Note 150 — Chapter IX · (continued 2)

There is one bearing of the use of alcohol in relation to irregular sexual intercourse, the importance of which Dr. Moll appears to me largely to ignore in his discussion of the subject, and that is the effect which even moderate doses of alcohol have in blunting the finer sensibilities, and in disturbing the balance of the judgment. (The author's only reference to the subject is on page 348, where he writes, "If so much alcohol is taken as to interfere with the natural psychical inhibitions, sexual practices may occur that would not otherwise have occurred.") To take the woman's point of view first, it is, I believe, a common experience with prostitutes that, in the earlier days at any rate, they find it difficult to ply their trade unless under the influence of alcohol. Turning to the man's point of view, there is quite a considerable proportion of young men who, however strong their sexual impulse, object to meretricious intercourse at once on ethical and æsthetic grounds. The ethical ground is that intercourse with a prostitute infringes the elementary principle of civilised morals, that one human being should not use another as a mere means to the ends of the former, but that each of us must treat all human beings as ends in themselves; considering the general character of prostitution, the fact that obligations to the individual prostitute are supposed to be discharged by a conventional money payment, does not countervail the fact that this moral principle is infringed. On the æsthetic objections to prostitution, it is hardly necessary to enlarge; they have been felt by all men with refined sensibilities. But it is precisely these refined sensibilities which are blunted by even moderate doses of alcohol—doses insufficiently great to abate the sexual impulse itself. I do not mean to suggest that prostitution would not continue, in the present economic and social conditions, were there no intoxicants in the world; but I think an evening spent in quiet observation in the "promenade" of a "fashionable" London music-hall will convince most people that the above-described effects of alcohol are by no means purely imaginary.—Translator's Note.