9
since they depend on property for their very existence.
Just here let us consider buying and selling, and the commercial principle generally, together with the division of labor that we now have in connection with them. What is the difference between a woman selling to a man the use of her sexual organs, and one person selling to another person the use of some other part of the body, such as the arm or the brain? Or what is the difference between a woman exacting from a man a price for the use of certain "resources" for his gratification, and one person exacting from another person a price for the use of certain other resources which the former can provide—such as a pair of boots or a load of firewood? I can see no moral difference between one transaction and the other. Our innate sentiment for the welfare of the race teaches us that if a woman admits a man for the mere satisfaction of her own animal passion, it is natural and not in itself immoral; and if she does so in pursuance of a special affection it is usually positively moral, in as much as such affection ordinarily guides to the coupling most advantageous for the beneficial breeding of her species. But to pair without desire is repugnant to our feelings, and rightly so, as it impairs the quality of propagation. Does not also the use of the other organs without, or in excess of, desire, impair the quality of their operation? The artist, the author, the poet, know that when they have to resort to "pot-boiling" drudgery, it renders it more difficult for them to produce good work. Where there is a real natural prompting, whether the craving of a faculty for exercise, or the suggestiveness of appropriate conditions, the gratification of that prompting is a pleasure; and the being who would demand compensation for being pleased, is repugnant to all our instincts of self-preservation. The whole system of the habitual female prostitute is in a state of chronic derangement. What else can be said of the man who spends all his time in overworking one faculty to the level of a mere mechanical automaton, and shutting his energies off from the rest? Our body is too delicate a mechanism to be tampered with in this way. The whole man would be healthier and more vigorous and competent for a greater variety of exercise and due proportioning of action to the measure in which the different faculties exist in his struc-
