Very deep-seated differences are linked with what I have been describing. The mother-woman craves for respectability in the man, not because she grasps its value as an idea, but because it is the supporter of the life of the world. She herself works, and is not idle like the prostitute; she is filled with care for the future, and so requires from the man a corresponding practical responsibility, and will not seduce him to pleasure. The prostitute, on the other hand, is most attracted by a careless, idle, dissipated man. A man that has lost self-restraint repels the mother-woman, is attractive to the prostitute. There are women who are dissatisfied with a son that is idle at school; there are others who encourage him. The diligent boy pleases the mother-woman, the idle and careless boy wins approval from the prostitute type. This distinction reaches high up amongst the respectable classes of society, but a salient example of it is seen in the fact that the “bullies” loved by women of the streets are usually criminals. The souteneur is always a criminal, a thief, a fraudulent person, or sometimes even a murderer.
I am almost on the point of saying that, however little woman is to be regarded as immoral (she is only non-moral), prostitution stands in some deep relation with crime, whilst motherhood is equally bound with the opposite tendency. We must avoid regarding the prostitute as the female analogue of the criminal; women, as I have already pointed out, are not criminals; they are too low in the moral scale for that designation. None the less, there is a constant connection between the prostitute type and crime. The great courtesan is comparable with that great criminal, the conqueror, and readily enters into actual relations with him; the petty courtesan entertains the thief and the pickpocket. The mother type is in fact the guardian of the life of the world, the prostitute type is its enemy. But just as the mother is in harmony, not with the soul but with the body, so the prostitute is no diabolic destroyer of the idea, but only a corrupter of empirical phenomena. Physical life and physical death, both of which are in intimate connection with the sexual act, are displayed by the woman in her two capacities of mother and prostitute.
It is still impossible to give a clearer solution than that which I have attempted, of the real significance of motherhood and prostitution. I am on an unfamiliar path, almost untrodden by any earlier wayfarer. Religious myths and philosophy alike have been unable to propound solutions. I have found some clues however. The anti-moral significance of prostitution is in harmony with the fact that it appears only amongst mankind. In all the animal kingdom the females are used only for reproduction; there are no true females that are sterile. There are analogies to prostitution, however, amongst male animals; one has only to think of the display and decoration of the peacock, of the shining glow-worm, of singing birds, of the love dances of many male birds. These secondary sexual manifestations, however, are mere advertisements of sexuality.
Prostitution is a human phenomenon; animals and plants are non-moral; they are never disposed to immorality and possess only motherhood. Here is a deep secret, hidden in the nature and origin of mankind. I ought to correct my earlier exposition by insisting that I have come to regard the prostitute element as a possibility in all women just as much as the merely animal capacity for motherhood. It is something which penetrates the nature of the human female, something with which the most animal-like mother is tinged, something which corresponds in the human female, to the characters that separate the human male from the animal male. Just as the immoral possibility of man is something that distinguishes him from the male animal, so the quality of the prostitute distinguishes the human female from the animal female. I shall have something to say as to the general relation of man to this element in woman, towards the end of my investigation, but possibly the ultimate origin of prostitution is a deep mystery into which none can penetrate.
CHAPTER XI
EROTICS AND ÆSTHETICS
The arguments which are in common use to justify a high opinion of woman have now been examined in all except a few points to which I shall recur, from the point of view of critical philosophy, and have been controverted. I hope that I have justified my deliberate choice of ground, although, indeed, Schopenhauer’s fate should have been a warning to me. His depreciation of women in his philosophical work “On Women,” has been frequently attributed to the circumstance that a beautiful Venetian girl, in whose company he was, fell in love with the extremely handsome personal appearance of Byron; as if a low opinion of women were not more likely to come to him who had had the best not the worst fortune with them.
The practice of merely calling any one who assails woman a misogynist, instead of refuting argument by argument, has much to commend it. Hatred is never impartial, and, therefore, to describe a man as having an animus against the object of his criticism, is at once to lay him open to the charge of insincerity, immorality, and partiality, and one that can be made with a hyperbole of accusation and evasion of the point, which only equal its lack of justification. This sort of answer never fails in its object, which is to exempt the vindicator from refuting the actual statements. It is the oldest and handiest weapon of the large majority of men, who never wish to see woman as she is. No men who really think deeply about women retain a high opinion of them; men either despise women or they have never thought seriously about them.
There is no doubt that it is a fallacious method in a theoretical argument to refer to one’s opponent’s psychological motives instead of bringing forward proofs to controvert his statements.
It is not necessary for me to say that in logical controversy the adversaries should place themselves under an impersonal conception of truth, and their aim should be to reach a result, irrespective of their own concrete opinions. If, however, in an argument, one side has come to a certain conclusion by a logical chain of reasoning, and the other side merely opposes the conclusion without having followed the reasoning process, it is at once fair and appropriate to examine the psychological motives which have induced the adversaries to abandon argument for abuse. I shall now put the champions of women to the test and see how much of their attitude is due to sentimentality, how much of it is disinterested, and how much due to selfish motives.