of this fact.

The psychology of prostitutes is very peculiar. Attempts to restore
them to a moral life nearly always fail hopelessly; it is rare to see
them permanently successful. Most of these women have a heredity of
bad quality and are of weak character, idle and libidinous. They find
it much easier to gain their living by prostitution, and forget their
work, if they have ever learned any. The poverty, drunkenness and
shame which follow seduction and illegitimate birth have no doubt
driven more than one prostitute to her sad trade, but the naturally
evil dispositions of these women constitute without any doubt the
principal cause. Alcohol, venereal diseases and bad habits, combined
with continually repeated sexual degradation, afterwards determine
progressive decadence.

Some of these women, however, of better quality, only surrender
themselves to prostitution by compulsion; they suffer from this
existence and strive to escape from it. The grisettes and lorettes[2]
form a group intermediate between prostitution and natural love; they
are women who hire themselves for a time to one man in particular, and
are maintained and paid by him in return for satisfying his sexual
appetites. Here again, sexual desire only exceptionally plays the
chief role. The conduct of these women results from their loose
character and pecuniary interest.

If, therefore, we admit on the one hand that the sexual excesses of
the female sex are especially grafted on hereditary disposition of
character, or are primarily due to strong appetites, we are obliged on
the other hand to recognize that the great role played by sexuality in
the brain of woman renders it more difficult for her than for man to
return to better ways when she has once prostituted herself, or when
she has surrendered in any way to sexual licentiousness, even when her
original quality was not bad.

In man the sexual appetite is much more easily separated than in woman
from other instincts, sentiments and intellectual life in general, and
possesses in him, however powerful it may be, a much more transient
character, which prevents it dominating the whole mental life.

I have dwelt so much on this point because it is essential to know the
differences which exist between man and woman in this respect, and to
take them into account if we wish to give a just and healthy judgment
on the sexual question from the social point of view. The more it is
our duty to give the same r