This tendency in an advanced civilization towards the humanization of prostitution is the reverse process, we may note, to that which takes place at an earlier stage of civilization when the ancient conception of the religious dignity of prostitution begins to fall into disrepute.  When men cease to reverence women who are prostitutes in the service of a goddess they set up in their place prostitutes who are merely abject slaves, flattering themselves that they are thereby working in the cause of “progress” and “morality.”  On the shores of the Mediterranean this process took place more than two thousand years ago, and is associated with the name of Solon.  To-day we may see the same process going on in India.  In some parts of India (as at Jejuri, near Poonah) first born girls are dedicated to Khandoba or other gods; they are married to the god and termed muralis.  They serve in the temple, sweep it, and wash the holy vessels, also they dance, sing and prostitute themselves.  They are forbidden to marry, and they live in the homes of their parents, brothers, or sisters; being consecrated to religious service, they are untouched by degradation.  Nowadays, however, Indian “reformers,” in the name of “civilization and science,” seek to persuade the muralis that they are “plunged in a career of degradation.”  No doubt in time the would-be moralists will drive the muralis out of their temples and their homes, deprive them of all self-respect, and convert them into wretched outcasts, all in the cause of “science and civilization” (see, e.g., an article by Mrs. Kashibai Deodhar, The New Reformer, October, 1907).  So it is that early reformers create for the reformers of a later day the task of humanizing prostitution afresh.

There can be no doubt that this more humane conception of prostitution is to-day beginning to be realized in the actual civilized life of Europe.  Thus in writing of prostitution in Paris, Dr. Robert Michels ("Erotische Streifzuege,” Mutterschutz, 1906, Heft 9, p. 368) remarks:  “While in Germany the prostitute is generally considered as an ‘outcast’ creature, and treated accordingly, an instrument of masculine lust to be used and thrown away, and whom one would under no circumstances recognize in public, in France the prostitute plays in many respects the part which once give significance and fame to the hetairae of Athens.”  And after describing the consideration and respect which the Parisian prostitute is often able to require of her friends, and the non-sexual relation of comradeship which she can enter into with other men, the writer continues:  “A girl who certainly yields herself for money, but by no means for the first comer’s money, and who, in addition to her ‘business friends,’ feels the need of, so to say, non-sexual companions with whom she can associate in a free comrade-like way, and by whom she is treated and valued as a free human being, is not wholly lost