ed, and was indeed practically
non-existent in the ancient days when that morality was still a living
reality. Women are no longer divided only into the two groups of wives who
are to be honored, and prostitutes who are the dishonored guardians of
that honor; there is a large third class of women who are neither wives
nor prostitutes. For this group of the unmarried virtuous the traditional
morality had no place at all; it simply ignored them. But the new
moralist, who is learning to recognize both the claims of the individual
and the claims of society, begins to ask whether on the one hand these
women are not entitled to the satisfaction of their affectional and
emotional impulses if they so desire, and on the other hand whether, since
a high civilization involves a diminished birthrate, the community is not
entitled to encourage every healthy and able-bodied woman to contribute to
maintain the birthrate when she so desires.

All the considerations briefly indicated in the preceding pages--the
fundamental sense of human equality generated by our civilization, the
repugnance to cruelty which accompanies the refinement of urban life, the
ugly contrast of extremes which shock our developing democratic
tendencies, the growing sense of the rights of the individual to authority
over his own person, the no less strongly emphasized right of the
community to the best that the individual can yield--all these
considerations are every day more strongly influencing the modern moralist
to assume towards the prostitute an attitude altogether different from
that of the morality which we derived from Cato and Augustine. He sees the
question in a larger and more dynamic manner. Instead of declaring that it
is well worth while to tolerate and at the same time to condemn the
prostitute, in order to preserve the sanctity of the wife in her home, he
is not only more inclined to regard each as the proper guardian of her own
moral freedom, but he is less certain about the time-honored position of
the prostitute, and moreover, by no means sure that the wife in the home
may not be fully as much in need of rescuing as the prostitute in the
street; he is prepared to consider whether reform in this matter is not
most likely to take place in the shape of a fairer apportionment of sexual
privileges and sexual duties to women generally, with an inevitably
resultant elevation in the sexual lives of men also.

The revolt of many serious reformers a