Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Vi Part 14

Mora.s.so (Archivio di Psichiatria, 1896, fasc. I) has protested against a purely degenerative view of prost.i.tutes on the strength of his own observations. There is, he states, a category of prost.i.tutes, unknown to scientific inquirers, which he calls that of the prost.i.tute di alto bordo. Among these the signs of degeneration, physical or moral, are not to be found in greater number than among women who do not belong to prost.i.tution. They reveal all sorts of characters, some of them showing great refinement, and are chiefly marked off by the possession of an unusual degree of s.e.xual appet.i.te. Even among the more degraded group of the ba.s.sa prost.i.tuzione, he a.s.serts, we find a predominance of s.e.xual, as well as professional, characters, rather than the signs of degeneration. It is sufficient to quote one more testimony, as set down many years ago by a woman of high intelligence and character, Mrs. Craik, the novelist: "The women who fall are by no means the worst of their station," she wrote. "I have heard it affirmed by more than one lady-by one in particular whose experience was as large as her benevolence-that many of them are of the very best, refined, intelligent, truthful, and affectionate. 'I don't know how it is,' she would say, 'whether their very superiority makes them dissatisfied with their own rank-such brutes or clowns as laboring men often are!-so that they fall easier victims to the rank above them; or whether, though this theory will shock many people, other virtues can exist and flourish entirely distinct from, and after the loss of, that which we are accustomed to believe the indispensable prime virtue of our s.e.x-chast.i.ty. I cannot explain it; I can only say that it is so, that some of my most promising village girls have been the first to come to harm; and some of the best and most faithful servants I ever had, have been girls who have fallen into shame, and who, had I not gone to the rescue and put them in the way to do well, would infallibly have become "lost women"'" (A Woman's Thoughts About Women, 1858, p. 291). Various writers have insisted on the good moral qualities of prost.i.tutes. Thus in France, Despine first enumerates their vices as (1) greediness and love of drink, (2) lying, (3) anger, (4) want of order and untidiness, (5) mobility of character, (6) need of movement, (7) tendency to h.o.m.os.e.xuality; and then proceeds to detail their good qualities: their maternal and filial affection, their charity to each other; and their refusal to denounce each other; while they are frequently religious, sometimes modest, and generally very honest (Despine, Psychologie Naturelle, vol. iii, pp. 207 et seq.; as regards Sicilian prost.i.tutes, cf. Callari, Archivio di Psichiatria, fasc. IV, 1903). The charity towards each other, often manifested in distress, is largely neutralized by a tendency to professional suspicion and jealousy of each other.

Lombroso believes that the basis of prost.i.tution must be found in moral idiocy. If by moral idiocy we are to understand a condition at all closely allied with insanity, this a.s.sertion is dubious. There seems no clear relationship between prost.i.tution and insanity, and Tammeo has shown (La Prost.i.tuzione, p. 76) that the frequency of prost.i.tutes in the various Italian provinces is in inverse ratio to the frequency of insane persons; as insanity increases, prost.i.tution decreases. But if we mean a minor degree of moral imbecility-that is to say, a bluntness of perception for the ordinary moral considerations of civilization which, while it is largely due to the hardening influence of an unfavorable early environment, may also rest on a congenital predisposition-there can be no doubt that moral imbecility of slight degree is very frequently found among prost.i.tutes. It would be plausible, doubtless, to say that every woman who gives her virginity in exchange for an inadequate return is an imbecile. If she gives herself for love, she has, at the worst, made a foolish mistake, such as the young and inexperienced may at any time make. But if she deliberately proposes to sell herself, and does so for nothing or next to nothing, the case is altered. The experiences of Commenge in Paris are instructive on this point. "For many young girls," he writes, "modesty has no existence, they experience no emotion in showing themselves completely undressed, they abandon themselves to any chance individual whom they will never see again. They attach no importance to their virginity; they are deflowered under the strangest conditions, without the least thought or care about the act they are accomplishing. No sentiment, no calculation, pushes them into a man's arms. They let themselves go without reflexion and without motive, in an almost animal manner, from indifference and without pleasure." He was acquainted with forty-five girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen who were deflowered by chance strangers whom they never met again; they lost their virginity, in Dumas's phrase, as they lost their milk-teeth, and could give no plausible account of the loss. A girl of fifteen, mentioned by Commenge, living with her parents who supplied all her wants, lost her virginity by casually meeting a man who offered her two francs if she would go with him; she did so without demur and soon begun to accost men on her own account. A girl of fourteen, also living comfortably with her parents, sacrificed her virginity at a fair in return for a gla.s.s of beer, and henceforth begun to a.s.sociate with prost.i.tutes. Another girl of the same age, at a local fete, wishing to go round on the hobby horse, spontaneously offered herself to the man directing the machinery for the pleasure of a ride. Yet another girl, of fifteen, at another fete, offered her virginity in return for the same momentary joy (Commenge, Prost.i.tution Clandestine, 1897, pp. 101 et seq.). In the United States, Dr. W. Travis Gibb, examining physician to the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, bears similar testimony to the fact that in a fairly large proportion of "rape" cases the child is the willing victim. "It is horribly pathetic," he says (Medical Record, April 20, 1907), "to learn how far a nickel or a quarter will go towards purchasing the virtue of these children."

In estimating the tendency of prost.i.tutes to display congenital physical anomalies, the crudest and most obvious test, though not a precise or satisfactory one, is the general impression produced by the face. In France, when nearly 1000 prost.i.tutes were divided into five groups from the point of view of their looks, only from seven to fourteen per cent, were found to belong to the first group, or that of those who could be said to possess youth and beauty (Jeannel, De la Prost.i.tution Publique, 1860, p. 168). Woods Hutchinson, again, judging from an extensive acquaintance with London, Paris, Vienna, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, a.s.serts that a handsome or even attractive-looking prost.i.tute, is rare, and that the general average of beauty is lower than in any other cla.s.s of women. "Whatever other evils," he remarks, "the fatal power of beauty may be responsible for, it has nothing to do with prost.i.tution" (Woods Hutchinson, "The Economics of Prost.i.tution," American Gynaecological and Obstetric Journal, September, 1895). It must, of course, be borne in mind that these estimates are liable to be vitiated through being based chiefly on the inspection of women who most obviously belong to the cla.s.s of prost.i.tutes and have already been coa.r.s.ened by their profession.

If we may conclude-and the fact is probably undisputed-that beautiful, agreeable, and harmoniously formed faces are rare rather than common among prost.i.tutes, we may certainly say that minute examination will reveal a large number of physical abnormalities. One of the earliest important physical investigations of prost.i.tutes was that of Dr. Pauline Tarnowsky in Russia (first published in the Vratch in 1887, and afterwards as Etudes anthropometriques sur les Prost.i.tuees et les Voleuses). She examined fifty St. Petersburg prost.i.tutes who had been inmates of a brothel for not less than two years, and also fifty peasant women of, so far as possible, the same age and mental development. She found that (1) the prost.i.tute showed shorter anterior-posterior and transverse diameters of skull; (2) a proportion equal to eighty-four per cent. showed various signs of physical degeneration (irregular skull, asymmetry of face, anomalies of hard palate, teeth, ears, etc.). This tendency to anomaly among the prost.i.tutes was to some extent explained when it was found that about four-fifths of them had parents who were habitual drunkards, and nearly one-fifth were the last survivors of large families; such families have been often produced by degenerate parents.

The frequency of hereditary degeneration has been noted by Bonhoeffer among German prost.i.tutes. He investigated 190 Breslau prost.i.tutes in prison, and therefore of a more abnormal cla.s.s than ordinary prost.i.tutes, and found that 102 were hereditarily degenerate, and mostly with one or both parents who were drunkards; 53 also showed feeble-mindedness (Zeitschrift fur die Gesamte Strafwissenschaft, Bd. xxiii, p. 106).

The most detailed examinations of ordinary non-criminal prost.i.tutes, both anthropometrically and as regards the prevalence of anomalies, have been made in Italy, though not on a sufficiently large number of subjects to yield absolutely decisive results. Thus Fornasari made a detailed examination of sixty prost.i.tutes belonging chiefly to Emilia and Venice, and also of twenty-seven others belonging to Bologna, the latter group being compared with a third group of twenty normal women belonging to Bologna (Archivio di Psichiatria, 1892, fasc. VI). The prost.i.tutes were found to be of lower type than the normal individuals, having smaller heads and larger faces. As the author himself points out, his subjects were not sufficiently numerous to justify far-reaching generalizations, but it may be worth while to summarize some of his results. At equal heights the prost.i.tutes showed greater weight; at equal ages they were of shorter stature than other women, not only of well-to-do, but of the poor cla.s.s: height of face, bi-zygomatic diameter (though not the distance between zygomas), the distance from chin to external auditory meatus, and the size of the jaw were all greater in the prost.i.tutes; the hands were longer and broader, compared to the palm, than in ordinary women; the foot also was longer in prost.i.tutes, and the thigh, as compared to the calf, was larger. It is noteworthy that in most particulars, and especially in regard to head measurements, the variations were much greater among the prost.i.tutes than among the other women examined; this is to some extent, though not entirely, to be accounted for by the slightly greater number of the former.

Ardu (in the same number of the Archivio) gave the result of observations (undertaken at Lombroso's suggestion) as to the frequency of abnormalities among prost.i.tutes. The subjects were seventy-four in number and belonged to Professor Giovannini's Clinica Sifilopatica at Turin. The abnormalities investigated were virile distribution of hair on p.u.b.es, chest, and limbs, hypertrichosis on forehead, left-handedness, atrophy of nipple, and tattooing (which was only found once). Combining Ardu's observations with another series of observations on fifty-five prost.i.tutes examined by Lombroso, it is found that virile disposition of hair is found in fifteen per cent. as against six per cent. in normal women; some degree of hypertrichosis in eighteen per cent.; left-handedness in eleven per cent. (but in normal women as high as twelve per cent. according to Gallia); and atrophy of nipple in twelve per cent.

Giuffrida-Ruggeri, again (Atti della, Societa Romana di Antropologia, 1897, p. 216), on examining eighty-two prost.i.tutes found anomalies in the following order of decreasing frequency: tendency of eyebrows to meet, lack of cranial symmetry, depression at root of nose, defective development of calves, hypertrichosis and other anomalies of hair, adherent or absent lobule, prominent zigoma, prominent forehead or frontal bones, bad implantation of teeth, Darwinian tubercle of ear, thin vertical lips. These signs are separately of little or no importance, though together not without significance as an indication of general anomaly.

More recently Ascarilla, in an elaborate study (Archivio di Psichiatria, 1906, fasc. VI, p. 812) of the finger prints of prost.i.tutes, comes to the conclusion that even in this respect prost.i.tutes tend to form a cla.s.s showing morphological inferiority to normal women. The patterns tend to show unusual simplicity and uniformity, and the significance of this is indicated by the fact that a similar uniformity is shown by the finger prints of the insane and deaf-mutes (De Sanctis and Toscano, Atti Societa Romana Antropologia, vol. viii, 1901, fasc. II).

In Chicago Dr. Harriet Alexander, in conjunction with Dr. E. S. Talbot and Dr. J. G. Kiernan, examined thirty prost.i.tutes in the Bridewell, or House of Correction; only the "obtuse" cla.s.s of professional prost.i.tutes reach this inst.i.tution, and it is not therefore surprising that they were found to exhibit very marked stigmata of degeneracy. In race nearly half of those examined were Celtic Irish. In sixteen the zygomatic processes were unequal and very prominent. Other facial asymmetries were common. In three cases the heads were of Mongoloid type; sixteen were epignathic, and eleven prognathic; five showed arrest of development of face. Brachycephaly predominated (seventeen cases); the rest were mesaticephalic; there were no dolichocephals. Abnormalities in shape of the skull were numerous, and twenty-nine had defective ears. Four were demonstrably insane, and one was an epileptic (H. C. B. Alexander, "Physical Abnormalities in Prost.i.tutes," Chicago Academy of Medicine, April, 1893; E. S. Talbot, Degeneracy, p. 320; Id., Irregularities of the Teeth, fourth edition, p. 141).

It would seem, on the whole, so far as the evidence at present goes, that prost.i.tutes are not quite normal representatives of the ranks into which they were born. There has been a process of selection of individuals who slightly deviate congenitally from the normal average and are, correspondingly, slightly inapt for normal life.[188] The psychic characteristics which accompany such deviation are not always necessarily of an obviously unfavorable nature; the slightly neurotic girl of low cla.s.s birth-disinclined for hard work, through defective energy, and perhaps greedy and selfish-may even seem to possess a refinement superior to her station. While, however, there is a tendency to anomaly among prost.i.tutes, it must be clearly recognized that that tendency remains slight so long as we consider impartially the whole cla.s.s of prost.i.tutes. Those investigators who have reached the conclusion that prost.i.tutes are a highly degenerate and abnormal cla.s.s have only observed special groups of prost.i.tutes, more especially those who are frequently found in prison. It is not possible to form a just conception of prost.i.tutes by studying them only in prison, any more than it would be possible to form a just conception of clergymen, doctors, or lawyers by studying them exclusively in prison, and this remains true even although a much larger proportion of prost.i.tutes than of members of the more reputable professions pa.s.s through prisons; that fact no doubt partly indicates the greater abnormality of prost.i.tutes.

It has, of course, to be remembered that the special conditions of the lives of prost.i.tutes tend to cause in them the appearance of certain professional characteristics which are entirely acquired and not congenital. In that way we may account for the gradual modification of the feminine secondary and tertiary s.e.xual characters, and the appearance of masculine characters, such as the frequent deep voice, etc.[189] But with all due allowance for these acquired characters, it remains true that such comparative investigations as have so far been made, although inconclusive, seem to indicate that, even apart from the prevalence of acquired anomalies, the professional selection of their avocation tends to separate out from the general population of the same social cla.s.s, individuals who possess anthropometrical characters varying in a definite direction. The observations thus made seem, in this way, to indicate that prost.i.tutes tend to be in weight over the average, though not in stature, that in length of arm they are inferior though the hands are longer (this has been found alike in Italy and Russia); they have smaller ankles and larger calves, and still larger thighs in proportion to their large calves. The estimated skull capacity and the skull circ.u.mference and diameters are somewhat below the normal, not only when compared with respectable women but also with thieves; there is a tendency to brachycephaly (both in Italy and Russia); the cheek-bones are usually prominent and the jaws developed; the hair is darker than in respectable women though less so than in thieves; it is also unusually abundant, not only on the head but also on the pudenda and elsewhere; the eyes have been found to be decidedly darker than those of either respectable women or criminals.[190]

So far as the evidence goes it serves to indicate that prost.i.tutes tend to approximate to the type which, as was shown in the previous volume, there is reason to regard as specially indicative of developed s.e.xuality. It is, however, unnecessary to discuss this question until our anthropometrical knowledge of prost.i.tutes is more extended and precise.

3. The Moral Justification of Prost.i.tution.-There are and always have been moralists-many of them people whose opinions are deserving of the most serious respect-who consider that, allowing for the need of improved hygienic conditions, the existence of prost.i.tution presents no serious problem for solution. It is, at most, they say, a necessary evil, and, at best, a beneficent inst.i.tution, the bulwark of the home, the inevitable reverse of which monogamy is the obverse. "The immoral guardian of public morality," is the definition of prost.i.tutes given by one writer, who takes the humble view of the matter, and another, taking the loftier ground, writes: "The prost.i.tute fulfils a social mission. She is the guardian of virginal modesty, the channel to carry off adulterous desire, the protector of matrons who fear late maternity; it is her part to act as the shield of the family." "Female Decii," said Balzac in his Physiologie du Mariage of prost.i.tutes, "they sacrifice themselves for the republic and make of their bodies a rampart for the protection of respectable families." In the same way Schopenhauer called prost.i.tutes "human sacrifices on the altar of monogamy." Lecky, again, in an oft-quoted pa.s.sage of rhetoric,[191] may be said to combine both the higher and the lower view of the prost.i.tute's mission in human society, to which he even seeks to give a hieratic character. "The supreme type of vice," he declared, "she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chast.i.ty, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and of despair. On that one degraded and ign.o.ble form are concentrated the pa.s.sions that might have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people."[192]

I am not aware that the Greeks were greatly concerned with the moral justification of prost.i.tution. They had not allowed it to a.s.sume very offensive forms and for the most part they were content to accept it. The Romans usually accepted it, too, but, we gather, not quite so easily. There was an austerely serious, almost Puritanic, spirit in the Romans of the old stock and they seem sometimes to have felt the need to a.s.sure themselves that prost.i.tution really was morally justifiable. It is significant to note that they were accustomed to remember that Cato was said to have expressed satisfaction on seeing a man emerge from a brothel, for otherwise he might have gone to lie with his neighbor's wife.[193]

The social necessity of prost.i.tution is the most ancient of all the arguments of moralists in favor of the toleration of prost.i.tutes; and if we accept the eternal validity of the marriage system with which prost.i.tution developed, and of the theoretical morality based on that system, this is an exceedingly forcible, if not an unanswerable, argument.

The advent of Christianity, with its special att.i.tude towards the "flesh," necessarily caused an enormous increase of attention to the moral aspects of prost.i.tution. When prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution. 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 prost.i.tute and her like, however sordid and ugly and wicked they may be, are equally necessary; remove prost.i.tutes from human affairs and you would pollute the world with l.u.s.t: "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 prost.i.tution. He maintained the sinfulness of fornication but he accepted the necessity of prost.i.tution as a beneficial part of the social structure, comparing it to the sewers which keep a palace pure.[195] "Prost.i.tution 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 att.i.tude towards prost.i.tution was indeed generally maintained by theologians. Some, following Augustine and Aquinas, would permit prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tute has a right to her wages, and is not obliged to make rest.i.tution.[196] The earlier Christian moralists found no difficulty in maintaining that there is no sin in renting a house to a prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tutes. All Catholic theologians hold that a prost.i.tute is bound to confess the sin of prost.i.tution, and most, though not all, theologians have believed that a man also must confess intercourse with a prost.i.tute. At the same time, while there was a certain indulgence to the prost.i.tute herself, the Church was always very severe on those who lived on the profits of promoting prost.i.tution, on the lenones. Thus the Council of Elvira, which was ready to receive without penance the prost.i.tute 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 s.e.xual morality, having abandoned the confessional, was usually able to escape the necessity for any definite and responsible utterances concerning the moral status of prost.i.tution. 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 prost.i.tutes and no toleration for prost.i.tution. This att.i.tude, 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 att.i.tude in a thoughtful and serious writer, is well ill.u.s.trated 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 l.u.s.ty, 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 prost.i.tution 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 chast.i.ty may be supported by incontinence, and the best of virtues want the a.s.sistance of the worst of vices."[200] After Mandeville's time this view of prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution.

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 prost.i.tute. She defends her profession with much skill, and argues that while men imagine that prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tute, and she proceeds to p.r.o.nounce 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution must proceed from the principle of grat.i.tude without false shame for its utility, and compa.s.sion for the poor creatures at whose expense this is attained" (La Prost.i.tution 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 s.e.xually perfect individuals, with normal, or, in cases where repression is prolonged, excessive s.e.xual appet.i.tes. 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 prost.i.tution and regarding prost.i.tutes as "the worst specimens of the s.e.x," yet regards prost.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution of marriage" (The Gospel According to Darwin, p. 193; cf. the same author's article on "The Economics of Prost.i.tution," summarized in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, November 21, 1895). Adolf Gerson, in a somewhat similar spirit, argues ("Die Ursache der Prost.i.tution," s.e.xual-Probleme, September, 1908) that "prost.i.tution is one of the means used by Nature to limit the procreative activity of men, and especially to postpone the period of s.e.xual maturity." Molinari considers that the social benefits of prost.i.tution have been manifested in various ways from the first; by sterilizing, for instance, the more excessive manifestations of the s.e.xual impulse prost.i.tution 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, prost.i.tution 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), "prost.i.tution (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. Prost.i.tution 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, Nacke, and many others, have pleaded for prost.i.tution, 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 prost.i.tution, believe that some improvement in method is still desirable. Thus Berault looks forward to a time when regulated brothels will become less contemptible. Various improvements may, he thinks, in the near future, "deprive them of the barbarous attributes which mark them out for the opprobrium of the skeptical or ignorant mult.i.tude, while their recognizable advantages will put an end to the contempt aroused by their cynical aspect" (La Maison de Tolerance, These de Paris, 1904).

4. The Civilizational Value of Prost.i.tution.-The moral argument for prost.i.tution is based on the belief that our marriage system is so infinitely precious that an inst.i.tution which serves as its b.u.t.tress must be kept in existence, however ugly or otherwise objectionable it may in itself be. There is, however, another argument in support of prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution as an outlet for superfluous s.e.xual energy, and may even affect those who have little or no commerce with prost.i.tutes. This element may be said to const.i.tute the civilizational value of prost.i.tution.

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 compet.i.tion 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 subst.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tute'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 s.e.xual impulse is a leading factor. But a large number of young women turn instinctively to a life of prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution. Merrick, in London, found that 5000, or nearly a third, of the prost.i.tutes he investigated, voluntarily gave up home or situation "for a life of pleasure," and he puts this at the head of the causes of prost.i.tution.[202] In America Sanger found that "inclination" came almost at the head of the causes of prost.i.tution, while Woods Hutchinson found "love of display, luxury and idleness" by far at the head. "Disgusted and wearied with work" is the reason a.s.signed by a large number of Belgian girls when stating to the police their wish to be enrolled as prost.i.tutes. In Italy a similar motive is estimated to play an important part. In Russia "desire for amus.e.m.e.nt" comes second among the causes of prost.i.tution. There can, I think, be little doubt that, as a thoughtful student of London life has concluded, the problem of prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution, 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 prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tution as a sin. 'I am taken out to dinner and to some place of amus.e.m.e.nt every night; why should I give it up?'" Merrick, who found that five per cent. of 14,000 prost.i.tutes who pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sent 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 att.i.tude may be found among prost.i.tutes 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 att.i.tude is often more than an instinctive feeling; in intelligent prost.i.tutes 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-cla.s.s 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 prost.i.tute'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 p.u.b.erta, p. 462), "for between those who sell themselves to prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution. "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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 prost.i.tution 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 s.e.xual matters, the teacher rather than the pupil. (In "The s.e.xual Impulse in Women," in the third volume of these Studies, I have discussed the part played by servants as s.e.xual initiators of the young boys in the households in which they are placed.) The more precise statistics of the causes of prost.i.tution seldom a.s.sign 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 const.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tution.

The statistics of the parentage of illegitimate children have some bearing on this question. In a series of 180 unmarried mothers a.s.sisted by the Berlin Bund fur 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 a.s.sistants 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-cla.s.s; 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 prost.i.tutes have lost their virginity at an early age, and in the great majority of cases through men of their own cla.s.s. "The girl of the people falls by the people," stated Reuss in France (La Prost.i.tution, 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 Prost.i.tution Clandestine, 1885), showed that prost.i.tutes are usually deflowered by men of their own cla.s.s. 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 cla.s.s 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 manuvres, is the cause of unchast.i.ty 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 prost.i.tutes, 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 p.u.b.erta, p. 461). The loss of virginity, Marro adds, though it may not be the direct cause of prost.i.tution, often leads on to it. "When a door has once been broken in," a prost.i.tute said to him, "it is difficult to keep it closed." In Sardinia, as A. Mantegazza and Ciuffo found, prost.i.tutes are very largely servants from the country who have already been deflowered by men of their own cla.s.s.

This civilizational factor of prost.i.tution, 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 succ.u.mb 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 prost.i.tute. 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 prost.i.tute'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 prost.i.tutes also should often be outsiders. Still it remains a significant fact that so typically urban a phenomenon as prost.i.tution should be so largely recruited from the country. This is everywhere the case. Merrick enumerates the regions from which came some 14,000 prost.i.tutes who pa.s.sed through Millbank Prison. Middles.e.x, Kent, Surrey, Ess.e.x 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 prost.i.tutes 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 pa.s.s through a prison do not accurately represent the proportions among prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes generally, half a century earlier, in Edinburgh. Sanger found that of 2000 prost.i.tutes 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. Prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes 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 Prost.i.tution, p. 452). It is instructive to see here the influence of a dreary climate and monotonous labor in stimulating the appet.i.te for a "life of pleasure." In France, as shown by a map in Parent-Duchatelet's work (vol. i, pp. 37-64, 1857), if the country is divided into five zones, on the whole running east and west, there is a steady and progressive decrease in the number of prost.i.tutes 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), prost.i.tution, 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 Prost.i.tution, p. 12) that "nearly all the prost.i.tutes of Paris come from the provinces." Jeannel found that of one thousand Bordeaux prost.i.tutes only forty-six belonged to the city itself, and Potton (Appendix to Parent-Duchatelet, vol. ii, p. 446) states that of nearly four thousand Lyons prost.i.tutes only 376 belonged to Lyons. In Vienna, in 1873, Schrank remarks that of over 1500 prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes are children of the city.

It is interesting to note that this tendency of the prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tutes. Thus in Paris, according to Reuss (La Prost.i.tution, p. 12), the foreign prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tute, 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 prost.i.tute. It is now necessary to point out that for the man also, the same appeal makes itself felt in the person of the prost.i.tute. The common and ignorant a.s.sumption that prost.i.tution exists to satisfy the gross sensuality of the young unmarried man, and that if he is taught to bridle gross s.e.xual impulse or induced to marry early the prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tute is something more than a channel to drain off superfluous s.e.xual energy, and her attraction by no means ceases when men are married, for a large number of the men who visit prost.i.tutes, if not the majority, are married. And alike whether they are married or unmarried the motive is not one of uncomplicated l.u.s.t.

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-cla.s.s prost.i.tutes in London are almost entirely supported by married men," while in Germany, as stated in the interesting series of reminiscences by a former prost.i.tute, Hedwig Hard's Beichte einer Gefallenen, (p. 208), the majority of the men who visit prost.i.tutes are married. The estimate is probably excessive. Neisser states that only twenty-five per cent. of cases of gonorrha 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 prost.i.tutes, 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 prost.i.tute a man of the best social cla.s.s 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 a.s.saulting 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 s.e.xual mates of their husbands. And the husbands, without being carried away by any impulse of strong pa.s.sion or any desire for infidelity, seek abroad what they cannot find at home.

This is not the only reason why married men visit prost.i.tutes. 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 doc.u.ment 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 prost.i.tutes, but nearly always women of low social cla.s.s-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 G.o.d (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 att.i.tude 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, pa.s.sim).

There is a third cla.s.s of married men, less considerable in number but not unimportant, who are impelled to visit prost.i.tutes: the cla.s.s of s.e.xually 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 s.e.xual 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 prost.i.tute, the only woman whose business it is to fulfil his peculiar needs. Marriage has brought no relief to these men, and they const.i.tute a noteworthy proportion of a prost.i.tute's clients in every great city. The most ordinary prost.i.tute of any experience can supply cases from among her own visitors to ill.u.s.trate a treatise of psychopathic s.e.xuality. It may suffice here to quote a pa.s.sage from the confessions of a young London (Strand) prost.i.tute as written down from her lips by a friend to whom I am indebted for the doc.u.ment; 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 prost.i.tute. 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 o.r.g.a.s.m 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 prost.i.tute, 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 prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tute 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 circ.u.mstances 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 prost.i.tute who incarnates this fascination of the city, far better than the virginal woman, even if intimacy with her were within reach. The prost.i.tute 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 s.e.x 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 s.e.x, but also because she is, in her way, an artist, an expert in the art of feminine exploitation, a leader of feminine fashions. For she is this, and there are, as Simmel has stated in his Philosophie der Mode, good psychological reasons why she always should be this. Her uncertain social position makes all that is conventional and established hateful to her, while her temperament makes perpetual novelty delightful. In new fashions she finds "an aesthetic form of that instinct of destruction which seems peculiar to all pariah existences, in so far as they are not completely enslaved in spirit."

"However surprising it may seem to some," a modern writer remarks, "prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tutes are now (R. h.e.l.lmann, Ueber Geschlechtsfreiheit, pp. 245-252).

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

But while to the simple, ignorant, and hungry youth the prost.i.tute appeals as the embodiment of many of the refinements and perversities of civilization, on ma