morally justifiable. It is
significant to note that they were accustomed to remember that Cato was
said to have expressed satisfaction on seeing a man emerge from a brothel,
for otherwise he might have gone to lie with his neighbor's wife.[193]

The social necessity of prostitution is the most ancient of all the
arguments of moralists in favor of the toleration of prostitutes; and if
we accept the eternal validity of the marriage system with which
prostitution developed, and of the theoretical morality based on that
system, this is an exceedingly forcible, if not an unanswerable, argument.

The advent of Christianity, with its special attitude towards the "flesh,"
necessarily caused an enormous increase of attention to the moral aspects
of prostitution. When prostitution was not morally denounced, it became
clearly necessary to morally justify it; it was impossible for a Church,
whose ideals were more or less ascetic, to be benevolently indifferent in
such a matter. As a rule we seem to find throughout that while the more
independent and irresponsible divines take the side of denunciation, those
theologians who have had thrust upon them the grave responsibilities of
ecclesiastical statesmanship have rather tended towards the reluctant
moral justification of prostitution. Of this we have an example of the
first importance in St. Augustine, after St. Paul the chief builder of the
Christian Church. In a treatise written in 386 to justify the Divine
regulation of the world, we find him declaring that just as the
executioner, however repulsive he may be, occupies a necessary place in
society, so the prostitute and her like, however sordid and ugly and
wicked they may be, are equally necessary; remove prostitutes from human
affairs and you would pollute the world with lust: "Aufer meretrices de
rebus humanis, turbaveris omnia libidinibus."[194] Aquinas, the only
theological thinker of Christendom who can be named with Augustine, was of
the same mind with him on this question of prostitution. He maintained the
sinfulness of fornication but he accepted the necessity of prostitution as
a beneficial part of the social structure, comparing it to the sewers
which keep a palace pure.[195] "Prostitution in towns is like the sewer in
a palace; take away the sewers and the palace becomes an impure and
stinking place." Liguori, the most influential theologian of more modern
times, was of the like opinion.

This wavering and semi-indul