unity. It may be roughly characterized as a safety valve for
the institution of marriage" (_The Gospel According to Darwin_,
p. 193; cf. the same author's article on "The Economics of
Prostitution," summarized in _Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal_, November 21, 1895). Adolf Gerson, in a somewhat similar
spirit, argues ("Die Ursache der Prostitution,"
_Sexual-Probleme_, September, 1908) that "prostitution is one of
the means used by Nature to limit the procreative activity of
men, and especially to postpone the period of sexual maturity."
Molinari considers that the social benefits of prostitution have
been manifested in various ways from the first; by sterilizing,
for instance, the more excessive manifestations of the sexual
impulse prostitution suppressed the necessity for the infanticide
of superfluous children, and led to the prohibition of that
primitive method of limiting the population (G. de Molinari, _La
Viriculture_, p. 45). In quite another way than that mentioned by
Molinari, prostitution has even in very recent times led to the
abandonment of infanticide. In the Chinese province of Ping-Yang,
Matignon states, it was usual not many years ago for poor parents
to kill forty per cent. of the girl children, or even all of
them, at birth, for they were too expensive to rear and brought
nothing in, since men who wished to marry could easily obtain a
wife in the neighboring province of Wenchu, where women were
very easy to obtain. Now, however, the line of steamships along
the coast makes it very easy for girls to reach the brothels of
Shang-Hai, where they can earn money for their families; the
custom of killing them has therefore died out (Matignon,
_Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1896, p. 72). "Under
present conditions," writes Dr. F. Erhard ("Auch ein Wort zur
Ehereform," _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Jahrgang I, Heft 9),
"prostitution (in the broadest sense, including free
relationships) is necessary in order that young men may, in some
degree, learn to know women, for conventional conversation cannot
suffice for this; an exact knowledge of feminine thought and
action is, however, necessary for a proper choice, since it is
seldom possible to rely on the certainty of instinct. It is good
also that men should wear off their horns before marriage, for
the po