A man who can be chaste without discomfort between fourteen and twenty-
three, is endowed with a most unusual temperament. And it is one which
is not very common at present. As a matter of fact, young men are not
chaste, and cannot be.
Society, as it is well aware of this, opens a little loophole to
sexuality, which is free from social embarrassment--the loophole of
prostitution.
As the bee-hive has its workers, society has its prostitutes.
After a few years of sexual life without the walls, passed in the
surrounding moats of prostitution, the normal man is prepared for
marriage, with its submission to social forms and to standards which are
clearly absurd.
There is no possibility of escaping this dilemma which has been decreed
by society.
The alternative is perversion or surrender.
To a man of means, who has money to spend, surrender is not very
difficult; he has but to follow the formula. Prostitution among the
upper classes does not offend the eye, and it reveals none of the sores
which deface prostitution as it is practised among the poor. Marriage,
too, does not sit heavily upon the rich. With the poor, however, shame
and surrender walk hand in hand.
To practise the baser forms of prostitution is to elbow all that is most
vile in society, and to sink to its level oneself.
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