Note 44 — Chapter IV · Methods by which Sexual Morality may be Promoted

There is a class of persons, the illogical, whose conscience will not allow them to counsel vice, who state that it is a habit that can be avoided as the use of opium can be avoided, but who in the same breath declare prostitution to be a necessity, and that the greater part of young men away from home will resort to it. Now, if prostitution be a necessity, it must be because fornication is a necessity. What is a necessity? It is something inevitable, because it is rooted in the constitution; it is an unavoidable development of human nature itself. If so, fornication is not a habit like opium-eating, but the form in which human nature is shaped—God’s work. In that case fornication would not be wrong; it should not be condemned, and neither the man nor the woman who practises it should be blamed. There is no avoiding this direct conclusion, and everyone who asserts that prostitution is a necessity must be prepared to accept it. This grave error and the confusion of thought and practice which arises from it proceed from a wrong use of the word ‘Necessity.’ It is the existence of the sexual passion which is a necessary part of nature, not prostitution. This necessary passion may either be controlled or it may be satisfied in two ways—by marriage, or by fornication. It is only the passion which is a necessity, not the way in which it is gratified. It is thus a positive falsehood to state that prostitution is a necessity, and, considered in all its bearings, a most dangerous falsehood.