s that little or no stigma is attached to it for the reason that the
community has not yet become accustomed to attach any special value to the
presence of virginity. Schurtz quotes from the old Arabic geographer
Al-Bekri some interesting remarks about the Slavs: "The women of the
Slavs, after they have married, are faithful to their husbands. If,
however, a young girl falls in love with a man she goes to him and
satisfies her passion. And if a man marries and finds his wife a virgin he
says to her: 'If you were worth anything men would have loved you, and you
would have chosen one who would have taken away your virginity.' Then he
drives her away and renounces her." It is a feeling of this kind which,
among some peoples, leads a girl to be proud of the presents she has
received from her lovers and to preserve them as a dowry for her marriage,
knowing that her value will thus be still further heightened. Even among
the Southern Slavs of modern Europe, who have preserved much of the
primitive sexual freedom, this freedom, as Krauss, who has minutely
studied the manners and customs of these peoples, declares, is
fundamentally different from vice, licentiousness, or immodesty.[129]

Prostitution tends to arise, as Schurtz has pointed out, in every society
in which early marriage is difficult and intercourse outside marriage is
socially disapproved. "Venal women everywhere appear as soon as the free
sexual intercourse of young people is repressed, without the necessary
consequences being impeded by unusually early marriages."[130] The
repression of sexual intimacies outside marriage is a phenomenon of
civilization, but it is not itself by any means a measure of a people's
general level, and may, therefore, begin to appear at an early period. But
it is important to remember that the primitive and rudimentary forms of
prostitution, when they occur, are merely temporary, and
frequently--though not invariably--involve no degrading influence on the
woman in public estimation, sometimes indeed increasing her value as a
wife. The woman who sells herself for money purely as a professional
matter, without any thought of love or passion, and who, by virtue of her
profession, belongs to a pariah class definitely and rigidly excluded from
the main body of her sex, is a phenomenon which can seldom be found except
in developed civilization. It is altogether incorrect to speak of
prostitutes as a mere survival from primitive times.

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