onsider the psychology of
prostitution. We have already mentioned _La Maison Tellier_ by de
Maupassant; Zola's _Nana_ is the history of a high-class prostitute
related in the well-known realistic manner of the celebrated novelist,
in which he describes the sexual depravity existing in certain
Parisian circles of the Second Empire.

I will now make a few remarks concerning a social movement organized
against the regulation of prostitution, called abolitionism.

=Abolitionism and Regulation.=--An Englishwoman, Mrs. Josephine
Butler, undertook, in the name of liberty, a campaign against
proxenetism, white slavery and the State regulation of prostitution.
She also attacked the injustice of the Code Napoleon toward women,
especially the prohibition of inquiry into paternity, which throws
girls who have been seduced into the arms of prostitution. The
abolitionists contest the right of police inscription of prostitutes
under the pretext of hygiene, of submitting them against their will to
medical inspection, and of keeping them in brothels. They claim severe
laws against proxenetism and oppose toleration.

In medical circles the system of regulation has generally been
defended. It is urged that society has the right to protect itself
against dangerous infection, and that, with this object, it has as
much right to treat infected prostitutes compulsorily, as those
affected with smallpox or cholera. Owing to their shameful trade, they
maintain that these women have lost all claim to special
consideration.

This argument appears very reasonable at first sight, but it takes
quite a different aspect when the facts are examined more thoroughly.

First of all the comparison with smallpox and cholera is illogical,
for these diseases endanger the innocent public, while the man who
makes use of prostitution is quite aware of the danger he runs.
Society is under no obligation to provide healthy prostitutes for the
use of Don Juan.

Against this it is stated that innocent wives are often infected and
made to suffer for the sins of their husbands. But such an extensive
blending of the State with family life does not appear to be
admissible, and would lead to crying abuses. Society has neither the
right nor the duty to facilitate the dangerous or injurious acts of
certain individuals at the expense of others, by rendering them less
dangerous, so that certain third parties may be less liable to suffer.
This is an absurd sophism. The d