of vice, is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and of despair. On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds and civilisations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted by the sins of the people." 1 Considerations of this sort should fill us, not only with pity, but with awe. What can be more miserable than the lot of these unhappy women, if we really see it as it is? All the dignity of womanhood gone; all interests in life, save those of a purely animal nature, extinguished; not even the power of repentance left, in many cases, for a career of animalism has degraded them to the level of the animal, and the moral sense is atrophied. No; in place of repentance, merely regrets when their physical charms have faded; when diseases incident to their calling have made a prey of them; when destitution and desolation stare them in the face. Triste vie est celle que je quitte, says the dying Marguerite Gautier. Sad indeed; the saddest to which any woman. can condemn herself. Fearfulness and trembling may well come upon us, and a horrible dread over 1 History of European Morals, vol. ii., p. 283. whelm us, when we reflect that here, too, we are confronted with that appalling fact-evil the apparently inevitable condition of good; that here, too, we are brought face to face with that inscrutable law of vicarious sacrifice. It is a profound and heartpiercing mystery, like that of animal suffering; a problem beyond the reaches of our souls. I am But, if we pass from speculation to practice, the function of the State seems clear. It is to take cog. nisance of this monstrous fact of prostitution, to reg. ulate what must practically be regarded as a necessary evil, and to minimise the resultant mischiefs. far from asserting that public authority should interfere to prevent women who choose this miserable calling from following it. The cynical excuse of the father of a celebrated American courtesan for his daughter's course of life, "It's a ready-money business, and she likes it," must disgust and dismay us. But certainly, if a woman who has attained an age which authorises her to decide, prefers to walk in this broad way which leadeth to destruction, no human power can restrain her. She is at liberty to choose the evil and refuse the good, here, as in other matters. To say this is not, however, to admit "the right of free prostitution "—what a travesty of the word "right"-occasionally asserted; and that, curiously enough, by some who pose as champions of "social purity." The regulation of this evil trade is no wrongful interference with individual liberty, for the criminous commerce is in itself an impediment to social good. It is, assuredly, the function of the State to prohibit the use of our thoroughfares as a mart where public women may follow their vocation; and to enable young men, in whom passion is strongest and reason weakest, to walk abroad without temptation staring them in the face. It is, assuredly, the function of the State to maintain, by due police regulations, order and decency in the parts of music-halls and other places of general resort, where such women congregate, and where those who need them may find them without common scandal and inconvenience1; not to make foolish and futile attempts at excluding them from such rendezvous. It is, assuredly, the function of the State, and that in the interests of the unhappy women themselves, to inspect and control the houses in which they are known to dwell together, and to secure their unshackled liberty of departure thence; not, in hypocritical impotence, to make spasmodic raids upon their habitations. All the arguments in favour of the regulation of the drink traffic, apply with far greater force to this. For the sexual appetite is much more deeply rooted in man than the appetite for alcohol. It is part and parcel of human 1 The lines of Horace will doubtless occur to some readers"Quidam notus homo cum exiret fornice, 'Macte Virtute esto,' inquit sententia dia Catonis. Nam simul ac venas inflavit tetra libido Huc juvenes æquum est descendere, non alienas nature-not an artificial adjunct, the product of civilisation. A third matter affecting the moral life of a country, regarding which the State has, as it appears to me, a function, is cruelty to animals. And I wish to say a few words about it here, because the ground upon which that function rests is often misunderstood. We are told that the State should interfere to protect the rights of animals. The unfortunate phrase is likely to prejudice the object of the excellent people who ignorantly employ it. The lower animals have, in strictness, no rights. Capability of right and responsibility for wrong go together. As the Germans put it, man is rechtsfähig because he is zurechnungsfähig. Man is the only being in the world to whom rights and their correlative duties attach. Man alone is a person and selfdetermined. "The condition of making the animal contributory to human good," writes Green, "is that we do not leave him free to determine the exercise of his powers; that we determine them for him: that we use him merely as an instrument: and this means that we do not, because we cannot, endow him with rights. We do not endow him with rights because there is no conception of a good common to him with us which we can treat as a motive for him to do to us as he would have us do to him." Still, the lower animals are not mere 1 Works, vol. ii., p. 513. things. They possess that realisation of selfhood which is a characteristic of the person. And, therefore, we may properly attribute to them-to use Trendelenburg's happy phrase-ein Stück persönliches, an element of personality. They are our poor relations, and their very poverty gives them a strong claim on the sympathy-one of the highest ethical emotions-both of individual persons, and of the State which incorporates and represents the personalities of its subjects. Cruelty to them is certainly demoralising; the more so as it is a singularly cowardly abuse of power. And it is the function of the State effectively to restrain and severely to punish such cruelty, even when practised in the name of science. Torture is an unethical means of investigation, whether in criminal courts or in physiological laboratories. 4. THE STATE AND PUBLIC HYGIENE Another matter in which the rights of the State come into conflict with private rights is Public Hygiene. It is a mere truism to say that the State should care for the corporal soundness of its subjects. No one, I suppose, will question its function of insisting upon sanitation; of providing physical training for the young, and healthful breathing-spaces for the masses, in our cities; of promoting cleanliness by means of public baths and wash-houses; of repressing the adulteration of food and drink; of |