The advent of Christianity, with its special attitude towards the "flesh,"

necessarily caused an enormous increase of attention to the moral aspects

of prostitution. When prostitution was not morally denounced, it became

clearly necessary to morally justify it; it was impossible for a Church,

whose ideals were more or less ascetic, to be benevolently indifferent in

such a matter. As a rule we seem to find throughout that while the more

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, Näcke,

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

Bérault 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

Tolérance_, Thèse 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 Pubertà_, 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 für 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 Pubertà_, 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-Duchâtelet'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-Duchâtelet, 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 æsthetic 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 Quirós 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 _café

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 _hetairæ_ 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 Régnier, in his novel,

_Les Rencontres de Monsieur Bréot_ (p. 50), represents Bercaillé

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 _naïveté_ 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

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."

[122] _Digest_, lib. xxiii, tit. ii, p. 43. If she only gave herself to

one or two persons, though for money, it was not prostitution.

[123] Guyot, _La Prostitution_, p. 8. The element of venality is

essential, and religious writers (like Robert Wardlaw, D.D., of Edinburgh,

in his _Lectures on Female Prostitution_, 1842, p. 14) who define

prostitution as "the illicit intercourse of the sexes," and synonymous

with theological "fornication," fall into an absurd confusion.

[124] "Such marriages are sometimes stigmatized as 'legalized

prostitution,'" remarks Sidgwick (_Methods of Ethics_, Bk. iii, Ch. XI),

"but the phrase is felt to be extravagant and paradoxical."

[125] Bonger, _Criminalité et Conditions Economiques_, p. 378. Bonger

believes that the act of prostitution is "intrinsically equal to that of a

man or woman who contracts a marriage for economical reasons."

[126] E. Richard, _La Prostitution à Paris_, 1890, p. 44. It may be

questioned whether publicity or notoriety should form an essential part of

the definition; it seems, however, to be involved, or the prostitute

cannot obtain clients. Reuss states that she must, in addition, be

absolutely without means of subsistence; that is certainly not essential.

Nor is it necessary, as the _Digest_ insisted, that the act should be

performed "without pleasure;" that may be as it will, without affecting

the prostitutional nature of the act.

[127] Hawkesworth, _Account of the Voyages_, etc., 1775, vol. ii, p. 254.

[128] R.W. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 235.

[129] F.S. Krauss, _Romanische Forschungen_, 1903, p. 290.

[130] H. Schurtz, _Altersklassen und Männerbünde_, 1902, p. 190. In this

work Schurtz brings together (pp. 189-201) some examples of the germs of

prostitution among primitive peoples. Many facts and references are given

by Westermarck (_History of Human Marriage_, pp. 66 et seq., and _Origin

and Development of the Moral Ideas_, vol. ii, pp. 441 _et seq._).

[131] Bachofen (more especially in his _Mutterrecht_ and _Sage von

Tanaquil_) argued that even religious prostitution sprang from the

resistance of primitive instincts to the individualization of love. Cf.

Robertson Smith, _Religion of Semites_, second edition, p. 59.

[132] Whatever the reason may be, there can be no doubt that there is a

widespread tendency for religion and prostitution to be associated; it is

possibly to some extent a special case of that general connection between

the religious and sexual impulses which has been discussed elsewhere

(Appendix C to vol. i of these _Studies_). Thus A.B. Ellis, in his book on

_The Ewe-speaking Peoples of West Africa_ (pp. 124, 141) states that here

women dedicated to a god become promiscuous prostitutes. W.G. Sumner

(_Folkways_, Ch. XVI) brings together many facts concerning the wide

distribution of religious prostitution.

[133] Herodotus, Bk. I, Ch. CXCIX; Baruch, Ch. VI, p. 43. Modern scholars

confirm the statements of Herodotus from the study of Babylonian

literature, though inclined to deny that religious prostitution occupied

so large a place as he gives it. A tablet of the Gilgamash epic, according

to Morris Jastrow, refers to prostitutes as attendants of the goddess

Ishtar in the city Uruk (or Erech), which was thus a centre, and perhaps

the chief centre, of the rites described by Herodotus (Morris Jastrow,

_The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, 1898, p. 475). Ishtar was the

goddess of fertility, the great mother goddess, and the prostitutes were

priestesses, attached to her worship, who took part in ceremonies intended

to symbolize fertility. These priestesses of Ishtar were known by the

general name Kadishtu, "the holy ones" (op. cit., pp. 485, 660).

[134] It is usual among modern writers to associate Aphrodite Pandemos,

rather than Ourania, with venal or promiscuous sexuality, but this is a

complete mistake, for the Aphrodite Pandemos was purely political and had

no sexual significance. The mistake was introduced, perhaps intentionally,

by Plato. It has been suggested that that arch-juggler, who disliked

democratic ideas, purposely sought to pervert and vulgarize the conception

of Aphrodite Pandemos (Farnell, _Cults of Greek States_, vol. ii, p. 660).

[135] Athenæus, Bk. xiii, cap. XXXII. It appears that the only other

Hellenic community where the temple cult involved unchastity was a city of

the Locri Epizephyrii (Farnell, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 636).

[136] I do not say an earlier "promiscuity," for the theory of a primitive

sexual promiscuity is now widely discredited, though there can be no

reasonable doubt that the early prevalence of mother-right was more

favorable to the sexual freedom of women than the later patriarchal

system. Thus in very early Egyptian days a woman could give her favors to

any man she chose by sending him her garment, even if she were married. In

time the growth of the rights of men led to this being regarded as

criminal, but the priestesses of Amen retained the privilege to the last,

as being under divine protection (Flinders Petrie, _Egyptian Tales_, pp.

10, 48).

[137] It should be added that Farnell ("The Position of Women in Ancient

Religion," _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, 1904, p. 88) seeks to

explain the religious prostitution of Babylonia as a special religious

modification of the custom of destroying virginity before marriage in

order to safeguard the husband from the mystic dangers of defloration.

E.S. Hartland, also ("Concerning the Rite at the Temple of Mylitta,"

_Anthropological Essays Presented to E.B. Tyler_, p. 189), suggests that

this was a puberty rite connected with ceremonial defloration. This theory

is not, however, generally accepted by Semitic scholars.

[138] The girls of this tribe, who are remarkably pretty, after spending

two or three years in thus amassing a little dowry, return home to marry,

and are said to make model wives and mothers. They are described by

Bertherand in Parent-Duchâtelet, _La Prostitution à Paris_, vol. ii, p.

539.

[139] In Abyssinia (according to Fiaschi, _British Medical Journal_, March

13, 1897), where prostitution has always been held in high esteem, the

prostitutes, who are now subject to medical examination twice a week,

still attach no disgrace to their profession, and easily find husbands

afterwards. Potter (_Sohrab and Rustem_, pp. 168 et seq.) gives references

as regards peoples, widely dispersed in the Old World and the New, among

whom the young women have practiced prostitution to obtain a dowry.

[140] At Tralles, in Lydia, even in the second century A.D., as Sir W.M.

Ramsay notes (_Cities of Phrygia_, vol. i, pp. 94, 115), sacred

prostitution was still an honorable practice for women of good birth who

"felt themselves called upon to live the divine life under the influence

of divine inspiration."

[141] The gradual secularization of prostitution from its earlier

religious form has been traced by various writers (see, e.g., Dupouey, _La

Prostitution dans l'Antiquité_). The earliest complimentary reference to

the _Hetaira_ in literature is to be found, according to Benecke

(_Antimachus of Colophon_, p. 36), in Bacchylides.

[142] Cicero, _Oratio prô Coelio_, Cap. XX.

[143] Pierre Dufour, _Histoire de la Prostitution_, vol. ii, Chs. XIX-XX.

The real author of this well-known history of prostitution, which, though

not scholarly in its methods, brings together a great mass of interesting

information, is said to be Paul Lacroix.

[144] Rabutaux, in his _Histoire de la Prostitution en Europe_, describes

many attempts to suppress prostitution; cf. Dufour, _op. cit._, vol. iii.

[145] Dufour, op. cit., vol. vi, Ch. XLI. It was in the reign of the

homosexual Henry III that the tolerance of brothels was established.

[146] In the eighteenth century, especially, houses of prostitution in

Paris attained to an astonishing degree of elaboration and prosperity.

Owing to the constant watchful attention of the police a vast amount of

detailed information concerning these establishments was accumulated, and

during recent years much of it has been published. A summary of this

literature will be found in Dühren's _Neue Forshungen über den Marquis de

Sade und seine Zeit_, 1904, pp. 97 et seq.

[147] Rabutaux, op. cit., p. 54.

[148] Calza has written the history of Venetian prostitution; and some of

the documents he found have been reproduced by Mantegazza, _Gli Amori

degli Uomimi_, cap. XIV. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, a

comparatively late period, Coryat visited Venice, and in his _Crudities_

gives a full and interesting account of its courtesans, who then numbered,

he says, at least 20,000; the revenue they brought into the State

maintained a dozen galleys.

[149] J. Schrank, _Die Prostitution in Wien_, Bd. I, pp. 152-206.

[150] U. Robert, _Les Signes d'Infamie au Moyen Age_, Ch. IV.

[151] Rudeck (_Geschichte der öffentlichen Sittlichkeit in Deutschland_,

pp. 26-36) gives many details concerning the important part played by

prostitutes and brothels in mediæval German life.

[152] They are described by Rabutaux, op. cit., pp. 90 _et seq._

[153] _L'Année Sociologique_, seventh year, 1904, p. 440.

[154] Bloch, _Der Ursprung der Syphilis_. As regards the German

"Frauenhausen" see Max Bauer, _Das Geschlechtsleben in der Deutschen

Vergangenheit_, pp. 133-214. In Paris, Dufour states (op. cit., vol. v,

Ch. XXXIV), brothels under the ordinances of St. Louis had many rights

which they lost at last in 1560, when they became merely tolerated houses,

without statutes, special costumes, or confinement to special streets.

[155] "Cortegiana, hoc est meretrix honesta," wrote Burchard, the Pope's

Secretary, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, _Diarium_, ed.

Thuasne, vol. ii, p. 442; other authorities are quoted by Thuasne in a

note.

[156] Burchard, _Diarium_, vol. iii, p. 167. Thuasne quotes other

authorities in confirmation.

[157] The example of Holland, where some large cities have adopted the

regulation of prostitution and others have not, is instructive as regards

the illusory nature of the advantages of regulation. In 1883 Dr. Després

brought forward figures, supplied by Dutch officials, showing that in

Rotterdam, where prostitution was regulated, both prostitution and

venereal diseases were more prevalent than in Amsterdam, a city without

regulation (A. Després, _La Prostitution en France_, p. 122).

[158] It was in 1802 that the medical inspection of prostitutes in Paris

brothels was introduced, though not until 1825 fully established and made

general.

[159] M.L. Heidingsfeld, "The Control of Prostitution," _Journal American

Medical Association_, January 30, 1904.

[160] See, e.g., G. Bérault, _La Maison de Tolérance_, Thèse de Paris,

1904.

[161] Thus the circumstances of the English army in India are of a special

character. A number of statements (from the reports of committees,

official publications, etc.) regarding the good influence of regulation in

reducing venereal diseases in India are brought together by

Surgeon-Colonel F.H. Welch, "The Prevention of Syphilis," _Lancet_, August

12, 1899. The system has been abolished, but only as the result of a

popular outcry and not on the question of its merits.

[162] Thus Richard, who accepts regulation and was instructed to report on

it for the Paris Municipal Council, would not have girls inscribed as

professional prostitutes until they are of age and able to realize what

they are binding themselves to (E. Richard, _La Prostitution à Paris_, p.

147). But at that age a large proportion of prostitutes have been

practicing their profession for years.

[163] In Germany, where the cure of infected prostitutes under regulation

is nearly everywhere compulsory, usually at the cost of the community, it

is found that 18 is the average age at which they are affected by

syphilis; the average age of prostitutes in brothels is higher than that

of those outside, and a much larger proportion have therefore become

immune to disease (Blaschko, "Hygiene der Syphilis," in Weyl's _Handbuch

der Hygiene_, Bd. ii, p. 62, 1900).

[164] A. Sherwell, _Life in West London_, 1897, Ch. V.

[165] Bonger brings together statistics illustrating this point, op. cit.,

pp. 402-6.

[166] _The Nightless City_, p. 125.

[167] Ströhmberg, as quoted by Aschaffenburg, _Das Verbrechen_, 1903, p.

77.

[168] _Monatsschrift für Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene_, 1906. Heft

10, p. 460. But this cause is undoubtedly effective in some cases of

unmarried women in Germany unable to get work (see article by Sister

Henrietta Arendt, Police-Assistant at Stuttgart, _Sexual-Probleme_,

December, 1908).

[169] Thus, for instance, we find Irma von Troll-Borostyáni saying in her

book, _Im Freien Reich_ (p. 176): "Go and ask these unfortunate creatures

if they willingly and freely devoted themselves to vice. And nearly all of

them will tell you a story of need and destitution, of hunger and lack of

work, which compelled them to it, or else of love and seduction and the

fear of the discovery of their false step which drove them out of their

homes, helpless and forsaken, into the pool of vice from which there is

hardly any salvation." It is, of course, quite true that the prostitute is

frequently ready to tell such stories to philanthropic persons who expect

to hear them, and sometimes even put the words into her mouth.

[170] C. Booth, _Life and Labour_, final volume, p. 125. Similarly in

Sweden, Kullberg states that girls of thirteen to seventeen, living at

home with their parents in comfortable circumstances, have often been

found on the streets.

[171] W. Acton, _Prostitution_, 1870, pp. 39, 49.

[172] In Lyons, according to Potton, of 3884 prostitutes, 3194 abandoned,

or apparently abandoned, their profession; in Paris a very large number

became servants, dressmakers, or tailoresses, occupations which, in many

cases, doubtless, they had exercised before (Parent-Duchâtelet, _De la

Prostitution_, 1857, vol. i, p. 584; vol. ii, p. 451). Sloggett (quoted by

Acton) stated that at Davenport, 250 of the 1775 prostitutes there

married. It is well known that prostitutes occasionally marry extremely

well. It was remarked nearly a century ago that marriages of prostitutes

to rich men were especially frequent in England, and usually turned out

well; the same seems to be true still. In their own social rank they not

infrequently marry cabmen and policemen, the two classes of men with whom

they are brought most closely in contact in the streets. As regards

Germany, C.K. Schneider (_Die Prostituirte und die Gesellschaft_), states

that young prostitutes take up all sorts of occupations and situations,

sometimes, if they have saved a little money, establishing a business,

while old prostitutes become procuresses, brothel-keepers, lavatory women,

and so on. Not a few prostitutes marry, he adds, but the proportion among

inscribed German prostitutes is very small, less than 2 per cent.

[173] G. de Molinari, _La Viriculture_, 1897, p. 155.

[174] Reuss and other writers have reproduced typical extracts from the

private account books of prostitutes, showing the high rate of their

earnings. Even in the common brothels, in Philadelphia (according to

Goodchild, "The Social Evil in Philadelphia," _Arena_, March, 1896), girls

earn twenty dollars or more a week, which is far more than they could earn

in any other occupation open to them.

[175] A. Després, _La Prostitution en France_, 1883.

[176] Bonger, _Criminalité et Conditions Economiques_, 1905, pp. 378-414.

[177] _La Donna Delinquente_, p. 401.

[178] Raciborski, _Traité de l'Impuissance_, p. 20. It may be added that

Bergh, a leading authority on the anatomical peculiarities of the external

female sexual organs, who believe that strong development of the external

genital organs accompanies libidinous tendencies, has not found such

development to be common among prostitutes.

[179] Hammer, who has had much opportunity of studying the psychology of

prostitutes, remarks that he has seen no reason to suspect sexual coldness

(_Monatsschrift für Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene_, 1906, Heft 2,

p. 85), although, as he has elsewhere stated, he is of opinion that

indolence, rather than excess of sensuality, is the chief cause of

prostitution.

[180] See "The Sexual Impulse in Women," in the third volume of these

_Studies_.

[181] Tait stated that in Edinburgh many married women living with their

husbands in comfortable circumstances, and having children, were found to

be acting as prostitutes, that is, in the regular habit of making

assignations with strangers (W. Tait, _Magdalenism in Edinburgh_, 1842, p.

16).

[182] Janke brings together opinions to this effect, _Die Willkürliche

Hervorbringen des Geschlechts_, p. 275. "If we compare a prostitute of

thirty-five with her respectable sister," Acton remarked (_Prostitution_,

1870, p. 39), "we seldom find that the constitutional ravages often

thought to be necessary consequences of prostitution exceed those

attributable to the cares of a family and the heart-wearing struggles of

virtuous labor."

[183] Hirschfeld states (_Wesen der Liebe_, p. 35) that the desire for

intercourse with a sympathetic person is heightened, and not decreased, by

a professional act of coitus.

[184] This has been clearly shown by Hans Ostwald (from whom I take the

above-quoted observation of a prostitute), one of the best authorities on

prostitute life and character; see, e.g., his article, "Die erotischen

Beziehungen zwischen Dirne und Zuhälter," _Sexual-Probleme_, June, 1908.

In the subsequent number of the same periodical (July, 1908, p. 393) Dr.

Max Marcuse supports Ostwald's experiences, and says that the letters of

prostitutes and their bullies are love-letters exactly like those of

respectable people of the same class, and with the same elements of love

and jealousy; these relationships, he remarks, often prove very enduring.

The prostitute author of the _Tagebuch einer Verlorenen_ (p. 147) also has

some remarks on the prostitute's relations to her bully, stating that it

is simply the natural relationship of a girl to her lover.

[185] Thus Moraglia found that among 180 prostitutes in North Italian

brothels, and among 23 elegant Italian and foreign cocottes, every one

admitted that she masturbated, preferably by friction of the clitoris; 113

of them, the majority, declared that they preferred solitary or mutual

masturbation to normal coitus. Hammer states (_Zehn Lebensläufe Berliner

Kontrollmädchen_ in Ostwald's series of "Grosstadt Dokumente," 1905) that

when in hospital all but three or four of sixty prostitutes masturbate,

and those who do not are laughed at by the rest.

[186] _Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Jahrgang VII, 1905, p. 148;

"Sexual Inversion," vol. ii of these _Studies_, Ch. IV. Hammer found that

of twenty-five prostitutes in a reformatory as many as twenty-three were

homosexual, or, on good grounds, suspected to be such. Hirschfeld

(_Berlins Drittes Geschlecht_, p. 65) mentions that prostitutes sometimes

accost better-class women who, from their man-like air, they take to be

homosexual; from persons of their own sex prostitutes will accept a

smaller remuneration, and sometimes refuse payment altogether.

[187] With prostitution, as with criminality, it is of course difficult to

disentangle the element of heredity from that of environment, even when we

have good grounds for believing that the factor of heredity here, as

throughout the whole of life, cannot fail to carry much weight. It is

certain, in any case, that prostitution frequently runs in families. "It

has often been my experience," writes a former prostitute (Hedwig Hard,

_Beichte einer Gefallenen_, p. 156) "that when in a family a girl enters

this path, her sister soon afterwards follows her: I have met with

innumerable cases; sometimes three sisters will all be on the register,

and I knew a case of four sisters, whose mother, a midwife, had been in

prison, and the father drank. In this case, all four sisters, who were

very beautiful, married, one at least very happily, to a rich doctor who

took her out of the brothel at sixteen and educated her."

[188] This fact is not contradicted by the undoubted fact that prostitutes

are by no means always contented with the life they choose.

[189] This point has been discussed by Bloch, _Sexualleben unserer Zeit_,

Ch. XIII.

[190] Various series of observations are summarized by Lombroso and

Ferrero, _La Donna Delinquente_, 1893, Part III, cap. IV.

[191] _History of European Morals_, vol. iii, p. 283.

[192] Similarly Lord Morley has written (_Diderot_, vol. ii, p. 20): "The

purity of the family, so lovely and dear as it is, has still only been

secured hitherto by retaining a vast and dolorous host of female outcasts

... upon whose heads, as upon the scapegoat of the Hebrew ordinance, we

put all the iniquities of the children of the house, and all their

transgressions in all their sins, and then banish them with maledictions

into the foul outer wilderness and the land not inhabited."

[193] Horace, _Satires_, lib. i, 2.

[194] Augustine, _De Ordine_, Bk. II, Ch. IV.

[195] _De Regimine Principum_ (_Opuscula XX_), lib. iv, cap. XIV. I am

indebted to the Rev. H. Northcote for the reference to the precise place

where this statement occurs; it is usually quoted more vaguely.

[196] Lea, _History of Auricular Confession_, vol. ii, p. 69. There was

even, it seems, an eccentric decision of the Salamanca theologians that a

nun might so receive money, "licite et valide."

[197] Lea, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 263, 399.

[198] Rabutaux, _De la Prostitution en Europe_, pp. 22 et seq.

[199] Burton, _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part III, Sect. III, Mem. IV, Subs.

II.

[200] B. Mandeville, _Remarks to Fable of the Bees_, 1714, pp. 93-9; cf.

P. Sakmann, _Bernard de Mandeville_, pp. 101-4.