to see her, receiving from him presents in money.  This somehow came to the knowledge of the police, and she was arrested and sentenced to one day’s imprisonment as an unregistered prostitute.  On appeal, however, the sentence was annulled.  Liszt, in his Strafrecht, lays it down that a girl who obtains whole or part of her income from “fixed relationships” is not practicing unchastity for gain in the sense of the German law (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Jahrgang 1, Heft 9, p. 345).

It is not altogether easy to explain the origin of the systematized professional prostitution with the existence of which we are familiar in civilization.  The amateur kind of prostitution which has sometimes been noted among primitive peoples—­the fact, that is, that a man may give a woman a present in seeking to persuade her to allow him to have intercourse with her—­is really not prostitution as we understand it.  The present in such a case is merely part of a kind of courtship leading to a temporary relationship.  The woman more or less retains her social position and is not forced to make an avocation of selling herself because henceforth no other career is possible to her.  When Cook came to New Zealand his men found that the women were not impregnable, “but the terms and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us,” and according “to their notions the agreement was as innocent.”  The consent of the woman’s friends was necessary, and when the preliminaries were settled it was also necessary to treat this “Juliet of a night” with “the same delicacy as is here required with the wife for life, and the lover who presumed to take any liberties by which this was violated was sure to be disappointed."[127] In some of the Melanesian Islands, it is said that women would sometimes become prostitutes, or on account of their bad conduct be forced to become prostitutes for a time; they were not, however, particularly despised, and when they had in this way accumulated a certain amount of property they could marry well, after which it would not be proper to refer to their former career.[128]

When prostitution first arises among a primitive people it sometimes happens that little or no stigma is attached to it for the reason that the community has not yet become accustomed to attach any special value to the presence of virginity.  Schurtz quotes from the old Arabic geographer Al-Bekri some interesting remarks about the Slavs:  “The women of the Slavs, after they have married, are faithful to their husbands.  If, however, a young girl falls in love with a man she goes to him and satisfies her passion.  And if a man marries and finds his wife a virgin he says to her:  ’If you were worth anything men would have loved you, and you would have chosen one who would have taken away your virginity.’  Then he drives her away and renounces her.”  It is a feeling of this kind which, among some peoples, leads a girl to be proud of the presents she has received from her lovers and to preserve them as a dowry for her marriage, knowing that her value will thus be still further heightened.  Even among the Southern Slavs of modern Europe, who have preserved much of the primitive sexual freedom, this freedom, as Krauss, who has minutely studied the manners and customs of these peoples, declares, is fundamentally different from vice, licentiousness, or immodesty.[129]