Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/66

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Personal Beauty

have just mentioned; the checking of the desire for children by conflicting social values; enters into a great many of these mammonistic marriages and tends to neutralized their evil results. The harm of mismating is not completely destroyed by childlessness, however, for although positive damage—the procreation by the unfit parent—may thus be prevented, the loss due to the nonprocreation by the fit mate in such a union is not made up.

Features of civilization which are in themselves good may, as indicated above, work seirous harm in society which has not yet completely adjusted itself to these features. Certain benefits, on the other hand may accrue to society from features which are in themselves malignant, even though the evil wrought by these features is enormously in excess of the incidental benefits. Prostitution is one of these sinister features, which, it is probable, has conferred slight benefits on society, and has also contributed to social modifications whose value is open to serious question.

Prostitution is a social institution developed with civilization as a result of social maladjustment: maladjustment of the various other institutions which develop by irregular growth. Although no longer accepted as a necessity, it resists all attempts to eliminate it based on the assumption that it is a primary institution, instead