wise,
there has been a great extension of popular interest in dramatic
performances, and the newly instituted Pageants, carried out and taken
part in by the population of the region commemorated in the Pageant, are
festivals of the same character. In England, however, at the present time,
the real popular orgiastic festivals are the Bank holidays, with which may
be associated the more occasional celebrations, "Maffekings," etc., often
called out by comparatively insignificant national events but still
adequate to arouse orgiastic emotions as genuine as those of antiquity,
though they are lacking in beauty and religious consecration. It is easy
indeed for the narrowly austere person to view such manifestations with a
supercilious smile, but in the eyes of the moralist and the philosopher
these orgiastic festivals exert a salutary and preservative function. In
every age of dull and monotonous routine--and all civilization involves
such routine--many natural impulses and functions tend to become
suppressed, atrophied, or perverted. They need these moments of joyous
exercise and expression, moments in which they may not necessarily attain
their full activity but in which they will at all events be able, as
Cyples expresses it, to rehearse their great possibilities.[119]

_II. The Origin and Development of Prostitution_.

The more refined forms of the orgy flourish in civilization, although on
account of their mainly cerebral character they are not the most
beneficent or the most effective. The more primitive and muscular forms of
the orgy tend, on the other hand, under the influence of civilization, to
fall into discredit and to be so far as possible suppressed altogether. It
is partly in this way that civilization encourages prostitution. For the
orgy in its primitive forms, forbidden to show itself openly and
reputably, seeks the darkness, and allying itself with a fundamental
instinct to which civilized society offers no complete legitimate
satisfaction, it firmly entrenches itself in the very centre of civilized
life, and thereby constitutes a problem of immense difficulty and
importance.[120]

It is commonly said that prostitution has existed always and everywhere.
That statement is far from correct. A kind of amateur prostitution is
occasionally found among savages, but usually it is only when barbarism is
fully developed and is already approaching the stage of civilization that
well developed prostitution is foun