, Michels
concludes, but we should have reason to congratulate ourselves if
love-relationships of this Parisian species represented the
lowest known form of extra-conjugal sexuality. (As bearing on the
relative consideration accorded to prostitutes I may mention that
a Paris prostitute remarked to a friend of mine that Englishmen
would ask her questions which no Frenchman would venture to ask.)

It is not, however, only in Paris, although here more markedly
and prominently, that this humanizing change in prostitution is
beginning to make itself felt. It is manifested, for instance, in
the greater openness of a man's sexual life. "While he formerly
slinked into a brothel in a remote street," Dr. Willy Hellpach
remarks (_Nervositaet und Kultur_, p. 169), "he now walks abroad
with his 'liaison,' visiting the theatres and cafes, without
indeed any anxiety to meet his acquaintances, but with no
embarrassment on that point. The thing is becoming more
commonplace, more--natural." It is also, Hellpach proceeds to
point out, thus becoming more moral also, and much unwholesome
prudery and pruriency is being done away with.

In England, where change is slow, this tendency to the
humanization of prostitution may be less pronounced. But it
certainly exists. In the middle of the last century Lecky wrote
(_History of European Morals_, vol. ii, p. 285) that habitual
prostitution "is in no other European country so hopelessly
vicious or so irrevocable." That statement, which was also made
by Parent-Duchatelet and other foreign observers, is fully
confirmed by the evidence on record. But it is a statement which
would hardly be made to-day, except perhaps, in reference to
special confined areas of our cities. It is the same in America,
and we may doubtless find this tendency reflected in the report
on _The Social Evil_ (1902), drawn up by a committee in New York,
who gave it (p. 176) as one of their chief recommendations that
prostitution should no longer be regarded as a crime, in which
light, one gathers, it had formerly been regarded in New York.
That may seem but a small step in the path of humanization, but
it is in the right direction.

It is by no means only in lands of European civilization that we
may trace with developing culture the refinement and humanization
of the slighte