Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/174

 already appropriated, or possessed by a man, are in principle respected, but solely by the same title as any other property. Their masters, their husbands, those who have bought or captured them, have a perfect right to hire them out to whomsoever they will, as the Australian husbands do, and as the Polynesian ones did.

When the appropriation of women, polygamic as much as possible, became general, the more than fickle instincts of primitive man persisted none the less; and, as a matter of fact, it is then that prostitution, in the modern sense of the word, first arose. Outside the majority of women, regularly belonging to husband-proprietors, there existed, in much smaller numbers, women trafficking their persons, either voluntarily for their own profit, or for that of their legal possessors. At Senaar, for example, and in many other countries, merchants and slave-dealers trade very profitably in their feminine live stock.

We know also that, in primitive Athens, the most eminent men possessed troops of prostitutes, and drew a large revenue from them; for it is very slowly that prostitution, and all that relates to it, has awakened any scruple in the human conscience.

Even at the most glorious period of Hellenic civilisation, with what consideration were the most distinguished hetaïræ still regarded, since Socrates and Pericles willingly met at the house of Aspasia!

In all the more or less cultivated societies of the old or new world prostitution has flourished or continues to flourish. It is even in refined societies alone that prostitution becomes specialised and legalised, and ends by being regulated, by becoming, in short, a kind of institution, supplementing legal marriage and being concurrent with it.

Everywhere—in all countries, and among all races—prostitution has been, or continues to be, tolerated, and sometimes even honoured. It existed in the great states of Central America, in ancient Peru, in ancient Mexico, and in Nicaragua, where there were already prostitutes and brothels. In this last country the morals were still so impure, and continence, although very relative, so difficult to bear, that at a certain annual festival the women of all