prostitution (_Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit_, pp. 359-362),
refers to the delicate and sensitive young Danish writer, J.P.
Jakobsen, who seems to have acutely felt the contrast between the
higher and more habitual impulses, and the occasional outburst of
what he felt to be lower instincts; in his _Niels Lyhne_ he
describes the kind of double life in which a man is true for a
fortnight to the god he worships, and is then overcome by other
powers which madly bear him in their grip towards what he feels
to be humiliating, perverse, and filthy. "At such moments," Bloch
remarks, "the man is another being. The 'two souls' in the breast
become a reality. Is that the famous scholar, the lofty idealist,
the fine-souled æsthetician, the artist who has given us so many
splendid and pure works in poetry and painting? We no longer
recognize him, for at such moments another being has come to the
surface, another nature is moving within him, and with the power
of an elementary force is impelling him towards things at which
his 'upper consciousness,' the civilized man within him, would
shudder." Bloch believes that we are here concerned with a kind
of normal masculine masochism, which prostitution serves to
gratify.


_IV. The Present Social Attitude Towards Prostitution._

We have now surveyed the complex fact of prostitution in some of its most
various and typical aspects, seeking to realise, intelligently and
sympathetically, the fundamental part it plays as an elementary
constituent of our marriage system. Finally we have to consider the
grounds on which prostitution now appears to a large and growing number of
persons not only an unsatisfactory method of sexual gratification but a
radically bad method.

The movement of antagonism towards prostitution manifests itself most
conspicuously, as might beforehand have been anticipated, by a feeling of
repugnance towards the most ancient and typical, once the most credited
and best established prostitutional manifestation, the brothel. The growth
of this repugnance is not confined to one or two countries but is
international, and may thus be regarded as corresponding to a real
tendency in our civilization. It is equally pronounced in prostitutes
themselves and in the people who are their clients. The distaste on the
one side increases the distaste on the other. Since only the most helpless
or the most stupid prostitutes are nowadays willing to accept the
servitude of the brothel, the brothel-keeper is forced to resort to
extraordinary methods for entrapping victims, and even to take part in
that cosmopolitan trade in "white slaves" which exists solely to feed
brothels.[211] This state of things has a natural reaction in prejudicing
the clients of prostitution against an institution which is going out of
fashion and out of credit. An even more fundamental antipathy is
engendered by the fact that the brothel fails to respond to the high
degree of personal freedom and variety which civilization produces, and
always demands even when it fails to produce. On one side the prostitute
is disinclined to enter into a slavery which usually fails even to bring
her any reward; on the other side her client feels it as part of the
fascination of prostitution under civilized conditions that he shall enjoy
a freedom and choice the brothel cannot provide.[212] Thus it comes about
that brothels which once contained nearly all the women who made it a
business to minister to the sexual needs of men, now contain only a
decreasing minority, and that the transformation of cloistered
prostitution into free prostitution is approved by many social reformers
as a gain to the cause of morality.[213]

The decay of brothels, whether as cause or as effect, has been associated
with a vast increase of prostitution outside brothels. But the repugnance
to brothels in many essential respects also applies to prostitution
generally, and, as we shall see, it is exerting a profoundly modifying
influence on that prostitution.

The changing feeling in regard to prostitution seems to express itself
mainly in two ways. On the one hand there are those who, without desiring
to abolish prostitution, resent the abnegation which accompanies it, and
are disgusted by its sordid aspects. They may have no moral scruples
against prostitution, and they know no reason why a woman should not
freely do as she will with her own person. But they believe that, if
prostitution is necessary, the relationships of men with prostitutes
should be humane and agreeable to each party, and not degrading to either.
It must be remembered that under the conditions of civilized urban life,
the discipline of work is often too severe, and the excitements of urban
existence too constant, to render an abandonment to orgy a desirable
recreation. The gross form of orgy appeals, not to the town-dweller but to
the peasant, and to the sailor or soldier who reaches the town after long
periods of dreary routine and emotional abstinence. It is a mistake, even,
to suppose that the attraction of prostitution is inevitably associated
with the fulfilment of the sexual act. So far is this from being the case
that the most attractive prostitute may be a woman who, possessing few
sexual needs of her own, desires to please by the charm of her
personality; these are among those who most often find good husbands.
There are many men who are even well content merely to have a few hours'
free intimacy with an agreeable woman, without any further favor, although
that may be open to them. For a very large number of men under urban
conditions of existence the prostitute is ceasing to be the degraded
instrument of a moment's lustful desire; they seek an agreeable human
person with whom they may find relaxation from the daily stress or routine
of life. When an act of prostitution is thus put on a humane basis,
although it by no means thereby becomes conducive to the best development
of either party, it at least ceases to be hopelessly degrading. Otherwise
it would not have been possible for religious prostitution to flourish for
so long in ancient days among honorable women of good birth on the shores
of the Mediterranean, even in regions like Lydia, where the position of
women was peculiarly high.[214]

It is true that the monetary side of prostitution would still exist. But
it is possible to exaggerate its importance. It must be pointed out that,
though it is usual to speak of the prostitute as a woman who "sells
herself," this is rather a crude and inexact way of expressing, in its
typical form, the relationship of a prostitute to her client. A prostitute
is not a commodity with a market-price, like a loaf or a leg of mutton.
She is much more on a level with people belonging to the professional
classes, who accept fees in return for services rendered; the amount of
the fee varies, on the one hand in accordance with professional standing,
on the other hand in accordance with the client's means, and under special
circumstances may be graciously dispensed with altogether. Prostitution
places on a venal basis intimate relationships which ought to spring up
from natural love, and in so doing degrades them. But strictly speaking
there is in such a case no "sale." To speak of a prostitute "selling
herself" is scarcely even a pardonable rhetorical exaggeration; it is both
inexact and unjust.[215]

This tendency in an advanced civilization towards the
humanization of prostitution is the reverse process, we may note,
to that which takes place at an earlier stage of civilization
when the ancient conception of the religious dignity of
prostitution begins to fall into disrepute. When men cease to
reverence women who are prostitutes in the service of a goddess
they set up in their place prostitutes who are merely abject
slaves, flattering themselves that they are thereby working in
the cause of "progress" and "morality." On the shores of the
Mediterranean this process took place more than two thousand
years ago, and is associated with the name of Solon. To-day we
may see the same process going on in India. In some parts of
India (as at Jejuri, near Poonah) first born girls are dedicated
to Khandoba or other gods; they are married to the god and termed
_muralis_. They serve in the temple, sweep it, and wash the holy
vessels, also they dance, sing and prostitute themselves. They
are forbidden to marry, and they live in the homes of their
parents, brothers, or sisters; being consecrated to religious
service, they are untouched by degradation. Nowadays, however,
Indian "reformers," in the name of "civilization and science,"
seek to persuade the _muralis_ that they are "plunged in a career
of degradation." No doubt in time the would-be moralists will
drive the _muralis_ out of their temples and their homes, deprive
them of all self-respect, and convert them into wretched
outcasts, all in the cause of "science and civilization" (see,
e.g., an article by Mrs. Kashibai Deodhar, _The New Reformer_,
October, 1907). So it is that early reformers create for the
reformers of a later day the task of humanizing prostitution
afresh.

There can be no doubt that this more humane conception of
prostitution is to-day beginning to be realized in the actual
civilized life of Europe. Thus in writing of prostitution in
Paris, Dr. Robert Michels ("Erotische Streifzüge,"
_Mutterschutz_, 1906, Heft 9, p. 368) remarks: "While in Germany
the prostitute is generally considered as an 'outcast' creature,
and treated accordingly, an instrument of masculine lust to be
used and thrown away, and whom one would under no circumstances
recognize in public, in France the prostitute plays in many
respects the part which once give significance and fame to the
_hetairæ_ of Athens." And after describing the consideration and
respect which the Parisian prostitute is often able to require of
her friends, and the non-sexual relation of comradeship which she
can enter into with other men, the writer continues: "A girl who
certainly yields herself for money, but by no means for the first
comer's money, and who, in addition to her 'business friends,'
feels the need of, so to say, non-sexual companions with whom she
can associate in a free comrade-like way, and by whom she is
treated and valued as a free human being, is not wholly lost for
the moral worth of humanity." All prostitution is bad, Michels
concludes, but we should have reason to congratulate ourselves if
love-relationships of this Parisian species represented the
lowest known form of extra-conjugal sexuality. (As bearing on the
relative consideration accorded to prostitutes I may mention that
a Paris prostitute remarked to a friend of mine that Englishmen
would ask her questions which no Frenchman would venture to ask.)

It is not, however, only in Paris, although here more markedly
and prominently, that this humanizing change in prostitution is
beginning to make itself felt. It is manifested, for instance, in
the greater openness of a man's sexual life. "While he formerly
slinked into a brothel in a remote street," Dr. Willy Hellpach
remarks (_Nervosität und Kultur_, p. 169), "he now walks abroad
with his 'liaison,' visiting the theatres and cafés, without
indeed any anxiety to meet his acquaintances, but with no
embarrassment on that point. The thing is becoming more
commonplace, more--natural." It is also, Hellpach proceeds to
point out, thus becoming more moral also, and much unwholesome
prudery and pruriency is being done away with.

In England, where change is slow, this tendency to the
humanization of prostitution may be less pronounced. But it
certainly exists. In the middle of the last century Lecky wrote
(_History of European Morals_, vol. ii, p. 285) that habitual
prostitution "is in no other European country so hopelessly
vicious or so irrevocable." That statement, which was also made
by Parent-Duchâtelet and other foreign observers, is fully
confirmed by the evidence on record. But it is a statement which
would hardly be made to-day, except perhaps, in reference to
special confined areas of our cities. It is the same in America,
and we may doubtless find this tendency reflected in the report
on _The Social Evil_ (1902), drawn up by a committee in New York,
who gave it (p. 176) as one of their chief recommendations that
prostitution should no longer be regarded as a crime, in which
light, one gathers, it had formerly been regarded in New York.
That may seem but a small step in the path of humanization, but
it is in the right direction.

It is by no means only in lands of European civilization that we
may trace with developing culture the refinement and humanization
of the slighter bonds of relationship with women. In Japan
exactly the same demands led, several centuries ago, to the
appearance of the geisha. In the course of an interesting and
precise study of the geisha Mr. R.T. Farrer remarks (_Nineteenth
Century_, April, 1904): "The geisha is in no sense necessarily a
courtesan. She is a woman educated to attract; perfected from her
childhood in all the intricacies of Japanese literature;
practiced in wit and repartee; inured to the rapid give-and-take
of conversation on every topic, human and divine. From her
earliest youth she is broken into an inviolable charm of manner
incomprehensible to the finest European, yet she is almost
invariably a blossom of the lower classes, with dumpy claws, and
squat, ugly nails. Her education, physical and moral, is far
harder than that of the _ballerina_, and her success is achieved
only after years of struggle and a bitter agony of torture....
And the geisha's social position may be compared with that of the
European actress. The Geisha-house offers prizes as desirable as
any of the Western stage. A great geisha with twenty nobles
sitting round her, contending for her laughter, and kept in
constant check by the flashing bodkin of her wit, holds a
position no less high and famous than that of Sarah Bernhardt in
her prime. She is equally sought, equally flattered, quite as
madly adored, that quiet little elderly plain girl in dull blue.
But she is prized thus primarily for her tongue, whose power only
ripens fully as her physical charms decline. She demands vast
sums for her owners, and even so often appears and dances only at
her own pleasure. Few, if any, Westerners ever see a really
famous geisha. She is too great to come before a European, except
for an august or imperial command. Finally she may, and
frequently does, marry into exalted places. In all this there is
not the slightest necessity for any illicit relation."

In some respects the position of the ancient Greek _hetaira_ was
more analogous to that of the Japanese _geisha_ than to that of
the prostitute in the strict sense. For the Greeks, indeed, the
_hetaira_, was not strictly a _porne_ or prostitute at all. The
name meant friend or companion, and the woman to whom the name
was applied held an honorable position, which could not be
accorded to the mere prostitute. Athenæus (Bk. xiii, Chs.
XXVIII-XXX) brings together passages showing that the _hetaira_
could be regarded as an independent citizen, pure, simple, and
virtuous, altogether distinct from the common crew of
prostitutes, though these might ape her name. The _hetairæ_ "were
almost the only Greek women," says Donaldson (_Woman_, p. 59),
"who exhibited what was best and noblest in women's nature." This
fact renders it more intelligible why a woman of such
intellectual distinction as Aspasia should have been a _hetaira_.
There seems little doubt as to her intellectual distinction.
"Æschines, in his dialogue entitled 'Aspasia,'" writes Gomperz,
the historian of Greek philosophy (_Greek Thinkers_, vol. iii,
pp. 124 and 343), "puts in the mouth of that distinguished woman
an incisive criticism of the mode of life traditional for her
sex. It would be exceedingly strange," Gomperz adds, in arguing
that an inference may thus be drawn concerning the historical
Aspasia, "if three authors--Plato, Xenophon and Æschines--had
agreed in fictitiously enduing the companion of Pericles with
what we might very reasonably have expected her to possess--a
highly cultivated mind and intellectual influence." It is even
possible that the movement for woman's right which, as we dimly
divine through the pages of Aristophanes, took place in Athens in
the fourth century B.C., was led by _hetairæ_. According to Ivo
Bruns (_Frauenemancipation in Athen_, 1900, p. 19) "the most
certain information which we possess concerning Aspasia bears a
strong resemblance to the picture which Euripides and
Aristophanes present to us of the leaders of the woman movement."
It was the existence of this movement which made Plato's ideas on
the community of women appear far less absurd than they do to us.
It may perhaps be thought by some that this movement represented
on a higher plane that love of distruction, or, as we should
better say, that spirit of revolt and aspiration, which Simmel
finds to mark the intellectual and artistic activity of those who
are unclassed or dubiously classed in the social hierarchy. Ninon
de Lenclos, as we have seen, was not strictly a courtesan, but
she was a pioneer in the assertion of woman's rights. Aphra Behn
who, a little later in England, occupied a similarly dubious
social position, was likewise a pioneer in generous humanitarian
aspirations, which have since been adopted in the world at
large.

These refinements of prostitution may be said to be chiefly the
outcome of the late and more developed stages in civilization. As
Schurtz has put it (_Altersklassen und Männerbünde_, p. 191):
"The cheerful, skilful and artistically accomplished _hetaira_
frequently stands as an ideal figure in opposition to the
intellectually uncultivated wife banished to the interior of the
house. The courtesan of the Italian Renaissance, Japanese
geishas, Chinese flower-girls, and Indian bayaderas, all show
some not unnoble features, the breath of a free artistic
existence. They have achieved--with, it is true, the sacrifice of
their highest worth--an independence from the oppressive rule of
man and of household duties, and a part of the feminine endowment
which is so often crippled comes in them to brilliant
development. Prostitution in its best form may thus offer a path
by which these feminine characteristics may exert a certain
influence on the development of civilization. We may also believe
that the artistic activity of women is in some measure able to
offer a counterpoise to the otherwise less pleasant results of
sexual abandonment, preventing the coarsening and destruction of
the emotional life; in his _Magda_ Sudermann has described a type
of woman who, from the standpoint of strict morality, is open to
condemnation, but in her art finds a foothold, the strength of
which even ill-will must unwillingly recognize." In his _Sex and
Character_, Weininger has developed in a more extreme and
extravagant manner the conception of the prostitute as a
fundamental and essential part of life, a permanent feminine
type.

There are others, apparently in increasing numbers, who approach the
problem of prostitution not from an æsthetic standpoint but from a moral
standpoint. This moral attitude is not, however, that conventionalized
morality of Cato and St. Augustine and Lecky, set forth in previous pages,
according to which the prostitute in the street must be accepted as the
guardian of the wife in the home. These moralists reject indeed the claim
of that belief to be considered moral at all. They hold that it is not
morally possible that the honor of some women shall be purchaseable at the
price of the dishonor of other women, because at such a price virtue loses
all moral worth. When they read that, as Goncourt stated, "the most
luxurious articles of women's _trousseaux_, the bridal chemises of girls
with dowries of six hundred thousand francs, are made in the prison of
Clairvaux,"[216] they see the symbol of the intimate dependence of our
luxurious virtue on our squalid vice. And while they accept the
historical and sociological evidence which shows that prostitution is an
inevitable part of the marriage system which still survives among us, they
ask whether it is not possible so to modify our marriage system that it
shall not be necessary to divide feminine humanity into "disreputable"
women, who make sacrifices which it is dishonorable to make, and
"respectable" women, who take sacrifices which it cannot be less
dishonorable to accept.

Prostitutes, a distinguished man of science has said (Duclaux,
_L'Hygiène Sociale_, p. 243), "have become things which the
public uses when it wants them, and throws on the dungheap when
it has made them vile. In its pharisaism it even has the
insolence to treat their trade as shameful, as though it were not
just as shameful to buy as to sell in this market." Bloch
(_Sexualleben unserer Zeit_, Ch. XV) insists that prostitution
must be ennobled, and that only so can it be even diminished.
Isidore Dyer, of New Orleans, also argues that we cannot check
prostitution unless we create "in the minds of men and women a
spirit of tolerance instead of intolerance of fallen women." This
point may be illustrated by a remark by the prostitute author of
the _Tagebuch einer Verlorenen_. "If the profession of yielding
the body ceased to be a shameful one," she wrote, "the army of
'unfortunates' would diminish by four-fifths--I will even say
nine-tenths. Myself, for example! How gladly would I take a
situation as companion or governess!" "One of two things," wrote
the eminent sociologist Tarde ("La Morale Sexuelle," _Archives
d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, January, 1907), "either prostitution
will disappear through continuing to be dishonorable and will be
replaced by some other institution which will better remedy the
defects of monogamous marriage, or it will survive by becoming
respectable, that is to say, by making itself respected, whether
liked or disliked." Tarde thought this might perhaps come about
by a better organization of prostitutes, a more careful selection
among those who desired admission to their ranks and the
cultivation of professional virtues which would raise their moral
level. "If courtesans fulfil a need," Balzac had already said in
his _Physiologie du Mariage_, "they must become an institution."

This moral attitude is supported and enforced by the inevitable democratic
tendency of civilization which, although it by no means destroys the idea
of class, undermines that idea as the mark of fundamental human
distinctions and renders it superficial. Prostitution no longer makes a
woman a slave; it ought not to make her even a pariah: "My body is my
own," said the young German prostitute of to-day, "and what I do with it
is nobody else's concern." When the prostitute was literally a slave moral
duty towards her was by no means necessarily identical with moral duty
towards the free woman. But when, even in the same family, the prostitute
may be separated by a great and impassable social gulf from her married
sister, it becomes possible to see, and in the opinion of many
imperatively necessary to see, that a readjustment of moral values is
required. For thousands of years prostitution has been defended on the
ground that the prostitute is necessary to ensure the "purity of women."
In a democratic age it begins to be realized that prostitutes also are
women.

The developing sense of a fundamental human equality underlying the
surface divisions of class tends to make the usual attitude towards the
prostitute, the attitude of her clients even more than that of society
generally, seem painfully cruel. The callous and coarsely frivolous tone
of so many young men about prostitutes, it has been said, is "simply
cruelty of a peculiarly brutal kind," not to be discerned in any other
relation of life.[217] And if this attitude is cruel even in speech it is
still more cruel in action, whatever attempts may be made to disguise its
cruelty.

Canon Lyttelton's remarks may be taken to refer chiefly to young
men of the upper middle class. Concerning what is perhaps the
usual attitude of lower middle class people towards prostitution,
I may quote from a remarkable communication which has reached me
from Australia: "What are the views of a young man brought up in
a middle-class Christian English family on prostitutes? Take my
father, for instance. He first mentioned prostitutes to me, if I
remember rightly, when speaking of his life before marriage. And
he spoke of them as he would speak of a horse he had hired, paid
for, and dismissed from his mind when it had rendered him
service. Although my mother was so kind and good she spoke of
abandoned women with disgust and scorn as of some unclean animal.
As it flatters vanity and pride to be able with good countenance
and universal consent to look down on something, I soon grasped
the situation and adopted an attitude which is, in the main, that
of most middle-class Christian Englishmen towards prostitutes.
But as puberty develops this attitude has to be accommodated with
the wish to make use of this scum, these moral lepers. The
ordinary young man, who likes a spice of immorality and has it
when in town, and thinks it is not likely to come to his mother's
or sisters' ears, does not get over his arrogance and disgust or
abate them in the least. He takes them with him, more or less
disguised, to the brothel, and they color his thoughts and
actions all the time he is sleeping with prostitutes, or kissing
them, or passing his hands over them, as he would over a mare,
getting as much as he can for his money. To tell the truth, on
the whole, that was my attitude too. But if anyone had asked me
for the smallest reason for this attitude, for this feeling of
superiority, pride, _hauteur_, and prejudice, I should, like any
other 'respectable' young man, have been entirely at a loss, and
could only have gaped foolishly."

From the modern moral standpoint which now concerns us, not only is the
cruelty involved in the dishonor of the prostitute absurd, but not less
absurd, and often not less cruel, seems the honor bestowed on the
respectable women on the other side of the social gulf. It is well
recognized that men sometimes go to prostitutes to gratify the excitement
aroused by fondling their betrothed.[218] As the emotional and physical
results of ungratified excitement are not infrequently more serious in
women than in men, the betrothed women in these cases are equally
justified in seeking relief from other men, and the vicious circle of
absurdity might thus be completed.

From the point of view of the modern moralist there is another
consideration which was altogether overlooked in the conventional and
traditional morality we have inherited, and was indeed practically
non-existent in the ancient days when that morality was still a living
reality. Women are no longer divided only into the two groups of wives who
are to be honored, and prostitutes who are the dishonored guardians of
that honor; there is a large third class of women who are neither wives
nor prostitutes. For this group of the unmarried virtuous the traditional
morality had no place at all; it simply ignored them. But the new
moralist, who is learning to recognize both the claims of the individual
and the claims of society, begins to ask whether on the one hand these
women are not entitled to the satisfaction of their affectional and
emotional impulses if they so desire, and on the other hand whether, since
a high civilization involves a diminished birthrate, the community is not
entitled to encourage every healthy and able-bodied woman to contribute to
maintain the birthrate when she so desires.

All the considerations briefly indicated in the preceding pages--the
fundamental sense of human equality generated by our civilization, the
repugnance to cruelty which accompanies the refinement of urban life, the
ugly contrast of extremes which shock our developing democratic
tendencies, the growing sense of the rights of the individual to authority
over his own person, the no less strongly emphasized right of the
community to the best that the individual can yield--all these
considerations are every day more strongly influencing the modern moralist
to assume towards the prostitute an attitude altogether different from
that of the morality which we derived from Cato and Augustine. He sees the
question in a larger and more dynamic manner. Instead of declaring that it
is well worth while to tolerate and at the same time to condemn the
prostitute, in order to preserve the sanctity of the wife in her home, he
is not only more inclined to regard each as the proper guardian of her own
moral freedom, but he is less certain about the time-honored position of
the prostitute, and moreover, by no means sure that the wife in the home
may not be fully as much in need of rescuing as the prostitute in the
street; he is prepared to consider whether reform in this matter is not
most likely to take place in the shape of a fairer apportionment of sexual
privileges and sexual duties to women generally, with an inevitably
resultant elevation in the sexual lives of men also.

The revolt of many serious reformers against the injustice and
degradation now involved by our system of prostitution is so
profound that some have declared themselves ready to accept any
revolution of ideas which would bring about a more wholesome
transmutation of moral values. "Better indeed were a saturnalia
of _free_ men and women," exclaims Edward Carpenter (_Love's
Coming of Age_, p. 62), "than the spectacle which, as it is, our
great cities present at night."

Even those who would be quite content with as conservative a
treatment as possible of social institutions still cannot fail to
realize that prostitution is unsatisfactory, unless we are
content to make very humble claims of the sexual act. "The act of
prostitution," Godfrey declares (_The Science of Sex_, p. 202),
"may be physiologically complete, but it is complete in no other
sense. All the moral and intellectual factors which combine with
physical desire to form the perfect sexual attraction are absent.
All the higher elements of love--admiration, respect, honor, and
self-sacrificing devotion--are as foreign to prostitution as to
the egoistic act of masturbation. The principal drawbacks to the
morality of the act lie in its associations more than in the act
itself. Any affectional quality which a more or less promiscuous
connection might possess is at once destroyed by the intrusion of
the monetary element. In the resulting degradation the woman has
the largest share, since it makes her a pariah and involves her
in all the hardening and depraving influences of social
ostracism. But her degradation only serves to render her
influence on her partners more demoralizing. Prostitution," he
concludes, "has a strong tendency towards emphasizing the
naturally selfish attitude of men towards women, and encouraging
them in the delusion, born of unregulated passions, that the
sexual act itself is the aim and end of the sex life.
Prostitution can therefore make no claim to afford even a
temporary solution to the sex problem. It fulfils only that
mission which has made it a 'necessary evil'--the mission of
palliative to the physical rigors of celibacy and monogamy. It
does so at the cost of a considerable amount of physical and
moral deterioration, much of which is undoubtedly due to the
action of society in completing the degradation of the prostitute
by persistent ostracism. Prostitution was not so great an evil
when it was not thought so great, yet even at its best it was a
real evil, a melancholy and sordid travesty of sincere and
natural passional relations. It is an evil which we are bound to
have with us so long as celibacy is a custom and monogamy a law."
It is the wife as well as the prostitute who is degraded by a
system which makes venal love possible. "The time has gone past,"
the same writer remarks elsewhere (p. 195) "when a mere ceremony
can really sanctify what is base and transform lust and greed
into the sincerity of sexual affection. If, to enter into sexual
connections with a man for a solely material end is a disgrace to
humanity, it is a disgrace under the marriage bond just as much
as apart from the hypocritical blessing of the church or the law.
If the public prostitute is a being who deserves to be treated as
a pariah, it is hopelessly irrational to withhold every sort of
moral opprobrium from the woman who leads a similar life under a
different set of external circumstances. Either the prostitute
wife must come under the moral ban, or there must be an end to
the complete ostracism under which the prostitute labors."

The thinker who more clearly and fundamentally than others, and
first of all, realized the dynamical relationships of
prostitution, as dependent upon a change in the other social
relationships of life, was James Hinton. More than thirty years
ago, in fragmentary writings that still remain unpublished, since
he never worked them into an orderly form, Hinton gave vigorous
and often passionate expression to this fundamental idea. It may
be worth while to quote a few brief passages from Hinton's MSS.:
"I feel that the laws of force should hold also amid the waves of
human passion, that the relations of mechanics are true, and will
rule also in human life.... There is a tension, a crushing of the
soul, by our modern life, and it is ready for a sudden spring to
a different order in which the forces shall rearrange themselves.
It is a dynamical question presented in moral terms.... Keeping a
portion of the woman population without prospect of marriage
means having prostitutes, that is women as instruments of man's
mere sensuality, and this means the killing, in many of them, of
all pure love or capacity of it. This is the fact we have to
face.... To-day I saw a young woman whose life was being consumed
by her want of love, a case of threatened utter misery: now see
the price at which we purchase her ill-health; for her ill-health
we pay the crushing of another girl into hell. We give that for
it; her wretchedness of soul and body are bought by prostitution;
we have prostitutes made for that.... We devote some women
recklessly to perdition to make a hothouse Heaven for the
rest.... One wears herself out in vainly trying to endure
pleasures she is not strong enough to enjoy, while other women
are perishing for lack of these very pleasures. If marriage is
this, is it not embodied lust? The happy Christian homes are the
true dark places of the earth.... Prostitution for man, restraint
for woman--they are two sides of the same thing, and both are
denials of love, like luxury and asceticism. The mountains of
restraint must be used to fill up the abysses of luxury."

Some of Hinton's views were set forth by a writer intimately
acquainted with him in a pamphlet entitled _The Future of
Marriage: An Eirenicon for a Question of To-day_, by a
Respectable Woman (1885). "When once the conviction is forced
home upon the 'good' women," the writer remarks, "that their
place of honor and privilege rests upon the degradation of others
as its basis, they will never rest till they have either
abandoned it or sought for it some other pedestal. If our
inflexible marriage system has for its essential condition the
existence side by side with it of prostitution, then one of two
things follows: either prostitution must be shown to be
compatible with the well-being, moral and physical, of the women
who practice it, or our marriage system must be condemned. If it
was clearly put before anyone, he could not seriously assert that
to be 'virtue' which could only be practiced at the expense of
another's vice.... Whilst the laws of physics are becoming so
universally recognized that no one dreams of attempting to
annihilate a particle of matter, or of force, yet we do not
instinctively apply the same conception to moral forces, but
think and act as if we could simply do away with an evil, while
leaving unchanged that which gives it its strength. This is the
only view of the social problem which can give us hope. That
prostitution should simply cease, leaving everything else as it
is, would be disastrous if it were possible. But it is not
possible. The weakness of all existing efforts to put down
prostitution is that they are directed against it as an isolated
thing, whereas it is only one of the symptoms proceeding from a
common disease."

Ellen Key, who during recent years has been the chief apostle of
a gospel of sexual morality based on the needs of women as the
mothers of the race, has, in a somewhat similar spirit, denounced
alike prostitution and rigid marriage, declaring (in her _Essays
on Love and Marriage_) that "the development of erotic personal
consciousness is as much hindered by socially regulated
'morality' as by socially regulated 'immorality,'" and that "the
two lowest and socially sanctioned expressions of sexual dualism,
rigid marriage and prostitution, will gradually become
impossible, because with the conquest of the idea of erotic unity
they will no longer correspond to human needs."

We may sum up the present situation as regards prostitution by saying that
on the one hand there is a tendency for its elevation, in association with
the growing humanity and refinement of civilization, characteristics which
must inevitably tend to mark more and more both those women who become
prostitutes and those men who seek them; on the other hand, but perhaps
through the same dynamic force, there is a tendency towards the slow
elimination of prostitution by the successful competition of higher and
purer methods of sexual relationship freed from pecuniary considerations.
This refinement and humanization, this competition by better forms of
sexual love, are indeed an essential part of progress as civilization
becomes more truly sound, wholesome, and sincere.

This moral change cannot, it seems probable, fail to be accompanied by the
realization that the facts of human life are more important than the
forms. For all changes from lower to higher social forms, from savagery to
civilization, are accompanied--in so far as they are vital changes--by a
slow and painful groping towards the truth that it is only in natural
relations that sanity and sanctity can be found, for, as Nietzsche said,
the "return" to Nature should rather be called the "ascent." Only so can
we achieve the final elimination from our hearts of that clinging
tradition that there is any impurity or dishonor in acts of love for which
the reasonable, and not merely the conventional, conditions have been
fulfilled. For it is vain to attempt to cleanse our laws, or even our
by-laws, until we have first cleansed our hearts.

It would be out of place here to push further the statement of the moral
question as it is to-day beginning to shape itself in the sphere of sex.
In a psychological discussion we are only concerned to set down the actual
attitude of the moralist, and of civilization. The practical outcome of
that attitude must be left to moralists and sociologists and the community
generally to work out.

Our inquiry has also, it may be hoped, incidentally tended to show that in
practically dealing with the question of prostitution it is pre-eminently
necessary to remember the warning which, as regards many other social
problems, has been embodied by Herbert Spencer in his famous illustration
of the bent iron plate. In trying to make the bent plate smooth, it is
useless, Spencer pointed out, to hammer directly on the buckled up part;
if we do so we merely find that we have made matters worse; our hammering,
to be effective, must be around, and not directly on, the offensive
elevation we wish to reduce; only so can the iron plate be hammered
smooth.[219] But this elementary law has not been understood by
moralists. The plain, practical, common-sense reformer, as he fancied
himself to be--from the time of Charlemagne onwards--has over and over
again brought his heavy fist directly down on to the evil of prostitution
and has always made matters worse. It is only by wisely working outside
and around the evil that we can hope to lessen it effectually. By aiming
to develop and raise the relationships of men to women, and of women to
women, by modifying our notions of sexual relationships, and by
introducing a saner and truer conception of womanhood and of the
responsibilities of women as well as of men, by attaining, socially as
well as economically, a higher level of human living--it is only by such
methods as these that we can reasonably expect to see any diminution and
alleviation of the evil of prostitution. So long as we are incapable of
such methods we must be content with the prostitution we deserve, learning
to treat it with the pity, and the respect, which so intimate a failure of
our civilization is entitled to.


FOOTNOTES:

[107] See, e.g., Cheetham's Hulsean Lectures, _The Mysteries, Pagan and
Christian_, pp. 123, 136.

[108] Hormayr's _Taschenbuch_, 1835, p. 255. Hagelstange, in a chapter on
mediæval festivals in his _Süddeutsches Bauernleben im Mittelalter_, shows
how, in these Christian orgies which were really of pagan origin, the
German people reacted with tremendous and boisterous energy against the
laborious and monotonous existence of everyday life.

[109] This was clearly realized by the more intelligent upholders of the
Feast of Fools. Austere persons wished to abolish this Feast, and in a
remarkable petition sent up to the Theological Faculty of Paris (and
quoted by Flogel, _Geschichte des Grotesk-Komischen_, fourth edition, p.
204) the case for the Feast is thus presented: "We do this according to
ancient custom, in order that folly, which is second nature to man and
seems to be inborn, may at least once a year have free outlet. Wine casks
would burst if we failed sometimes to remove the bung and let in air. Now
we are all ill-bound casks and barrels which would let out the wine of
wisdom if by constant devotion and fear of God we allowed it to ferment.
We must let in air so that it may not be spoilt. Thus on some days we give
ourselves up to sport, so that with the greater zeal we may afterwards
return to the worship of God." The Feast of Fools was not suppressed until
the middle of the sixteenth century, and relics of it persisted (as at
Aix) till near the end of the eighteenth century.

[110] A Méray, _La Vie au Temps des Libres Prêcheurs_, vol. ii, Ch. X. A
good and scholarly account of the Feast of Fools is given by E.K.
Chambers, _The Mediæval Stage_, Ch. XIII. It is true that the Church and
the early Fathers often anathematized the theatre. But Gregory of
Nazianzen wished to found a Christian theatre; the Mediæval Mysteries were
certainly under the protection of the clergy; and St. Thomas Aquinas, the
greatest of the schoolmen, only condemns the theatre with cautious
qualifications.

[111] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, Ch. XII.

[112] _Journal Anthropological Institute_, July-Dec., 1904, p. 329.

[113] Westermarck (_Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, vol. ii,
pp. 283-9) shows how widespread is the custom of setting apart a
periodical rest day.

[114] A.E. Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, pp. 273 et seq., Crawley brings
into association with this function of great festivals the custom, found
in some parts of the world, of exchanging wives at these times. "It has
nothing whatever to do with the marriage system, except as breaking it for
a season, women of forbidden degree being lent, on the same grounds as
conventions and ordinary relations are broken at festivals of the
Saturnalia type, the object being to change life and start afresh, by
exchanging every thing one can, while the very act of exchange coincides
with the other desire, to weld the community together" (Ib., p. 479).

[115] See "The Analysis of the Sexual Impulse" in vol. iii of these
_Studies_.

[116] G. Murray, _Ancient Greek Literature_, p. 211.

[117] The Greek drama probably arose out of a folk-festival of more or
less sexual character, and it is even possible that the mediæval drama had
a somewhat similar origin (see Donaldson, _The Greek Theatre_; Gilbert
Murray, loc. cit.; Karl Pearson, _The Chances of Death_, vol. ii, pp.
135-6, 280 et seq.).

[118] R. Canudo, "Les Chorèges Français," _Mercure de France_, May 1,
1907, p. 180.

[119] "This is, in fact," Cyples declares (_The Process of Human
Experience_, p. 743), "Art's great function--to rehearse within us greater
egoistic possibilities, to habituate us to larger actualizations of
personality in a rudimentary manner," and so to arouse, "aimlessly but
splendidly, the sheer as yet unfulfilled possibilities within us."

[120] Even when monotonous labor is intellectual, it is not thereby
protected against degrading orgiastic reactions. Prof. L. Gurlitt shows
(_Die Neue Generation_, January, 1909, pp. 31-6) how the strenuous,
unremitting intellectual work of Prussian seminaries leads among both
teachers and scholars to the worst forms of the orgy.

[121] Rabutaux discusses various definitions of prostitution, _De la
Prostitution en Europe_, pp. 119 et seq. For the origin of the names to
designate the prostitute, see Schrader, _Reallexicon_, art.
"Beischläferin."