ics--The Reaction Between Theoretical and Practical
Morality--Sexual Morality in the Past an Application of Economic
Morality--The Combined Rigidity and Laxity of This Morality--The
Growth of a Specific Sexual Morality and the Evolution of Moral
Ideals--Manifestations of Sexual Morality--Disregard of the Forms of
Marriage--Trial Marriage--Marriage After Conception of Child--Phenomena in
Germany, Anglo-Saxon Countries, Russia, etc.--The Status of Woman--The
Historical Tendency Favoring Moral Equality of Women with Men--The Theory
of the Matriarchate--Mother-Descent--Women in Babylonia--Egypt--Rome--The
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries--The Historical Tendency
Favoring Moral Inequality of Woman--The Ambiguous Influence of
Christianity--Influence of Teutonic Custom and Feudalism--Chivalry--Woman
in England--The Sale of Wives--The Vanishing Subjection of
Woman--Inaptitude of the Modern Man to Domineer--The Growth of Moral
Responsibility in Women--The Concomitant Development of Economic
Independence--The Increase of Women Who Work--Invasion of the Modern
Industrial Field by Women--In How Far This Is Socially Justifiable--The
Sexual Responsibility of Women and Its Consequences--The Alleged Moral
Inferiority of Women--The "Self-Sacrifice" of Women--Society Not Concerned
with Sexual Relationships--Procreation the Sole Sexual Concern of the
State--The Supreme Importance of Maternity.

It has been necessary to deal fully with the phenomena of prostitution
because, however aloof we may personally choose to hold ourselves from
those phenomena, they really bring us to the heart of the sexual question
in so far as it constitutes a social problem. If we look at prostitution
from the outside, as an objective phenomenon, as a question of social
dynamics, it is seen to be not a merely accidental and eliminable incident
of our present marriage system but an integral part of it, without which
it would fall to pieces. This will probably be fairly clear to all who
have followed the preceding exposition of prostitutional phenomena. There
is, however, more than this to be said. Not only is prostitution to-day,
as it has been for more than two thousand years, the buttress of our
marriage system, but if we look at marriage, not from the outside as a
formal institution, but from the inside with relation to the motives that
constitute it, we find that marriage in a large proportion of cases is
itself in certain respects a form of prostitution.