number but not unimportant, who are impelled to visit
prostitutes: the class of sexually perverted men. There are a
great many reasons why such men may desire to be married, and in
some cases they marry women with whom they find it possible to
obtain the particular form of sexual gratification they crave.
But in a large proportion of cases this is not possible. The
conventionally bred woman often cannot bring herself to humor
even some quite innocent fetishistic whim of her husband's, for
it is too alien to her feelings and too incomprehensible to her
ideas, even though she may be genuinely in love with him; in many
cases the husband would not venture to ask, and scarcely even
wish, that his wife should lend herself to play the fantastic or
possibly degrading part his desires demand. In such a case he
turns naturally to the prostitute, the only woman whose business
it is to fulfil his peculiar needs. Marriage has brought no
relief to these men, and they constitute a noteworthy proportion
of a prostitute's clients in every great city. The most ordinary
prostitute of any experience can supply cases from among her own
visitors to illustrate a treatise of psychopathic sexuality. It
may suffice here to quote a passage from the confessions of a
young London (Strand) prostitute as written down from her lips by
a friend to whom I am indebted for the document; I have merely
turned a few colloquial terms into more technical forms. After
describing how, when she was still a child of thirteen in the
country, a rich old gentleman would frequently come and exhibit
himself before her and other girls, and was eventually arrested
and imprisoned, she spoke of the perversities she had met with
since she had become a prostitute. She knew a young man, about
twenty-five, generally dressed in a sporting style, who always
came with a pair of live pigeons, which he brought in a basket.
She and the girl with whom she lived had to undress and take the
pigeons and wring their necks; he would stand in front of them,
and as the necks were wrung orgasm occurred. Once a man met her
in the street and asked her if he might come with her and lick
her boots. She agreed, and he took her to a hotel, paid half a
guinea for a room, and, when she sat down, got under the table
and licked her boots, which were covered with mud; he did nothing
more. Then there were some things, she said, that were too dirty
to repeat; well, one man came home with her and her friend and
made them urinate into his mouth. She also had stories of
flagellation, generally of men who whipped the girls, more rarely
of men who liked to be whipped by them. One man, who brought a
new birch every time, liked to whip her friend until he drew
blood. She knew another man who would do nothing but smack her
nates violently. Now all these things, which come into the
ordinary day's work of the prostitute, are rooted in deep and
almost irresistible impulses (as will be clear to any reader of
the discussion of Erotic Symbolism in the previous volume of
these _Studies_). They must find some outlet. But it is only the
prostitute who can be relied upon, through her interests and
training, to overcome the natural repulsion to such actions, and
gratify desires which, without gratification, might take on other
and more dangerous forms.

Although Woods Hutchinson quotes with approval the declaration of a
friend, "Out of thousands I have never seen one with good table manners,"
there is still a real sense in which the prostitute represents, however
inadequately, the attraction of civilization. "There was no house in
which I could habitually see a lady's face and hear a lady's voice," wrote
the novelist Anthony Trollope in his _Autobiography_, concerning his early
life in London. "No allurement to decent respectability came in my way. It
seems to me that in such circumstances the temptations of loose life will
almost certainly prevail with a young man. The temptation at any rate
prevailed with me." In every great city, it has been said, there are
thousands of men who have no right to call any woman but a barmaid by her
Christian name.[210] All the brilliant fever of civilization pulses round
them in the streets but their lips never touch it. It is the prostitute
who incarnates this fascination of the city, far better than the virginal
woman, even if intimacy with her were within reach. The prostitute
represents it because she herself feels it, because she has even
sacrificed her woman's honor in the effort to identify herself with it.
She has unbridled feminine instincts, she is a mistress of the feminine
arts of adornment, she can speak to him concerning the mysteries of
womanhood and the luxuries of sex with an immediate freedom and knowledge
the innocent maiden cloistered in her home would be incapable of. She
appeals to him by no means only because she can gratify the lower desires
of sex, but also because she is, in her way, an artist, an expert in the
art of feminine exploitation, a leader of feminine fashions. For she is
this, and there are, as Simmel has stated in his _Philosophie der Mode_,
good psychological reasons why she always should be this. Her uncertain
social position makes all that is conventional and established hateful to
her, while her temperament makes perpetual novelty delightful. In new
fashions she finds "an aesthetic form of that instinct of destruction which
seems peculiar to all pariah existences, in so far as they are not
completely enslaved in spirit."

"However surprising it may seem to some," a modern writer
remarks, "prostitutes must be put on the same level as artists.
Both use their gifts and talents for the joy and pleasure of
others, and, as a rule, for payment. What is the essential
difference between a singer who gives pleasure to hearers by her
throat and a prostitute who gives pleasure to those who seek her
by another part of her body? All art works on the senses." He
refers to the significant fact that actors, and especially
actresses, were formerly regarded much as prostitutes are now (R.
Hellmann, _Ueber Geschlechtsfreiheit_, pp. 245-252).

Bernaldo de Quiros and Llanas Aguilaniedo (_La Mala Vida en
Madrid_, p. 242) trace the same influence still lower in the
social scale. They are describing the more squalid kind of _cafe
chantant_, in which, in Spain and elsewhere, the most vicious and
degenerate feminine creatures become waitresses (and occasionally
singers and dancers), playing the part of amiable and
distinguished _hetairae_ to the public of carmen and shop-boys who
frequent these resorts. "Dressed with what seems to the youth
irreproachable taste, with hair elaborately prepared, and clean
face adorned with flowers or trinkets, affable and at times
haughty, superior in charm and in finery to the other women he is
able to know, the waitresses become the most elevated example of
the _femme galante_ whom he is able to contemplate and talk to,
the courtesan of his sphere."

But while to the simple, ignorant, and hungry youth the prostitute appeals
as the embodiment of many of the refinements and perversities of
civilization, on many more complex and civilized men she exerts an
attraction of an almost reverse kind. She appeals by her fresh and natural
coarseness, her frank familiarity with the crudest facts of life; and so
lifts them for a moment out of the withering atmosphere of artificial
thought and unreal sentiment in which so many civilized persons are
compelled to spend the greater part of their lives. They feel in the words
which the royal friend of a woman of this temperament is said to have used
in explaining her incomprehensible influence over him: "She is so
splendidly vulgar!"

In illustration of this aspect of the appeal of prostitution, I
may quote a passage in which the novelist, Hermant, in his
_Confession d'un Enfant d'Hier_ (Lettre VII), has set down the
reasons which may lead the super-refined child of a cultured age,
yet by no means radically or completely vicious, to find
satisfaction in commerce with prostitutes: "As long as my heart
was not touched the object of my satisfaction was completely
indifferent to me. I was, moreover, a great lover of absolute
liberty, which is only possible in the circle of these anonymous
creatures and in their reserved dwelling. There everything became
permissible. With other women, however low we may seek them,
certain convenances must be observed, a kind of protocol. To
these one can say everything: one is protected by incognito and
assured that nothing will be divulged. I profited by this
freedom, which suited my age, but with a perverse fancy which was
not characteristic of my years. I scarcely know where I found
what I said to them, for it was the opposite of my tastes, which
were simple, and, if I may venture to say so, classic. It is true
that, in matters of love, unrestrained naturalism always tends to
perversion, a fact that can only seem paradoxical at first sight.
Primitive peoples have many traits in common with degenerates. It
was, however, only in words that I was unbridled; and that was
the only occasion on which I can recollect seriously lying. But
that necessity, which I then experienced, of expelling a lower
depth of ignoble instincts, seems to me characteristic and
humiliating. I may add that even in the midst of these
dissipations I retained a certain reserve. The contacts to which
I exposed myself failed to soil me; nothing was left when I had
crossed the threshold. I have always retained, from that forcible
and indifferent commerce, the habit of attributing no consequence
to the action of the flesh. The amorous function, which religion
and morality have surrounded with mystery or seasoned with sin,
seems to me a function like any other, a little vile, but
agreeable, and one to which the usual epilogue is too long....
This kind of companionship only lasted for a short time." This
analysis of the attitude of a certain common type of civilized
modern man seems to be just, but it may perhaps occur to some
readers that a commerce which led to "the action of the flesh"
being regarded as of no consequence can scarcely be said to have
left no taint.

In a somewhat similar manner, Henri de Regnier, in his novel,
_Les Rencontres de Monsieur Breot_ (p. 50), represents Bercaille
as deliberately preferring to take his pleasures with
servant-girls rather than with ladies, for pleasure was, to his
mind, a kind of service, which could well be accommodated with
the services they are accustomed to give; and then they are
robust and agreeable, they possess the _naivete_ which is always
charming in the common people, and they are not apt to be
repelled by those little accidents which might offend the
fastidious sensibilities of delicately bred ladies.

Bloch, who has especially emphasized this side of the appeal of