Page:Symonds - A Problem in Modern Ethics.djvu/29

Rh historical, anthropological, apologetical and polemical. With a few books in each of these kinds I propose to deal now.

The first which falls under my hand is written by a French official, who was formerly Chief of the Police Department for Morals in Paris. M. Carlier, during ten years, had excellent opportunities for studying the habits of professional male prostitutes and their frequenters. He had condensed the results of his experience in seven very disagreeable chapters, which offer a revolting picture of vice and systematised extortion in the great metropolis.

"In the numerous books," says M. Carlier, "which treat of prostitution, the antiphysical passions have hitherto been always deliberately omitted. Officially, public opinion does not recognise them, the legislature will take no notice of them. The police are left alone to react against them; and the unequal combat may some day cease, since it is supported by no text of the code and no regulation of the state. When that happens, pæderasty will become a calamity far more dangerous, more scandalous, than female prostitution, the organisation of which it shares in full. A magistrate once declared that 'in Paris it is the school where the cleverest and boldest criminals are formed; and as a matter of fact, it produces associations of special scoundrels, who use it as the means of theft and chantage, not stopping short of murder in the execution of their plots."

It will be seen from this exordium that M. Carlier