unions on a natural
sexual basis. Our modern marriage system has, however, acquired
an artificial rigidity which excludes the possibility of this
natural safeguard and compensation. Whatever its real moral
content may be, a modern marriage is always "legal" and "sacred."
We are indeed so accustomed to economic forms of marriage that,
as Sidgwick truly observed (_Method of Ethics_, Bk. ii, Ch. XI),
when they are spoken of as "legalized prostitution" it constantly
happens that "the phrase is felt to be extravagant and
paradoxical."

A man who marries for money or for ambition is departing from the
biological and moral ends of marriage. A woman who sells herself for life
is morally on the same level as one who sells herself for a night. The
fact that the payment seems larger, that in return for rendering certain
domestic services and certain personal complacencies--services and
complacencies in which she may be quite inexpert--she will secure an
almshouse in which she will be fed and clothed and sheltered for life
makes no difference in the moral aspect of her case. The moral
responsibility is, it need scarcely be said, at least as much the man's as
the woman's. It is largely due to the ignorance and even the indifference
of men, who often know little or nothing of the nature of women and the
art of love. The unintelligence with which even men who might, one thinks,
be not without experience, select as a mate, a woman who, however fine and
charming she may be, possesses none of the qualities which her wooer
really craves, is a perpetual marvel. To refrain from testing and proving
the temper and quality of the woman he desires for a mate is no doubt an
amiable trait of humility on a man's part. But it is certain that a man
should never be content with less than the best of what a woman's soul and
body have to give, however unworthy he may feel himself of such a
possession. This demand, it must be remarked, is in the highest interests
of the woman herself. A woman can offer to a man what is a part at all
events of the secret of the universe. The woman degrades herself who sinks
to the level of a candidate for an asylum for the destitute.

Our discussion of the psychic facts of sex has thus, it will be seen,
brought us up to the question of morality. Over and over again, in
setting forth the phenomena of prostitution, it has been necessary to use
the word "moral." That word, however, is v