Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Vi Part 18

This point has been discussed by Bloch, s.e.xualleben 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 Prost.i.tution 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.

[201]

These conditions favor temporary free unions, but they also favor prost.i.tution. The reason is, according to Adolf Gerson (s.e.xual-Probleme, September, 1908), that the woman of good cla.s.s will not have free unions. Partly moved by moral traditions, and partly by the feeling that a man should be legally her property, she will not give herself out of love to a man; and he therefore turns to the lower-cla.s.s woman who gives herself for money.

[202]

Many girls, said Ellice Hopkins, get into mischief merely because they have in them an element of the "black kitten," which must frolic and play, but has no desire to get into danger. "Do you not think it a little hard," she added, "that men should have dug by the side of her foolish dancing feet a bottomless pit, and that she cannot have her jump and fun in safety, and put on her fine feathers like the silly bird-witted thing she is, without a single false step dashing her over the brink, and leaving her with the very womanhood dashed out of her?"

[203]

A. Sherwell, Life in West London, 1897, Ch. V.

[204]

As quoted by Bloch, s.e.xualleben Unserer Zeit, p. 358. In Berlin during recent years the number of prost.i.tutes has increased at nearly double the rate at which the general population has increased. It is no doubt probable that the supply tends to increase the demand.

[205]

Goncourt, Journal, vol. iii, p. 49.

[206]

Vanderkiste, The Dens of London, 1854, p. 242.

[207]

Bonger (Criminalite et Conditions Economiques, p. 406) refers to the prevalence of prost.i.tution among dressmakers and milliners, as well as among servants, as showing the influence of contact with luxury, and adds that the rich women, who look down on prost.i.tution, do not always realize that they are themselves an important factor of prost.i.tution, both by their luxury and their idleness; while they do not seem to be aware that they would themselves act in the same way if placed under the same conditions.

[208]

H. Lippert, in his book on prost.i.tution in Hamburg, laid much stress on the craving for dress and adornment as a factor of prost.i.tution, and Bloch (Das s.e.xualleben unsurer Zeit, p. 372) considers that this factor is usually underestimated, and that it exerts an especially powerful influence on servants.

[209]

Since this was written the influence of several generations of town-life in immunizing a stock to the evils of that life (though without reference to prost.i.tution) has been set forth by Reibmayr, Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und Genies, 1908, vol. ii, pp. 73 et seq.

[210]

In France this intimacy is embodied in the delicious privilege of tutoiement. "The mystery of tutoiement!" exclaims Ernest La Jennesse in L'Holocauste: "Barriers broken down, veils drawn away, and the ease of existence! At a time when I was very lonely, and trying to grow accustomed to Paris and to misfortune, I would go miles-on foot, naturally-to see a girl cousin and an aunt, merely to have something to tutoyer. Sometimes they were not at home, and I had to come back with my tu, my thirst for confidence and familiarity and brotherliness."

[211]

For some facts and references to the extensive literature concerning this trade, see, e.g., Bloch, Das s.e.xualleben Unserer Zeit, pp. 374-376; also K. M. Baer, Zeitschrift fur s.e.xualwissenschaft, Sept., 1908; Paulucci de Calboli, Nuova Antologia, April, 1902.

[212]

These considerations do not, it is true, apply to many kinds of s.e.xual perverts who form an important proportion of the clients of brothels. These can frequently find what they crave inside a brothel much more easily than outside.

[213]

Thus Charles Booth, in his great work on Life and Labor in London, final volume (p. 128), recommends that "houses of accommodation," instead of being hunted out, should be tolerated as a step towards the suppression of brothels.

[214]

"Towns like Woolwich, Aldershot, Portsmouth, Plymouth," it has been said, "abound with wretched, filthy monsters that bear no resemblance to women; but it is drink, scorn, brutality and disease which have reduced them to this state, not the mere fact of a.s.sociating with men."

[215]

"The contract of prost.i.tution in the opinion of prost.i.tutes themselves," Bernaldo de Quiros and Llanas Aguilaniedo remark (La Mala Vida en Madrid, p. 254), "cannot be a.s.similated to a sale, nor to a contract of work, nor to any other form of barter recognized by the civil law. They consider that in these pacts there always enters an element which makes it much more like a gift in a matter in which no payment could be adequate. 'A woman's body is without price' is an axiom of prost.i.tution. The money placed in the hands of her who procures the satisfaction of s.e.xual desire is not the price of the act, but an offering which the priestess of Venus applies to her maintenance." To the Spaniard, it is true, every transaction which resembles trade is repugnant, but the principle underlying this feeling holds good of prost.i.tution generally.

[216]

Journal des Goncourt, vol. iii; this was in 1866.

[217]

Rev. the Hon. C. Lyttelton, Training of the Young in Laws of s.e.x, p. 42.

[218]

See, e.g., R. W. Taylor, Treatise on s.e.xual Disorders, 1897, pp. 74-5. Georg Hirth (Wege zur Heimat, 1909, p. 619) narrates the case of a young officer who, being excited by the caresses of his betrothed and having too much respect for her to go further than this, and too much respect for himself to resort to masturbation, knew nothing better than to go to a prost.i.tute. Syphilis developed a few days after the wedding. Hirth adds, briefly, that the results were terrible.

[219]

It is an oft-quoted pa.s.sage, but can scarcely be quoted too often: "You see that this wrought-iron plate is not quite flat: it sticks up a little, here towards the left-'c.o.c.kles,' as we say. How shall we flatten it? Obviously, you reply, by hitting down on the part that is prominent. Well, here is a hammer, and I give the plate a blow as you advise. Harder, you say. Still no effect. Another stroke? Well, there is one, and another, and another. The prominence remains, you see: the evil is as great as ever-greater, indeed. But that is not all. Look at the warp which the plate has got near the opposite edge. Where it was flat before it is now curved. A pretty bungle we have made of it. Instead of curing the original defect we have produced a second. Had we asked an artisan practiced in 'planishing,' as it is called, he would have told us that no good was to be done, but only mischief, by hitting down on the projecting part. He would have taught us how to give variously-directed and specially-adjusted blows with a hammer elsewhere: so attacking the evil, not by direct, but by indirect actions. The required process is less simple than you thought. Even a sheet of metal is not to be successfully dealt with after those common-sense methods in which you have so much confidence. What, then, shall we say about a society?... Is humanity more readily straightened than an iron plate?" (The Study of Sociology, p. 270.)

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CONQUEST OF THE VENEREAL DISEASES.

The Significance of the Venereal Diseases-The History of Syphilis-The Problem of Its Origin-The Social Gravity of Syphilis-The Social Dangers of Gonorrha-The Modern Change in the Methods of Combating Venereal Diseases-Causes of the Decay of the System of Police Regulation-Necessity of Facing the Facts-The Innocent Victims of Venereal Diseases-Diseases Not Crimes-The Principle of Notification-The Scandinavian System-Gratuitous Treatment-Punishment for Transmitting Venereal Diseases-s.e.xual Education in Relation to Venereal Diseases-Lectures, Etc.-Discussion in Novels and on the Stage-The "Disgusting" Not the "Immoral."

It may, perhaps, excite surprise that in the preceding discussion of prost.i.tution scarcely a word has been said of venereal diseases. In the eyes of many people, the question of prost.i.tution is simply the question of syphilis. But from the psychological point of view with which we are directly concerned, as from the moral point of view with which we cannot fail to be indirectly concerned, the question of the diseases which may be, and so frequently are, a.s.sociated with prost.i.tution cannot be placed in the first line of significance. The two questions, however intimately they may be mingled, are fundamentally distinct. Not only would venereal diseases still persist even though prost.i.tution had absolutely ceased, but, on the other hand, when we have brought syphilis under the same control as we have brought the somewhat a.n.a.logous disease of leprosy, the problem of prost.i.tution would still remain.