Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/126

 view that all women are angels, and so angelic that nothing can corrupt them. We may reverence the soul in every living person, we may keep our faith strong in the miraculous power of recovery, we may humbly own that none of us is entitled to cast a stone, we may even have come to see that stone-throwing has not a reforming influence, and yet, if we are honest, we must admit that there are women who have no personal pride and no reverence for the body: covetous women; cold women, who do not know the purification of passion; sensual women, who know only appetite; lazy women; vain women; cowardly women. It is cant to insist that we must reverence such women, any more than we would reverence covetous, cold, sensual, lazy, vain or cowardly men. The life of prostitution tends to encourage all these vices; that is one of the strongest reasons for hating the life; but, undoubtedly, some persons have more aptitude for it than others.

The questions we must ask ourselves are: (1) What is prostitution? (2) Is it an evil? (3) Is it necessary? (4) If it is not necessary, how can it be checked or prevented?

It is not easy to find a definition of prostitution which will be accepted by all. I propose to define it as the yielding up for material advantages only of something which should be given for other purposes. A man prostitutes his pen if he takes money for writing lies; it is no prostitution if he accepts money for writing what he believes to be