“My work is at an end. When I commenced it, I pointed out what reasons I had for undertaking it, what aim I wished to attain. Had I not been firmly convinced that the investigations begun by me regarding the nature of prostitutes might favour health and morality, I should not have published them. I have exposed to the public gaze great infirmities of mankind; thoughtful men, for whom I have written, will thank me for doing so. He who loves his fellow-men will without anxiety follow me into the department of knowledge I have described, and will not turn away his glance from the pictures I have drawn.He who wishes to know the good that remains to be done, and who wishes to learn how to pursue with good results the way by which something better is to be attained, must first know what actually exists; he must know the truth.“The profession of prostitution is an evil of all times, all countries, and appears to be innate in the social structure of mankind. It will perhaps never be entirely eradicated; still, all the more we must strive to limit its extent and its dangers. With prostitution itself it is as with vice, crime, and disease; the teacher of morals endeavours to prevent the vices, the lawgiver to prevent the crimes, the physician to cure the diseases. All alike know that they will never fully attain their goal; but they pursue their work none the less in the conviction that he who does only a little good yet does a great service to the weak man. I follow their example. A friend whose loss I shall always mourn drew my attention to the fate of the prostitute. I studied them, I wished to learn the causes of their degradation, and wherever possible to discover the means by which their number could be limited. What experience has taught me on this subject I have openly stated, and I am convinced that the lawgiver, the man whom the State has empowered with authority to care for public health and morality, will find in my book useful information.”
“My work is at an end. When I commenced it, I pointed out what reasons I had for undertaking it, what aim I wished to attain. Had I not been firmly convinced that the investigations begun by me regarding the nature of prostitutes might favour health and morality, I should not have published them. I have exposed to the public gaze great infirmities of mankind; thoughtful men, for whom I have written, will thank me for doing so. He who loves his fellow-men will without anxiety follow me into the department of knowledge I have described, and will not turn away his glance from the pictures I have drawn.He who wishes to know the good that remains to be done, and who wishes to learn how to pursue with good results the way by which something better is to be attained, must first know what actually exists; he must know the truth.
“The profession of prostitution is an evil of all times, all countries, and appears to be innate in the social structure of mankind. It will perhaps never be entirely eradicated; still, all the more we must strive to limit its extent and its dangers. With prostitution itself it is as with vice, crime, and disease; the teacher of morals endeavours to prevent the vices, the lawgiver to prevent the crimes, the physician to cure the diseases. All alike know that they will never fully attain their goal; but they pursue their work none the less in the conviction that he who does only a little good yet does a great service to the weak man. I follow their example. A friend whose loss I shall always mourn drew my attention to the fate of the prostitute. I studied them, I wished to learn the causes of their degradation, and wherever possible to discover the means by which their number could be limited. What experience has taught me on this subject I have openly stated, and I am convinced that the lawgiver, the man whom the State has empowered with authority to care for public health and morality, will find in my book useful information.”
Parent-Duchatelet’s book, no less admirable in its execution than in its design, still remains the foundation for the scientific study of prostitution. It is the exemplar for all contemporary and subsequent works.
The powerful influence exercised by this book was shown above all in this—that works on prostitution appeared in rapid succession in the various capitals of the civilized world. These were all based to a greater or less extent upon the work of Parent-Duchatelet, and thus they constitute extremely valuable scientific monographs regarding the conditions of prostitution in particular towns,such as since that date have not been issued. Here there still lies hidden a wealth of material, a large part of which has not yet been utilized.
As an enlargement and continuation of the work of Parent-Duchatelet, there appeared three years later, in the year 1839, the work of the Commissary of PoliceBéraud[252]on the prostitutes of Paris and on the Parisianpolice des mœurs. The book is more especially distinguished by an elaborate history of prostitution, and by the wealth of psychological observations it contains; also by its exact information regarding secret prostitution.
In the same year a well-known London physician, Dr. MichaelRyan,[253]published his important book onProstitution inLondon,[254]with a comparison of the conditions in Paris and New York. Ryan first dealt with the generalsocialandeconomiccauses of prostitution, with critical acumen, as we could not but expect from an Englishman. His book also contained an interesting account of the extraordinary diffusion in England at that time of pornographic books andpictures,[255]and concerning their publication and sale by pedlars, and the measures undertaken to repress this traffic. Valuable also are the detailed reports given in this book, on pp. 212-252, regarding prostitution in the United States, and especially in New York.
The example of Ryan was followed by his countrymen, Dr. William Tait and the Rev. Ralph Wardlaw. The former treated in a comprehensive work the subject of prostitution inEdinburgh;[256]the latter, in a shorter book, described prostitution inGlasgow.[257]
Very interesting is the book, of which a few copies only ever reached Germany (one of which is in my own possession), and which even in Portugal is extremely rare, of Dr. Francisco Ignacio dos Santos Cruz regarding prostitution inLisbon,[258]in which the whole subject of Portuguese prostitution is admirably described, with special reference to the capital city. Santos Cruz givesmost careful attention to the legislative aspect of the question. He was the first to advocate a measure which has recently been proposed also by Lesser (doubtless in ignorance of the work of his predecessor)—viz., theformation of polyclinics for the gratuitous treatment ofprostitutes.[259]
Regarding prostitution in the town of Lyons, renowned for its immorality, Dr. Potton wrote a celebrated book, which received a prize from the Medical Society of Lyons in the year 1841. This work was based on official sources, and had especial reference to the relationships of prostitution to the hygienic and economic conditions of thepopulation.[260]
A valuable book, also, is the work on prostitution in Algiers by E. A.Duchesne.[261]It contains an elaborate account of “male prostitution”—that is, prostitution of men for men—an expansion of the idea of prostitution which is, as far as my knowledge goes, found here for the first time. Naturally, in earlier works we find allusions to men who practise pederasty for money, but the idea “prostitution” had hitherto been strictly limited to the class of purchasable women.
We see this, for example, in the anonymous book “Prostitution in Berlin, and itsVictims,”[262]published in Berlin seven years before the appearance of the work of Duchesne. The author definitely states that “the admirable book of Parent-Duchatelet on prostitution in the town of Paris, and its remarkable success, have chiefly given occasion to the publication of my own work.” The book is, however, quite independent in character, and treats of the individual relationships of prostitution in Berlin, on the basis ofofficialsources and experience, in historical, moral, medical, and political relations, and also from the point of view of police administration. It contains an appendix on “prostituted men” (p. 207), who, however, are not homosexual prostitutes, but, according to the writer’s own definition, “men who make it their profession to serve for paymentvoluptuous womenby the gratification of the latter’s unnatural passions.” This species still exists at the present day, but there is no particular name for the type. (In the seventies, in Vienna, men who could be hired to perform coitus were known locally as “stallions”—Ger.Hengste.) We must include them in the great army ofsouteneurs, although the term is not strictly applicable. Later we shall return to the consideration of this peculiar variety of male prostitution.
As an enlargement of the work just mentioned, we can regard the book published in the same year, 1846, by the Criminal Commissary, Dr. Carl Röhrmann, onProstitution inBerlin.[263]
This book is especially remarkable from the fact that it contains “complete and candid biographies of the best-known prostitutes in Berlin,” an idea which has recently been revived, for example, in W. Hammer’s “The Life-History of Ten Public Prostitutes in Berlin” (Berlin and Leipzig, 1905).
Very valuable official material is, finally, to be found in a third work on prostitution in Berlin, written by the celebrated syphilologist F. J.Behrend.[264]It begins with a careful history of the police regulations regarding prostitution in Berlin, then discusses the consequences of the abolition of the Berlin brothels in the year 1845, and proceeds to demand new measures and regulations for the control of prostitution and for the prevention of syphilis in Berlin. As a collection of material, the book is of considerable value.
Little known, but thoroughly original, is the work of the Hamburg physician, Dr. Lippert, onprostitution inHamburg.[265]Blaschko even fails to mention it in the bibliography at the end of his own work, presently to be described. Lippert adduces numerous and interesting new contributions to our knowledge of “the many-headed hydra, the colour-changing chameleon,” of prostitution. After an introductory sketch regarding the historical development of prostitution in Hamburg, he gives a “characterization of the present moral condition of Hamburg,” embodying important information regarding the number of brothel prostitutes and street-walkers, the topographical distribution of prostitution and of brothels, the secret houses of accommodation, the remarkable decline in the number of marriages, the relationship between legitimate and illegitimate births, and the number of drinking-saloons and dancing-halls; and he goes on to describe with more detail these individual factors of prostitution,and especially the opportunities for prostitution. The third chapter contains an extremely interesting physiological and pathological description of the Hamburg prostitutes. According to Lippert, the principal motives of prostitution are “idleness,frivolity, and, above all, thelove of finery.” He rightly lays especial stress upon the last-named cause, which, in the more recent scientific investigations regarding the causes of prostitution, has, unfortunately, been too much neglected. Then follow data regarding the age, nationality, class, and occupation of prostitutes. We learn that as early as the date of this book of Lippert’s the greatest number of public prostitutes had originally beenmaidservants(p. 79), not girls of the labouring classes. Thus the fact that prostitutes recruit their ranks chiefly from the servant class is not, as recent writers assert, exclusively the consequence of the increasing mental culture of the modern proletariat, but is most probably rather connected with the freer configuration of the amatory life among the labouring classes, where the nobler form of “free love” has long been dominant. From the very nature of the case, this must lead to a limitation of the supply of prostitutes from this class. The chapter closes with an elaborate description of the physical and mental peculiarities of the Hamburg prostitutes, and of the diseases observed in them. In the fourth chapter the various classes of prostitutes are considered more closely—the brothel prostitutes (with an exact description of the celebrated brothel streets of Hamburg), the prostitutes living alone, the street-walkers, the “kept women,” the large group of secret prostitutes. There follow in an appendix interesting accounts of the public places which are related to prostitution; of prostitution in the Hamburger Berg and in the suburb of St. Pauli; and of the rescue work of Hamburg.
A very good account of prostitution in Hamburg is also found in a book contemporary with that of Lippert, entitled “Memoirs of a Prostitute, or Prostitution in Hamburg” (St. Pauli, 1847). This work, which is now extraordinarily rare, resembles the book which recently gained such celebrity, the “Tagebuch einer Verlorenen” (“Diary of a Lost Woman”), by Margaret Böhme, in that it was edited by a Dr. J. Zeisig, professedly after the “original manuscript.” As usual, it has all happened before!
In the preface to his book, Lippert remarks that, since prostitution in Berlin and in Hamburg has now been adequately described, it was desirable that an analogous book should be compiled regarding Vienna, in order that we might have the necessarycomparative statistics of “the three principal towns and principal factors of German prostitution.”
The actual account of prostitution in Vienna did not, however, appear till forty years later, in the year 1886. Still, as early as 1847 the book of Dr. Anton J. Gross-Hoffinger was published, describing exclusively the conditions of prostitution in Austria, and naturally chiefly concerned with conditions inVienna.[266]In my opinion, this book has an epoch-making significance, because therein we find asserted for the first time, with all possible emphasis, that the institution ofcoercive marriageis the ultimate cause of prostitution, to which all the other causes are subsidiary. In no other book do we find so painful a description, drawn with such astonishing clearness, of the horrible conditions resulting from the artificial preservation of the official and ecclesiastical coercive marriage, which was really based upon economic conditions peculiar to the remote past. The two first sections, “Woman the Slave of Civilization” and “Woman in her Degradation,” are the most frightful accusations of conventional marriage. On pp. 190 and 191 the author formulates in fifteen paragraphs a law of marriage reform, which has a very close resemblance to the previously described ideas of Ellen Key. A perfect classic is the chapter on servant-girls (pp. 226-284), unique in its thoroughness, and affording an admirable description of the legal, moral, and economic relationships of domestic service.
“The great army of domestic servants,” he writes, “constitute the ever-ready reserve force of prostitution. Daily from this reserve are drawn new recruits for the regular service, and daily the vacant places in the reserve are once more filled.”
“The great army of domestic servants,” he writes, “constitute the ever-ready reserve force of prostitution. Daily from this reserve are drawn new recruits for the regular service, and daily the vacant places in the reserve are once more filled.”
Gross-Hoffinger, in 1847, came also to the conclusion that in “free love” or “free marriage” was to be found the only salvation from the misery of prostitution.
The comprehensive work of Schrank upon prostitution inVienna[267]is distinguished by an abundance of interesting isolated observations, and these are especially to be found in the earlier historical portion. The second part is occupied with the administration and hygiene of prostitution in Vienna. The work gives an exhaustive account of Viennese prostitution down to the year 1885.
Prostitution in Leipzig was described in three chapters of a general work on prostitution, published in the year1854.[268]The titles of these three chapters are: “Moral Corruption in Leipzig”; “Tolerated Prostitutes and Tolerated Houses in Leipzig”; “Tolerated Prostitutes in Leipzig: their Morals, their Customs, their Hygienic Condition, their End.” Very interesting is the statement of the author that of the 3,000 maidservants in Leipzig,one-thirdwere engaged in secret prostitution.
The prostitution in the largest town of the new world, in New York, also found an admirable description in the sixth decade of the nineteenth century in the great historical work of the New York physician, William M.Sanger.[269]Of the 685 large octavo pages which the book contains, pages 450 to 676 are devoted to the description of the conditions of prostitution in New York. The historical portion of the book is also extremely valuable, being based upon the best historical authorities.
With the year 1860, or thereabouts, this first period of the scientific literature of prostitution, characterized by monographs dealing with individualtowns, in pursuance of the example of Parent-Duchatelet, came to a close. Just as Parent-Duchatelet had inaugurated this kind of description, so the French now undertook the introduction of the further researches into prostitution. First of all, Dr. J. Jeannel summarized the results of the books we have already mentioned in a general work onprostitution,[270]which contained a comparative view of the conditions in various countries and towns. An Englishman, W. Acton, also wrote a similar general work onprostitution;[271]whilst yet another general work on the subject was written by the GermanHügel.[272]
The extremely important question ofsecretprostitution has been elucidated especially by the writings ofMartineau[273]andCommenge;[274]the not less important question of prostitution practised bygirls under full ageis treated byAugagneur;[275]theproblems of regulation and of brothelshave been studied by Fiaux, whose work is comprehensive and based upon carefully compiled statistics, and the author attempts the solution of theseproblems;[276]the sometime French Minister Yves Guyot has discussed the problem of prostitution from the higher philosophical and social point ofview;[277]in short, the French physicians illuminated this obscure province of thought from every side, andlaid the foundations for the scientific and critical study of prostitution, which began with the last decade of the nineteenth century.
To Alfred Blaschko unquestionably belongs the credit of having broken entirely new ground in connexion with the problem of prostitution, by means of the debate instituted by him in the year 1892 in the Medical Society of Berlin, and by several works distinguished by a sharp-sighted, criticalfaculty.[278]Upon his exhaustive scientific studies, and upon the most careful practical considerations, Blaschko bases the demands:
“Abolish Regulation!Away with Brothels!”
“Abolish Regulation!Away with Brothels!”
“Abolish Regulation!Away with Brothels!”
At the same time, Blaschko is a convinced advocate of the economic theory of prostitution.
Almost at the same time, Cesare Lombroso, the celebrated alienist and criminal anthropologist of Turin, propounded hisanthropologicaltheory of prostitution, and enunciated the doctrine, which attracted so much attention, of the “Donna delinquinte e prostituta,” of the “congenitalprostitute.”[279]This doctrine found an unconditional supporter in the St. Petersburg syphilologist Tarnowsky; whilst the latter strongly opposed the efforts made by the International Federation, founded in 1875 by Mrs. Josephine Butler, for the abolition of the regulation ofprostitution.[280]Ströhmberg, in an interesting work onprostitution,[281]takes the same standpoint as Lombroso and Tarnowsky.
It is, however, noteworthy that quite recently the French observers also, and, above all, the experienced Fiaux, are inclining to the views of Blaschko, of the accuracy of which I myself am now fully convinced, notwithstanding the fact that in my work on prostitution inEngland,[282]which appeared eight years ago (October, 1900), I still advocated regulation. E. von Düring also, who, as professor of medicine in Constantinople for many years, has made elaborate study of the conditions of prostitution in that town, adheres, in an essay well worth reading, without qualification to the opinion of Blaschko regarding the uselessness of regulation and ofbrothels.[283]
After this brief enumeration of the most important descriptive and scientific studies of prostitution, we shall now proceed to a short account of the conditions that obtain at the present day.
The idea of “prostitution” is in no respect clearly and sharply limited. Parent-Duchatelet considered that prostitution only occurred
“when a woman was known to have accepted money for this purpose on several successive occasions, when she was openly recognized as being engaged in this occupation, when an arrest had occurred and the offence had thus been definitely discovered, or when in any other way it was proved to the satisfaction of the police” (vol. i., p. 11).
“when a woman was known to have accepted money for this purpose on several successive occasions, when she was openly recognized as being engaged in this occupation, when an arrest had occurred and the offence had thus been definitely discovered, or when in any other way it was proved to the satisfaction of the police” (vol. i., p. 11).
But in this way he entirely excluded the so-called “secret” prostitution—that is to say, he excluded by far the largest category of prostitution.
As soon as we take this latter into consideration, we find it necessary to have a wider conception of the term “prostitution.” This is recognized by the French physician Rey in his little book on “Public and Secret Prostitution” (German edition, p. 1; Leipzig, 1851). He regards as prostitution the act “by which a woman allows theuse of her body by any man, without distinction, andfor a payment made or expected.”
In this admirable definition we see the two most important characteristics of prostitution:complete indifference with regard to the person of the man demanding the use of her body, and the fact thatthe act is done for reward. The only point omitted from consideration is the condition mentioned by Parent-Duchatelet—namely, thefrequent repetitionof the act of prostitution withdifferentmen.
Schrank combines all these characteristics of prostitution in amuch briefer phrase, by defining them as “professional acts of fornication performed with the human body,” by which, in the first place, we include male and femalehomosexualprostitution, which are not covered by the definitions previously quoted, and, in the second place, Schrank’s definition lays stress on the fact that ingenuineprostitution themonetary rewardis the aim of the act of prostitution much more than any kind of enjoyment. Where enjoyment plays a prominent part,in addition tothe earning of money, we are no longer concerned with genuine prostitution. Even a prostitute, who in other respects is typically a woman of that class, ceases at that moment and for that time to be a prostitute, when her earnings become a secondary consideration, and themanto whom she gives herself the principal consideration.
For this reason, strictly speaking, a large proportion of secret prostitutes and numerous members of the half-world cannot be reckoned as prostitutes in the proper sense of the term—at any rate,not always; not when, for instance, the man who supports and pays them is at the same time their“lover”;[284]they then belong for the time being to the not less dangerous province of “wild love.” But in practice this distinction cannot be strictly maintained, for thesamewoman will very frequently undertake a genuine act of prostitution.
It is only the “sale of the sweet name of love,” as the celebrated politician Louis Blanc expresses it, which constitutes prostitution—thecomplete lackof all spiritual and all personal relationships on the one side, and the ignominious predominance of themercantilecharacter of the sexual union on the other. Hence there may be prostitution in marriage, although this always remains widely different from the sale of the body tonumerousandfrequently changingindividuals.
The “prostitution” of primeval times, in which social relationships were so utterly different from ours, unquestionably resembled rather the wild love of the present day than our own prostitution. It was sexual promiscuity, not professional fornication. According to Heinrich Schurtz, prostitution is indeed not an exclusive product of higher civilization, but occurs also among primitive peoples, and appears everywhere where the unrestricted sexual intercourse of youth—wild love—is prevented, without early marriage taking its place. But what he describes as prostitution—for example, the living of several unmarried girls in the housesof men—is still no more than a peculiar form of wild love. Still, according to the reports of numerous travellers, there are among primitive peoples alsopurchasablewomen, and this must be explained, just as in our own case, from the combined influence of individual, social, and economic conditions.
To my mind there is no doubt that the so-called “religious” prostitution is to be regarded as at least agerminal formandpredecessorof the prostitution of the present day. In this case also we had to do withprofessionalfornication; only, although the temple-girls, just like our modern prostitutes, gave themselvesindifferently to any manthat offered the money paid for this service, that money did not, in the case of religious prostitution, go to the girl herself, but to the deity, or to the crafty priests who represented him; thus the priests really played the part of our modern brothel-keepers. It is absolutely unquestionable that in this religious prostitution a more ideal element also played a part. This subject was discussed at considerable length above (pp. 100-112).
Prostitution is everywhere a product of thegrowth of large towns; its peculiar characteristics are developed only in large towns. To the country it was always foreign until those beautiful times of the middle ages, in which prostitution was regarded as anecessary of life, like eating and drinking, and was organized in guilds, so that everywhere “women-houses” were instituted for the public, unconstrained use of all classes, for peasant and prince. At that time quite small towns also had their brothels. The appearance of syphilis, and the awakening of modern individualism, brought these conditions to an end; the brothels disappeared everywhere; and this tendency to acontinuous decreaseof barrack prostitution, to a progressive diminution in the number of brothels, has continually strengthened. On the whole, the rural districts to-day do not know prostitution; there we have only free love and wild love. The existence of prostitution is confined to the large towns, because in these all the necessary conditions are fulfilled, and, above all, because in large towns the possibilities for the gratification of the sexual impulse by marriage or by free love are in the case of men much more limited than they are in the country. In the town there is even ademandfor prostitutes, but not in the country. It is true that the demand on the part of men does not correspond to the extension which modern prostitution has assumed in the large towns; this demand corresponds, as it were, to a portion only of prostitution. In his admirable work on the campaign against prostitution(Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, vol. ii., pp. 311-313) F. Schiller proves that prostitution has not increased merely in proportion to the increase in the male population,but that in reality, in recent decades, it has increased, on the whole, in a much greater proportion than the population, and that different towns exhibit the most remarkable contrasts in the respective ratios of prostitutes to male population.
For example, in Berlin prostitution has increasedto an extent almost doublethat of the increase in male population. A similar relationship is to be observed in other large towns. Everywhere the supply of prostitutesexceedsthe demand; and we cannot doubt that by this great supply the need for prostitutes is to a large extent at first aroused. Street-walkers and brothelsalluremany men to sexual intercourse who otherwise would not have felt any need for it.
But, on the other hand, the existence of avoluntary demandfor prostitutes on the part ofmenis a fact which cannot be denied. In this sense prostitution has been described as mainly a “man’s question.”
Here we touch upon an extremely difficult problem, and one which, as far as I can see, no one before myself has definitely stated, perhaps because no one hasventuredto do it—and yet, for our knowledge of prostitution, the question is one of great importance.
What precisely is the “need of man for prostitution” of which Blaschko speaks? Is it merely the sexual impulse? Or is there any other factor in operation?
Certainly the sexual impulse, simple sensuality, plays a large part in this male demand for prostitutes; but this does not explain the fact why married men, and so many men who, if not married, have yet opportunities for other sexual intercourse, have recourse to prostitutes; it does not explain the fact, by which I am myself continually and anew astonished, of the peculiar attractive force which prostitutes exercise upon cultured men with delicate æsthetic and ethical perceptions. Is there any deeper physiological relationship here involved?
I answer this question unconditionally in the affirmative.
It is not by chance that prostitution is mainly a product of civilization, that it finds in civilization its proper vital conditions, whereas in primitive states it cannot properly thrive.
In primitive times, unrestrained by the (just) demands of a higher civilization, and by the social morality intimately associated therewith, men could, without fear or regret, satisfytheir wild impulses, no less in the sexual sphere than in others; they could give free play to those peculiar biological instincts of a sexual nature which lie hidden in every man. Their sexual “supra- and sub-consciousness,” to use the happy phrase which Chr. von Ehrenfels invented to denote the dualism of modern sexuality, were stillmonistic. To-day, however, the primitive instincts arerepressedby the necessities of civilized life, and by the coercive force of conventional morality; but these instincts still slumber in every one. Each one of us has also his sexual sub-consciousness. Sometimes it awakens, demands activity, free from all restraint, from all coercion, from all convention. In such moments it seems as if the man were an entirely different being. Here the “two souls” in our breast become a reality. Is this still the celebrated man of learning, the refined idealist, the sensitive æsthetic, the artist who has enriched us with the most magnificent and the purest works of poetry or of plastic art? We recognize him no longer, because in such moments something quite different has awakened to life;anothernature stirs within him and urges him with an elemental force to do things from which his “supra-consciousness,” the consciousness of the civilized man, would draw back in horror.
Such a delicate sensitive nature, open to the finest spiritual activities, as that of the Danish poet J. P. Jakobsen, must feel this contrast in an especially painful manner; it is precisely such natures—those in which the extremes we have described appear most sharply and most clearly—which afford us proof of the existence of a double consciousness. The primitive instinct breaks out, like a monomania—of which old psychiatric doctrine of “monomania” we are involuntarily reminded when we see how even men of light and leading, men who in other respects live only in the highest regions of the spirit, are subjected to the domination of this purely instinctive sexualism, so that they lead a “secret” inner life, of whose existence the world has no suspicion.
In “Niels Lyhne” J. P. Jakobsen has admirably characterized this double life.
“But when,” he writes, “he had served God truly for eleven days, it often happened thatother powersgained the upper hand in him; by an overwhelming force he was driven to the coarse lust of coarse enjoyments; he yielded, overcome by the human passion for self-annihilation, which, while the blood burns as blood only can burn, demands degradation, perversity, dirt, and foulness, with no less force than the force which inspires the equally human passion for becoming greater than one is, and purer.”
“But when,” he writes, “he had served God truly for eleven days, it often happened thatother powersgained the upper hand in him; by an overwhelming force he was driven to the coarse lust of coarse enjoyments; he yielded, overcome by the human passion for self-annihilation, which, while the blood burns as blood only can burn, demands degradation, perversity, dirt, and foulness, with no less force than the force which inspires the equally human passion for becoming greater than one is, and purer.”
These human instincts can be satisfied only by prostitution. By the purchasable prostitute this desire, described so aptly and with so much insight by Jakobsen, can be fully satisfied. To the origin of the desire we shall return in another connexion. The common, the rough, the brutal animal in the nature of prostitution, exercises a formal magical attractive force on large numbers of men.
Ludwig Pietsch, in his “Recollections of Sixty Years,” vol. ii., p. 337 (Berlin, 1894), tells of the celebrated cocotte of the Second French Empire, Cora Pearl, whom he saw in Baden-Baden:
“I have never been able to understand how it was that she exercised so powerful an attraction. In her appearance, her tumid, painted ‘pug-face,’ the secret was certainly not to be found. Perhaps the influence which she exercised on so many men rested principally in the quality which the royal friend of the Danish Countess Danner described to the latter, when explaining to her the reason of the power, to others quite incomprehensible, which Cora Pearl had exercised on his own heart. He said: ‘She is so gloriously vulgar.’”
“I have never been able to understand how it was that she exercised so powerful an attraction. In her appearance, her tumid, painted ‘pug-face,’ the secret was certainly not to be found. Perhaps the influence which she exercised on so many men rested principally in the quality which the royal friend of the Danish Countess Danner described to the latter, when explaining to her the reason of the power, to others quite incomprehensible, which Cora Pearl had exercised on his own heart. He said: ‘She is so gloriously vulgar.’”
This word speaks volumes, and illuminates the peculiar influence of prostitutes and prostitution upon man in an apt and powerfulway.[285]
Admirably, also, has Stefan Grimmen, in his novelette “Die Landpartie” (published inDie Welt am Montag, No. 22, May 28, 1906), described this influence, which in this case was exercised by two demi-mondaines lying in the grass, upon the masculine members of a picnic-party, who were so enthralled as completely to forget the ladies of their company. The de Goncourts were also aware of the specific allurement exercised by prostitutes, for in one place in their diary they recommend a wife to adopt certain customs of prostitutes, in order to bind her husband to her for a long time.
In this respect, we cannot fail to recognize a certain masochistic trait in the sensibility of men, which appears especially remarkable when we call to mind the contrast between the nature of the above described spiritually lofty persons and the nature of a prostitute. In this way we should be led to the view thatprostitution is in part a product of the physiological male masochism—that is to say, of the impulse from time to time to plunge into the depths of coarse, brutal, sexual lust and of self-mortificationand self-abasement, by surrender to a comparatively worthless creature. This attraction towards prostitutes is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the psyche of the modern civilized man; it is the curse of the evolution of civilization.
“The most ideal man also is unable to free himself from his body,” says Heinrich Schurtz; “refinement leads ultimately to an unnatural over-nicety,which must necessarily be permeated from time to time by a breath of fresh unrefinement and coarse naturalism, if it is not to perish from its own inward contradiction.”
“The most ideal man also is unable to free himself from his body,” says Heinrich Schurtz; “refinement leads ultimately to an unnatural over-nicety,which must necessarily be permeated from time to time by a breath of fresh unrefinement and coarse naturalism, if it is not to perish from its own inward contradiction.”
In a certain sense the same need finds expression also in Gutzkow’s remark in the “Neue Serapionsbrüder,” vol. i., p. 198 (Breslau, 1877), that man sometimes has a need for “woman-in-herself,” not woman with the thousand and one tricks and whimsies of wives, mothers, and daughters.
Without question, this need is much more characteristic of man than of woman. Still, I am not prepared altogether to deny its existence in the latter. In another connexion I shall return to this extremely important question.
Naturally in this we see no more than afavouring factorof the appearance of prostitutionin the mass; we do not speak of it as the definite cause of the production of any individual prostitute.
Speaking generally, I consider the dispute regarding the causes of prostitution as superfluous; a number of causes are in operation, and in each individual case it is always an unfortunateconcatenationof circumstances, of subjective and objective influences, which have driven the girl to prostitution. The varioustheoriesregarding the causes of prostitution have therefore only a relative value. Not one of them explains it wholly; each explanation demands the assistance of others.
This is, above all, true of the celebrated theory of Lombroso, regarding the “born prostitute,” a theory which states, to put the matter shortly and clearly, that the girl is born with all therudimentary characteristicsof a prostitute, and that these rudimentary characteristics have also aphysicalfoundation, in the form of demonstrablestigmata of degeneration.
Lombroso’s “born prostitute” is, above all, distinguished by a complete lack of the moral sense, by typical “moral insanity,” which is the true “root” of the prostitute life, for he regards that life as very little dependent upon the sexual. Prostitution, therefore, according to Lombroso, “is only a special case of the early tendency to all evil, of the desire which characterizes the morally idiotic human being from childhood upwards, to do thatwhich isforbidden.”[286]The individual cause of prostitution, according to this view, is to be found, not in the sexual, but in the ethical province. With the ethical defects are associated greediness, the love of finery, a tendency to drink, vanity, dislike of work, mendacity, and an inclination towards criminality. To this moral degeneration there corresponds the presence of stigmata of degeneration, such as anomalies of the teeth, cleft palate, abnormal distribution of the hair, prominent ears, asymmetry of the face, etc.
The above-described type of degenerate woman does, as a fact, exist. But, in the first place, such women constitute only a small fraction of prostitutes, and such women are foundfollowing other occupations. Thus, the expression “born prostitute” is a false one; it should run, “born degenerate,” for not all born degenerates become prostitutes.
In the second place,not all degenerate prostitutes are born degenerates. In many cases the degeneration is a result of the professional unchastity.
“No one,” says Friedrich Hammer, “who has not personally investigated the matter can conceive howrapidlyandcompletelytheprocess of transformation from an honourable girl into a prostitute proceeds—the transformation into a street-walker. A few weeks before she was clean-looking and trim, perhaps with a somewhat frivolous appearance, but still able to understand the position in which she found herself; now, however, she seems to have completely ‘gone to pieces’; she is dirty and verminous, and on her face is an expression of absolute wretchedness, not, as you perhaps might imagine, of unbridled sensuality—no, rather one of indifference, of complete helplessness and loss of will, of unresponsiveness alike to punishment and tobenefit.”[287]
“No one,” says Friedrich Hammer, “who has not personally investigated the matter can conceive howrapidlyandcompletelytheprocess of transformation from an honourable girl into a prostitute proceeds—the transformation into a street-walker. A few weeks before she was clean-looking and trim, perhaps with a somewhat frivolous appearance, but still able to understand the position in which she found herself; now, however, she seems to have completely ‘gone to pieces’; she is dirty and verminous, and on her face is an expression of absolute wretchedness, not, as you perhaps might imagine, of unbridled sensuality—no, rather one of indifference, of complete helplessness and loss of will, of unresponsiveness alike to punishment and tobenefit.”[287]
The earlier investigators of prostitution, including the first of all, Parent-Duchatelet, did not fail to recognize that the mental and physical abnormalities of the prostitute werechangesdue to her mode of life. In many prostitutes we can observe atypical obliteration of the secondary and tertiary sexual charactersafter a prolonged practice of their profession. Virey remarked, very justly, that “in consequence of the frequent embraces of men, prostitutes gain a more or less masculine appearance”: their neck is thicker, their voice harsher and more masculine (J. J. Virey, “Woman,” pp. 157, 158; Leipzig, 1827).
Most prostitutes have done more or less injury to the functions of the human body, have completely disordered their sexual life,and are sterile. It is not to be wondered at that this sometimes manifests itself in their outward appearance—as, for example, in the slight development of the breasts, which often amounts to a simple atrophy. The “unmistakable development” of the tertiary characters of the male in individual prostitutes, which has led Kurella to propound the interesting hypothesis that prostitutes are a sub-variety of thehomosexual,[288]rests for the most part upon their assumption of a masculine mode of life and masculine habits, which in the long-run cannot fail to influence also the bodily development—as, for example, smoking and the excessive use of alcohol, pot-house life, gluttony, and other masculine habits. The “deep masculine voice” of many prostitutes is unquestionably in most cases the result of the excessive use of tobacco and alcohol. To this strikinggradualchange in the voice Parent-Duchatelet devoted considerable attention (vol. i., pp. 86-88, of the German edition); it also attracted Lippert’s notice. Parent-Duchatelet refers the common development in prostitutes of the masculine voice to their excessive indulgence in alcoholic beverages, and to their exposure to frequent changes of weather (catching cold, etc.). Smoking also certainly plays a part.
Lippert draws attention to other changes (“Prostitution in Hamburg,” pp. 80 and 90):