[16]. “La Donna Delinquente, la Prostituta, e la Donna Normale.”
[17]. Havelock Ellis confirms this statement, as the result of a most laborious investigation (“Man and Woman,” 4th edition, London, 1904, chap. xvi, and appendix).
[18]. Aschaffenburg also writes: “I believe that in some instances we are entitled to regard the prostitute as the equivalent of the criminal; but, notwithstanding this, I believe that the complement to the prostitute is to be looked for, not in the thief, the pickpocket, or the forger, but rather in the beggar and the vagrant.”
Translator’s Note.—Lombroso’s views regarding the prostitute are disputed by many who accept the greater part of his teachings in the matter of criminal anthropology. Prostitution is largely a socially-caused phenomenon, and therefore prostitutes, in so far as they are the complements of criminals will be mainly complementary to socially-caused and occasional “criminals,” not to habitual and instinctive criminals. Thus, Bloch (“The Sexual Life of Our Time,” London, Rebman, Ltd., 1909, p. 401), while admitting that the world of crime is very near to that of prostitution—because the prostitute has need of a man to whom she is not simply a chattel, to whom she can be something from the personal point of view, and also because she shares with the criminal the life of the social pariah—goes on to say: “Lombroso’s doctrine that prostitution is throughout equivalent to criminality is certainly not justified. It is only by the outward circumstances of their life that the bulk of prostitutes are driven into intimate relations with criminality.” For a careful consideration of the pros and cons of this profoundly important question, with reference to leading authorities, see Havelock Ellis, “Sex in Relation to Society,” pp. 266–269.
[19]. In Germany in the year 1899 (“Statistik des Deutschen Reichs,” vol. xxxii., II., 50–65), for every 100 men condemned for the offences specified below, there were of women convicted of the like offence:
| Crime and misdemeanour in general | 19·3 |
| Breaches of the peace | 12·0 |
| Perjury | 14·6 |
| False accusation | 35·8 |
| Procurement | 164·6 |
| Procuring abortion | 375·9 |
| Infant exposure | 400·0 |
| Fraud | 20·0 |
| Injury to property | 6·0 |
| Simple assault | 11·8 |
| Aggravated assault | 7·9 |
| Petty larceny | 37·9 |
| Major thefts | 13·3 |
[20]. Compare Walter Bagehot’s phrase, “the pain of a new idea,” which will be found in his brilliant little volume on “Physics and Politics” (p. 163).—Translator.
[21]. Compare also Havelock Ellis, “Studies in the Psychology of Sex,” vol. vi., “Sex in Relation to Society,” where this fundamental and profoundly important paradox is most thoughtfully expounded. After explaining the difference between traditional morality and ideal morality, the former being concerned with the accepted standards of social conduct, the latter embodying an attempt to reform those standards, and showing how the two moralities are of necessity opposed each to the other, Ellis goes on to say (op. cit., p. 368): “We have to remember that they are both equally sound and equally indispensable, not only to those who accept them, but to the community which they continue to hold in vital theoretical balance. We have seen them both, for instance, applied to the question of prostitution; traditional morality defends prostitution, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the marriage system, which it regards as sufficiently precious to be worth a sacrifice, while ideal morality refuses to accept the necessity of prostitution, and looks forward to progressive changes in the marriage system which will modify and diminish prostitution.”—Translator.
[22]. Translated as “The Man of Genius.” London: Walter Scott.
[23]. This brilliant expert has given the best summary of his own aims in the speech which he delivered in the year 1870 in Cincinnati, at the Congress for Prison Reform. He said: “When the chains have been removed, when corporal punishment has been abolished, when the treatment of prisoners has become something altogether different from what it has been in the past, when, in a word, in penology severity has been replaced by mildness and consideration, still it will not be easy to say if and to what extent this humane spirit will have dammed the spreading flood of crime, nor should I find it easy to determine precisely the grounds by which we have been guided to a decision whether severity or mildness is to be preferred.