t there is any impurity or dishonor in acts of love for which
the reasonable, and not merely the conventional, conditions have been
fulfilled. For it is vain to attempt to cleanse our laws, or even our
by-laws, until we have first cleansed our hearts.

It would be out of place here to push further the statement of the moral
question as it is to-day beginning to shape itself in the sphere of sex.
In a psychological discussion we are only concerned to set down the actual
attitude of the moralist, and of civilization. The practical outcome of
that attitude must be left to moralists and sociologists and the community
generally to work out.

Our inquiry has also, it may be hoped, incidentally tended to show that in
practically dealing with the question of prostitution it is pre-eminently
necessary to remember the warning which, as regards many other social
problems, has been embodied by Herbert Spencer in his famous illustration
of the bent iron plate. In trying to make the bent plate smooth, it is
useless, Spencer pointed out, to hammer directly on the buckled up part;
if we do so we merely find that we have made matters worse; our hammering,
to be effective, must be around, and not directly on, the offensive
elevation we wish to reduce; only so can the iron plate be hammered
smooth.[219] But this elementary law has not been understood by
moralists. The plain, practical, common-sense reformer, as he fancied
himself to be--from the time of Charlemagne onwards--has over and over
again brought his heavy fist directly down on to the evil of prostitution
and has always made matters worse. It is only by wisely working outside
and around the evil that we can hope to lessen it effectually. By aiming
to develop and raise the relationships of men to women, and of women to
women, by modifying our notions of sexual relationships, and by
introducing a saner and truer conception of womanhood and of the
responsibilities of women as well as of men, by attaining, socially as
well as economically, a higher level of human living--it is only by such
methods as these that we can reasonably expect to see any diminution and
alleviation of the evil of prostitution. So long as we are incapable of
such methods we must be content with the prostitution we deserve, learning
to treat it with the pity, and the respect, which so intimate a failure of
our civilization is entitled to.

FOOTNOTES:

[107] See, e.g., Cheetham's Hulsean Lectures, _The Myst