entioned prostitutes to me, if I
remember rightly, when speaking of his life before marriage. And
he spoke of them as he would speak of a horse he had hired, paid
for, and dismissed from his mind when it had rendered him
service. Although my mother was so kind and good she spoke of
abandoned women with disgust and scorn as of some unclean animal.
As it flatters vanity and pride to be able with good countenance
and universal consent to look down on something, I soon grasped
the situation and adopted an attitude which is, in the main, that
of most middle-class Christian Englishmen towards prostitutes.
But as puberty develops this attitude has to be accommodated with
the wish to make use of this scum, these moral lepers. The
ordinary young man, who likes a spice of immorality and has it
when in town, and thinks it is not likely to come to his mother's
or sisters' ears, does not get over his arrogance and disgust or
abate them in the least. He takes them with him, more or less
disguised, to the brothel, and they color his thoughts and
actions all the time he is sleeping with prostitutes, or kissing
them, or passing his hands over them, as he would over a mare,
getting as much as he can for his money. To tell the truth, on
the whole, that was my attitude too. But if anyone had asked me
for the smallest reason for this attitude, for this feeling of
superiority, pride, _hauteur_, and prejudice, I should, like any
other 'respectable' young man, have been entirely at a loss, and
could only have gaped foolishly."

From the modern moral standpoint which now concerns us, not only is the
cruelty involved in the dishonor of the prostitute absurd, but not less
absurd, and often not less cruel, seems the honor bestowed on the
respectable women on the other side of the social gulf. It is well
recognized that men sometimes go to prostitutes to gratify the excitement
aroused by fondling their betrothed.[218] As the emotional and physical
results of ungratified excitement are not infrequently more serious in
women than in men, the betrothed women in these cases are equally
justified in seeking relief from other men, and the vicious circle of
absurdity might thus be completed.

From the point of view of the modern moralist there is another
consideration which was altogether overlooked in the conventional and
traditional morality we have inherit