for the moral worth of humanity.”  All prostitution is bad, Michels concludes, but we should have reason to congratulate ourselves if love-relationships of this Parisian species represented the lowest known form of extra-conjugal sexuality. (As bearing on the relative consideration accorded to prostitutes I may mention that a Paris prostitute remarked to a friend of mine that Englishmen would ask her questions which no Frenchman would venture to ask.)

It is not, however, only in Paris, although here more markedly and prominently, that this humanizing change in prostitution is beginning to make itself felt.  It is manifested, for instance, in the greater openness of a man’s sexual life.  “While he formerly slinked into a brothel in a remote street,” Dr. Willy Hellpach remarks (Nervositaet und Kultur, p. 169), “he now walks abroad with his ‘liaison,’ visiting the theatres and cafes, without indeed any anxiety to meet his acquaintances, but with no embarrassment on that point.  The thing is becoming more commonplace, more—­natural.”  It is also, Hellpach proceeds to point out, thus becoming more moral also, and much unwholesome prudery and pruriency is being done away with.

In England, where change is slow, this tendency to the humanization of prostitution may be less pronounced.  But it certainly exists.  In the middle of the last century Lecky wrote (History of European Morals, vol. ii, p. 285) that habitual prostitution “is in no other European country so hopelessly vicious or so irrevocable.”  That statement, which was also made by Parent-Duchatelet and other foreign observers, is fully confirmed by the evidence on record.  But it is a statement which would hardly be made to-day, except perhaps, in reference to special confined areas of our cities.  It is the same in America, and we may doubtless find this tendency reflected in the report on The Social Evil (1902), drawn up by a committee in New York, who gave it (p. 176) as one of their chief recommendations that prostitution should no longer be regarded as a crime, in which light, one gathers, it had formerly been regarded in New York.  That may seem but a small step in the path of humanization, but it is in the right direction.

It is by no means only in lands of European civilization that we may trace with developing culture the refinement and humanization of the slighter bonds of relationship with women.  In Japan exactly the same demands led, several centuries ago, to the appearance of the geisha.  In the course of an interesting and precise study of the geisha Mr. R.T.  Farrer remarks (Nineteenth Century, April, 1904):  “The geisha is in no sense necessarily a courtesan.  She is a woman educated to attract; perfected from her childhood in all the intricacies of Japanese literature; practiced in wit and repartee; inured to the rapid give-and-take of conversation on every topic, human and divine.  From her earliest youth