It is necessary, we see, that the balance should be held even. An absolute license is bad; an absolute abstinence—even though some by nature or circumstances are urgently called to adopt it—is also bad. They are both alike away from the gracious equilibrium of Nature. And the force, we see, which naturally holds this balance even is the biological fact that the act of sexual union is the satisfaction of the erotic needs, not of one person, but of two persons.
[92]
This view was an ambiguous improvement on the view, universally prevalent, as Westermarck has shown, among primitive peoples, that the sexual act involves indignity to a woman or depreciation of her only in so far as she is the property of another person who is the really injured party.
This view was an ambiguous improvement on the view, universally prevalent, as Westermarck has shown, among primitive peoples, that the sexual act involves indignity to a woman or depreciation of her only in so far as she is the property of another person who is the really injured party.
[93]
This implicit contradiction has been acutely pointed out from the religious side by the Rev. H. Northcote,Christianity and Sex Problems, p. 53.
This implicit contradiction has been acutely pointed out from the religious side by the Rev. H. Northcote,Christianity and Sex Problems, p. 53.
[94]
It has already been necessary to discuss this point briefly in "The Sexual Impulse in Women," vol. iii of theseStudies.
It has already been necessary to discuss this point briefly in "The Sexual Impulse in Women," vol. iii of theseStudies.
[95]
"Die Abstinentia Sexualis,"Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, Nov., 1908.
"Die Abstinentia Sexualis,"Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, Nov., 1908.
[96]
P. Janet, "La Maladie du Scrupule,"Revue Philosophique, May, 1901.
P. Janet, "La Maladie du Scrupule,"Revue Philosophique, May, 1901.
[97]
S. Freud,Sexual-Probleme, March, 1908. As Adele Schreiber also points out (Mutterschutz, Jan., 1907, p. 30), it is not enough to prove that abstinence is not dangerous; we have to remember that the spiritual and physical energy used up in repressing this mighty instinct often reduces a joyous and energetic nature to a weary and faded shadow. Similarly, Helene Stöcker (Die Liebe und die Frauen, p. 105) says: "The question whether abstinence is harmful is, to say the truth, a ridiculous question. One needs to be no nervous specialist to know, as a matter of course, that a life of happy love and marriage is the healthy life, and its complete absence cannot fail to lead to severe psychic depression, even if no direct physiological disturbances can be demonstrated."
S. Freud,Sexual-Probleme, March, 1908. As Adele Schreiber also points out (Mutterschutz, Jan., 1907, p. 30), it is not enough to prove that abstinence is not dangerous; we have to remember that the spiritual and physical energy used up in repressing this mighty instinct often reduces a joyous and energetic nature to a weary and faded shadow. Similarly, Helene Stöcker (Die Liebe und die Frauen, p. 105) says: "The question whether abstinence is harmful is, to say the truth, a ridiculous question. One needs to be no nervous specialist to know, as a matter of course, that a life of happy love and marriage is the healthy life, and its complete absence cannot fail to lead to severe psychic depression, even if no direct physiological disturbances can be demonstrated."
[98]
Max Flesch, "Ehe, Hygine und Sexuelle Moral,"Mutterschutz, 1905, Heft 7.
Max Flesch, "Ehe, Hygine und Sexuelle Moral,"Mutterschutz, 1905, Heft 7.
[99]
See the Section on Touch in the fourth volume of theseStudies.
See the Section on Touch in the fourth volume of theseStudies.
[100]
"I have had two years' close experience and connexion with the Trappists," wrote Dr. Butterfield, of Natal (British Medical Journal, Sept. 15, 1906, p. 668), "both as medical attendant and as being a Catholic in creed myself. I have studied them and investigated their life, habits and diet, and though I should be very backward in adopting it myself, as not suited to me individually, the great bulk of them are in absolute ideal health and strength, seldom ailing, capable of vast work, mental and physical. Their life is very simple and very regular. A healthier body of men and women, with perfect equanimity of temper—this latter I lay great stress on—it would be difficult to find. Health beams in their eyes and countenance and actions. Only in sickness or prolonged journeys are they allowed any strong foods—meats, eggs, etc.—or any alcohol."
"I have had two years' close experience and connexion with the Trappists," wrote Dr. Butterfield, of Natal (British Medical Journal, Sept. 15, 1906, p. 668), "both as medical attendant and as being a Catholic in creed myself. I have studied them and investigated their life, habits and diet, and though I should be very backward in adopting it myself, as not suited to me individually, the great bulk of them are in absolute ideal health and strength, seldom ailing, capable of vast work, mental and physical. Their life is very simple and very regular. A healthier body of men and women, with perfect equanimity of temper—this latter I lay great stress on—it would be difficult to find. Health beams in their eyes and countenance and actions. Only in sickness or prolonged journeys are they allowed any strong foods—meats, eggs, etc.—or any alcohol."
[101]
Féré,L'Instinct Sexuel, second edition, p. 332.
Féré,L'Instinct Sexuel, second edition, p. 332.
[102]
Rural life, as we have seen when discussing its relation to sexual precocity,ison one side the reverse of a safeguard against sexual influences. But, on the other hand, in so far as it involves hard work and simple living under conditions that are not nervously stimulating, it is favorable to a considerably delayed sexual activity in youth and to a relative continence. Ammon, in the course of his anthropological investigations of Baden conscripts, found that sexual intercourse was rare in the country before twenty, and even sexual emissions during sleep rare before nineteen or twenty. It is said, also, he repeats, that no one has a right to run after girls who does not yet carry a gun, and the elder lads sometimes brutally ill-treat any younger boy found going about with a girl. No doubt this is often preliminary to much license later.
Rural life, as we have seen when discussing its relation to sexual precocity,ison one side the reverse of a safeguard against sexual influences. But, on the other hand, in so far as it involves hard work and simple living under conditions that are not nervously stimulating, it is favorable to a considerably delayed sexual activity in youth and to a relative continence. Ammon, in the course of his anthropological investigations of Baden conscripts, found that sexual intercourse was rare in the country before twenty, and even sexual emissions during sleep rare before nineteen or twenty. It is said, also, he repeats, that no one has a right to run after girls who does not yet carry a gun, and the elder lads sometimes brutally ill-treat any younger boy found going about with a girl. No doubt this is often preliminary to much license later.
[103]
The numerical preponderance which celibate women teachers have now gained in the American school system has caused much misgiving among many sagacious observers, and is said to be unsatisfactory in its results on the pupils of both sexes. A distinguished authority, Professor McKeen Cattell ("The School and the Family,"Popular Science Monthly, Jan., 1909), referring to this preponderance of "devitalized and unsexed spinsters," goes so far as to say that "the ultimate result of letting the celibate female be the usual teacher has been such as to make it a question whether it would not be an advantage to the country if the whole school plant could be scrapped."
The numerical preponderance which celibate women teachers have now gained in the American school system has caused much misgiving among many sagacious observers, and is said to be unsatisfactory in its results on the pupils of both sexes. A distinguished authority, Professor McKeen Cattell ("The School and the Family,"Popular Science Monthly, Jan., 1909), referring to this preponderance of "devitalized and unsexed spinsters," goes so far as to say that "the ultimate result of letting the celibate female be the usual teacher has been such as to make it a question whether it would not be an advantage to the country if the whole school plant could be scrapped."
[104]
Corre (Les Criminels, p. 351) mentions that of thirteen priests convicted of crime, six were guilty of sexual attempts on children, and of eighty-three convicted lay teachers, forty-eight had committed similar offenses. This was at a time when lay teachers were in practice almost compelled to live a celibate life; altered conditions have greatly diminished this class of offense among them. Without going so far as crime, many moral and religious men, clergymen and others, who have led severely abstinent lives in youth, sometimes experience in middle age or later the eruption of almost uncontrollable sexual impulses, normal or abnormal. In women such manifestations are apt to take the form of obsessional thoughts of sexual character, ase.g., the case (Comptes-Rendus Congrès International de Médecine, Moscow, 1897, vol. iv, p. 27) of a chaste woman who was compelled to think about and look at the sexual organs of men.
Corre (Les Criminels, p. 351) mentions that of thirteen priests convicted of crime, six were guilty of sexual attempts on children, and of eighty-three convicted lay teachers, forty-eight had committed similar offenses. This was at a time when lay teachers were in practice almost compelled to live a celibate life; altered conditions have greatly diminished this class of offense among them. Without going so far as crime, many moral and religious men, clergymen and others, who have led severely abstinent lives in youth, sometimes experience in middle age or later the eruption of almost uncontrollable sexual impulses, normal or abnormal. In women such manifestations are apt to take the form of obsessional thoughts of sexual character, ase.g., the case (Comptes-Rendus Congrès International de Médecine, Moscow, 1897, vol. iv, p. 27) of a chaste woman who was compelled to think about and look at the sexual organs of men.
[105]
J. A. Godfrey,The Science of Sex, p. 138.
J. A. Godfrey,The Science of Sex, p. 138.
[106]
See,e.g., Havelock Ellis, "St. Francis and Others,"Affirmations.
See,e.g., Havelock Ellis, "St. Francis and Others,"Affirmations.
I.The Orgy:—The Religious Origin of the Orgy—The Feast of Fools—Recognition of the Orgy by the Greeks and Romans—The Orgy Among Savages—The Drama—The Object Subserved by the Orgy.
I.The Orgy:—The Religious Origin of the Orgy—The Feast of Fools—Recognition of the Orgy by the Greeks and Romans—The Orgy Among Savages—The Drama—The Object Subserved by the Orgy.
II.The Origin and Development of Prostitution:—The Definition of Prostitution—Prostitution Among Savages—The Conditions Under Which Professional Prostitution Arises—Sacred Prostitution—The Rite of Mylitta—The Practice of Prostitution to Obtain a Marriage Portion—The Rise of Secular Prostitution in Greece—Prostitution in the East—India, China, Japan, etc.—Prostitution in Rome—The Influence of Christianity on Prostitution—The Effort to Combat Prostitution—The Mediæval Brothel—The Appearance of the Courtesan—Tullia D'Aragona—Veronica Franco—Ninon de Lenclos—Later Attempts to Eradicate Prostitution—The Regulation of Prostitution—Its Futility Becoming Recognized.
II.The Origin and Development of Prostitution:—The Definition of Prostitution—Prostitution Among Savages—The Conditions Under Which Professional Prostitution Arises—Sacred Prostitution—The Rite of Mylitta—The Practice of Prostitution to Obtain a Marriage Portion—The Rise of Secular Prostitution in Greece—Prostitution in the East—India, China, Japan, etc.—Prostitution in Rome—The Influence of Christianity on Prostitution—The Effort to Combat Prostitution—The Mediæval Brothel—The Appearance of the Courtesan—Tullia D'Aragona—Veronica Franco—Ninon de Lenclos—Later Attempts to Eradicate Prostitution—The Regulation of Prostitution—Its Futility Becoming Recognized.
III.The Causes of Prostitution:—Prostitution as a Part of the Marriage System—The Complex Causation of Prostitution—The Motives Assigned by Prostitutes—(1) Economic Factor of Prostitution—Poverty Seldom the Chief Motive for Prostitution—But Economic Pressure Exerts a Real Influence—The Large Proportion of Prostitutes Recruited from Domestic Service—Significance of This Fact—(2) The Biological Factor of Prostitution—The So-called Born-Prostitute—Alleged Identity with the Born-Criminal—The Sexual Instinct in Prostitutes—The Physical and Psychic Characters of Prostitutes—(3) Moral Necessity as a Factor in the Existence of Prostitution—The Moral Advocates of Prostitution—The Moral Attitude of Christianity Towards Prostitution—The Attitude of Protestantism—Recent Advocates of the Moral Necessity of Prostitution—(4) Civilizational Value as a Factor of Prostitution—The Influence of Urban Life—The Craving for Excitement—Why Servant-girls so Often Turn to Prostitution—The Small Part Played by Seduction—Prostitutes Come Largely from the Country—The Appeal of Civilization Attracts Women to Prostitution—The Corresponding Attraction Felt by Men—The Prostitute as Artist and Leader of Fashion—The Charm of Vulgarity.
III.The Causes of Prostitution:—Prostitution as a Part of the Marriage System—The Complex Causation of Prostitution—The Motives Assigned by Prostitutes—(1) Economic Factor of Prostitution—Poverty Seldom the Chief Motive for Prostitution—But Economic Pressure Exerts a Real Influence—The Large Proportion of Prostitutes Recruited from Domestic Service—Significance of This Fact—(2) The Biological Factor of Prostitution—The So-called Born-Prostitute—Alleged Identity with the Born-Criminal—The Sexual Instinct in Prostitutes—The Physical and Psychic Characters of Prostitutes—(3) Moral Necessity as a Factor in the Existence of Prostitution—The Moral Advocates of Prostitution—The Moral Attitude of Christianity Towards Prostitution—The Attitude of Protestantism—Recent Advocates of the Moral Necessity of Prostitution—(4) Civilizational Value as a Factor of Prostitution—The Influence of Urban Life—The Craving for Excitement—Why Servant-girls so Often Turn to Prostitution—The Small Part Played by Seduction—Prostitutes Come Largely from the Country—The Appeal of Civilization Attracts Women to Prostitution—The Corresponding Attraction Felt by Men—The Prostitute as Artist and Leader of Fashion—The Charm of Vulgarity.
IV.The Present Social Attitude Towards Prostitution:—The Decay of the Brothel—The Tendency to the Humanization of Prostitution—The Monetary Aspects of Prostitution—The Geisha—The Hetaira—TheMoral Revolt Against Prostitution—Squalid Vice Based on Luxurious Virtue—The Ordinary Attitude Towards Prostitutes—Its Cruelty Absurd—The Need of Reforming Prostitution—The Need of Reforming Marriage—These These Two Needs Closely Correlated—The Dynamic Relationships Involved.
IV.The Present Social Attitude Towards Prostitution:—The Decay of the Brothel—The Tendency to the Humanization of Prostitution—The Monetary Aspects of Prostitution—The Geisha—The Hetaira—TheMoral Revolt Against Prostitution—Squalid Vice Based on Luxurious Virtue—The Ordinary Attitude Towards Prostitutes—Its Cruelty Absurd—The Need of Reforming Prostitution—The Need of Reforming Marriage—These These Two Needs Closely Correlated—The Dynamic Relationships Involved.
Traditional morality, religion, and established convention combine to promote not only the extreme of rigid abstinence but also that of reckless license. They preach and idealize the one extreme; they drive those who cannot accept it to adopt the opposite extreme. In the great ages of religion it even happens that the severity of the rule of abstinence is more or less deliberately tempered by the permission for occasional outbursts of license. We thus have the orgy, which flourished in mediæval days and is, indeed, in its largest sense, a universal manifestation, having a function to fulfil in every orderly and laborious civilization, built up on natural energies that are bound by more or less inevitable restraints.
The consideration of the orgy, it may be said, lifts us beyond the merely sexual sphere, into a higher and wider region which belongs to religion. The Greekorgeiareferred originally to ritual things done with a religious purpose, though later, when dances of Bacchanals and the like lost their sacred and inspiring character, the idea was fostered by Christianity that such things were immoral.[107]Yet Christianity was itself in its origin an orgy of the higher spiritual activities released from the uncongenial servitude of classic civilization, a great festival of the poor and the humble, of the slave and the sinner. And when, with the necessity for orderly social organization, Christianity had ceased to be this it still recognized, as Paganism had done, the need for an occasional orgy. It appears that in 743 at a Synod held in Hainault reference was made to the February debauch (de Spurcalibus in februario) as a pagan practice; yet it was precisely this pagan festival which was embodied in the accepted customs of the Christian Church as the chief orgy of the ecclesiasticalyear, the great Carnival prefixed to the long fast of Lent. The celebration on Shrove Tuesday and the previous Sunday constituted a Christian Bacchanalian festival in which all classes joined. The greatest freedom and activity of physical movement was encouraged; "some go about naked without shame, some crawl on all fours, some on stilts, some imitate animals."[108]As time went on the Carnival lost its most strongly marked Bacchanalian features, but it still retains its essential character as a permitted and temporary relaxation of the tension of customary restraints and conventions. The Mediæval Feast of Fools—a New Year's Revel well established by the twelfth century, mainly in France—presented an expressive picture of a Christian orgy in its extreme form, for here the most sacred ceremonies of the Church became the subject of fantastic parody. The Church, according to Nietzsche's saying, like all wise legislators, recognized that where great impulses and habits have to be cultivated, intercalary days must be appointed in which these impulses and habits may be denied, and so learn to hunger anew.[109]The clergy took the leading part in these folk-festivals, for to the men of that age, as Méray remarks, "the temple offered the complete notes of the human gamut; they found there the teaching of all duties, the consolation of all sorrows, the satisfactionof all joys. The sacred festivals of mediæval Christianity were not a survival from Roman times; they leapt from the very heart of Christian society."[110]But, as Méray admits, all great and vigorous peoples, of the East and the West, have found it necessary sometimes to play with their sacred things.
Among the Greeks and Romans this need is everywhere visible, not only in their comedy and their literature generally, but in everyday life. As Nietzsche truly remarks (in hisGeburt der Tragödie) the Greeks recognized all natural impulses, even those that are seemingly unworthy, and safeguarded them from working mischief by providing channels into which, on special days and in special rites, the surplus of wild energy might harmlessly flow. Plutarch, the last and most influential of the Greek moralists, well says, when advocating festivals (in his essay "On the Training of Children"), that "even in bows and harps we loosen their strings that we may bend and wind them up again." Seneca, perhaps the most influential of Roman if not of European moralists, even recommended occasional drunkenness. "Sometimes," he wrote in hisDe Tranquillilate, "we ought to come even to the point of intoxication, not for the purpose of drowning ourselves but of sinking ourselves deep in wine. For it washes away cares and raises our spirits from the lowest depths. The inventor of wine is calledLiberbecause he frees the soul from the servitude of care, releases it from slavery, quickens it, and makes it bolder for all undertakings." The Romans were a sterner and more serious people than the Greeks, but on that very account they recognized the necessity of occasionally relaxing their moral fibres in order to preserve their tone, and encouraged the prevalence of festivals which were marked by much more abandonment than those of Greece. When thesefestivals began to lose their moral sanction and to fall into decay the decadence of Rome had begun.
All over the world, and not excepting the most primitive savages—for even savage life is built up on systematic constraints which sometimes need relaxation—the principle of the orgy is recognized and accepted. Thus Spencer and Gillen describe[111]the Nathagura or fire-ceremony of the Warramunga tribe of Central Australia, a festival taken part in by both sexes, in which all the ordinary rules of social life are broken, a kind of Saturnalia in which, however, there is no sexual license, for sexual license is, it need scarcely be said, no essential part of the orgy, even when the orgy lightens the burden of sexual constraints. In a widely different part of the world, in British Columbia, the Salish Indians, according to Hill Tout,[112]believed that, long before the whites came, their ancestors observed a Sabbath or seventh day ceremony for dancing and praying, assembling at sunrise and dancing till noon. The Sabbath, or periodically recurring orgy,—not a day of tension and constraint but a festival of joy, a rest from all the duties of everyday life,—has, as we know, formed an essential part of many of the orderly ancient civilizations on which our own has been built;[113]it is highly probable that the stability of these ancient civilizations was intimately associated with their recognition of the need of a Sabbath orgy. Such festivals are, indeed, as Crawley observes, processes of purification and reinvigoration, the effort to put off "the old man" and put on "the new man," to enter with fresh energy on the path of everyday life.[114]
The orgy is an institution which by no means has its significance only for the past. On the contrary, the high tension, the rigid routine, the gray monotony of modern life insistently call for moments of organic relief, though the precise form that that orgiastic relief takes must necessarily change with other social changes. As Wilhelm von Humboldt said, "just as men need suffering in order to become strong so they need joy in order to become good." Charles Wagner, insisting more recently (in hisJeunesse) on the same need of joy in our modern life, regrets that dancing in the old, free, and natural manner has gone out of fashion or become unwholesome. Dancing is indeed the most fundamental and primitive form of the orgy, and that which most completely and healthfully fulfils its object. For while it is undoubtedly, as we see even among animals, a process by which sexual tumescence is accomplished,[115]it by no means necessarily becomes focused in sexual detumescence but it may itself become a detumescent discharge of accumulated energy. It was on this account that, at all events in former days, the clergy in Spain, on moral grounds, openly encouraged the national passion for dancing. Among cultured people in modern times, the orgy tends to take on a purely cerebral form, which is less wholesome because it fails to lead to harmonious discharge along motor channels. In these comparatively passive forms, however, the orgy tends to become more and more pronounced under the conditions of civilization. Aristotle's famous statement concerning the function of tragedy as "purgation" seems to be a recognition of the beneficial effects of the orgy.[116]Wagner's music-dramas appeal powerfully to this need; the theatre, now as ever, fulfils a great function of the same kind, inherited from the ancient days when it was the ordered expression of a sexual festival.[117]The theatre, indeed, tends at the present time to assume a larger importance and to approximate to the more serious dramatic performances of classic days by being transferred to the day-time and the open-air. France has especially taken the initiative in these performances, analogous to the Dionysiac festivals of antiquity and the Mysteries and Moralities of the Middle Ages. The movement began some years ago at Orange. In 1907 there were, in France, as many as thirty open-air theatres ("Théâtres de la Nature," "Théâtres du Soleil," etc.,) while it is in Marseilles that the first formal open-air theatre has been erected since classic days.[118]In England, likewise, there has been a great extension of popular interest in dramatic performances, and the newly instituted Pageants, carried out and taken part in by the population of the region commemorated in the Pageant, are festivals of the same character. In England, however, at the present time, the real popular orgiastic festivals are the Bank holidays, with which may be associated the more occasional celebrations, "Maffekings," etc., often called out by comparatively insignificant national events but still adequate to arouse orgiastic emotions as genuine as those of antiquity, though they are lacking in beauty and religious consecration. It is easy indeed for the narrowly austere person to view such manifestations with a supercilious smile, but in the eyes of the moralist and the philosopher these orgiastic festivals exert a salutary and preservative function. In every age of dull and monotonous routine—and all civilization involves such routine—many natural impulses and functions tend to become suppressed, atrophied, or perverted. They need these moments of joyous exercise and expression, moments in which they may not necessarily attain their full activity but in which they will at all events be able, as Cyples expresses it, to rehearse their great possibilities.[119]
The more refined forms of the orgy flourish in civilization, although on account of their mainly cerebral character they are not the most beneficent or the most effective. The more primitive and muscular forms of the orgy tend, on the other hand, under the influence of civilization, to fall into discredit and to be so far as possible suppressed altogether. It is partly in this way that civilization encourages prostitution. For the orgy in its primitive forms, forbidden to show itself openly and reputably, seeks the darkness, and allying itself with a fundamental instinct to which civilized society offers no complete legitimate satisfaction, it firmly entrenches itself in the very centre of civilized life, and thereby constitutes a problem of immense difficulty and importance.[120]
It is commonly said that prostitution has existed always and everywhere. That statement is far from correct. A kind of amateur prostitution is occasionally found among savages, but usually it is only when barbarism is fully developed and is already approaching the stage of civilization that well developed prostitution is found. It exists in a systematic form in every civilization.
What is prostitution? There has been considerable discussion as to the correct definition of prostitution.[121]The Roman Ulpian said that a prostitute was one who openly abandons her body to a number of men without choice, for money.[122]Not all modern definitions have been so satisfactory. It is sometimes said a prostitute is a woman who gives herself to numerous men. To be sound, however, a definition must be applicable to bothsexes alike and we should certainly hesitate to describe a man who had sexual intercourse with many women as a prostitute. The idea of venality, the intention to sell the favors of the body, is essential to the conception of prostitution. Thus Guyot defines a prostitute as "any person for whom sexual relationships are subordinated to gain."[123]It is not, however, adequate to define a prostitute simply as a woman who sells her body. That is done every day by women who become wives in order to gain a home and a livelihood, yet, immoral as this conduct may be from any high ethical standpoint, it would be inconvenient and even misleading to call it prostitution.[124]It is better, therefore, to define a prostitute as a woman who temporarily sells her sexual favors to various persons. Thus, according to Wharton'sLaw-lexicona prostitute is "a woman who indiscriminately consorts with men for hire"; Bonger states that "those women are prostitutes who sell their bodies for the exercise of sexual acts and make of this a profession";[125]Richard again states that "a prostitute is a woman who publicly gives herself to the first comer in return for a pecuniary remuneration."[126]As, finally, the prevalence of homosexuality has led to the existence of male prostitutes, the definition must be put in a form irrespective of sex, and we may, therefore, say that a prostitute is a person who makes it a professionto gratify the lust of various persons of the opposite sex or the same sex.
It is essential that the act of prostitution should be habitually performed with "various persons." A woman who gains her living by being mistress to a man, to whom she is faithful, is not a prostitute, although she often becomes one afterwards, and may have been one before. The exact point at which a woman begins to be a prostitute is a question of considerable importance in countries in which prostitutes are subject to registration. Thus in Berlin, not long ago, a girl who was mistress to a rich cavalry officer and supported by him, during the illness of the officer accidentally met a man whom she had formerly known, and once or twice invited him to see her, receiving from him presents in money. This somehow came to the knowledge of the police, and she was arrested and sentenced to one day's imprisonment as an unregistered prostitute. On appeal, however, the sentence was annulled. Liszt, in hisStrafrecht, lays it down that a girl who obtains whole or part of her income from "fixed relationships" is not practicing unchastity for gain in the sense of the German law (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Jahrgang 1, Heft 9, p. 345).
It is essential that the act of prostitution should be habitually performed with "various persons." A woman who gains her living by being mistress to a man, to whom she is faithful, is not a prostitute, although she often becomes one afterwards, and may have been one before. The exact point at which a woman begins to be a prostitute is a question of considerable importance in countries in which prostitutes are subject to registration. Thus in Berlin, not long ago, a girl who was mistress to a rich cavalry officer and supported by him, during the illness of the officer accidentally met a man whom she had formerly known, and once or twice invited him to see her, receiving from him presents in money. This somehow came to the knowledge of the police, and she was arrested and sentenced to one day's imprisonment as an unregistered prostitute. On appeal, however, the sentence was annulled. Liszt, in hisStrafrecht, lays it down that a girl who obtains whole or part of her income from "fixed relationships" is not practicing unchastity for gain in the sense of the German law (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Jahrgang 1, Heft 9, p. 345).
It is not altogether easy to explain the origin of the systematized professional prostitution with the existence of which we are familiar in civilization. The amateur kind of prostitution which has sometimes been noted among primitive peoples—the fact, that is, that a man may give a woman a present in seeking to persuade her to allow him to have intercourse with her—is really not prostitution as we understand it. The present in such a case is merely part of a kind of courtship leading to a temporary relationship. The woman more or less retains her social position and is not forced to make an avocation of selling herself because henceforth no other career is possible to her. When Cook came to New Zealand his men found that the women were not impregnable, "but the terms and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us," and according "to their notions the agreement was as innocent." The consent of the woman's friends was necessary, and when the preliminaries were settled it was also necessary to treat this "Juliet of a night" with "the same delicacy as is here required with the wife for life, and the lover who presumed to take any liberties by which this wasviolated was sure to be disappointed."[127]In some of the Melanesian Islands, it is said that women would sometimes become prostitutes, or on account of their bad conduct be forced to become prostitutes for a time; they were not, however, particularly despised, and when they had in this way accumulated a certain amount of property they could marry well, after which it would not be proper to refer to their former career.[128]
When prostitution first arises among a primitive people it sometimes happens that little or no stigma is attached to it for the reason that the community has not yet become accustomed to attach any special value to the presence of virginity. Schurtz quotes from the old Arabic geographer Al-Bekri some interesting remarks about the Slavs: "The women of the Slavs, after they have married, are faithful to their husbands. If, however, a young girl falls in love with a man she goes to him and satisfies her passion. And if a man marries and finds his wife a virgin he says to her: 'If you were worth anything men would have loved you, and you would have chosen one who would have taken away your virginity.' Then he drives her away and renounces her." It is a feeling of this kind which, among some peoples, leads a girl to be proud of the presents she has received from her lovers and to preserve them as a dowry for her marriage, knowing that her value will thus be still further heightened. Even among the Southern Slavs of modern Europe, who have preserved much of the primitive sexual freedom, this freedom, as Krauss, who has minutely studied the manners and customs of these peoples, declares, is fundamentally different from vice, licentiousness, or immodesty.[129]
Prostitution tends to arise, as Schurtz has pointed out, in every society in which early marriage is difficult and intercourse outside marriage is socially disapproved. "Venal women everywhere appear as soon as the free sexual intercourse of young people is repressed, without the necessary consequences beingimpeded by unusually early marriages."[130]The repression of sexual intimacies outside marriage is a phenomenon of civilization, but it is not itself by any means a measure of a people's general level, and may, therefore, begin to appear at an early period. But it is important to remember that the primitive and rudimentary forms of prostitution, when they occur, are merely temporary, and frequently—though not invariably—involve no degrading influence on the woman in public estimation, sometimes indeed increasing her value as a wife. The woman who sells herself for money purely as a professional matter, without any thought of love or passion, and who, by virtue of her profession, belongs to a pariah class definitely and rigidly excluded from the main body of her sex, is a phenomenon which can seldom be found except in developed civilization. It is altogether incorrect to speak of prostitutes as a mere survival from primitive times.
On the whole, while among savages sexual relationships are sometimes free before marriage, as well as on the occasion of special festivals, they are rarely truly promiscuous and still more rarely venal. When savage women nowadays sell themselves, or are sold by their husbands, it has usually been found that we are concerned with the contamination of European civilization.
The definite ways in which professional prostitution may arise are no doubt many.[131]We may assent to the general principle, laid down by Schurtz, that whenever the free union of young people is impeded under conditions in which early marriage is also difficult prostitution must certainly arise. There are, however, different ways in which this principle may take shape. So far as our western civilization is concerned—the civilization, thatis to say, which has its cradle in the Mediterranean basin—it would seem that the origin of prostitution is to be found primarily in a religious custom, religion, the great conserver of social traditions, preserving in a transformed shape a primitive freedom that was passing out of general social life.[132]The typical example is that recorded by Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, at the temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, where every woman once in her life had to come and give herself to the first stranger who threw a coin in her lap, in worship of the goddess. The money could not be refused, however small the amount, but it was given as an offertory to the temple, and the woman, having followed the man and thus made oblation to Mylitta, returned home and lived chastely ever afterwards.[133]Very similar customs existed in other parts of Western Asia, in North Africa, in Cyprus and other islands of the Eastern Mediterranean, and also in Greece, where the Temple of Aphrodite on the fort at Corinth possessed over a thousand hierodules, dedicated to the service of the goddess, from time to time, as Strabo states, by those who desired to make thank-offering for mercies vouchsafed to them. Pindar refers to the hospitable young Corinthian women ministrants whose thoughts often turn towards OuraniaAphrodite[134]in whose temple they burned incense; and Athenæus mentions the importance that was attached to the prayers of the Corinthian prostitutes in any national calamity.[135]
We seem here to be in the presence, not merely of a religiously preserved survival of a greater sexual freedom formerly existing,[136]but of a specialized and ritualized development of that primitive cult of the generative forces of Nature which involves the belief that all natural fruitfulness is associated with, and promoted by, acts of human sexual intercourse which thus acquire a religious significance. At a later stage acts of sexual intercourse having a religious significance become specialized and localized in temples, and by a rational transition of ideas it becomes believed that such acts of sexual intercourse in the service of the god, or with persons devoted to the god's service, brought benefits to the individual who performed them, more especially, if a woman, by insuring her fertility. Among primitive peoples generally this conception is embodied mainly in seasonal festivals, but among the peoples of Western Asia who had ceased to be primitive, and among whom traditional priestly and hieratic influences had acquired very great influence, the earliergenerative cult had thus, it seems probable, naturally changed its form in becoming attached to the temples.[137]
The theory that religious prostitution developed, as a general rule, out of the belief that the generative activity of human beings possessed a mysterious and sacred influence in promoting the fertility of Nature generally seems to have been first set forth by Mannhardt in hisAntike Wald- und Feldkulte(pp. 283et seq.). It is supported by Dr. F. S. Krauss ("Beischlafausübung als Kulthandlung,"Anthropophyteia, vol. iii, p. 20), who refers to the significant fact that in Baruch's time, at a period long anterior to Herodotus, sacred prostitution took place under the trees. Dr. J. G. Frazer has more especially developed this conception of the origin of sacred prostitution in hisAdonis, Attis, Osiris. He thus summarizes his lengthy discussion: "We may conclude that a great Mother Goddess, the personification of all the reproductive energies of nature, was worshipped under different names, but with a substantial similarity of myth and ritual by many peoples of western Asia; that associated with her was a lover, or rather series of lovers, divine yet mortal, with whom she mated year by year, their commerce being deemed essential to the propagation of animals and plants, each in their several kind; and further, that the fabulous union of the divine pair was simulated, and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the real, though temporary, union of the human sexes at the sanctuary of the goddess for the sake of thereby ensuring the fruitfulness of the ground and the increase of man and beast. In course of time, as the institution of individual marriage grew in favor, and the old communism fell more and more into discredit, the revival of the ancient practice, even for a single occasion in a woman's life, became ever more repugnant to the moral sense of the people, and accordingly they resorted to various expedients for evading in practice the obligation which they still acknowledged in theory.... But while the majority of women thus contrived to observe the form of religion without sacrificing their virtue, it was still thought necessary to the general welfare that a certain number of them should discharge the old obligation in the old way. These became prostitutes, either for life or for a term of years, at one of the temples: dedicated to the service of religion, they were invested with a sacredcharacter, and their vocation, far from being deemed infamous, was probably long regarded by the laity as an exercise of more than common virtue, and rewarded with a tribute of mixed wonder, reverence, and pity, not unlike that which in some parts of the world is still paid to women who seek to honor their Creator in a different way by renouncing the natural functions of their sex and the tenderest relations of humanity" (J. G. Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 1907, pp. 23et seq.).It is difficult to resist the conclusion that this theory represents the central and primitive idea which led to the development of sacred prostitution. It seems equally clear, however, that as time went on, and especially as temple cults developed and priestly influence increased, this fundamental and primitive idea tended to become modified, and even transformed. The primitive conception became specialized in the belief that religious benefits, and especially the gift of fruitfulness, were gainedby the worshipper, who thus sought the goddess's favor by an act of unchastity which might be presumed to be agreeable to an unchaste deity. The rite of Mylitta, as described by Herodotus, was a late development of this kind in an ancient civilization, and the benefit sought was evidently for the worshipper herself. This has been pointed out by Dr. Westermarck, who remarks that the words spoken to the woman by her partner as he gives her the coin—"May the goddess be auspicious to thee!"—themselves indicate that the object of the act was to insure her fertility, and he refers also to the fact that strangers frequently had a semi-supernatural character, and their benefits a specially efficacious character (Westermarck,Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, p. 446). It may be added that the rite of Mylitta thus became analogous with another Mediterranean rite, in which the act of simulating intercourse with the representative of a god, or his image, ensured a woman's fertility. This is the rite practiced by the Egyptians of Mendes, in which a woman went through the ceremony of simulated intercourse with the sacred goat, regarded as the representative of a deity of Pan-like character (Herodotus, Bk. ii, Ch. XLVI; and see Dulaure,Des Divinités Génératrices, Ch. II;cf.vol. v of theseStudies, "Erotic Symbolism," Sect. IV). This rite was maintained by Roman women, in connection with the statues of Priapus, to a very much later date, and St. Augustine mentions how Roman matrons placed the young bride on the erect member of Priapus (De Civitate Dei, Bk. iii, Ch. IX). The idea evidently running through this whole group of phenomena is that the deity, or the representative or even mere image of the deity, is able, through a real or simulated act of intercourse, to confer on the worshipper a portion of its own exalted generative activity.
The theory that religious prostitution developed, as a general rule, out of the belief that the generative activity of human beings possessed a mysterious and sacred influence in promoting the fertility of Nature generally seems to have been first set forth by Mannhardt in hisAntike Wald- und Feldkulte(pp. 283et seq.). It is supported by Dr. F. S. Krauss ("Beischlafausübung als Kulthandlung,"Anthropophyteia, vol. iii, p. 20), who refers to the significant fact that in Baruch's time, at a period long anterior to Herodotus, sacred prostitution took place under the trees. Dr. J. G. Frazer has more especially developed this conception of the origin of sacred prostitution in hisAdonis, Attis, Osiris. He thus summarizes his lengthy discussion: "We may conclude that a great Mother Goddess, the personification of all the reproductive energies of nature, was worshipped under different names, but with a substantial similarity of myth and ritual by many peoples of western Asia; that associated with her was a lover, or rather series of lovers, divine yet mortal, with whom she mated year by year, their commerce being deemed essential to the propagation of animals and plants, each in their several kind; and further, that the fabulous union of the divine pair was simulated, and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the real, though temporary, union of the human sexes at the sanctuary of the goddess for the sake of thereby ensuring the fruitfulness of the ground and the increase of man and beast. In course of time, as the institution of individual marriage grew in favor, and the old communism fell more and more into discredit, the revival of the ancient practice, even for a single occasion in a woman's life, became ever more repugnant to the moral sense of the people, and accordingly they resorted to various expedients for evading in practice the obligation which they still acknowledged in theory.... But while the majority of women thus contrived to observe the form of religion without sacrificing their virtue, it was still thought necessary to the general welfare that a certain number of them should discharge the old obligation in the old way. These became prostitutes, either for life or for a term of years, at one of the temples: dedicated to the service of religion, they were invested with a sacredcharacter, and their vocation, far from being deemed infamous, was probably long regarded by the laity as an exercise of more than common virtue, and rewarded with a tribute of mixed wonder, reverence, and pity, not unlike that which in some parts of the world is still paid to women who seek to honor their Creator in a different way by renouncing the natural functions of their sex and the tenderest relations of humanity" (J. G. Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 1907, pp. 23et seq.).
It is difficult to resist the conclusion that this theory represents the central and primitive idea which led to the development of sacred prostitution. It seems equally clear, however, that as time went on, and especially as temple cults developed and priestly influence increased, this fundamental and primitive idea tended to become modified, and even transformed. The primitive conception became specialized in the belief that religious benefits, and especially the gift of fruitfulness, were gainedby the worshipper, who thus sought the goddess's favor by an act of unchastity which might be presumed to be agreeable to an unchaste deity. The rite of Mylitta, as described by Herodotus, was a late development of this kind in an ancient civilization, and the benefit sought was evidently for the worshipper herself. This has been pointed out by Dr. Westermarck, who remarks that the words spoken to the woman by her partner as he gives her the coin—"May the goddess be auspicious to thee!"—themselves indicate that the object of the act was to insure her fertility, and he refers also to the fact that strangers frequently had a semi-supernatural character, and their benefits a specially efficacious character (Westermarck,Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, p. 446). It may be added that the rite of Mylitta thus became analogous with another Mediterranean rite, in which the act of simulating intercourse with the representative of a god, or his image, ensured a woman's fertility. This is the rite practiced by the Egyptians of Mendes, in which a woman went through the ceremony of simulated intercourse with the sacred goat, regarded as the representative of a deity of Pan-like character (Herodotus, Bk. ii, Ch. XLVI; and see Dulaure,Des Divinités Génératrices, Ch. II;cf.vol. v of theseStudies, "Erotic Symbolism," Sect. IV). This rite was maintained by Roman women, in connection with the statues of Priapus, to a very much later date, and St. Augustine mentions how Roman matrons placed the young bride on the erect member of Priapus (De Civitate Dei, Bk. iii, Ch. IX). The idea evidently running through this whole group of phenomena is that the deity, or the representative or even mere image of the deity, is able, through a real or simulated act of intercourse, to confer on the worshipper a portion of its own exalted generative activity.
At a later period, in Corinth, prostitutes were still the priestesses of Venus, more or less loosely attached to hertemples, and so long as that was the case they enjoyed a considerable degree of esteem. At this stage, however, we realize that religious prostitution was developing a utilitarian side. These temples flourished chiefly in sea-coast towns, in islands, in large cities to which many strangers and sailors came. The priestesses of Cyprus burnt incense on her altars and invoked her sacred aid, but at the same time Pindar addresses them as "young girls who welcome all strangers and give them hospitality." Side by side with the religious significance of the act of generation the needs of men far from home were already beginning to be definitely recognized. The Babylonian woman had gone to the temple of Mylitta to fulfil a personal religious duty; the Corinthian priestess had begun to act as an avowed minister to the sexual needs of men in strange cities.
The custom which Herodotus noted in Lydia of young girls prostituting themselves in order to acquire a marriage portion which they may dispose of as they think fit (Bk. I, Ch. 93) may very well have developed (as Frazer also believes) out of religious prostitution; we can indeed trace its evolution in Cyprus where eventually, at the period when Justinian visited the island, the money given by strangers to the women was no longer placed on the altar but put into a chest to form marriage-portions for them. It is a custom to be found in Japan and various other parts of the world, notably among the Ouled-Nail of Algeria,[138]and is not necessarily always based on religious prostitution; but it obviously cannot exist except among peoples who see nothing very derogatory in free sexual intercourse for the purpose of obtaining money, so that the custom of Mylitta furnished a natural basis for it.[139]