t not to let her
see what I felt. I have never been conscious of so deep a pity for any
woman before, or felt so fierce an anger against social conditions
that made this degradation of love possible. For, mark you, I know
this woman well, have known her for years, and I can, and do, testify
that in many directions apart from her trade, her virtue, her
refinement and her character are equal, even if not superior, to my
own. This is the greatest lesson I have learnt. The degradation of
prostitution rests not with these women, but on us, the sheltered,
happy women who have been content to ignore or despise them. Do you
come to know these women (and this is very difficult) you are just as
able to like them and in many ways to respect them, as you are to like
and to respect any "straight" woman. You may hate their trade, you
cannot justly hate them.

I would like here to bring forward as a chief cause of prostitution a
factor which, though mentioned by many investigators,[327] has not, I
think, been sufficiently recognised. To me it has been brought very
forcibly home by my personal investigations. I mean sexual frigidity.
This is surely the clearest explanation of the moral insensibility of
the prostitute. I have not enough knowledge to say whether this is a
natural condition, or whether it is acquired. I am certain, however,
that it is present in those courtesans whom I have known. These women
have never experienced passion. I believe that the traffic of love's
supreme rite means less to them than it would do to me to shake hands
with a man I disliked.

Now, if I am right, this fact will explain a great deal. I believe,
moreover, that here a way opens out whereby in the future prostitution
may be remedied. This is no fanciful statement, but a practical belief
in passion as a power containing all forces. To any one who shares
the faith I have been developing in this book, what I mean will be
evident. If we consider how large a factor physical sex is in the life
of woman, it becomes clear that any atrophy of these instincts must be
in the highest degree hurtful. Moral insensibility is almost always
combined with economic dependence. If all mating was founded, as it
ought to be, on love, and all children born from lovers, there would
follow as an inevitable result a truer insistence on reality in the
relationships of the sexes. With a strengthening of passion in the
mothers of the race, sex will return to its right and powe