7<5 Human Physiology. 



this has been going on for centuries, sapping the life of the 

 nation, destroying vast populations the innocent as well as 

 the guilty, even more than the guilty and nothing effectual 

 has been done to stay the pestilence. A timid and partial 

 effort to economise the strength and cost of army and navy has 

 met with a violent opposition, and there is little hope of legis- 

 lative remedy. Prostitution and its evils must go on until men 

 and women are wise and good enough to lay the axe at the root 

 of this deadly upas. "Wise and good." Education of the intellect 

 alone, and even of the taste, is not sufficient. A very learned 

 and, in many respects, tasteful man may be a profligate. Very 

 accomplished women have been very immoral. There must 

 be moral elevation which will bring men into higher and purer 

 modes of life. There must come to men a strong and deep 

 sense of what is best in life, and of their duty to God and their 

 fellow-men. They must see and feel that selfish sensuality is a 

 sin that seduction is a crime which may be worse than mur- 

 der a dishonesty that is more base than theft. When every 

 man treats every woman as he would wish his mother, sister, or 

 daughter to be treated when every woman requires purity in 

 man as she does in woman when a crime against chastity is 

 as severely reprobated and punished as a crime against pro- 

 perty when the sins that drive women from society shall be 

 punished in men with the same severity and when, more than 

 all, both men and women understand their own natures, and 

 know the real objects of life, and what will give them the highest 

 and purest enjoyments in this and every stage of being, we may 

 expect to see an end of all this guilt and crime and misery. 



If prostitution and its consequences are really necessary 

 evils; if their victims suffer for the greatest good of humanity; 

 if a certain proportion of our women, even of the loveliest and 

 best, must go down into this horrible gulf to secure the safety 

 and happiness of the rest; if nothing can be done even to save 

 us from the pestilence that walketh in darkness, then we ought 



